When I buy a Sonic game, it’s because I want to play ping-pong with an F-16, but forces like my girlfriend and the laws of physics prohibit me. I get the impression that most people have similar expectations. Except for Sega, who decided that Sonic should spend half the game as a slow-ass werewolf. This is absurd, since Sonic already has characteristics of both hedgehog and human, so I don’t know how the hell he can become half wolf, half hedgehog, half person.
The “speed” levels where you play as regular old Sonic the Hedgehog are amazing. They’re nearly perfect. Sonic’s 3d controls have been completely revamped. The archaic spin-dash has been sidelined in favor of new maneuvers: the Flash Step and the Drift. Drifting is reminiscent of Mario Kart, while the Flash Step has obviously been lifted from Dragon Ball Z. These moves work so well partly because the levels are designed to implement them. Drifting around turns and flash stepping to avoid obstacles feels natural. A third technique, the Sonic Boost, allows Sonic to expend his boost gauge to gain a temporary speed burst. The gauge is filled by collecting rings, which also still act as health. The synergy all these mechanics are able to produce is mind blowing; it’s undoubtedly the best 3d control scheme Sonic has ever had. In fact, the speed stages were so much better and more realized than the rest of the game that I felt certain they must have been designed by a different team.
It turns out, I was right. I dug around and found out Sonic Team designed the entire game, with the ironic exception of the levels where you actually play as Sonic. These levels were designed by Osaka-based Dimps, who also developed the excellent Sonic Rush games.
Weresonic is a confusing element. I think that since the major complaint about Sonic adventure was, “We don’t even get to play as Sonic enough!” This is Sega’s little way of saying, “Well, you’re playing as Sonic the whole time,” even though we're not. The reality of Weresonic is that he looks, moves, and for all gameplay intents and purposes is...Knuckles. (For those who are not Sonic-savvy, Knuckles is the red guy in Sonic 3.) The fact that Sega was trying to trick me into playing as Knuckles when I really just wanted to play as Sonic put me off before I even touched the game. But I have to admit, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.
Knuckles’ air-glide has gone the way of the spin-dash, in favor of a double jump. His other traditional moves, climbing things and beating things, are in tact. The controls, overall, are surprisingly tight. Even the waggle based combat works. The camera doesn’t even suck, which is probably a first for a 3d Sonic game.
What does suck is the level design. It’s completely boring -- there’s nothing to do in the Weresonic levels! You fight some things, you jump over some platforms, find a few things to open a door, flip a switch, rinse and repeat. I had horrible flashbacks to N64 platformers. To make matters worse, these portions are sandwiched between some the most enjoyable and dynamic Sonic levels ever designed.
Weresonic's environments are boring, too. There’s the lava level, the desert level, the ice level, ect. But I do have to admit, the moonlit jungle with its haunting soundtrack, and unique aesthetic, at least kept me interested even though I was just doing the same stupid crap over and over again.
A minor problem I had was that sometimes the auto-target feature just didn’t target fast enough for me. I would forgive Sonic Team, if only I wasn’t sitting there holding a pointing device in my hand.
For some reason there are multiple hubs to select levels from. The world selection screen is a hub that allows you to select which level to play, but so are the various temples located throughout the world. The temples are accessible from both the village hubs and the main overwold screen. So Unleashed actually has three different level hubs. Confusing? The developers seemed to think so. At one point I fought my way to the center of a temple, only to be told that we would have to leave, fly halfway around the world to a village, only to be told by a professor that I should go back to the temple I was in and fight the boss. Gee thanks, how would I have ever known that the Ice Boss was in the fucking Ice Temple.
If there are two things that Sonic Team has always done well, it’s music and boss fights. Unleashed is no exception. It features mostly live instrumental tracks, including a strangely placed love song that successfully eroticizes a scene with Sonic and his “buddy,” Chip. But that’s okay with me, one of the reasons I like Japanese games is the homoerotic undertones. The tunes are mostly solid, with a few weak tracks here and there -- although sadly my favorite Japanese NASCAR enthusiasts, CRUSH 40, do not make an appearance.
