Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood

I tend to avoid thinking about my worst experiences with a game unless it was something truly abysmal.  Most of the time if I'm playing something horrid, I already have my expectations set fairly low and don't typically view it in the same way I do when I attempt to play a game in a normal setting (as in actually trying to accomplish something within it other than laughing at it).  Most of the time the abysmal products I face aren't actually commercial releases but rather flash games and user createdmods.  There are a few interesting cases, such as Zoo Race and The Demon Rush, where an at home project is released as a commercial product out there for the masses to tear into, but even then I only read threads of those brave enough to walk us through and play a demo just to laugh at how terrible something could be.  I know better than to spend money for things I won't enjoy and would rather not give further incentive to the people making these things to continue in this career.  Of the games I've seriously tried to play this year, I can only think of a few experiences that were borderline unenjoyable.
 
I started off the year with a sub-par Pokemon clone, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker.  While a technically competent game in that there are few bugs, It failed to detail better ways to get better monsters and made incentives for experimenting and made the actual part of playing your game pretty much just work.  The entire game was spread around grinding these characters up, since once you combine a perfectly top notch character with another, you are given a new monster that starts out at level 1 and can barely survive it's first few battles all the while you've just tossed out two of your strongest party members for a creature that might not quite work out the way you want.  Sure, it pays off in the long run, but it also means an extra entire hour or so of grinding.  If for some reason you think you can rush through the game, you can back your party into a corner by having monsters that will never be strong enough to progress the game (since each monster is in a performance class), forcing you to backtrack with a guide.
 
I'm fairly certain you could complete the game in two or three hours if the process of creating new monsters was streamlined and worthwhile.  Instead it's a bloated mess, one I would stay away from if you value time.  If not, then sure, go for it.
 
I would list Terminator Salvation if I didn't actually have fun with that game.  I guess it's worth a mention because it's bugged to hell, but considering the time constraints and the doomed-to-fail movie license curse, it actually came out quite passable.  Of course, this is me saying this only having paid $7 renting it.  I can only feel sad for the people that invested $60.
 
While I couldn't stand DQM:J for the bloated gameplay choices, I couldn't stand Sonic Chronicles:  The Dark Brotherhood for nearly the opposite.  It was a good idea in theory and in some parts, execution, there were a number of performance issues that make the game just downright clunky for a game about the fastest character even concieved.  The longwinded attacks, gameplay that feels unbalanced, and drawn out battles makes it difficult to recommend.  I doubt I'll ever come back to it, though I really wanted to like this game as I went through it, it looks fairly polished when you're watching gameplay videos.  You could tell they had big ideas for the game, and they come through, but they never came to fruition and the execution is all over the place.  Mario has the market on mascot RPGs cornered and the bar they set it fairly high.  It's also quite ironic that Mario and Luigi games are the faster-paced RPG.
 
Even then, there were points during those games where I had fun.  None of these games were truly abysmal, but they were definitely the low marks of games I spent time playing this year.  But hey, you have to know how low the barrel goes to appreciate the good ones!

Sonic the Hedgehog is a battered wife, Sonic Team has beaten the life, the will out of the poor little guy. Some websites are already lamenting the lack of gameplay and vision in the latest episode of the now tragic tale of the once beloved Hedgehog (some might say too beloved). In the late nineties only Mario and Sonic emerged from the 16-bit era as platform mascots that could survive in a 3D world, the two biggest and baddest franchises of their respective companies who each had earned a certain amount of respect from gamers for their gameplay quality.

 Nintendo has been very careful, very conservative about when they release a core Mario game. A Mario game is typically released once or maybe twice a generation cycle and every single one of those games has had a minimum level of quality. Each one could be described as being one of the best, one of the most important games of that generation. They have long tails and the quality of Mario as a product assures that Mario's name will have cache when his name is placed on less stellar franchises, like when Mario throws a party or decides to play a game of baseball with his friends. Mario has a stable and happy relationship with Nintendo, Sonic...not so much.

Ever since the death of the Dreamcast, the reorganization of all of Sega's internal parties and Sega being bought out by Sammy, Sonic has been lost and listless. The Sonic Adventure games may not have been the most inspired games in the world, but they were generally fun. Games like Phantasy Star Online and it's iterations also showed that Sonic Team was a quality studio that could produce games from multiple genres. I think that ever since the fallout that followed the death of the Dreamcast Sega has been bereft of leadership, of vision. Producing consoles gave Sega an identity, it allowed them to be creative and proactive as any game they produced internally that was unique would help diversify the market for their console. Sega has since lost that creative spark, their Pachinko producing overlords have led them into a strategy that has made them too dependent on licensed products and has sent them from being one of the biggest game producers in the world to a middling company. Sega is going through one hell of a mid-life crisis, it doesn't know what its purpose or what its strong points are any more, and Sonic games have suffered as a result.

Sonic has been Sega's trump card, their ace in the hole. He is the one character in their line-up who has enough cultural cache to naturally create sales, no matter the gameplay. Unfortunately, this means that Sonic is overexposed, that the lack of innovation in his games over the last decade or so has been made woefully apparent. Sega does not know how to evolve Sonic, they just know that their bottom line requires them to release a main line series game featuring his name. So they keep on handing Sonic back to his torturers, back to the people who have been unable to find a working formula for Sonic since the Dreamcast apocalypse, Sonic Team.

