Sonic's friends: Who's fun to play and who's not.

A major topic of Sonic games is Sonic's friends. Ever since Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast, Sega feels the need to give all of Sonic's pals equal gametime as Sonic and it seems like that's been a thorn in the series side for some time. One major complaint of "old school" fans and critics is the funnest part of Sonic's games is playing as Sonic. Running fast through high speed platforming stages and smashing through robots. It's not that we don't like Sonic's pals, it's just that they aren't always that fun to play. Sega wants to add "variety" to gameplay but we play Sonic games to go fast. So what's fun and what's not.

Tails:

Tails was fun to play with in 2nd and 3rd Genesis games mainly because he controlled like Sonic. He ran fast and had a spin attack, plus the addition of being able to fly. Of course in Sonic 3, we even had hyper Tails, a sort of super version of our two tailed buddy. Tails had a great solo outing in "Tails Adventures" on the Game Gear, a game worthy of a sequel and even in "Sonic Adventure" Tails was fun and fast and still had a decent attack in his Tails spin move. But then they stuck him in a mech in SA2. The mech was slow and boring. Hold down the B button and jump occasionally. It would've been more fun to have Tails flying the Tornado and had a flight sim aspect in the game and planes go faster than mechs. Mech games suck. Can you name a good mech game? Then in Sonic Next Gen, Tails went back on foot but instead of giving him a practical attack like jumping, they made him throw a stupid ring box. Who thought of that idea? Let Tails run fast, fly and attack like Sonic and we like to play with him.

Knuckles:

Knuckles was fun to play with when he debuted. He had all the moves of Sonic plus the ability to climb, dig and fly. That's great and for the most part, that has remained unchanged but first of all we have to deal with Shadow replacing Knuckles as the resident badass which turned Knuckles into Sonic's thug and making him an idiot. Also I never cared much for the whole emerald hunting thing. It wouldn't have been bad except they timed you and this was annoying because I wanted to explore these levels more and at times it was a pain trying to find the pieces. Let Knuckles go back to the way he was in Sonic 3, he's cool and we like him but no more endless hunting around.

Shadow:

When was Shadow the most fun? When he ran fast like Sonic in SA2. Had Sega stuck with that, it would've been fine. We could've had this fast, evil version of Sonic with Chaos Control powers but they decided to try to be "dark and edgy" and gave Shadow guns and cars. On the bright side you could pass on the guns and cars and try to run fast through the levels but then there was those tedious hero/dark missions that had you circling the stage multiple times trying to find the last alien, soldier or whatever you had to destroy to move on. Then in Sonic Next Gen, they slowed him down and made him drive vehicles instead of letting him run fast like he once did. Let Shadow run fast again. We don't need guns and cars. Shadow's powers are enough to distinguish him from Sonic.

Characters that have never been fun: Amy, Cream, Big, Vector, Marine and Charmy

Games that got it right:

Handhelds: Sonic's recent handheld games are perfect in that they found a way to please everyone by doing one simple thing. CHOICE. In Sonic Advance series it allowed the player to choose who they wanted to play with so purists could just play as Sonic but others could switch out between Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Cream. Better yet you weren't forced to play as each character to finish the game. Why can't the 3D games get this? It's fine to play as friends but let us choose if we want to or not and it's more fun when they are fast like Sonic. Sonic Rush Adventure (DS) even had a good idea in letting the player choose betweeen Blaze or Sonic which was good considering you had to return to some stages so you could play as the other character. If Unleashed allowed the player to choose between Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, etc. but didn't force you to play as them just to unlock the final ending, I wouldn't care. I couldn't finish "Sonic Adventure" because Big's levels were so mind numblingly boring I thought I was going to hang myself with my game controller cord.

Sonic Heroes: One thing Heroes got right aside from it's return to a gameplay formula similar to that of the 2D games was that the characters all went fast even slow as mud Amy and fatass Big. The team aspect of using Tails to fly and Knuckles to smash rocks was a good idea as well but as I've stated before, I would've rather had one long game with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles using this team aspect instead of simply making us play through the same game four times as lesser characters just to unlock the final boss fight.

So summing up all this. I like my Sonic friends fast and fun to control, not doing boring tedious stuff and I don't like being forced to play as some lame friend in order to progress on. Let me choose who I want to play with as with Sonic Advance.

Hey, the Chaotix kicked major *** on the 32x. sonicphc

To reply to the topic:

Sonic - We all know Sonic is always fun, he sets the standards. He's our measuring stick.

