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Sonic Boom |OT| Sonic 2014

That's pretty fucking sad if you think about it. The demo apparently had better lighting and texture quality. There's some rumor going around saying the plot was going to involve echidna's or something but Ken Penders and his horrid Julie Su fetish came in a stopped it.
Penders at this point is literally Chris-Chan if he was moderately successful
and safe to talk about in public
.

This game's plot hardly would've been better with yet another secret echidna society though. Adventures and Chronicles already did that shit, and the latter got in hot water from Penders' stupid lawsuit over it.
 
Technically it's Wii U then 3DS, but despite Sega's marketing the 3DS game starts off in a way that implies no connection whatsoever to the Wii U game. In fact, it starts in such a way that implies the Wii U title never happened.

Chalk it up to yet another snafu here.
Yeah Sonic not remembering Lyric in the 3DS version was really odd. I bet the Sonic Boom TV studio did not realize this when animating the cutscenes.
 
BRB twitter feed has been dark since Nov. 4th:

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Sort of feel bad for everyone at BRB.. It seems like they were genuinely invested into what they were making, but something shitty must have happened during development. I wonder if they're going to respond to the criticism at all. Or if there'll even be a patch of any kind.
 
The more I play the worse it gets :(. If you don't follow the path they want you to in the second hub world you can get stuck and have to reload a checkpoint. That's just, wow.

I still disagree with people saying '06 is better, but if this keeps up I might not feel that way for long.
 
I'd be surprised if Sega didn't push for some kind of patch to fix the big issues. Just to save face with the consumer. There's no excuse these days, even Nintendo is patching shit.
 
Even though people will argue that Boom is worse than 06 it's still hard to find Boom more contemptible than 06. Compared to 06 which was a special case of many chickens coming home to roost after years of Sonic Team ineptitude, Boom is just kind of a tragic outcome of some starry-eyed developers.

It's never fun to have the honors as a new studio with infinite possibilities to be given the opportunity to handle a reimagining of a prestigious franchise, and then screw it up this much.
 
I think the comparison is off. Sonic 06 was a broken pile of shit that was borderline unplayable. Sonic Boom is playable, it's just very glitchy. Plus it's shorter. It's not a good thing for Sonic but on the plus side there's a good chance for a patch.
 
Even though people will argue that Boom is worse than 06 it's still hard to find Boom more contemptible than 06. Compared to 06 which was a special case of many chickens coming home to roost after years of Sonic Team ineptitude, Boom is just kind of a tragic outcome of some starry-eyed developers.

It's never fun to have the honors as a new studio with infinite possibilities to be given the opportunity to handle a reimagining of a prestigious franchise, and then screw it up this much.
Boom also didn't bill itself as a reboot and even though '06 isn't really either, SEGA's marketting and PR for it definitely tried to make out it was a 'reinvention' of the entire series going forward. Considering just how truly awful that game's plot is (and I don't think it being properly finished would've removed princess x dead hedgehog action or the issue of redundant playstyles being shoehorned in) and how it was initially billed as the return to form for the franchise back in 2005, I'd say that was a far bigger bomb.

Plus everybody thought this was going to be shit when it was revealed so there's not nearly as much crushing disappointment.
 
I think that the Sonic Boom is not so much a cool new video game franchise but a licensed game to support the new cartoon. More like a SpongeBob SquarePants game than Sonic proper. Dollars to donuts Big Red Button had so much Big Red Tape and pressure to deal with during development.
 
All this 06 talk makes me miss the early to mid 2000's period where cartoon mascot games were getting serious and 'epic', complete with its own awful, darker-than-usual storyline and terribly dull visual style. These days, cartoon mascots are all running around cartoon mascot worlds and making ironic and meta jokes all the time. This is a good thing and far more appropriate for the franchise, but It's just not as funny when they're trying to be funny and it makes me sad we'll never get a Sonic storyline as bad as Shadow the Hedgehog or Sonic 06 ever again.

Reading Big Red Button Twitter they were super excited to make this game what happened :(

If you're feeling bad now, do yourself a massive favour and don't look at the Sega Forums post history of the Sonic Boom producer.
 
If you're feeling bad now, do yourself a massive favour and don't look at the Sega Forums post history of the Sonic Boom producer.

Yikes, you weren't kidding.

