The best modern Sonic game?

It has to be Colors for me. I haven't played Generations yet, but based on what videos I've watched I think its not going to be quite as impressive. Colors was awesome for several reasons for me. The Wisp system was unlike anything Sonic had played around before, and they made the wise decision to make almost all of the Wisps relate to new ways to traverse the levels. Even more surprising is that they took that potential and didn't squander it: there are some downright awesome levels in Colors that are almost labyrinthine with their extra routes and hidden areas you can only get to if you use your Wisps thoughtfully.
In contrast, Generations looks very fun but slightly simpler.
 
Sonic Adventure 1. This is the only one to feel like a Sonic game in 3D. The other play styles aren't forced and aren't nearly as bad as the SA2 counterparts.

SA1 has a lot of hints of classic Sonic in a 3D world from control, level design, jump animation/sound. Going onto SA2 and Heroes you start to see level design streamlining, touchier controls, and loss of any classic charm/design.

The Rush style of games are ok in general, but it's incredibly evident when playing them that the physics are awful for platforming.

Sonic 4 is a mediocre platformer and a complete joke as an attempt at classic Sonic. I haven't played Generations, but I didn't like the demo too much (busy levels, forced physics, Sonic CD jump noise)
 
Good:
  • Colors
  • Generations

Flawed:
  • Adventure
  • Adventure 2
  • Unleashed

Not Good:
  • Heroes
  • Secret Rings*

Oh god what were they thinking?!
  • 2006
  • Shadow
  • Black Night



*(at least before upgrading everything)
 
Generations is good, but the modern segments still feels off . Interesting enough Colors is a better game overall.

That being said, Planet Wisp classic mode, if it wasn't for the wisps, could totally belong to the genesis era.
 
Baiano19 said:
Generations is good, but the modern segments still feels off . Interesting enough Colors is a better game overall.

That being said, Planet Wisp classic mode, if it wasn't for the wisps, could totally belong to the genesis era.
Click to expand...
Planet Wisp is basically Metallic Madness Past, but with a bit more green. It's pretty great how they transformed it.
 
WrathOfOtaibah said:
Sonic Adventure 2's Sonic levels, too bad there were only like 4 Sonic levels.
Click to expand...

There were 6 Sonic levels and 4 Shadow levels.

gutter_trash said:
don't forget to start your stop-watch while calculating the gameplay hours of Knuckles/Rouge Treasure Hunting and for Tails/Eggman shooting in Sonic Adventure 2 when compared to Sonic/Shadow
Click to expand...

I really liked the treasure hunting levels. Great music, exploration-based levels (which were a nice breather from Sonic/Shadow levels) and your character runs at good pace. However, Mad Space is...well maddening.
 
Haven't played generations but I have to say Sonic Adventure 2 is the best I have played. Here's why I hate the others:

Sonic has always been advertised for being about speed, but the Genesis games shine with the level design. They were platforming gold. For some reason, the leap into 3D had Sonic running in a straight line as fast as possible, taking more from Sonic R than from Sonic & Knuckles.

That said, with this new focus on speed, I never understood the implementation of a worthless open-world map that links the stages. Way to slow the momentum in the game, when I need to talk to bland NPCs just to unlock the next stage. As result, I dislike the following:

Sonic Adventure
Sonic Unleashed
Sonic 2006 (worst offender)

Sonic Adventure 2 shines in that it offered the addicting Chao Garden, epic set pieces for a Dreamcast game, and more importantly, the return of versus mode where to players try to race through a level. Is it bad that I enjoy it not for being a Sonic game but because it offered so much more. And of course, stage select over the open-world.

Sonic Heroes and Shadow were just awkward. Sonic Colors fixes most of the previous problems but I played it about half-way through and just got bored, felt like I could just hold the joystick forward and could beat any level. Same for Secret Rings.

I actually enjoy Sonic Shuffle more than any other, for its clever use of the VMU
 
w00tkins said:
Black Night was a funny one in that it seemed everything except the gameplay was good. Don't take my word for it though as I've never played it myself.
Click to expand...
This is true, that games presentation and visuals are incredible and I dug the arcadey setup.
Too bad actually playing it is a chore and the main gameplay hook is beyond stupid.
 
Sonic Adventure 2: Battle is what I always played back in the day. I still consider it the best of the best. Generations would be my next choice, then Unleashed. (Haven't played Colours)
 
Tell you what. After playing Colors and Generations, I actually went and bought Unleashed to see what hate was about. Here's the Shymalian twist: It's awesome.

Reminded me of why I should never listen to Sonic fans about Sonic games. For all the burning hatred the werehog got when it came out, Unleashed has turned out to be a great game, and a true adventure style Sonic experience. Maybe it doesn't seem bad now, with games like Colors and Generations around, to balance the available modern Sonic catalog.