Tails - I liked him in Sonic 2, but he was kinda useless since the only difference he had from Sonic was the fact that he was shorter. Other than that, he just LOOKED different. In Sonic 3 & Knuckles, he was awesome because he could fly and even carry Sonic to important places if you either had a friend to play with, or were skilled at swapping controllers quicky. In SA1, he was very fun, but his stages were WAY too easy and WAY too short. In SA2, he wasn't even Tails anymore. He was basically a larger Gamma from SA walking about in a mech. HOw does that belong in a Sonic game? It doesn't. In Heroes, he served as a flight ability to once again aid Sonic. He didn't ruin the stages by being overly powerful with his flight this time, like he was in SA1. He was fun as ever in the Advance games.

Knuckles - He was fun in S3&K since he played like Sonic, but with gliding and climbing abilities. His specially designed paths were cleverly put into the game to add good replay value.He was okay in Sonic 2 A couple tricky quirks, but overall, he was good. A bit too easy since I got all 7 Chaos Emeralds before clearing the first Zone. In SA1 and 2, he pulled a Super Mario 64 on us and went looking for things in open feilds. Just great. In Heroes, he had the most fun fighting style that allowed him to do cool things like throw his teammates as weapons, or makes fireballs erupt from the ground while sending out a shockwave. I kinda missed his wall climbing and gliding, but his role in Sonic Heroes was fun enough, so I didn't miss it too much. At least he can do the Triangle Dive, which was fun to use in windy areas.

Mighty and Maria are probably the only characters who were never any fun to play as. Other charaters had their good and bad moments.

Knux and Tails were good when they played like Sonic. Gamma and the mechs in SA2 were fun, but not Sonic-styIe so they shouldn't have been there.

I never liked playing as Amy or Big, they are the only two I never enjoyed and that I have at least tried out.

Lol...

Reminds of one of those Sonic shorts... where Silver tries to run up the loop-de-loop. :P

Lol...

Reminds of one of those Sonic shorts... where Silver tries to run up the loop-de-loop. :P

Hyper_Hedgehog

Yeah and they censored,then later at night he still tries to go up the loop.

Lol...

Reminds of one of those Sonic shorts... where Silver tries to run up the loop-de-loop. :P

Hyper_Hedgehog

That was hilarious. Anyway, the only people I don't really like playing are Big and Vector. I actually don't mind playing Amy and in Sonic Adventure (DX), it was actually fun. I remember spending alot of time running to get to full speed, then using her hammer for a Super Jump of sorts.

Amy's SA1 gameplay was just too slow and didn't have enough of the Sonic elements involved other than the items. It felt boring, stale, and generic to me. Nothing about it was appealing to me. But at least they weren't as bad as Big's stages, right? Hahaha! :lol:DocEggmanNega

Amy's gameplay in SA1 bugged me because of the insane camera angle. It had the sort of camera work you saw in the old Resident Evil games (before RE4) where the camera would abruptly switch angles at the worst possible times (and this seemed to be a common occurence in a lot of Sonic games).kbaily

The park stage had some of the worst angles, especially the indoor areas.

Amy's SA1 gameplay was just too slow and didn't have enough of the Sonic elements involved other than the items. It felt boring, stale, and generic to me. Nothing about it was appealing to me. But at least they weren't as bad as Big's stages, right? Hahaha! :lol:DocEggmanNega

I barely completed Big's story in Sonic Adventure.

I only did because my noose broke.

Big's last mission at Twinkle Park is all but impossible, you can't catch a 2000 point fish when there aren't any 2000 point fish.demoman_chaos

I have the silver lure and have completed the ones in all of the other stages.

Does anybody (else) here know about the unreachable lure upgrade in Station Square?
It is in the same place that Tail's jet-boots are, above the sewer where Big has no hope of reaching without an AR. I saw it on youtube.

I didn't like Sonic Heroes that much playing through virtually the same level with different teams is boring.chocolate1325

That was the thing that bugged me about Heroes, where instead of having simply this team based game with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, but tried to extend the gameplay by making you play the same levels 3 more times as characters no one cares about. If you were like me, you played through the game as Team Sonic but after beating it (it was a bit on the easy side except for trying to catch the Chaos Emerald) you were told "finish another story" so you slog through the other three wondering why they decided to ressurect the corpses of the Knuckles Chaotix cast. Only to finish all those and be told you had to still collect all the chaos emeralds. I kind of found a similar situtation in the first Sonic Rush where Blaze's storyline pretty much went through the same levels as Sonic except in a different order. At least in Sonic Rush Adventure they eliminated this tedium by just allowing the player to choose between the two.

Rejected Teams for Sonic Heroes:

Team SatAM: Sally, Bunnie and Rotor

Team Babylon: Jet, Wave and Storm

Team Annoying TV characters: Manic, Sonja and Chris Thorndyke

Team Archie Comic: (insert 3 comic book characters here)

Team Obscure: Mighty the Armadillo, Bean the Dynamite and Ray the Squirrel

Team Mario: Mario, Luigi and Yoshi

FYI, I could come up with other rejected Sonic teams all day.

