James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog movie

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Locit
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Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog movie

Post by Locit »

j-man wrote:
Tue Aug 18, 2020 4:39 am
Then again, remember how bizarrely optimistic I was about Sonic 4?
Well I fuckin' do now mate.

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Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog movie

Post by j-man »

Yeah... it was a whole thing.

Enjoy the decade-old, second-hand embarrassment!

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Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog movie

Post by cjmcray »

Sonic 4: Episode 2 was pretty darn good though! (But by that point, the negative reaction to Episode 1 pretty much killed any hopes for a third episode)

Sonic movie was ok. Wish Paramount hadn't been so spoiler heavy in the trailers.

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Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog movie

Post by cjmcray »

I wish Sonic hadn't farted though.

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Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog movie

Post by big_smile »

Weren't there large parts of the gaming press that were optimistic about Sonic 4. In fact, I still see some journalists talk about it in a fond way. I'm guessing these are people who don’t remember the Mega Drive games too well beyond Sonic = 2D.

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Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog movie

Post by Jingles »

Not to steer this topic away from Jim Carrey and blue arms, but...

Would you believe that both episodes of Sonic 4 have higher Metacritic scores than Forces, both versions of Lost World, both handheld Sonic Boom games, and the HD Unleashed? Even the SD version of Unleashed is still a good 15 points below Episode 1.

Who could be surprised? For general audiences, Sonic 4 is a competent, fast, relatively bug-free, downloadable 2D platformer complete with seven bonus stages apiece, full level layouts, some new moves, and stars Sonic the Hedgehog, Tails the Fox, and Dr. Robotnik doing what people remember them doing (or have seen them doing in YouTube videos). What's not to like? It surprises me that they never just pumped out a few more episodes for a cheap cash-grab.

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Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog movie

Post by Gaz »

This Sonic 4 talk is reminding me a bit of this video I watched the other day.

It's a clip from a UK TV show called Go 8-Bit DLC which was hosted by Ellie Gibson, a former game journalist who wrote this Sonic 4 Episode 1 review for Eurogamer and gave the game 9/10. She admits she got too caught up in the hype and overrated the game and acknowledges it's not very good.

I never actually posted my opinion on the movie, It's.... OK. I expected it to be a complete trainwreck but it's actually quite a fun movie. I still feel calling it good is probably pushing it a bit but it's enjoyable.

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Re: James Marsden taking lead role in Sonic the Hedgehog movie

Post by big_smile »

I get the power of nostalgia but I don’t see how it works in Sonic 4. For one thing, the game looks hideous. It has none of the visual charm of the classic games and the 3D graphics are too flat to be interesting in their own right. And then the gameplay itself is awful. The level design is bland and uninspired with too many cheap hits and bottomless pits. And then when you get to episode 2, there's now a whole new flying/partner mechanic to get in the way of things.

The marketing did a good job of tapping into why people love the classic games, but the product itself is completely blind to all of that (which shouldn't be surprising as it was supposed to be just a regular modern Sonic game. The Sonic 4 baggage was attached to it much later). I suspect the only reason Episode II didn’t catch on as much is because we had just had Generations which showed us exactly how a new classic game should be.

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