His resignation from the Segaboards back in August before shit wasn't even close to as crazy as it is now:

frostman007 said:
Guys, I'm sorry to have to say this, but I think I'm just gonna go quiet and not post for a while. Early on, I made myself a promise to interact more with the fans out there and I thought that forums would be a good way to do this. I could share info and have conservations with some cool and interesting folks, so many of which have supported Sonic for a long time. However, this project took a lot out of me and it seems like I don't have the energy right now to deal with the back and forth arguments that seem to constantly appear in threads, as well as how aspects of things I post don't quite get received like I intended them to. I also see several people who appear to have the singular goal of bringing discussions down or just have what appears to be some sort of vandetta against the IP, in general. And this just paints a very negative experience overall, at least in my humble opinion. Basically, I thought this was going to be fun... It has, but not as much as I thought it would be. Now, I don't get me wrong. I have talked to some great folks that have opinions, both positive and negative, and that have been able to express those opinions in interesting and informative ways. And I love reading those types of posts. I have no problems with people having negative comments about Sonic Boom or anything Sonic at all. All comments help me to learn and get a better understanding of the fan base and there is nothing wrong with any of them. They are your opinions and you are entitled to them.

I just thought the whole idea behind forums like these was so that we can all came together to share thoughts and comments with other fans who shared the same excitement for a particular topic. Unfortunately, through my eyes, it just seems like a place where people have to constantly justify what opinions they have and where simple things can quickly spiral out of control, reducing the overall enjoyment that folks get from hanging out here. It's unfortunate, really, but maybe that's just my own perception.

Maybe, in a few weeks, I'll see how I feel and come back to join you all again (if you'll have me), but right now I'm just not feeling it. So many of us have worked so hard to try and create something that both fans can enjoy and that could introduce Sonic to a completely new audience... and I'm just tired. It's a shame really, because I really do love meeting and talking to fans of Sega and Sonic, in general. Even in the short amount of time that I've been working on Sonic Boom, I've come across so many amazing people who have shared how Sonic has touched their lives and why they love the character so much. They have this genuine passion and excitement that I wish I could bottle. It's amazing, and that's why I'm so looking forward to the upcoming Sonic Boom event in NY. I want to meet each and every one of you there, so I hope you can all make it.

Regardless, to all of you that share that same passion and excitement about our blue hedgehog, I thank you for your continued support and for helping to keep Sonic constantly running forward. Even when you weren't happy with the direction he might have headed in, you were always happy to see where he ended up.

For those still interested in asking me questions over the coming weeks, definitely feel free to send them to me on Twitter or through the message system in these forums. I will do my best to answer as many of them as I can.

See you soon?

I can't imagine how they're feeling now :(

Enlighten us...

I'm interested in this too. Summary?

Post history.


It's a shame, but you just can't deny the basic QA issues all of the footage has shown. Stuff like the pause exploit and lack of collisioning in many areas are hard to gloss over. There may be a chance at good will if they put out a patch that smoothes out the performance and glitches. I guess we'll wait and see.
 
4chan sums it up pretty well.

q8QamPi.png

I don't even know what to say about that.

Just, holy shit.


The amount of in-game banter has been adjusted to better match what the characters are doing and allow players to better focus on the actual gameplay. The demos were initially populated with a lot of lines due to loudness of expos and uncertainty of which lines players would actually hear. Playing in a home environment is different so the game has been adjusted accordingly

"HEY THERE'S A RAMP"

"WE CAN USE THIS AS A RAMP"
 
I'd be surprised if Sega didn't push for some kind of patch to fix the big issues. Just to save face with the consumer. There's no excuse these days, even Nintendo is patching shit.

Well, there was no patch of fixes for 06. I guess it'll depend on why the game's in the state it is. If it was kicked out of the door prematurely so that Sega could capitalize on Christmas sales (i.e. a short term cash grab like it seemed they did with 06), who knows whether they'll actually want to spend more money on fixing it, or just hope that the name and marketing will carry them through the holiday period.
 
Wow, his final post is heartbreaking. Maybe he really was deluded into thinking the game was much better than it was, but he just seemed so hurt from people's initial reactions to the game.

And it's hard to blame them. When I was at PAX Prime this year, I was working at a booth, so before the hall opened, I walked to the Sega booth while there was no line and asked to play. The guy said he could get in a lot of trouble if he let someone play beforehand, to which I responded that I understood, and then walked away.

As I was walking away, he stopped me and said, "Hey, actually, go ahead. Enjoy it man."

So I played a minute or so of the Wii U build. It was so ugly, so poorly controlled, and so poorly defined that I pretended to have a phone call, turned and thanked him, and left.

I'd give BRB another chance if we got a story about what the fuck happened with this game. They clearly had a project they were excited about and that they were doing good work with, but somewhere along the line, that just changed.
 
I'd be surprised if Sega didn't push for some kind of patch to fix the big issues. Just to save face with the consumer. There's no excuse these days, even Nintendo is patching shit.

