What Sonic game is this?

[Arcade]

That may be because Shadow played like a lame copy of Sonic Adventure, while heroes was...a bad game that needed at least six months more of develoment.

[Radrappy]

There is no chance in hell Shadow is a better game than Heroes. Shadow represents perhaps one of the worst ideas ever to grace video-game history, taking the series in the direction that makes it the laughing stock it is today. At least Heroes wouldn't jam attitude and angst ridden teen drama down your throat. Admittedly I only rented Shadow and played it for a couple days. But in those terrible hours I played I found very little redeeming qualities. However, pop in Heroes and despite all its craptastic glory, I can still give you a pretty sizable list of things they did right(mostly atmosphere, music, concept related). The scariest thing about Shadow the Hedgehog is that there actually is a fanbase for it that Sega apparently listens to.

[RocketPunch]

You gun down Air Force One in Shadow? I suddenly have reason to play this game. Not that I want to actually gun down Air Force One or anything. It's just that Shadow the Hedgehog, one of the industry's most laughable characters, shooting down the President's airplane is one of those "THIS I've got to see" things, in a Snakes on a Plane kind of way.

That may be because Shadow played like a lame copy of Sonic Adventure, while heroes was...a bad game that needed at least six months more of develoment.

What would six more months of development have improved? I believe Heroes was technically competent, just conceptually flawed. It's not like Sonic '06, which flew onto shelves incomplete.

There is no chance in hell Shadow is a better game than Heroes. Shadow represents perhaps one of the worst ideas ever to grace video-game history, taking the series in the direction that makes it the laughing stock it is today. At least Heroes wouldn't jam attitude and angst ridden teen drama down your throat. Admittedly I only rented Shadow and played it for a couple days. But in those terrible hours I played I found very little redeeming qualities. However, pop in Heroes and despite all its craptastic glory, I can still give you a pretty sizable list of things they did right(mostly atmosphere, music, concept related). The scariest thing about Shadow the Hedgehog is that there actually is a fanbase for it that Sega apparently listens to.

Rappy, I think they meant Shadow was better than Heroes in terms of raw gameplay, not atmosphere. In the case of atmosphere, music, and general feel though, I agree with you.

[Wooduck51]

Since this topic has totally removed itself from its original course let me jump into the fray:

What heroes introduced to the series and/or sucked at:
Health bars on enemies
Shitty Shadow storyline
Team mechanics (did not come back......completely)
crappy control
unbeatable A rank requirements
SPECIAL STAGES
Half assed return of Metal Sonic
Bosses that mainly consist of waves of enemies

What Shadow sucked at and/or experimented:
Guns (did not come back)
convoluted storyline (thank you for confirming that Shadow really did live on the ARK, otherwise unpleasant)
not great but better control (fixed grinding, R trigger allows precise control)

Interestingly the only thing bad from Shadow that was carried over into latter games were the vehicles, and in fact Shadow even tried to fix one or two things. Heroes on the other hand introduced horrible things that have not yet left; please do research before you make erroneous claims.

Not that ShTH does not torment me day and night; before it was announced I imagined how a Shadow game could be a lot of fun (I was imagining a Shadow's StH 06 combat system minus the health bars and a good story) instead they announced what we have today, sonofabitch.

[Radrappy]

You honestly enjoyed Shadow more?

[K2J]

Oh, that mission about destroying the President's helicopter/plane in Shadow the Hedgehog? Hardest freaking mission ever.

I think I agree that, had Sonic Heroes been a typical Sonic game with every character having unique abilities and thus unique paths through the levels, it could have been the best thing to happen to me since I learned how boys were different than girls. Shadow also could have been somewhat justified by a simple gameplay adjustment: make your choice for the mission at the level's start, so your own people don't needlessly attack you. You would only be able to change at checkpoints, or something.

Oh, you want my top and bottom five? Okay, but keep in mind that I joined the fandom late (2001), so most of this knowledge comes from collections.