The boss battles are solid as well , even the Weresonic ones. These epic fights can hold their own against any AAA title. Which makes me wonder, “Sonic Team, why do you have to suck at everything else?” Maybe after this they won’t try to add some weird gimmick to the next Sonic game…er..wait a second:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_and_the_Black_Knight
Oh, fuck.
Well, I hope this guy is right:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi4QVN_8y4g
11/25/08
11/18/08
Is Deadly Towers Really That Bad?
In the continued quest to find the least playable game of all time, I subject myself to Deadly Towers during the time of year when the industry releases almost all of it's top quality titles. I am obviously insane.
If Google searches are to be believed, then Deadly Towers is the closest thing to an internet wide consensus of “teh worst game evar.” In the old days, before Seanbaby figured out how to transform dick jokes into money (hint: you need baking soda), he reviewed DT as the #1 worst NES game. One of the game’s producers sent Seanbaby the following email, which was subsequently added to the review:
“I produced the game and it wasn't THAT bad for the times...some of the others are WAY worse. Nice to see it again, though.
Alan Weiss – Producer”
I’m not so sure about that, Alan Weiss. I’m not so sure about that, at all. I went into Deadly Towers with a positive mindset. I was going to beat it. I mean, people hate Simon’s Quest, and I like that game, so who knows right? “I will beat Deadly Towers,” I declared. I was lying. The following is the synopsis of my first two screens of DT:
Screen 1: Prince Myer teleports in front of what I’m assuming is a tower. There are scary faces on the tower, so you know it is deadly. Teleporting; kind of unconventional in a fantasy game, but whatever. Color palate is bland, but we’re talking early NES game here so I can deal. I press the pad. “8 way directional walk. It can’t be that bad if it has 8 way walk,” I thought at the time (another lie). I press the B button. Myer shoots a sword, provocatively. Images speak louder than words here, but the myths are true: Myer ejaculates swords. I enter a door.
Screen 2: Wow there’s lots of enemies. I try to move in and fight; I’m instantly overrun and die. This happens a few more times, with a little strategizing, I’m able to clear the bats and the weird...puddle monsters, and I turn my focus to the blue sphere. The blue sphere absorbs somewhere between 30 and 40 swords before dying. I walk to the right, fireballs rise up much faster than I can move and knock me off the tower. Death.
I was ready to quit. It was November, there was a myriad of new triple A releases for me to be enjoying. I remember thinking, “Animal Crossing comes out at midnight. Maybe I should just play that instead.” But I didn’t want to let Deadly Towers turn me into a liar. “I will defeat these towers!” I yelled. I trudged on. I trudged all the way through the first dungeon before swearing never to play Deadly Towers again. What went wrong? How could I have fallen so far from my original ambitions? I mean literally, I fell off the tower dozens of times. Was it my shortcomings as gamer that prevented me from thoroughly enjoying this game?
The only thing that Deadly Towers does correctly is 8 way movement. Every other gameplay element is fucked up in some way. But the problems don’t end there. These fucked up gameplay elements weave together, perfectly creating a sinister web of horrible gameplay situations that I never imagined possible.
Case 1: Myer’s sword. Which he shoots our of his crotch. Weird and counterintuitive to begin with, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they were going for lolz. The problem with the sword shooting mechanic is that Myer can only shoot a single sword at a time. He has to wait for the first sword to hit its target before he can shoot another one. If Myer misses, he’s a sitting duck, since the sword travels very slowly across the entire screen and can’t be cancelled. If this were not bad enough, many basic enemies require dozens of hits to kill. The Wikipedia for DT points out that even the instruction manual warns gamers that
Myer’s sword sucks:
"SHORT SWORD -- You start the game with this sword. It is so weak, you feel lonely (you have no confidence in this sword)."
This shows that the team realized, at least on some level, aware of how difficult combat was. They either didn’t see, or didn’t care, how awkward and un-fun it was.