[QUOTE="chocolate1325"]I didn't like Sonic Heroes that much playing through virtually the same level with different teams is boring.kbaily

That was the thing that bugged me about Heroes, where instead of having simply this team based game with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, but tried to extend the gameplay by making you play the same levels 3 more times as characters no one cares about. If you were like me, you played through the game as Team Sonic but after beating it (it was a bit on the easy side except for trying to catch the Chaos Emerald) you were told "finish another story" so you slog through the other three wondering why they decided to ressurect the corpses of the Knuckles Chaotix cast. Only to finish all those and be told you had to still collect all the chaos emeralds. I kind of found a similar situtation in the first Sonic Rush where Blaze's storyline pretty much went through the same levels as Sonic except in a different order. At least in Sonic Rush Adventure they eliminated this tedium by just allowing the player to choose between the two.

[QUOTE="kbaily"]

[QUOTE="chocolate1325"]I didn't like Sonic Heroes that much playing through virtually the same level with different teams is boring.sonicphc

That was the thing that bugged me about Heroes, where instead of having simply this team based game with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, but tried to extend the gameplay by making you play the same levels 3 more times as characters no one cares about. If you were like me, you played through the game as Team Sonic but after beating it (it was a bit on the easy side except for trying to catch the Chaos Emerald) you were told "finish another story" so you slog through the other three wondering why they decided to ressurect the corpses of the Knuckles Chaotix cast. Only to finish all those and be told you had to still collect all the chaos emeralds. I kind of found a similar situtation in the first Sonic Rush where Blaze's storyline pretty much went through the same levels as Sonic except in a different order. At least in Sonic Rush Adventure they eliminated this tedium by just allowing the player to choose between the two.

I didn't like Sonic Heroes that much playing through virtually the same level with different teams is boring.chocolate1325

Well, the team blast was a tad broken, seeing as if you just spammed the B button a lot in the middle of nowhere you'd build up the team blast gauge without collecting rings or killing anything. That, and the game gave the team blast to you much too often.sonicphc

'I think I'll investigate it.
With my face.'

CIassic.

You know what's strange, is you have these "newer" Sonic fans who go on about how they like having umteen playable characters and how Secret Rings and Unleashed suck because you only play as Sonic but then if they hate playing as one character so much, why do they turn around say how much they like "Shadow the Hedgehog" when you only play as Shadow. If they like having multiple playable characters so much and hate games like Secret Rings for only having one playable character, shouldn't they hate Shadow's game then?

Ever notice that?

You know what's strange, is you have these "newer" Sonic fans who go on about how they like having umteen playable characters and how Secret Rings and Unleashed suck because you only play as Sonic but then if they hate playing as one character so much, why do they turn around say how much they like "Shadow the Hedgehog" when you only play as Shadow. If they like having multiple playable characters so much and hate games like Secret Rings for only having one playable character, shouldn't they hate Shadow's game then?

Ever notice that?

kbaily

[QUOTE="kbaily"]

You know what's strange, is you have these "newer" Sonic fans who go on about how they like having umteen playable characters and how Secret Rings and Unleashed suck because you only play as Sonic but then if they hate playing as one character so much, why do they turn around say how much they like "Shadow the Hedgehog" when you only play as Shadow. If they like having multiple playable characters so much and hate games like Secret Rings for only having one playable character, shouldn't they hate Shadow's game then?

Ever notice that?

chocolate1325

Well, you didn't miss much then. I played it and beat it and I didn't bother with the guns much mainly because the aiming SUCKED! But the whole hero/dark mission thing was a mess because EVERYTHING attacked you and it took ages to find the last thing you needed to do to move on in either the hero or dark mission and you end up just going for the goal ring saying "screw it!"

Aside from Fox and Krystal, Sonic and Sally is the only couple I'd ever support. I'm not too big on couples normally, but Sally is full of pwn and win.DocEggmanNega

You know I never liked Sally...don't know why. Anywho I beat everything with A rank in Heroes, which pops up when you beat Metal Sonic. Woo hoo!

I only nearly beat everthing on A rank (laughs) I got stuck me nor my friend couldn't find the 20th hermitcrab I gave up, then I cheated! (laughs) Actally I don't know why I'm laughing when I was told where it was it was in such an ovius place that I don't know how I missed it....:(Angelwave06

I remember doing that mission 30 minutes just trying to find the 20th hermit crab. Stupid mission. Finally got the A though.

[QUOTE="Angelwave06"]I only nearly beat everthing on A rank (laughs) I got stuck me nor my friend couldn't find the 20th hermitcrab I gave up, then I cheated! (laughs) Actally I don't know why I'm laughing when I was told where it was it was in such an ovius place that I don't know how I missed it....:(Greatness86

I remember doing that mission 30 minutes just trying to find the 20th hermit crab. Stupid mission. Finally got the A though.

With out cheating? I gave up before it reached 30mins I felt crazyed just running around and around and around!