Wasn't it widely rumored that it was Sony who had to patch Bayonetta PS3 to a playable state themselves (or at least finance the development of said patch) to save face because Sega couldn't be bothered to do it?
 
Wasn't it widely rumored that it was Sony who had to patch Bayonetta PS3 to a playable state themselves to save face (or at least finance the development of the patch) because Sega couldn't be bothered to do it?

If by widely rumoured you mean widely made up, then yes.

Bayonetta PS3 only got one patch and the only thing it did was enable HDD installation in order to cut the absurd loading times down a bit. Performance remained terrible.
 
Yikes, you weren't kidding.

His resignation from the Segaboards back in August before shit wasn't even close to as crazy as it is now

It's a shame, but you just can't deny the basic QA issues all of the footage has shown. Stuff like the pause exploit and lack of collisioning in many areas are hard to gloss over. There may be a chance at good will if they put out a patch that smoothes out the performance and glitches. I guess we'll wait and see.

Thanks for digging that up for me. I honestly really felt bad for the guy because I think there is some level of passion that was put into Boom. Some people did seem excited about redesigning the cast and bringing the franchise to a possible new audience. It's a shame things ended like they did but there's no denying how bad the game ended up.
 
Wasn't it widely rumored that it was Sony who had to patch Bayonetta PS3 to a playable state themselves to save face (or at least finance the development of the patch) because Sega couldn't be bothered to do it?

If that's true then goddamn....

I get why people hate Sega now.

Still hoping for VF5 on Steam though.
 
Wow, his final post is heartbreaking. Maybe he really was deluded into thinking the game was much better than it was, but he just seemed so hurt from people's initial reactions to the game.

And it's hard to blame them. When I was at PAX Prime this year, I was working at a booth, so before the hall opened, I walked to the Sega booth while there was no line and asked to play. The guy said he could get in a lot of trouble if he let someone play beforehand, to which I responded that I understood, and then walked away.

As I was walking away, he stopped me and said, "Hey, actually, go ahead. Enjoy it man."

So I played a minute or so of the Wii U build. It was so ugly, so poorly controlled, and so poorly defined that I pretended to have a phone call, turned and thanked him, and left.

I'd give BRB another chance if we got a story about what the fuck happened with this game. They clearly had a project they were excited about and that they were doing good work with, but somewhere along the line, that just changed.

I still believe that data was lost earlier in the year or something along those lines, if you go back over early screenshots and released videos there are places not in the final game, there's better lighting and shadows, more texture work on characters, things which would not just go away for a final release even for performance issues.

Something went wrong and they had to release what they had, this could have bummed them down a lot and could be why the dude from the sonic forums decided to call it a night and hang up his hat.

There's video out there of a better game, one with less jank and smoother movement.

*edit* I also think that the cryengine was the wrong type of back end to use, they could have probably done a better performing engine in unity.
 
As I was walking away, he stopped me and said, "Hey, actually, go ahead. Enjoy it man."

Damn...

This HAD to have been set for a next gen release at some point. The alpha footage of the cut hub world looked beautiful. This reboot would only make sense as a multi platform release. Sega really jumped the gun with the exclusivity deal, and I can only imagine they are kicking themselves for betting on the wrong horse. Clearly the Wii having the highest selling Sonic games wasn't join going to spur the same interest on a successor console that is DOA. I can only imagine what a stake in the heart it must have been to pair down all of the bells and whistles running beautifully on next gen hardware to a much weaker, power-pc based console.
I still believe that data was lost earlier in the year or something along those lines, if you go back over early screenshots and released videos there are places not in the final game, there's better lighting and shadows, more texture work on characters, things which would not just go away for a final release even for performance issues.

Something went wrong and they had to release what they had, this could have bummed them down a lot and could be why the dude from the sonic forums decided to call it a night and hang up his hat.

There's video out there of a better game, one with less jank and smoother movement.

*edit* I also think that the cryengine was the wrong type of back end to use, they could have probably done a better performing engine in unity.
The use of cry engine heavily points to the intent of a multi platform/next gen release at some point. It makes no sense to invest in a multi platform engine just to release a game on the WiiU.
 
BRB twitter feed has been dark since Nov. 4th:

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IbzTUaW.png


Sort of feel bad for everyone at BRB.. It seems like they were genuinely invested into what they were making, but something shitty must have happened during development. I wonder if they're going to respond to the criticism at all. Or if there'll even be a patch of any kind.

