[POLL] SONIC LOST WORLDS

author=Dudesoft
I seriously never lost any love for Sonic all these years. He's my #1 favourite videogame character. He has an actual personality that is fun, rebellious, heroic, and kick-ass. Even if the game is ultimately garbage (2007-cough-) Somic endures as the coolest hedgehog around.

Kentona's got the right idea. I'd break down and get a 3DS for this.

I really haven't, either. While I've still been critical of the most infamous additions to the franchise, Sonic remains as the game that got me into gaming to begin with, and after playing Sonic Colors I'm overjoyed that he's heading towards a good direction.

@Cyberdagger: Bleh. The problem was NEVER Sonic's friends. The Mario series, in addition to other franchises like Rayman and even Pokemon has an extensive cast of characters and NOBODY COMPLAINS ABOUT THEM.

The REAL problem with Sonic's friends is that they got shit gameplay to go with them. In games, people judge characters more by how they interact with the gameplay than how they interact with the game's story. For instance, Navi from LoZ: Orcarina of Time is fine in the context of the game's story. She's a guardian fairy that sticks with Link to help him on his quest. What makes everyone hate her, though, is how IN GAME she would spam the same, unsolicited messages and if you don't want to listen to them, she'll keep yelling "Hey! Hey! Hey!" forcing you to succumb to her lectures for the sake of keeping your sanity. Had her tutorial mechanic been perfected, however, I doubt she would be as infamous as she is today.

In Sonic's case, crap storm began with Sonic Adventure as every other character besides Sonic (Tails is maybe an exception) were given completely different game mechanics that made the whole thing look like a hodge-podge of unrefined ideas.

Tails was the closest sub-game to Sonic's, but it was short and had too many fillers; you weren't given enough time to like him.

Knuckles was a treasure hunt that is very akin to the red coin hunts in Super Mario 64; nobody liked them, and here it just slowed down a fast-paced game. Worse is how he does the same thing in SA2, but now in HUGE levels with a BS radar system and crappy rap music to go along with it. I've always loved Knuckles since his debut in Sonic 3, and the Adventure games have given him a bad name imo.

Amy was atrocious; I do NOT want to go slow in a FAST-paced action platformer. Even if she moved just a little bit faster to keep her within the bounds of Sonic game design it would have been fine, but I think she moves even slower than Mario here.

Big the Cat was worse. FISHING in a SONIC GAME. I don't need to say more, do I? He was one of those characters you would wonder why he even exists as a result.

Gamma was somewhat fun, but if I wanted to play a 3rd-person shooter I'd look for other titles, not Sonic the Hedgehog. Considering his gameplay wasn't as bad as the rest I have to say I actually like the guy.

Meanwhile, Blaze the Cat, a recent addition to Sonic's character lineup, is universally liked. Why is this? Because in Sonic Rush, she didn't offer a ridiculous change in gameplay like Big and Amy did in Sonic Adventure. She ran fast, traversed through loop-de-loops, and overall played like she belonged in a Sonic game. Even in Sonic '06, as terrible as that game was all around, she probably had the best gameplay out of all "sidekick" characters in that game, because she could actually GO FAST!

The point I'm getting across here is that the addition of new characters was never really a problem as some of the whiny "fans" make it out to be, so much as these characters were shoved in without fitting into Sonic's core design, or even if they did they were unrefined in one way or another. Sonic is about going fast and navigating through platforms, and if every other playable character followed this, akin to Sonic 3 & Knuckles, I don't think the addition of new characters would have ever been an issue.