But, for myself, I'd have to say:

Colors is #1

Unleashed and Generations tied for #2.
 
grandjedi6 said:
Good:
  • Colors
  • Generations

Flawed:
  • Adventure
  • Adventure 2
  • Unleashed

Not Good:
  • Heroes
  • Secret Rings*

Oh god what were they thinking?!
  • 2006
  • Shadow
  • Black Night



*(at least before upgrading everything)
Click to expand...

This I can get behind, agreed!
 
Generations
Adventure 1 (Sonic campaign alone)
Unleashed


*Adventure 2 gets disqualified because it's story mode forces you to stop playing Sonic style to go into treasure hunting and lock-shooting which tabulate more hours than Sonic style
 
AbsoluteZero said:
He looks like he belongs in a Final Fantasy game.

Which to be honest was probably their intention.
Click to expand...
Well, their intention was to make Sonic closer to real life. So, naturally they tried to "humanize" Eggman.

As to answer the OP's question, I pretty much agree with everything Dark Schala said.

I prefer the gameplay mechanics of Generations, which is probably the best Modern Sonic portrayal ever but Colors' presentation is on a whole other level.
 
grandjedi6 said:
Good:
  • Colors
  • Generations

Flawed:
  • Adventure
  • Adventure 2
  • Unleashed

Not Good:
  • Heroes
  • Secret Rings*

Oh god what were they thinking?!
  • 2006
  • Shadow
  • Black Night



*(at least before upgrading everything)
Click to expand...

This...

Codeblue said:
Sonic Rush without a doubt. The gameplay is good and all that but they got Naganuma of Jet Set Radio fame to do the music and damn was it awesome.
Click to expand...

....and this. Sums up exactly how I feel.
 
The Knuckles/Rouge levels of SA2 were actually fun. Sonic/Shadow levels were more fun and I would have liked to see more of them too, but the real offender is the slow, boring Tails/Robotnik stages.
 
Codeblue said:
Sonic Rush without a doubt. The gameplay is good and all that but they got Naganuma of Jet Set Radio fame to do the music and damn was it awesome.
Click to expand...
mind_blown.gif


Wow. Just yesterday I was listening to "Right There, Right On" on my iPhone and accidentally assumed it was from the Jet Set Radio soundtrack. Then I remembered it was from Sonic Rush and thought "very similar styles". Never did I imagine it was actually the same composer.
 
PKrockin said:
The Knuckles/Rouge levels of SA2 were actually fun. Sonic/Shadow levels were more fun and I would have liked to see more of them too, but the real offender is the slow, boring Tails/Robotnik stages.
Click to expand...
You did have a few exceptions to both of those, like Mad Space and Cosmic Wall being terrible and good respectively. A little polish all around would've made the whole game better. Plus, Chao World. Chao World!
 
Berordn said:
You did have a few exceptions to both of those, like Mad Space and Cosmic Wall being terrible and good respectively. A little polish all around would've made the whole game better. Plus, Chao World. Chao World!
Click to expand...

Still, SA2 was more refined than SA1. Better controls, fewer glitches, lip-sync and cutscene animation that wasn't a complete joke, etc.

Yeah, Chao World was great in SA2. A huge improvement on SA1.

Mad Space... all I can remember is flying crates. Must have blocked that level from my memory.
 
Generations for me. I have to give Colors another shot, only tried playing it with my nephew which wasn't the greatest experience since he didn't know what he was doing.

That being said, Sega should just release Colors as an XBLA/PSN game.
 
Generations is the best Modern Sonic game with Colors slightly behind. Adventure series haven't aged too well, I still get some enjoyment out of them but with the awful gameplay gimmicks, it makes it hard to consider them great anymore. I kind of wish they brought back the Chao Garden though, that was so fun.

Oh and Secret Rings is a piece of trash. Fuck everyone that told me "IT'S GOOD, GET IT". What a waste of money!
 
Sonic Generations is my all time favorite modern Sonic game, it just oozes Sonic Adventure style aesthetics and gameplay. I liked Sonic Colors, too. But I'm gonna have to say I prefer Generations. I think Generations is only a sample of what Iizuka-san plans to do with the Sonic franchise. I'm fully expecting Sonic Adventure 3 or a Sonic RPG sometime in the future. xP

I also like Unleashed, but it got old fast for me. Watching speed runs for the game was always fun, just could never do them myself and was never interested in them.
 
From the ones I've played -

Great -
Sonic Generations
Sonic Adventure 1/2 (Admittedly some nostalgia bias there, but I replay them frequently even now and still thoroughly enjoy them so...)

