BlazeHedgehog

BlazeHedgehog is breathing a sigh of relief

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  • Aug. 19, 2008 - 11:34 a.m.
    BlazeHedgehog just added a new blog
    Go me.
    Sonic: The Fated Hour got featured on the front-page rotator on Moddb and as a result it is the #1 game on the site right now. :D

  • Aug. 17, 2008 - 11:59 p.m.
    BlazeHedgehog is now friends with SuperMooseman
  • Aug. 17, 2008 - 8:52 a.m.
    BlazeHedgehog is breathing a sigh of relief
  • Aug. 17, 2008 - 8:42 a.m.
    BlazeHedgehog just added a new blog
    I have made a thing, and you can play it.
    Yup. If you've been waiting for the demo, it's here.

      

  • Aug. 9, 2008 - 1:02 p.m.
    BlazeHedgehog just commented on BlazeHedgehog's blog - What am I playing this weekend?
    I have no idea! :D

  • Aug. 9, 2008 - 5:49 a.m.
    BlazeHedgehog just added a new blog
    What am I playing this weekend?
    Nothing, probably. I need to buy a new motherboard soon, I need to keep working on my game so I don't miss my new deadline (the 16th), I need to get ready for SAGE as I am supposed to be covering the event for the website I work for. Not to mention Microsoft wants to talk to me about my "Xbox Experience" (which reminds me, I need to respond to that email after I write this blog). And then there's simple house chores stuff like mowing the lawn.

    Busy weekend and very little of it will be spent playing ...

  • Aug. 8, 2008 - 2:57 a.m.
    BlazeHedgehog just commented on Ashuku's blog - Rock Band
    GHOST DRUMMER SOLO

  • Aug. 7, 2008 - 1:49 p.m.
    BlazeHedgehog just commented on BlazeHedgehog's blog - Goin' Digital
    So worstest that I've never bothered to play it. :P

  • Aug. 7, 2008 - 6:32 a.m.
    BlazeHedgehog just created a new forum post on the topic Why hasnt sega rereleased a HD remake of the first sonic games? in the Sonic the Hedgehog
    Kush said: "The screen that Newton post was from that HD remake of Sonic 2 that I mentioned."
    Not quite. The screenshot is a wallpaper somebody made which inspired the project. There's a "tech demo" for the project coming next month.

  • Aug. 7, 2008 - 2:24 a.m.
    BlazeHedgehog just added a new blog
    Goin' Digital
    Those Digital TV converter boxes suck. I got one last night because the TV in my room still uses antenna.

    It's like, okay, every channel is crystal clear. That's cool. There are channels I can now watch that I could not watch before because the picture was too fuzzy. Like, now, I guess I could watch Saturday Morning Cartoons on KidsWB or whatever if I the mood struck me.  

    But... if you've ever had DirecTV or something, you know that when there's a bad storm, how the signal will sometimes break up? The sound will start cutting ...

About Me
I am a Sonic fan who is cautious of the newer games. I enjoy writing about games and making my own games and I hope to one day become a professional game designer. I am a writer for TSSZnews.com currently and working on a Sonic Fangame called Sonic: The Fated Hour. For more detailed information about me and who I am, read my introduction blog.
My Blog
Added by BlazeHedgehog on Aug. 19, 2008 | |

This post relates to: Sonic Unleashed

Sonic: The Fated Hour got featured on the front-page rotator on Moddb and as a result it is the #1 game on the site right now. :D


Added by BlazeHedgehog on Aug. 17, 2008 | |

This post relates to: Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Rush Adventure, Sonic Unleashed

Yup. If you've been waiting for the demo, it's here. Make sure to drop by the Sagexpo.org booths page to give me a thumbs up if you like it.

  



Added by BlazeHedgehog on Aug. 9, 2008 | |

This post relates to: Mega Man X4, Kingdom Hearts, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Shadow of the Colossus, Ratchet & Clank, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Resident Evil 4, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Crusader of Centy, EarthBound, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, What are you playing this weekend?

Nothing, probably. I need to buy a new motherboard soon, I need to keep working on my game so I don't miss my new deadline (the 16th), I need to get ready for SAGE as I am supposed to be covering the event for the website I work for. Not to mention Microsoft wants to talk to me about my "Xbox Experience" (which reminds me, I need to respond to that email after I write this blog). And then there's simple house chores stuff like mowing the lawn.