There has to have been some big developmental hurdles that bogged the process down for them. I know target renders are common, but the initial reveal trailers for the game showed gameplay that looked genuinely appealing and the graphics were great. I guess the Wii U couldn't handle their target render and things like that. Looking at that debut trailer, Bangarang and cornyness aside, now there's a game that looks slick and I want to play it. Maybe in a couple of years BRB will return on PS4 and XB1 (if Boom as a whole is still successful) and BRB can make the product they wanted to.
 
Damn...

This HAD to have been set for a next gen release at some point. The alpha footage of the cut hub world looked beautiful. This reboot would only make sense as a multi platform release. Sega really jumped the gun with the exclusivity deal, and I can only imagine they are kicking themselves for betting on the wrong horse. Clearly the Wii having the highest selling Sonic games wasn't join going to spur the same interest on a successor console that is DOA. I can only imagine what a stake in the heart it must have been to pair down all of the bells and whistles running beautifully on next gen hardware to a much weaker, power-pc based console.The use of cry engine heavily points to the intent of a multi platform/next gen release at some point. It makes no sense to invest in a multi platform engine just to release a game on the WiiU.

Are you going to blame Sonic 2006 on the Wii U too? Nobody has ever released a grossly misleading tech demo before. The final version of Sonic Boom looks and feels like it's from the PS2 era. Maybe SEGA is just bad at making games.
 
I feel bad they probably could not get the final build to run correctly and had to revert to an older version. Same thing happened to Sonic 06. But the game is still a hot mess.
 
The performance drops in Sonic 06 are worse than usual framedrops, because it slows down, making the character react differently from what you'd expect when pressing in a direction or a button for a set amount of time. The Silver levels were the worst offenders, wildly fluctuating all the time. 360-version here, never played it on PS3.

Same on PS3 but in different places than on 360. I have to say though, I find at least half of Sonic's action stages to be a fun guilty pleasure but the rest? Yeah, just as bad as its reputation makes it out to be.
 
There has to have been some big developmental hurdles that bogged the process down for them. I know target renders are common, but the initial reveal trailers for the game showed gameplay that looked genuinely appealing and the graphics were great. I guess the Wii U couldn't handle their target render and things like that. Looking at that debut trailer, Bangarang and cornyness aside, now there's a game that looks slick and I want to play it. Maybe in a couple of years BRB will return on PS4 and XB1 (if Boom as a whole is still successful) and BRB can make the product they wanted to.

Seriously? This feels like the Epic Mickey situation all over again. Let's blame the Wii for being underpowered instead of Warren Spector. Maybe the game would have looked prettier if it was released on the PS4, but that wouldn't change the corny dialogue, atrocious camera, poor level design, tedious gameplay, and insane amount of glitches. SEGA should be held accountable for failing to implement any quality control.
 
This HAD to have been set for a next gen release at some point.

Total baseless speculation here but perhaps Sonic Boom wasn't going to be the third Wii U exclusive title. Perhaps it was going to be a multi-platform title, which makes sense given the tie in with the cartoon, and another unique game was going to be the exclusive. Perhaps, seeing that the Wii U wasn't exactly selling like gangbusters, Sega cancelled the unique title, with less work done, to save money and moved Sonic Boom over to the Wii U relatively late in the day but with a concrete release date.

Unlikely I know, but it's one possible scenario as to why the game appears to be a total mess. Of course, another possibility is that Sega forced cost cutting when it became apparent that the exclusive arrangement with Nintendo wasn't going to be a license to print money.
 
also to add the menu screen with the save file select used to show thumbnails of the current stage of the game and characters in control, the final game here only says percentage and location name in standard white text, no images.
 
I don't know why people are coming up with conspiracy theories to justify this game's lack of polish. It's not like SEGA has a history of releasing broken games in the past.
 
I don't know why people are coming up with conspiracy theories to justify this game's lack of polish. It's not like SEGA has a history of releasing broken games in the past.

They do, yes, but it does seem strange that they would allow a repeat of Sonic 06 to occur when that game actually hurt the franchise. Releasing the game in this state is damaging to whatever reputation the company has left, especially after the Colonial Marines debacle.

EDIT: To be fair though, Occam's razor would just suggest that the release date was set in stone and Sega were stupid enough to release the game in whatever state it had reached by that point.
 
The reviews are starting to hit now so I guess the answer to your question is yes. Metacritic is tracking three reviews and I've seen other reviews not tracked by them elsewhere. Over the next day or so more reviews will certainly come in.

I guess I could make the thread if you guys think it's a good idea? The right time now?

Is it really necessary? Everyone knows how bad the game is. Could be humorous to see how some better writers sum it up, "They are ex developers for a reason" will be hard to beat though.
 
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