Good -
Sonic Colours(Would have been great, but I wasn't a fan of there being less stages and more acts, perhaps a pathetic complaint, but I just got bored of each stages asthetics by act 2 or 3)
Sonic Unleashed(Would have been great but unfortunately werehog levels outnumbered the excellent sonic levels)

Mediocre -
Sonic Heroes

Bad -
Shadow the Hedgehog
Sonic the Hedgehog 06
 
Generations is best, then unleashed, adventure 2 and adventure (haven't played colors yet but the stage from it in generations seemed very gimmicky I'll play it next though.)

Sonic 06 and heroes don't count because they're so bad.
 
I'm REALLY lking Generations a lot. It's a ton of fun to play as both to me, and the option to choose between the two makes it feel like two games.
 
Sonic Adventure is the one I dislike the least

It feels the most like sonic in 3D. If only they'd taken out all the other characters and concented on tightening up the camera and so forth on that one.

Have not played generations yet though.
 
I pretty much swore off Sonic after SA2. 2/3rds of the game being the shitty friends segments was just too much to bear.

The only Sonic game I've played since then is Sonic and the Black Knight. My nephew got it for his 12th birthday, and asked me to help him beat a boss last time I was at my sister-in-law's place. The boss he was stuck on?

The Mist Dragon.

The tutorial boss.

5 months he's had this game, and he was only playing the couple tutorial stages he'd passed because he couldn't figure out how to beat the tutorial boss.

(In his defense, he REALLY sucks at video games and has an alphabet soup of learning disabilities.)

So I played some of the Black Knight after that, and damn... I couldn't believe how terrible it was. I have a hard time believing Sonic 2006 could be worse than BK, it was just... Awful and nonsensical...

That said, I enjoyed the demo for Generations, and Colors is pretty cheap nowadays, so I'll probably get both of those eventually and come back into the Sonic fold.

But man... The low points that the franchise has seen...
 
Acullis said:
Awww yeah. I need to play that game again, but my dreamcast is broke. Do they have any good emulators for dreamcast? Or is that taboo?
Click to expand...
SA2 battle is for the GCN, so GCN, Wii or Dolphin emulator to play it.

I've only played SA1 Director's Cut and SA2 Battle, and I have to say that SA1 is a complete piece of garbage, while SA2 is awesome (Sonic and Shadow stages only, Knuckles stages were horrible and Tails were just average).

A shame that the remixed stage of SA2 in SG doesn't have the theme song...

I'll play Colors and Secret Rings later this year or in the beginning of 2012 though...
 
I grew up with the Genesis games but SA2 is still arguably my favorite. I was not a big fan of the Tails and Rouge levels, but the Knuckles and Robotnik levels were fine. Mad Space was the only truly awful part. Chao, well, they were interesting enough for me to write one of the early FAQs for it, but it dropped off the face of the internet and I lost all my backups.

Of course the real reason I loved the game were the Sonic and Shadow stages, they were actually very thoughtfully designed and tons of fun to replay/speedrun. Nothing in SA1 even came close to them, if you ask me. I always felt that the people who hated the game didn't give it enough of a chance - your first run through one of the Sonic levels might end up with you losing control and experiencing a camera freakout or two. But like the Genesis games the level design shines when you spend some time with it and start learning all the tricks to save time.

It even applies to the non-sonic levels, you might spend 20 minutes on your first Knuckles stage but when you revisit it you can burn through it in 2 minutes.

Generations definitely understands this design philosophy. I'm just not all that ecstatic about the boost feature. For a specific example, I was trying to perfect my City Escape time last night and every time I'd try to boost during a jump it would insist on shunting me off on a path I didn't want to take, but if I didn't boost I could land anywhere I wanted. Also planet wisp sucks. But the game's still great.
 
Dark Schala said:
...I... I disagree...

Sonic OVA was actually endearing. Sonic 2006 was...

34mOG.jpg


:(
Click to expand...
Yeah I like the OVA too. I know all about Sonic 06 being bad, but I've never played it beyond the demo. Its a shame because Crisis City Act 1 is probably my favorite/most-played level in Generations. I'm sure a lot of that has to do with the Sonic 06 stuff being unfamiliar/new to me though.
 
grandjedi6 said:
Good:
  • Colors
  • Generations

Flawed:
  • Adventure
  • Adventure 2
  • Unleashed

Not Good:
  • Heroes
  • Secret Rings*

Oh god what were they thinking?!
  • 2006
  • Shadow
  • Black Night



*(at least before upgrading everything)
Click to expand...

Damn, perfect listing right here.

