Most Sonic games are bad, very bad. Except for a few, Sonic games made after the Genesis/Master System have been terrible. Why though? Why are so many Sonic games bad? Well the cause can be traced back to the advertisements for the original Sonic games.
You notice how Sonic was advertised. Sonic was advertised as being about speed; radical Sonic was fast, old man Mario was slow. What happened to Sonic games is: the developers drank the speed kool-Aid, they thought Sonic was about speed so they focused on speed and when that failed to produce good games they then went with gimmicks, shitty stories. From there Sonic games hit bottom until Generations (or so I heard, I haven't played it (I need a job)). They forgot what made Sonic games good and it's not speed.
Sonic was never about speed. Play the original Sonic games and you'll find that for the most part Sonic doesn't move at max speed and there are many obstacles that slows Sonic down. Most often you're exploring the levels via platforming. Yes there is some parts of the levels that rely on speed and some parts of the levels requires speed to get to but those are not the bulk of the levels. Speed in the Genesis Sonic games was a small gimmick.
Look at the level maps for the Genesis Sonic games (, , , , ). A game about speed would require simple straightforward level designs, you need simple straightforward level designed if the game is about speed because moving at higher speed gives you less time to react and make choices. The Genesis Sonic games level designs are not simple or straightforward, the levels start out more complex than Mario and most many other plantformers of the time and they get more complex as the newer games cam out. These levels don't suit them selfs for speed, they are suited for exploration and platforming.
In the early Sonic games you did get a time bonus but that time bonus was minuscule compared to the ring bonus you got. You got more points for collecting rings, collecting 100 rings gave you extra lives and getting enough points gives you extra continues. You're rewarded for collecting rings not speed running the levels. You collect rings by exploring the levels, you explore the levels primarily though platforming.
Of course there were other issues with Sonic games after the Genesis; focusing on an ever expanding roster of woodland creatures instead of Sonic the guy the games are named after, stupid poorly thought out gimmicks, bad fan fiction level writing (an anti-Sonic enemy that is a black pallet swap of Sonic, named "Shadow", who turns out not to be evil and become a darker and edger Sonic wannabe who uses guns then he gets a pallet swap enemy of his own). However I'm focusing on the speed issue here and the other problems have been talked about by others.
Conclusion: Sonic is not about speed, it's about platforming.
How many people has said "TV sucks today"? Ive said it, I've gotten so sick of shitty TV I don't even watch TV anymore and what glimpses I get are usually bad. Take the nostalgia goggles off and look back to what TV was like in the 90's, 80's, etc. Many have the idea that TV was better in the past, an idea that once you take the nostalgia goggles off collapses and dies.
The Simpsons; I've said for years that The Simpsons is no longer funny; that it's a zombie franchise and that it should have ended 15 years ago. Upon actually looking back at old Simpsons episodes I found that it sucked even then. The Simpsons have never actually been funny. It's not just the Simpsons. Look back at most sitcoms; Freinds was at best mildly funny until the whole relationship drama between Ross and Rachel killed what hummer the show had, Every One Loves Ramon was never funny and was just a horrible show about horrible people except the writers never realized how horrible the protagonists where, any 80's early 90's family sitcom, etc. None of these where actually funny.
Before someone says "You just don't have a sense of hummer"; I do, there are many things I find funny and yes there are a few shows that are funny. For example: Scrubs when it's not trying to be serous or trying relationship drama (how come the Big Bang Theory is the only sitcom that can do relationship drama right? until recent seasons), Big Bang Theory started out "meh", got good but then went down hill fast, Futurama, Red Green Show (if you haven't heard of it's look it up, it hilarious), Father Ted, Old SNL, In Living Color, Kids in the Hall, Sports Night (which you people didn't watch so it got canceled) and others.
The problem is the vast majority of comedies through out the history of TV have not been funny but people watched them because they really didn't have much choice. When cable came around people had a choice between new crap and old crap so they watched the new crap then cable expanded to 600 channels and people had too many choices so they stuck to what they had before; the crap. People don't turn off the TV when they can only find crap, they watch crap. When people eat the crap they make you they continue to make crap, if people would stop watching the crap, they'll start making good shows but you people continue to watch crap.
