The Sonic Challenge
Also this week, I put together a review of Sonic Mania, Sega’s latest Sonic The Hedgehog game and an attempted throwback to the look and feel of the series’ most beloved entries. As someone who spent a ton of time playing Sonic back in the day but eventually cooled on his early ’90s outings, even I really loved it. But there are some things endemic to Sonic The Hedgehog that plenty of people just flat-out don’t like. DrFlimFlam ran down his history with the games in the comments:
I never quite “got” Sonic, since it mostly seemed designed to move faster than I could follow and react, a kind of train without a brake until I smacked into something I couldn’t have possibly seen coming, a game that served up surprises and gee-whiz visuals at first but really wanted you to stop, explore, and eventually figure out a way to zoom through the entire level, the player’s reflexes and knowledge combined in perfect synchronicity. Sega, in general, seemed to operate with that design, that The Perfect Run was the point of gaming, becoming so familiar with a game’s concept and systems that you could manipulate the game to such a degree that it appears choreographed.
I liked Sonic Generations somewhat, though I admit even that was just “solid” for me, and without the experience of having loved (or really understood) Sonic games myself (I’ve always been a Nintendo Coca-Cola to Sega’s Pepsi), I can only nod and smile politely. But then I read things like this review and I wonder if maybe this time, maybe now, it will somehow click and finally show me what I’ve never understood about this blue hedgehog and his increasingly weird posse of animal friends. And “Stranger In Moscow” is a hell of a good song.
Speaking of Sonic’s friends, Jakeoti ran down why the creators of Sonic Mania should think about coming up with a new character of their own, should they get a shot at a sequel:
If the team gets to do more in the future, I hope one of the ways they distinguish themselves is adding a new character or two.
I know, I know, the riff on Sonic is usually that the cast is way too expansive and unnecessary, but hear me out. I think there’s a misconception that, just because the “great” Sonic games end when they started adding more characters, the trinity of Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails is perfect. Yeah, they’re pretty good. Sonic is your standard for the series, while Tails and Knuckles each sacrifice speed for something. (Tails’ flight makes him kind of an easy mode character, while Knuckles gets powers that make his levels feel like a different game entirely.) What I think truly separates them from the rest of the cast is that they were designed with their own abilities first. Other characters are introduced for story purposes or just to have a new “cool” character. But then, that design clashes with gameplay. It’s why we get clunky non-Sonic mechanics in these games. Even characters that play a bit more traditionally have a weird identity crisis. Like, Amy in Sonic Advance—I guess she uses her hammer for all her stuff instead of rolling? So is her core identity “hammer”? It certainly conflicts with her original design purpose, which was basically “Sonic’s girlfriend.”
I dunno, this has been a wordy way of saying: figure out a new mechanic that is fun to use in a Sonic game, then do something with that. Make a character that fits the mechanic.