Sega is really learning coming from the Dreamcast/post Dreamcast games and their lack of focus (I have many fond memories of the Adventure games and their Sonic segments like a few other GAF members, but it's very clear that Sonic Team of that time didn't know what they wanted to do with regards to gameplay to keep things varied, as such they kept on adding more and more fluff onto things via "the friends"; problem was most of this content was middling to downright bad) through the Shadow/06 fall outs (pretty much a result of compounded issues and bad design decisions that had been continually pursued after the Adventure games) to Unleashed (a step in the right direction in that Sega finally found a path they wanted Sonic gameplay to follow and stuck to their guns, created a solidly performing game engine and put effort into rediscovering what elements of Sonic led to his worldwide fame and charm even if it was a rough first try with a gimmick that wasn't terribly popular... or entertaining) to Colors and now Generations.

Although there are still some niggling issues in design that they can still fix (somewhat liberal allotment of boost pads taking you to full speed when you already have a boost mechanic and could be playing a game of managing speed and finding the best routes around levels; said boost mechanic being somewhat OP when nothing really challenges you in that mode; power sliding can be tightened up just a bit more; levels could be played with more and get more surreal) they are coming ever closer to perfecting the modern boost style game play and I feel as though when they do, that game will be incredible. While momentum based Sonic still holds a dear place in my heart and I would love to see it adapted into a into 3D game as faithfully as possible with all the TLC Sega could give it, I do feel as though modern boost Sonic has come to a place where barring any stupid decisions in Sonic Team, the team can only make things better through variance and content. I really hope Sega starts playing with level design and focusing on multi-tiered levels with loads of path variance. In that way, we get a new gameplay style steadily becoming more and more solid, but with experimentation enough to make players want to find more hidden routes or look at certain elements for new experiences as if recreating some of the traversal of environments that the Genesis Sonic games were capable of.
 
Sonic Colours is the best with generations really close behind.

Colours pretty much "gets it" from the get go by throwing you straight into acts 1 and 2 of Tropical Resort before any cut scenes kick in. And then the cut scenes arrive and it's all downhill right? actually no, the plot is very simple this time, no huge conspiracies, no glut of side characters, just Sonic and Tails against the Eggman scheme of the day which doesn't revolve around setting free an all powerful evil.

The space amusement park setup allows for some varied settings, no deserts but you do get desserts. Each area has six acts and a boss, the acts usually end up with 2 longer ones, 2 medium and 2 short. There's also the sonic simulator which has 21 basic stages that can be played in co-op and even as mutant Sonic miis.
Wisp powers are what make this game standout, sonic gets abilities that actually vary the gameplay in a positive way, usually timed abilities that will change the way you traverse the stage and/or lead you to different path.

While Generations hits higher highs on the whole it also has far more small gripes that throw it off from usurping colours for me, the only time Colours ever frustrated me was terminal velocity act 1 when a camera switch makes a murderous robot chase section turn very awkward indeed. Generations has moments evocative of the not so great Sonic games (yes Vector, i'm looking at you and your musical notes!).
The control of Sonic isn't perfect but a quick back to back play of generations and colours has me much preferring the more controllable double jumping modern sonic from colours.

Oh and music is all good, as expected from Sonic. It's kind of funny how Sonic Colours and Sonic 4 had their unveiling and release quite close to one another and that when it was all said and done the unexpected twist was colours being the return to form and sonic 4 being the letdown.
 
In Sonic 2006, was Crisis City the best (and most playable) level?
 
ULTROS! said:
In Sonic 2006, was Crisis City the best (and most playable) level?
Click to expand...
Not really. It has a mach speed section (which is more unplayable than Sonic's normal gameplay). What's worse is that the mach speed section had this part where the camera pans in FRONT of Sonic, making it extremely hard to know what's ahead of you.

Although I haven't experienced the level myself... YET. But from what I've seen of the LP, it's honestly hard to say which level was the most playable. Funny enough, the best boss fight of the game is Egg Genesis.
 
grandjedi6 said:
Good:
  • Colors
  • Generations

Flawed:
  • Adventure
  • Adventure 2
  • Unleashed

Not Good:
  • Heroes
  • Secret Rings*

Oh god what were they thinking?!
  • 2006
  • Shadow
  • Black Night



*(at least before upgrading everything)
Click to expand...
Yeah this is pretty good. I haven't played Generations or Black Night yet but that's where I assume they would be lol
 
Colors.
When you think sega begin to know what to do with sonic, they come with generation.
A dull concept where they don't want to choose what is sonic now and throwing in the same game two near but different gameplay, coupled with a non cohesive adventure by its compilation nature and some strange decisions like taking one whisp power in colors levels. Something hard to introduce to just one level use and on top of that making a bad new game mechanic with it.
At least that's just an anniversary game.
 
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