Top 5
5) Sonic Adventure 2 - it hasn't held up as well over time, but it was the first Sonic game I ever owned. Unlike the watered down "grey" morality of today's storylines, it was really interesting to actually be fighting story-wise against yourself. Shadow actually being evil was probbably the best part.
4) Sonic CD - while it's overrated IMO, I love some of the mechanics and especially the American music. The Invincibility theme is my favorite Sonic music of all time.
3) Sonic 3 and Knuckles - it's hard to disregard this, even if I never was able to finish it sans Level Select. It defined what I think a Sonic game should be like.
2) Sonic Rush Adventure - regardless of its newness, SRA feels a lot more like a Sonic game than any of the other recent ones. Sonic and Blaze actually function a bit differently, enabling easier access to different areas. The only qualms I have regard the quilt-like menu system, which prohibits you from restarting missions until you fail them (or, if you want to change characters, you have to go through the whole list again... and the "Mission" option isn't even the first choice when talking to Marine!)
1) Sonic Adventure - this is the only 3D Sonic game that actually "felt" like an old game. Different paths for different characters, a storyline that wasn't boggled down in angst, Knuckles actually being a guardian, Robotnik being the final boss (of Sonic's story, at least), interesting level themes, some of the best music I've heard in the series... in fact, even though I've hacked this game in the past, it's no less magical to me.

Honorable Mentions
Sonic Advance - Egg Rocket is my favorite 2D Sonic stage, period.
Sonic 2 - Though a bit long for me, it's hard to deny the influence it's had.
Sonic Battle - Although a bit monotonous with the attacks, it had its good points, especially in showcasing how a good story can still be told without pushing technical limits.

Dishonorable Mentions
Sonic Heroes - Hey, guys! Let's play the same game 4 times! That's FUN!
G Sonic - I didn't think it would be this bad. It is.

Bottom 5
5) Sonic and the Secret Rings - It was cool for a while, but the RPG and mission mechanics slowed the experience down (and I'm not just talking about how you have to level up to get Sonic to a decent speed). The sometimes finicky controls don't help, either.
4) Sonic Advance 3 - felt too much like a 2D game trying to be 3D (the proliferation of switches, for instance).
3) Shadow the Hedgehog - it looked cool in concept, but as I noted above, everyone is trying to kill you, and if you fight back against the wrong ones, you get ridiculed/lose points.
2) SONIC the Hedgehog - I had to play this in order to complain about it, and I'm not dissapointed. This needed another year, and probbably the separating of amigo characters from the storylines.
1) Sonic Labyrinth - for obvious reasons. Isometric for any Sonic game isn't a good idea, but especially when you've decided to take the speed out of a character named for it.

[Esrever]

Isn't Shadow just basically an over-glorified mod of Sonic Heroes? The two games feel almost exactly the same, only one has the extra characters removed and guns added instead. Everything else about the two games -- the controls, the level layouts, the enemy attack behaviour and health system, the boss fight mechanics -- is pretty much identical, to the point where I had assumed the two titles were running on the same engine.

Considering how short a development time Shadow had compared to the other Sonic 3D platformers, it's no surprise that they had to build it on the foundation of an existing game.

[FlashTHD]

You honestly enjoyed Shadow more?

You can snap out of that denial any minute now bub.

K2, you're forgetting Mad Matrix's light speed circuit bomb hunt spectacular. Shooting out the prez's escape ship (not Air Force One-sized, guys) isn't hard, just el gran tedio. Less so if you do it with the secret guns and not the semi-autos the GUN trooper mechs cough up, but either way, filling up the dark gauge and using the infinite ammo wisely speeds things way up.

If you play it enough then your allies shooting at you becomes a minor irritance that doesn't happen much. Same for the supposed problem of not knowing what you're supposed to do; agreed that they should've made things more clear from the get-go - i'd just list the mission objectives while the level loads - but that too has a cheap workaround. Pause, flip through the mission list, go.

[Radrappy]

You honestly enjoyed Shadow more?

You can snap out of that denial any minute now bub.