Busy weekend and very little of it will be spent playing games. What I do play will probably be whatever is on my old laptop - so Sega Genesis emulators, etc. Usually when I cannot access this PC (it gets too hot and the motherboard starts shorting out and giving me blue screens) I get on my laptop and do whatever stuff I can to pass the time until about 11pm or so when it cools off enough to get back on the main PC. I've been lucky in that the past two days have been fairly rainy and cool, giving me lots of extra time to work on my game - but the heat is supposed to be returning as early as today. So yeah, I expect I'll be going back to Sonic 3 & Knuckles sometime soon - or maybe Mega Man X4. Pretty good PC port, that one. Runs very well on my 266mhz laptop. Maybe start up an RPG. Tried to get in to Crusader of Centy a few days ago to no avail. But I guess that's no more an RPG than Zelda's an RPG - but let's not get in to that argument here. Started a new game on Earthbound on this PC a few months ago, may try and go for that one on the laptop.

There is also my monstrous backlog; Zelda: Twilight Princess, Resident Evil 4, Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, Shadow of the Colossus, Metroid Prime 2, Kingdom Hearts... all of those need to be finished, but I never feel like playing any of them and I don't know why. Most of them feel like I have to sit down and invest too much time in them. I seem to be drifting away from the "sit down for a few hours and play something" and gravitating more towards "sit down for a few minutes and play something".

Maybe an RPG isn't such a good idea after all.


Added by BlazeHedgehog on Aug. 7, 2008 | |
Those Digital TV converter boxes suck. I got one last night because the TV in my room still uses antenna.

It's like, okay, every channel is crystal clear. That's cool. There are channels I can now watch that I could not watch before because the picture was too fuzzy. Like, now, I guess I could watch Saturday Morning Cartoons on KidsWB or whatever if I the mood struck me.  

But... if you've ever had DirecTV or something, you know that when there's a bad storm, how the signal will sometimes break up? The sound will start cutting out, you'll get nasty artifacts all over the screen, etc.? On channels that don't come through so well on this Digital Converter Box, that's what you get.

What sucks is that there are some channels on analog that while a little snowy are still watchable - but they are rendered totally unviewable through Digital. Either they show up as NO SIGNAL or they break up so much that you can't even tell what's going on. The tiniest bit of interference seems to completely destroy a channel, and because of the way it breaks up, it's hard to tell when moving an antenna if it's getting better or getting worse.

Also weird: Channels now have Sub Channels, so there's like, Channel 9, and then Channel 9-2. Channel 9 is our local NBC Affiliate, but Channel 9-2 is 24/7 news and weather from the Channel 9 news team.

I don't know if I like this new Digital TV thing.


Added by BlazeHedgehog on July 30, 2008 | |
So I bought another new Power Supply for my PC hoping that would fix the BSOD problem. If the sound coming from my case is any indication, it did not. That most likely narrows the cause of BSODing down to the Motherboard itself, which comes with a massive string of its own problems - after all, the last time I changed motherboards (a little under a year ago, might I remind the viewers at home), I actually lost an entire 160gb HDD because of various poor decisions I made regarding the re-installing of Windows and formatting the drive.

So obviously, I'm more than a little paranoid about doing another motherboard switch. That is, of course, on top of the always present money situation, in which every spare dollar I've had in the last 4-6 months has gone in to trying to buy new parts to fix this thing.

It's really, really putting a damper on my work ethic regarding a new demo of my Sonic game. When you can only work on the game for say, 2-4 hours a night (when typically I'd work on it for 5-8 hours a day), the notion of having this ready for the August 8th deadline is very rapidly slipping away.

Especially when performance issues start to crop up less than halfway through building the level's design. I'm basically getting 30fps now, in a 2D side scrolling game, on a rig that can run a fully 3D game like Half-Life 2 with all settings on high at over 100fps.

This sucks, basically.

On the plus side, a number of my larger GiantBomb submissions were approved, putting me up at 700pts. Hooray.



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Top Contributions

Sonic Adventure
205 Points

Sonic Adventure 2
193 Points

Sonic the Hedgehog
133 Points

Sonic the Hedgehog
104 Points

Sonic CD
103 Points

Sonic & Knuckles
78 Points

Sonic Jam
11 Points

My Reviews
Reviewed by BlazeHedgehog
Aug. 3, 2008
Broken, rushed, and just not very fun.


Before we begin about the subject at hand, it would probably be a good idea to give you a little background information about me as a person; it's essential to alleviating my own guilt. I'm a Sonic fan; something in 1991 truly captivated me and it's been hard to shake since then. To me, Sonic games are serious business - and yes, I’ve made a couple of bad purchases because there was a blue hedgehog on the box. When Sega began sounding the trumpets for Sonic's 15th Anniversary, I was hopeful: With a game set to mark the anniversary of the franchise, Sonic the Hedgehog (hereby referred to simply as "Sonic 2k6") would be a change of pace from lackluster titles like Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog. Things would be different. They had to be!

