Sonic Boom: A new Sonic cartoon series, coming Fall 2014

Shadon said:

Do you really not know? Have you not seen anything like Clement's 3-hour review...

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Okay, hold the fuck up here. I'm not remotely related to this argument, but it seems to me that if you're suggesting someone watch a THREE HOUR REVIEW of a game for ANY reason whatsoever, something is wrong with your argument. I can BEAT any of the good Sonic games in the time it takes to watch the review you're suggesting he watch. While I question the sanity of whoever made a three hour video review of a game that can't be all that much longer than that if you take out the cutscenes, I question your sanity even more for being willing to put up with watching such a thing front to back. It sounds to me like you desperately want to justify liking a bad game when that simply isn't necessary.

Sonic Boom Wii U is a bad game. Even ignoring the memes and the jokes, it has a Metacritic score of 32. Sonic 2K6 for 360, commonly joked about across the world for how terrible it is, has a Metacritic score of 46 for comparison. While I'm not of the opinion that Metacritic has a huge amount of meaning in exactly what the number is, going below 60 is a sign that something has gone very, very wrong.

The thing is, just because a game is objectively terrible doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. I would wager that a large number of people have directly or indirectly had lots of fun with Sonic 2K6 despite how rubbish it is. Bad movies are watched on purpose for exactly this reason. It's totally okay to like Sonic Boom and enjoy playing it! As a child I liked Bubsy for the love of god. It's just important to know that just because you're having fun doesn't mean you should defend it as a good game, and considering the overwhelming evidence that's been posted just about everywhere, I think it's pretty damn clear Sonic Boom is pretty terrible.

Shadon said:

Do you really not know? Have you not seen anything like Clement's 3-hour review, or Johnny's hour-long reasonably-apologetic review? There should be plenty of proof, and I feel like I could only repeat what others have said better.

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Going to echo Mystic here, why are you telling me to spend fours watching videos when you can just sum up their points in like ten minutes?

Or hell, why don't you just link to a video that can get its point across in ten minutes?

Because ten minutes is nothing compared to three hours. The point at which a three hour review can even be MADE is the reason there is such a massive gap in the quality between these two games. Three hours deconstructs every inch of a game because every inch of the game is absolutely horrible. Ten minutes is a list of flaws followed by a sarcastic comment and a bunch of people agreeing because they don't know. The moment at which you think that a ten minutes of "it's bad" tells you that you have no chance of enjoying a game is the moment at which you don't fucking know.

I'm not even trying to prove that Rise of Lyric is even that good. But by all accounts, it's not the worst. Rise of Lyric is average. It's average compared to other Sonic games, and it's average compared to other games. Sonic 06 is a god damned trainwreck. It is legendary for being a trainwreck, and people who actually know that can tell you many, many reasons why. But with Rise of Lyric, the game's been released at a time where people still have impressions that "oh, sonic's dead" even after nearly five years of proof of the contrary. It's not going to leave as big an impact, because it's nowhere near as bad, and nowhere near as many people even bought the damn thing. People are completely taking the word of very few others and not actually bothering to think for themselves, and that's where my problem is. I mean, if I just want to prove RoL is average and post Clement's RoL review here, what exactly would happen? I mean, would you just say the other review is better, just because you like it more? Would you not bother to watch it because it's longer than ten minutes?

Excuse me, but where are your arguments that I asked for two days ago?

I wanted you to explain to me why Sonic '06 was worse than Rise of Lyric, citing ingame reasoning as your points. As an answer, you told me to watch a three hour review. I said I don't have time for that, please sum up the points, or give me a condensed version of the arguments via a shorter video. You responded with, effectively, "time dictates quality", and then went on with your usual conjecture.

Here's a fun fact: time doesn't dictate quality, and it is possible to provide coherent arguments within a 10 minute timeframe, which ProJared has unless you can prove otherwise. Even Egoraptor's sequelitis's don't pass the thirty minute mark, and he still (generally) gets his points across. In the time it took you to tell me off with a 3 hour video and then ramble on with another spiel that doesn't actually state either games' issues still, you could have spent less than half of that time just telling me directly why Sonic '06 is objectively worse than Rise of Lyric.