So you mean to imply that Shadow the Hedgehog is undoubtedly/obviously the more enjoyable experience? That I'm from crazyville because I think Shadow is in more ways than one the worst thing that's ever happened to this series? Sure, in the latest installment he harmlessly pilots vehicles and serves as a secret agent (?) for the government. That makes three characters' jobs he's stolen. He stole the rival position from Knuckles, the ability to work with machinery and vehicles from Tails, and even that whole secret agent business from Rogue. The only thing he had going for him is that he actually tried and succeeded(?) in sacrificing himself and having some form of a character arc.

The very concept of Shadow using firearms, negates any redeeming qualities his game may have. I didn't find any, so I suppose this rules me out.

Sonic Heroes isn't a great game by any stretch, and it does nothing for the 3d gameplay but drive it into the ground. However it is no way the insult that Shadow the Hedgehog was to longtime fans and the ditching of any kind of integrity the series had left.

[Hybrid]

But see, the thing is, Shadow runs off what I assume is the same engine as Heroes, but with many of Heroes' major problems fixed. It has tighter controls (they're not "tight" by an any stretch of the imagination, but tighter than Heroes), superior light dash/homing attack/rail mechanics, a less unbearable ranking system, and arguably better level design, at least in structure - Its rare for a level in Shadow not to include multiple paths. Adding guns in may have taken the series in a direction that robbed it of what little dignity it had left, but from a purely gameplay standpoint, Shadow is a few leagues above Heroes in many ways.

I think I agree that, had Sonic Heroes been a typical Sonic game with every character having unique abilities and thus unique paths through the levels, it could have been the best thing to happen to me since I learned how boys were different than girls.

This is how I feel about Heroes. Instead of each level being virtually a straight path from point A to B, with markers saying "Use Power here, Use Flight here, Use Speed here", Sonic Heroes really would have been an excellent game if its levels had been designed the same way they were in S3&K; Sonic can only get to certain places, Tails can fly places Sonic can't, Knuckles can bash through rocks the others can't. Open up the level progression so that there are multiple paths through the level depending on which characters you wanted to use. Sonic would have the most straightforward path, but with least rewards; Knuckles and Tails would be the characters you use to explore (and in the case of Tails, use to make tricky platforming sections less irritating). Letting you explore the levels based on your ability to recognize possible shortcuts and which character you need to get rid of them instead of forcing you down a straight path and just plonking obstacles in your way that force you to switch to the only character who can overcome them. Also, they needed to get rid of the stupid Fly-type formation. Why couldn't they all just run until Tails picks them up to fly them places? I hate Fly formation with a passion.

[Esrever]

The thing that gets to me about Shadow -- more than the ugly graphics, more than the broken gunplay and vehicle segments, more than the insanely stupid storyline -- is how bloody repetitive it was. The only thing worse than playing through a particularly terrible segment of a level is knowing that exact same segment will probably be reused about seventeen more times over the course of the game. "Oh look, here's that temple corridor again, but now it has PURPLE flame lamps!"

The worst part is the final stage -- playing through the game over and over to get all ten endings unlocks a level that is built almost entirely out of bits of levels you've already played!

I think it is quite possibly the laziest game Sonic Team has ever made. Even Sonic Heroes managed to have large stages full of distinct artwork and unique architecture. Shadow's design and art direction, on the other hand, can probably be best described as "impending deadline." There isn't a single level in the game that looks like it got the kind of time and effort that was given to, say, Seaside Hill. Instead, most of the stages just feel like Heroes levels with less effort, and on the rare occassion when they try to introduce a level mechanic that wasn't present in that game -- like the nonlinear collection/switch levels, or the vehicle-driven stages, or that level near the end with all the plummeting platforms -- the implementation is so half-assed that you wish they hadn't bothered trying.

[BlazeHedgehog]

I dunno about Heroes having unique architecture. It may not have repeated as much as you say Shadow does, but a lot of levels in Heroes definitely had the "It's a good thing you like this part of the level because we're going to copy and paste it 2 more times later on."

And it wasn't helped by the fact that you played through each level 4 times as different characters. So you'd be in Mystic Mansion or whatever and it'd be like "Aw man, another it's-not-the-go-kart-from-Seaside-hill-for-serious Mine Cart sequence? I just did this same thing as Team Sonic, Team Rose, and Team Chaotix." or "Oh look, I have to destroy yet another Battleship in Egg Fleet."