I was wrong. Despite early claims otherwise, Sonic 2k6 is a very typical 3D Sonic game. It more or less tries to play itself as a "greatest hits" of Sonic's best moments, incorporating the adventure elements of the original Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2's darker sci-fi plot, and Sonic Heroes' team play aspect, with a few vague nods to classic Sonic games like Sonic CD. The idea is you roam around the hub world (called Soleanna) talking to town members (NPCs) and doing missions for them until you unlock an Action Stage. Action Stages are your standard, every day Sonic levels, where you grab as many rings and destroy as many enemies while racing to the finish line. Complete an Action Stage, and you return to Soleanna to repeat the process. Rings you collect in Action Stages go towards purchasing equipment upgrades, which allows you to access more Action Stages. Sounds easy enough, doesn't it?

What I had the misfortune of purchasing on launch day was a game that can barely be classified as an "incomplete"; it's unfinished, unpolished, and uncontrollable. The problems contained within stretch far and wide, encompassing nearly the entire game. At times it can almost seem unplayable. One of the first things you will notice about this game are the loading times: Not only are they frequent, but they are long. Enduring a 15-20 second loading time isn't so bad when you only do it once per level, but there are moments in Sonic 2k6 where you will hit four or more loading screens in only a few minutes of gameplay. The loading times become especially annoying about the time you start doing town missions for NPCs, which can see up to four or more loading screens (at 15 seconds each) for a couple of lines of text-only dialog. It's beyond inexcusable.

The graphics are a mixed bag. Though a clear step up from previous Sonic titles, visuals feel flat and lifeless. The dynamic shadowing system deserves special mention; while everything in the game self-shadows, the shadows themselves have an unfortunate habit of appearing only a few feet in front of the player. Watching the shadow of a tree suddenly materialize in the distance is awkward to say the least. Up close, the shadows characters cast are jagged and low-resolution, making in-game cutscenes look messy. Even worse, though the framerate never dips below 60 frames per second, you can expect numerous moments of slowdown as the game stumbles in keeping up with the lackluster graphics.

A rare bright spot is the level design in some of the Action Stages; a number of them are delightfully non-linear, offering up numerous alternate routes to the goal - a first for a 3D Sonic game, and something I have waited a long time to see (as they were a big part of my enjoyment regarding the Genesis Sonic titles). Stages like White Acropolis feature a number of wide-open fields with ramps and platforms scattered throughout, rather than the typically linear "single-lane highway suspended over a bottomless pit" designs seen in past Sonic games. These are, however, unceremoniously ruined by the game's over-sensitive controls. It's pretty much impossible to make slight adjustments to Sonic's direction, as the game seems to favor sharp, almost 45 degree angle turns. In a level like Kingdom Valley, a sharp turn of that magnitude often means instant death. Awkward collision detection issues help to further frustrate and drain joy from what could have been a fun experience.

The developers also continue the time-honored tradition of doing the opposite of what gamers request; rather than trying to avoid things people complained about in previous Sonic games, Sonic 2k6 seems to embrace them. To start, the game's art style leans heavily on realism. This extends beyond the game's poorly-implemented Havok Physics Engine, as it appears SonicTeam dressed up a monkey in a greasy Sonic the Hedgehog costume who walks around talking to plastic mannequins. Rather than cut down on the number of playable characters stealing Sonic's spotlight (something people have been complaining about since the original Sonic Adventure in 1999), Sonic 2k6 returns to form by forcing you to play as characters like Amy Rose and Tails, bringing the total list of characters up to 9 in all. Rubbing salt in the wound, these supporting characters often end up with even worse controls; expect to fight steering a character like Knuckles more than you end up fighting the enemies in the game, leading to the lion's share of unfair deaths. This says nothing of the innumerable little bugs I encountered, also usually resulting in accidental loss of life, even all the way up until the last levels in the game.

That being said, ;ike most of the 3D Sonic games, you can almost see a good game in here somewhere. Unfortunately, it's so buried under a mountain of inexcusable garbage that, more than any other 3D Sonic game, it becomes increasingly difficult to find anything that makes this game worth playing, let alone even just renting. It's the result of a Christmas deadline falling on a game that was nowhere near ready, and marks the bottom of the barrel for the franchise so far. You've been warned.




934 Points
Ranked #502 of 17,772

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Date Joined: July 21, 2008
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Gender: Male
Alignment: Neutral
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