When there is nothing but crap on, turn off the TV and read a book or play a game. Not a crappy book, or a crappy game, good ones.
In the wake of tragedies people always seek someone or something to blame. When shootings like the ones in Aurora and New Town happen people look for someone or something to blame and after the Aurora and New Town shootings people have come out blaming as they did after similar shootings in the past. I understand why people do it, if you can find someone responsible, something that caused the killers to do what they did then you could do something about that or them.
Reality is not always or often simple, most often the reality of things are so complex that finding a root cause for someones actions is impossible, there are just too many variables and factors at play. Also in reality sometimes there is nothing and no one to blame, sometimes, things just happen. There is no rime or reason, they just happen. Yes the killers are to blame but beyond that - what led them to do what they did - there may be no one or nothing to blame.
You can take a billion people and stick them in the exact same conditions as the Aurora or New Port killers and they may not have done what the killers did, you could make a billion exact clones of the Aurora or New Port killers and place them in a billion different circumstances and they may not do what the killers did. It could very well have been those people in those exact conditions that led to the shootings. There is no way of knowing and blaming media, video games, how the mentally ill are dealt with, their families, etc does not help, it only hurts.
Well it's the 22nd, the world didn't end. There was no catastrophe, there was no shift in global consciousness but then that one has no meaning and thus is unfalsifiable.
To all those who believed something would happen: *points* Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ah ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! *in hails* That felt good.
As of time of posting Their forums have been taken down but their is still up so go trollin'. I doubt these will stay up much longer, I'd bet they'll be down before Christmas.
In the past month I've been making fun of the 2012 doomsayers but there are serious and real world consequence to the doomsayings of doomsayers. Fortunetly it seems no one was hurt or died this time. NASA did get a bunch of calls from people fearing something would happen on the 21st, . There was at least one man who was , one that would have killed him, fortunately he didn't. There was a risk of a . An anonimus facebook user posted:
To all believers, beings and warriors of the light, I invite you to a spiritual suicide en masse in Uritorco, Córdoba, Argentina. We will all abandon our unclean flesh and transport our spirit through the inter-dimensional portal at 21 hours, 12 minutes on 21/12/2012 and from this will be created an army of light that will save humanity… In this change of era.
Ahhhh! The poles are shifting because of Nibiru! the galactic alignment is tearing the earth apart! Meteor are falling from the sky! Solar flare are incinerating the planet! The shift in global consciousness is making think about tings I don't want to think about! AHHHH! Gerr, bff, um. Nope. Nothing happening. The world didn't end, again.
With the recent shooting at a school in Newtown Connecticut and the shooting in Aurora Colorado violent video games are in the news again. The old men in the old media are blaming violent video games as they always do when a shooting hits the national news.
Violent video games have been the target of old media and conservatives for years. They will spout dubious studies and claim there is a link. They will blame any act of violence on violent video games even if the perpetrator never played a video game in his life.
In 1954 Fredric Wertham published the book Seduction of the Innocent[1] in which he blamed comic books for juvenile crime. From his book arose the comics code which castrated the comic book industry for decades[2]. Decades before the film industry suffered similarly. In 1930 the Hollywood studios instituted the motion picture production code which like the comics code castrated the film industry. The Hollywood studios instituted it because of a growing moral panic about immorality in films and the film industry feared the government would step in and regulate the morals of the film industry them selves[3].
Both the comics code and motion picture production code restricted or out rite banned violence, sex, gore, the super natural, criticism of authority, how criminals where depicted, drug use (even if it was an anti-drug message), depictions of homosexuality, depictions of relationships between people of different races, etc.
I like horror games, I like games that are scary, I like games that are creepy, I like games that make you not want to go forward but you must go forward. My enjoyment of horror games started with Silent Hill, I had taken back another game that started out good but when to shit and traded it in for Silent Hill and my love of horror games started from there.
The problem for people like me is: there are not that many horror games and many that call them selfs "horror" are not horror. For example: The Fear series is not horror, Dead Space is not horror, you can not be scared when you have enough firepower to liquefy the monster attacking you. Read the rest of this entry »