[P.P.A.]

I also "enjoyed" Shadow a bit more than Heroes. Controls are a bit better (but still too loose), enemy life bars are usually down in two hits (bigger foes aside, but that's what the weapons are for), you don't level up any more, you only have one annoying companion in a stage as opposed to two (and by selecting the Neutral path you can just turn him/her/it off) and the weapons are less of an annoyance than the switching between the team members was in Heroes. Sure, Heroes is a lot prettier and more charming in appearance - but all that doesn't help if it's just unplayable. Getting to the Last Story of Shadow was more tedious than in Heroes, but at least you didn't have to play those awful special stages (actually I still haven't seen Metal Sonic in heroes due to this. :( )
Worst flaw of Shadow I would say are some of the tedious level goals: Shooting down all enemies in the level is just a pain. But at least you could warp back at checkpoints if you missed some. Still, a radar or the likes would have been useful. Level designs and tilesets being reused a couple of times throughout the game is, I agree, just lazy. The vehicles on the other hand I don't see as such a problem, as you often aren't forced to use them. Except for those jumping things in Sky Troops (best stage in the game I'd say, love the music) and the alien birds in some other levels - but at least those Panzer Dragoon segments were fun.
As for the story (least important part imo)... Well, Heroes was extremely childish with a crapload of annoying characters and THE POWER OF TEAMWORK whereas Shadow tried too hard to be cool and ended up as a laughable embarrassment. Not to mention the lot of things that don't make any sense, such as Robotnik attacking you if you in the level before actually helped him! And have you ever listened to Black Doom? Half the time he wants to destroy the Earth and kill off humanity, the other half he wants to keep the humans as energy source or whatever. Doesn't really go together very well, does it?

[DackAttac]

[a handful of posts on the subject]

I don't disagree with many of your points. If I were just looking at what the games "represented", or the overall "attitude", then I'd certainly take Green Hill cop-off levels over gloom-and-doom with firearms. All I know is I swallowed my pride and went back to Shadow to play it some more after my initial run. Heroes only made it back out of the case once after I finished, which is when I went to the level select, looked at my options, and just powered the system back down.

Heroes was a lofty concept that just didn't lend itself to fun gameplay. At least in the way they implemented it. Shadow was a joke of a concept, but they were able to bring it a bit closer to fruition than Heroes, and quite frankly, I'm willing to choke down some dreary bullshit sci-fi premise if it means I'll have a good gaming experience. (Or, apparently, a heavily mediocre one.)

[hedgepig]

The coolest thing about Shadow as a character is that he makes Sonic look even cooler by comparison. The best thing about the Shadow game is watching Sonic destroy stuff of his own accord.

One of the many problems I found with the Shadow game is the crudeness of the morality. Killing aliens makes you 'good,' killing human soldiers makes you 'bad.' Frankly, the alien soldiers are merely pawns in the game like anyone else; don't they deserve some dignity?

Sonic Heroes was a dissapointment, but it didn't make me think 'Sonic Team' had lost the plot. Shadow sort of...did.

[Arcade]

What would six more months of development have improved? I believe Heroes was technically competent, just conceptually flawed. It's not like Sonic '06, which flew onto shelves incomplete.

Sonic Adventure vs Sonic Adventure international

That’s what six months more can do duh!

[BlazeHedgehog]

Sonic Adventure International was still plagued with collision detection issues and tons of animation bugs, etc.

The additional time helped polish the game up a little bit, I'll agree - better camera angles, fixing the most major flaws; but none of what was fixed was related to level design and there's still heaps upon heaps of small little glitches. There are times when it really feels like SA1 is held together by chewing gum and duct tape.

Sonic Heroes had problems that ran deeper than a six month round of polish would fix. Parts of the game's design doc needed to be scrapped and re-written entirely.