Case 2: Waves of fireballs. They swarm certain areas from bottom to top. They don’t move so quickly that Myer can’t dodge them, but he can’t destroy them with his sword effectively because they take so many hits that the next wave would be onscreen before he could kill a single fireball. Myer can’t just dodge the fire waves though, because of another problem. Areas often have way too many enemies on screen compared to how much ground Myer has available to stand on. The safest thing is for Myer to clear out the enemies before he can goes near the path where the fire comes up, but when enemies can take dozens of hits to kill, he can only shoot a single slow moving sword at a time, and he has to stand and shoot them from across the screen, gameplay grows tedious. The fire wave paths often are also often in areas where Myer can be knocked off the ledge of the tower, which is an instant game over. Myer is knocked backwards when he’s hit, so whenever I tried to make a run through it past the fire without killing at least most of the onscreen enemies, Myer would be overwhelmed, pushed back, and then thrown to his death.
Case 3: Invisible doors. These wouldn’t be so bad, by themselves. Perhaps they could’ve concealed desirable morsels. This was not the case. I never actually found an invisible door, per say; it found me. I was knocked back by an enemy and found myself transported into a maze-like labyrinth. I assumed I must have stumbled upon the game’s first dungeon. This was not the case. The truth about the secret doors in DT is that they lead into mazes which serve only to trap the player and distract him from actually progressing in the game. They are not tiny mazes, either; although thankfully they’re just extensive grids. However, the mazes are filled with deadly scorpions and other monsters; it is difficult to navigate through without taking some serious damage. To make matters worse, the only way to heal, early on, is through items dropped by enemies, but the drop rates are incredibly low. In bizarre twist of fate, this all works out for the better because the easiest way out of the mazes is to simply die and be transported back to the entrance of the Tower.
Deadly Towers is the poster child for bad design. I don’t think I’ve ever played anything that executed so many gameplay elements so perfectly wrong. It’s almost poetic. It’s almost worth playing. You’ll appreciate your other games more. Alan Weiss claims that there are worse NES games, and I think he means that there are games like Bible Adventures, that had very little thought put into them. But the saving grace of a game like Bible Adventures is that it’s so simple it’s not really that bad. There’s only so many things that could’ve gone wrong with it in the first place. Plus you get to play as Moses. Deadly Towers isn’t bad for a lack of trying, it’s bad because they tried a little too hard. The team implemented all sorts of unprecedented elements. The complicated mechanisms just don’t function together. I get the impression that it was playtested by designers who knew where everything was, who knew the maps. It will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to ever find a game whose core architecture is as fucked as DT’s. It very well may be the worst game ever made.
If Google searches are to be believed, then Deadly Towers is the closest thing to an internet wide consensus of “teh worst game evar.” In the old days, before Seanbaby figured out how to transform dick jokes into money (hint: you need baking soda), he reviewed DT as the #1 worst NES game. One of the game’s producers sent Seanbaby the following email, which was subsequently added to the review:
“I produced the game and it wasn't THAT bad for the times...some of the others are WAY worse. Nice to see it again, though.
Alan Weiss – Producer”
I’m not so sure about that, Alan Weiss. I’m not so sure about that, at all. I went into Deadly Towers with a positive mindset. I was going to beat it. I mean, people hate Simon’s Quest, and I like that game, so who knows right? “I will beat Deadly Towers,” I declared. I was lying. The following is the synopsis of my first two screens of DT:
Screen 1: Prince Myer teleports in front of what I’m assuming is a tower. There are scary faces on the tower, so you know it is deadly. Teleporting; kind of unconventional in a fantasy game, but whatever. Color palate is bland, but we’re talking early NES game here so I can deal. I press the pad. “8 way directional walk. It can’t be that bad if it has 8 way walk,” I thought at the time (another lie). I press the B button. Myer shoots a sword, provocatively. Images speak louder than words here, but the myths are true: Myer ejaculates swords. I enter a door.
Screen 2: Wow there’s lots of enemies. I try to move in and fight; I’m instantly overrun and die. This happens a few more times, with a little strategizing, I’m able to clear the bats and the weird...puddle monsters, and I turn my focus to the blue sphere. The blue sphere absorbs somewhere between 30 and 40 swords before dying. I walk to the right, fireballs rise up much faster than I can move and knock me off the tower. Death.
I was ready to quit. It was November, there was a myriad of new triple A releases for me to be enjoying. I remember thinking, “Animal Crossing comes out at midnight. Maybe I should just play that instead.” But I didn’t want to let Deadly Towers turn me into a liar. “I will defeat these towers!” I yelled. I trudged on. I trudged all the way through the first dungeon before swearing never to play Deadly Towers again. What went wrong? How could I have fallen so far from my original ambitions? I mean literally, I fell off the tower dozens of times. Was it my shortcomings as gamer that prevented me from thoroughly enjoying this game?