I don't mind if you post a review as a source of reading material, but if you're going to present a big argument, you better prove that you can actually write it out in your own words. Stop leveraging on reviews as a talking point and just give me a direct answer.

If you need a condensed paragraph to work with, here is my argument: Sonic '06 is not much worse (if it even is any worse at all) than Rise of Lyric because while Sonic '06 was a frustrating, gross, haphazard mess, Rise of Lyric is bland, unengaging, and riddled with framerate issues. They are both significantly bad games for different reasons, but one thing they both have in common is that they were both released in a blatantly unfinished, bug-riddled state.

The ball is in your court.

That's why I brought up the Metacritic score, which is made by a weighted average of a large number of critics. Check out Sonic Boom's metacritic here: http://www.metacritic.com/game/wii-u/sonic-boom-rise-of-lyric

You'll notice that the score is very, very low, both in the professional score and the user score. In fact, it's the worst game on the Wii U this year, and the sixth worst amongst all platforms. That's pretty bad. It's actually worse than Sonic 2K6, which actually got a couple of positive reviews back when it was released.

There is no way that a game with that kind of critical reception is "average". It is "way below average". Again, I point out that you are free to enjoy and have fun with awful games. There's nothing wrong with enjoying bad games and having a good time; we all have our hidden guilty pleasures of awful things we enjoy. Just don't try to pass it off as a good game, because the evidence is pretty overwhelming that it's from the same trash heap 2K6 is from.

For how much talk of Sonic 06 going on here, not much is actually being said about the game. Seeing as how I've played the game probably more than anyone here, I feel like I should weigh in on this discussion.

Sonic 06 is a trainwreck of a game. It's bugged to hell, the load times are ridiculous, the story is full of holes, almost every "amigo" character is just plain unfun to play as, and some levels are exercises in annoyance that last upwards of 10 minutes. It deserves nearly every shred of criticism thrown its way, and I won't defend it... but I will defend my 30+ hours of playtime.

On paper, the game is everything I wanted out of a 3D Sonic game at that time. It was a return to the Sonic Adventure formula, with multiple characters, a fantastic soundtrack, wide open level design, and a hub world to goof around in. It didn't do any of those aspects particularly well, other than the soundtrack and SOME of the level layouts, but it still felt like a part of the Sonic Adventure series. It still felt like "Sonic," to the extent that the past few 3D games had reinvented the franchise. I knew the game was broken when I bought it, but with that in mind, I managed to have a blast playing and replaying through the game in that first year with my ps3.

When Sonic Boom was announced, I was certainly wary, but the idea of ex-naughty dog employees working on the game gradually eased me into the concept. When the gameplay footage started coming out, though, I lost all hope immediately. When the videos which show the game breaking in hundreds of creative ways came out, I laughed openly and felt secure in my decision to never purchase the game.

On paper, Sonic Boom is everything I do not want out of a Sonic game. Exceedingly slow movement, bland geometric platforming, mind-numbingly dull combat, a story full of holes, characters that never shut up, terrible graphics for its console, game breaking, progression blocking glitches, and a nearly nonexistent soundtrack.

The game might not randomly decide that you don't deserve to live anymore, like some of 06's speed sections, but Boom does nothing to make me want to play it even when I see it working as intended. Not a single piece of it feels like "Sonic," other than the characters placed inside it. Even the running sequences have more in common with commonplace IOS apps than the Daylight stages in Sonic Unleashed.

It's impossible for me to justifying actually taking the time to play Sonic Boom. When I think of Boom's combat, I immediately think of how much better the combat is in any Devil May Cry game. When I think of Boom's speed sections, I think of how much more fun I could have just replaying some of the better levels in Sonic Generations. When I think of collecting a lot of shiny objects in a large 3D world, I have my pick of every Nintendo, Rareware, Insomniac, and Naughty Dog platforming game.

Why in the HELL would I ever play Sonic Boom, then?