[Hybrid]

The thing that gets to me about Shadow -- more than the ugly graphics, more than the broken gunplay and vehicle segments, more than the insanely stupid storyline -- is how bloody repetitive it was. The only thing worse than playing through a particularly terrible segment of a level is knowing that exact same segment will probably be reused about seventeen more times over the course of the game. "Oh look, here's that temple corridor again, but now it has PURPLE flame lamps!"

The same can be said for Heroes, though. Heroes only had seven unique "zones" with two levels each. And you had to play them all four times. Literally the only difference between them was length and, in the case of Team Chaotix, more annoying objectives.

Shadow, despite having a lot of levels made up of parts of previous levels, also had a lot more unique stages than Heroes. The execution for some of them was downright poor, but once you'd learnt to grapple with the poor controls/camera/physics, a good chunk of the game got pretty fun. There were only ever a couple of levels I replayed in Heroes (Seaside Hill, Egg Fleet and that first city level).

[Crazy Penguin]

Sonic Heroes' Special Stages were an utter disgrace. It's like they didn't even have analogue control in mind.

[RocketPunch]

Sonic Heroes had problems that ran deeper than a six month round of polish would fix. Parts of the game's design doc needed to be scrapped and re-written entirely.

That's what I'm saying. The concepts behind Sonic Heroes sucked because they were just poor concepts, not because they weren't executed well enough. No additional amount of time would've made the game better, it would've just given the developers six more months to take the gameplay even farther in the wrong direction.

[Isuka]

Man, this topic took a turn to the depressing side, didn't it?

Sonic Heroes' Special Stages were an utter disgrace. It's like they didn't even have analogue control in mind.

For everyone who's stuck with these, here's a protip: you have to try them with Team Rose, and each and every time the wind tube looks to be filled with bombs, dash your way through the upper part. You may lose some spheres here and there, but slowing down a little is always better than coming to a complete stop.

[Shadow Hog]

I think the core concept of having three players controlled at the same time could still work in the context of a Sonic game, barring a few changes be made to the formula.

Well, actually, one big one: no more formation rotation. Characters stay in Speed formation, period. Instead of wasting two buttons to "rotate formation" and then having one "action" button, you will now have three "use this character's power" button, which would stay relatively fixed. Press X to have the team spindash! Press Y to quickly hop into the air and start flying! Press B to quickly jab enemies that are in your way! In mid-air, press A to homing attack, or Y to start flying again, or X to glide, or B to throw teammates at enemies...

It's still a bit more unwieldy than just using one player, but far less so than "okay Knux is needed here and I'm Sonic, time to rotate to Knux then, okay let's hit this button twice... no, wait, that's Tails! Hit the other butt- oh, crap, I got hit, there goes my chances at the special stage."

[Locit]

Sonic Heroes' Special Stages were an utter disgrace. It's like they didn't even have analogue control in mind.

I don't remember much about them, but I seem to recall having no earthly clue what was going on. The first (and last) time I played one I just pushed A a bunch and somehow ended up with an emerald at the end. I avoided them after that simply so I wouldn't have to deal with the eye-stabbingly awful palette of neon hues and annoying sound bites issued by each character whenever you did anything.

[Hybrid]

I think the core concept of having three players controlled at the same time could still work in the context of a Sonic game, barring a few changes be made to the formula.

Before getting it, I was hoping Heroes was to be something like playing S3&K with all three characters at once.

I don't think the formations were a bad idea, particularly. Just assign each character to a certain button. Assuming the Wii controller for example, right d-pad is Knuckles, down is Sonic, left is Tails. If you're already Sonic, pressing down will perform Sonic's special move. If you're already Knuckles, pressing right will do his special move. etc. Then we've got the B button for a second special move. Up d-pad for Team Attack.

Giving each character their own complete movelist basically necessitates different team leaders, but it provides more diversity and done correctly (ie. not how it was done in Heroes) would be very enjoyable.

[BlazeHedgehog]

I always thought Heroes would've worked better if you could've only picked one buddy to bring with you in to a level and then you tag team it.

Sort of like Sonic Advance 3, but without the "buddy AI is completely worthless and the concept is poorly implemented".