The only thing that Deadly Towers does correctly is 8 way movement. Every other gameplay element is fucked up in some way. But the problems don’t end there. These fucked up gameplay elements weave together, perfectly creating a sinister web of horrible gameplay situations that I never imagined possible.
Case 1: Myer’s sword. Which he shoots our of his crotch. Weird and counterintuitive to begin with, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they were going for lolz. The problem with the sword shooting mechanic is that Myer can only shoot a single sword at a time. He has to wait for the first sword to hit its target before he can shoot another one. If Myer misses, he’s a sitting duck, since the sword travels very slowly across the entire screen and can’t be cancelled. If this were not bad enough, many basic enemies require dozens of hits to kill. The Wikipedia for DT points out that even the instruction manual warns gamers that
Myer’s sword sucks:
"SHORT SWORD -- You start the game with this sword. It is so weak, you feel lonely (you have no confidence in this sword)."
This shows that the team realized, at least on some level, aware of how difficult combat was. They either didn’t see, or didn’t care, how awkward and un-fun it was.
Case 2: Waves of fireballs. They swarm certain areas from bottom to top. They don’t move so quickly that Myer can’t dodge them, but he can’t destroy them with his sword effectively because they take so many hits that the next wave would be onscreen before he could kill a single fireball. Myer can’t just dodge the fire waves though, because of another problem. Areas often have way too many enemies on screen compared to how much ground Myer has available to stand on. The safest thing is for Myer to clear out the enemies before he can goes near the path where the fire comes up, but when enemies can take dozens of hits to kill, he can only shoot a single slow moving sword at a time, and he has to stand and shoot them from across the screen, gameplay grows tedious. The fire wave paths often are also often in areas where Myer can be knocked off the ledge of the tower, which is an instant game over. Myer is knocked backwards when he’s hit, so whenever I tried to make a run through it past the fire without killing at least most of the onscreen enemies, Myer would be overwhelmed, pushed back, and then thrown to his death.
Case 3: Invisible doors. These wouldn’t be so bad, by themselves. Perhaps they could’ve concealed desirable morsels. This was not the case. I never actually found an invisible door, per say; it found me. I was knocked back by an enemy and found myself transported into a maze-like labyrinth. I assumed I must have stumbled upon the game’s first dungeon. This was not the case. The truth about the secret doors in DT is that they lead into mazes which serve only to trap the player and distract him from actually progressing in the game. They are not tiny mazes, either; although thankfully they’re just extensive grids. However, the mazes are filled with deadly scorpions and other monsters; it is difficult to navigate through without taking some serious damage. To make matters worse, the only way to heal, early on, is through items dropped by enemies, but the drop rates are incredibly low. In bizarre twist of fate, this all works out for the better because the easiest way out of the mazes is to simply die and be transported back to the entrance of the Tower.
Deadly Towers is the poster child for bad design. I don’t think I’ve ever played anything that executed so many gameplay elements so perfectly wrong. It’s almost poetic. It’s almost worth playing. You’ll appreciate your other games more. Alan Weiss claims that there are worse NES games, and I think he means that there are games like Bible Adventures, that had very little thought put into them. But the saving grace of a game like Bible Adventures is that it’s so simple it’s not really that bad. There’s only so many things that could’ve gone wrong with it in the first place. Plus you get to play as Moses. Deadly Towers isn’t bad for a lack of trying, it’s bad because they tried a little too hard. The team implemented all sorts of unprecedented elements. The complicated mechanisms just don’t function together. I get the impression that it was playtested by designers who knew where everything was, who knew the maps. It will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to ever find a game whose core architecture is as fucked as DT’s. It very well may be the worst game ever made.
11/4/08
The beginning of the end
My old buddy Shineget64 was inspired to type up his impressions of the much loathed Sonic 2k6. This marks the beginning of a series where we review every infamously bad game - or at least ten of them - to determine the most unplayable video game ever created. - RFO
Watching all of Let's Play Sonic 2K6 inspired me to try it for myself and with it being only $10 now I decided to risk it since it's a relatively small price to pay if I end up not liking it. I just beat Silver in Sonic's game which according to the menu screen is 23% through his story. It's certainly not a good game, but I don't think it's so bad that it's unplayable either.
