I have to pick just one song!?
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Finished replaying Sonic Heroes (and Sonic Adventure 1+2, but I was more interested in talking about Heroes) very recently. First time I had done so in about 7 years. Heroes was the one that I had the biggest gulf between my memory and what I actually played.
It didn't really occur to me before how much of a technical mess the game was. Clipping and physics are eeeeverywhere, even compared to the Adventure games. That, combined with the repetition of levels makes it seem like they were really pressed in terms of deadlines.
All that aside, I did ultimately still enjoy the game alot. the core conceit of the game is still one of my favorite spins on traditional Sonic gameplay, and the idea of multiple storylines with differing playstyles all rooted in a singular gameplay system is a nice compromise between having multiple differentiated characters and focusing the game on traditional Sonic levels. That said there are some things I wish they had done that I thought would improve the game a lot. (A lot of the changes on this wishlist assume that they would have been given more time to actually do all this, which is a pipe dream of course, but work with me!)
-Remove all the padding. No Chaos Emerald stages (or at least make them easier to get into, losing the key after a single hit is duuumb) and minimal repetition of regular stages. While the stages as they are do have some differentiation between the teams, the shared level layouts and scenery diminish any freshness that those changes bring. The ideal way to do all this would of course be more original stages, with three campaigns (more on that in a minute) at maybe 10 stages each with minimal overlap (maybe 1 or 2 per story). If we go with a more conservative approach and just work with what was shipped, the campaigns would be short (only about 7-9 stages at the most) but that would still be 21-27 stages, the maximum range of which is about as many as the Adventure series had, as opposed to the 56 stages (Not including Bosses) with 35% original content of the actual Heroes.
-Cut the teams down to 3 as opposed to 4. Sonic, Rose and Dark aren't well-differentiated enough to justify having all three of them in the same game. I'd say cut out Team Rose, mainly because Team Sonic isn't very difficult to begin with.
-Team Chaotix needs even shorter stages for the mission-based gameplay to work optimally. The idea behind the stages is great but the destruction/collection quests drag on because the stages are just too long. Chaotix would be my favorite part of the game if they could fix that. Also get rid of Charmy and replace him with Amy+Cream. Not Like Team Rose didn't already circumvent the 3-character rule with Cheese.
-Combat shoulda been gutted for the most part. As others have likely said before me, combat does too much to break up the platforming and pacing, and most enemies aren't particularly fun to fight against (unless of course you're spamming level 2-3 Thunder Shoot, which never gets old).
-There's also the extremely irritating habit (mostly in Team Dark levels) of enemies being placed so that they're either unexpectedly in the middle of a high-speed portion (which is typically used by the game as a breather section, and which a player will likely be conditioned to not pay attention to by the time it pops up) or placed in a manner that makes them very hard to avoid. It's a rather cheap method of artificial difficulty that does little to service the gameplay. Cut that shit out.
Yay or nay on all this?
Really, there's a lot of things management seems to have little clue about.
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Finished replaying Sonic Heroes (and Sonic Adventure 1+2, but I was more interested in talking about Heroes) very recently. First time I had done so in about 7 years. Heroes was the one that I had the biggest gulf between my memory and what I actually played.
It didn't really occur to me before how much of a technical mess the game was. Clipping and physics are eeeeverywhere, even compared to the Adventure games. That, combined with the repetition of levels makes it seem like they were really pressed in terms of deadlines.
All that aside, I did ultimately still enjoy the game alot. the core conceit of the game is still one of my favorite spins on traditional Sonic gameplay, and the idea of multiple storylines with differing playstyles all rooted in a singular gameplay system is a nice compromise between having multiple differentiated characters and focusing the game on traditional Sonic levels. That said there are some things I wish they had done that I thought would improve the game a lot. (A lot of the changes on this wishlist assume that they would have been given more time to actually do all this, which is a pipe dream of course, but work with me!)
-Remove all the padding. No Chaos Emerald stages (or at least make them easier to get into, losing the key after a single hit is duuumb) and minimal repetition of regular stages. While the stages as they are do have some differentiation between the teams, the shared level layouts and scenery diminish any freshness that those changes bring. The ideal way to do all this would of course be more original stages, with three campaigns (more on that in a minute) at maybe 10 stages each with minimal overlap (maybe 1 or 2 per story). If we go with a more conservative approach and just work with what was shipped, the campaigns would be short (only about 7-9 stages at the most) but that would still be 21-27 stages, the maximum range of which is about as many as the Adventure series had, as opposed to the 56 stages (Not including Bosses) with 35% original content of the actual Heroes.
-Cut the teams down to 3 as opposed to 4. Sonic, Rose and Dark aren't well-differentiated enough to justify having all three of them in the same game. I'd say cut out Team Rose, mainly because Team Sonic isn't very difficult to begin with.
-Team Chaotix needs even shorter stages for the mission-based gameplay to work optimally. The idea behind the stages is great but the destruction/collection quests drag on because the stages are just too long. Chaotix would be my favorite part of the game if they could fix that. Also get rid of Charmy and replace him with Amy+Cream. Not Like Team Rose didn't already circumvent the 3-character rule with Cheese.
-Combat shoulda been gutted for the most part. As others have likely said before me, combat does too much to break up the platforming and pacing, and most enemies aren't particularly fun to fight against (unless of course you're spamming level 2-3 Thunder Shoot, which never gets old).
-There's also the extremely irritating habit (mostly in Team Dark levels) of enemies being placed so that they're either unexpectedly in the middle of a high-speed portion (which is typically used by the game as a breather section, and which a player will likely be conditioned to not pay attention to by the time it pops up) or placed in a manner that makes them very hard to avoid. It's a rather cheap method of artificial difficulty that does little to service the gameplay. Cut that shit out.
Yay or nay on all this?
Really, there's a lot of things management seems to have little clue about.