PROS
+I like the story and the voice acting so far (except for Tails, I want to cut him every time he speaks). The cutscenes are well done and have a great sense of style and execution
+As with every Sonic game, the soundtrack is top notch. Before ever playing the game I was always a fan of His World.
+Collectable medals in the hub and stages as well as getting them for earning S-Ranks. As a completionist, this is the type of stuff I love.
CONS
- The physics are all wrong. Jumping is too stiff and Sonic likes to get stuck in walls if he gets too close to them. On loops a few times, Sonic just likes to run off the edge into the abyss instead of completing the circle.
- As everyone knows the loading times are terrible, although in practice they seem shorter when I'm playing it compared to when I watched it in LPS2K6 so it's not quite as bad.
- Hub world is kind of pointless. I'm very glad that Sonic Unleashed's hub world is optional and doesn't need to be done if you don't want to (or in the case of the Wii/PS2 versions it's been pretty much removed completely in favor of a point and click map ala Sonic Adventure 2)
NOT AS BAD AS ADVERTISED
- The camera. When things are actually going it's fine and it's just when you want to stop and explore that things get dicey. Even then I found that just hitting L1 or R1 (I forget which one) repositions the camera behind Sonic no matter what's happening. It's saved me many times when I would have probably died trying to fix the camera manually.
-The stages themselves. Like the camera once things gets going it's pretty fun and comparable to earlier 3D Sonics. The auto-running segments are also a lot more fun in practice then they were watching them in the videos because I love stuff like with. Both boss fights so far were alright too against the Cerberus and Silver.
So uhh...yeah it's not a good game but I also dont' think it's as bad as advertised so far. I'd probably give it a 6/10 or so right now. I guess we'll see what happens as I play more and as I begin to play as Silver and eventually Shadow. At the very least...it's better than Shadow the Hedgehog.
*****
Watching all of Let's Play Sonic 2K6 inspired me to try it for myself and with it being only $10 now I decided to risk it since it's a relatively small price to pay if I end up not liking it. I just beat Silver in Sonic's game which according to the menu screen is 23% through his story. It's certainly not a good game, but I don't think it's so bad that it's unplayable either.
PROS
+I like the story and the voice acting so far (except for Tails, I want to cut him every time he speaks). The cutscenes are well done and have a great sense of style and execution
+As with every Sonic game, the soundtrack is top notch. Before ever playing the game I was always a fan of His World.
+Collectable medals in the hub and stages as well as getting them for earning S-Ranks. As a completionist, this is the type of stuff I love.
CONS
- The physics are all wrong. Jumping is too stiff and Sonic likes to get stuck in walls if he gets too close to them. On loops a few times, Sonic just likes to run off the edge into the abyss instead of completing the circle.
- As everyone knows the loading times are terrible, although in practice they seem shorter when I'm playing it compared to when I watched it in LPS2K6 so it's not quite as bad.
- Hub world is kind of pointless. I'm very glad that Sonic Unleashed's hub world is optional and doesn't need to be done if you don't want to (or in the case of the Wii/PS2 versions it's been pretty much removed completely in favor of a point and click map ala Sonic Adventure 2)
NOT AS BAD AS ADVERTISED
- The camera. When things are actually going it's fine and it's just when you want to stop and explore that things get dicey. Even then I found that just hitting L1 or R1 (I forget which one) repositions the camera behind Sonic no matter what's happening. It's saved me many times when I would have probably died trying to fix the camera manually.
-The stages themselves. Like the camera once things gets going it's pretty fun and comparable to earlier 3D Sonics. The auto-running segments are also a lot more fun in practice then they were watching them in the videos because I love stuff like with. Both boss fights so far were alright too against the Cerberus and Silver.
So uhh...yeah it's not a good game but I also dont' think it's as bad as advertised so far. I'd probably give it a 6/10 or so right now. I guess we'll see what happens as I play more and as I begin to play as Silver and eventually Shadow. At the very least...it's better than Shadow the Hedgehog.
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