Rather than attempting to move the series forward, Sonic Team has tried to tart up sonic, to patch him up with gimmicks. Sonic Team has so overloaded the franchise with unnecessary mythos, with new "Focus Test approved" friends and nemesis' that I struggle to see him appealing to anyone over the age of ten. Sonic has the worst friends imaginable, the kinds of friends who gum up the gameplay and make the story sickeningly juvenile. Whether their giving him a sword, turning him into a Warehog, having Shadow shoot a gun, have him kissing a realistically made woman, forcing us to use his shitty friends rather then Sonic, every last one of these things is just gaffer tape applied to the Sonic brand to cover up their lack of creativity. And this is from the company that gave us the Dreamcast! That gave us Samba de Amigo, Space Channel 5, Seaman, Phantasy Star Online, Sega gaga and Jet Grind Radio, the most off the wall creative games of their day. And now Sega and Sonic team are just a drunk with no direction, life has been cruel to them and in return they have taken their frustrations out on Sonic. They've made Sonic games no fun to play.

Now, I may not be a huge fan of Sonic over the year, but I always loved to play Sonic games when I was a kid. I loved the speed, the rocking music and the awesome casino levels in the Genesis era. I don't know if it's possible to represent those levels, those feelings that people had when they were playing those Genesis games on current generation hardware, but it would be worth a shot. Good platformers are hard to find these days and I'm always looking for an excuse to buy one, but Sonic Team's efforts have sickened me so much to the point that I don't even know if I am even going to pay attention any more.

The Best Sonic game in the last five years has been an rpg made by Bioware. Bioware! Sega needs to realize that the visionaries and engineers that they have working at Sonic Team are just not up to snuff, that those who still life Sonic games deserve better then what Sonic Team is making. The most successful and popular franchise in the history of Japan is Dragon Quest, that Enix produced RPG that is almost always the highest selling title in a major consoles sales life in Japan. Since the SNES Enix has not been afraid to give their most important product to other development houses, DQVIII and DQIX are both games that have been or are being produced by Level 5, a separate entity to Square-Enix. If the most important games of the last 5 years in Japan can be produced by outside developers, why not Sonic? It would allow a plucky developer to give Sonic fresh legs, to come in with new and different ideas. Sega could also use this as an opportunity to treat their brand better, Enix has never been afraid to delay their games until they are immaculate, until they have distilled that special Dragon Quest essence into a playable experience. Frankly, Sonic deserves better then Sonic Team. Sonic needs to pack his bags and move in with a developer who will treat him right, and give the world the kind of game we've been expecting from a name that big for a decade.

Note: will further edit for grammar and syntax when I feel like it :)

As you can see, I've once again become to inundated with games to post any updates. I'm wrestling with several RPGs at once here, with Fallout 3, Fable 2, a little Sonic: Brotherhood of Steel (oh wait, that's "The Dark Brotherhood"); and on top of that, I have Gears 2 and possibly Mirror's Edge coming up. Thank God for the piss poor economy... the lack of work is giving me more time to play these games!!! Oh, wait... *checks wallet*... *son of a*!!!

Oh, and I haven't forgotten how awesome Ever17 is yet. In fact, I've probably played through the story 10 separate times now (getting all of the good endings first, then the bad endings, with a few playthroughs beforehand to see all the subtle things I missed not knowing the whole truth behind what was going on).

I'm now waiting patiently for bits and pieces from a Remember11 translation project. That game seems even more refined, although I like the characters from Ever17 a whole lot more. Remember11 is a whole lot more mystery and intrigue, and a lot less "dating sim" than Ever17 (though you really can't call Ever17 a dating sim, you certainly do have romances between the different girls in the game), at least so far. The only bad thing is that, unlike Ever17, I've already sort of figured out several major plot points which I don't think I'm supposed to have known yet. I know I figured it out because I've read a couple different product descriptions that unfortunately flat-out tell you that is what is happening.

Is it weird that I want to finish Remember11 more than any of the other games I've mentioned in this post? Yes, even Gears 2. Man, I wish I knew Japanese, or that the people translating it would get wotking a little faster, or if KID never went bankrupt in the first place.

Whew. This one was kind of a toughie to write. Initially it was a lot longer, too - I ended up rewriting it a couple of times and managed to trim out four paragraphs worth of unnecessary text.

Oh well. Another review in the can! On to the next one, I suppose.

Sorry for the lack of updates or blogs but you know me.  I have been busy with work now and kind of want to relax and play games and stuff on my days off but once I get used to my work, which should be very soon, I will have blogs on a more regular basis hopefully.  Anyway, I talk about said job in the blog and what my recent purchases are and my upcoming ones also.  Also, a few other things are in there as well. 

Toodles.

Note: Blog might not be up yet for some reason even though it has been uploaded for a while. 

It started out kind of lame, but eventually I really began to like the game. And then.... that... that ending.

Really, really stupid. That's all I'll say. Expect my review in the next few days.

Whew! This is the time of the semester I've been waiting for. Like I said in my video blog, this semester seems to have gone by real quick for I'm surprised that my fall break is already here. Anyway, you guys may see me from time to time during the break since I'll be doing stuff with a friend over the break. Even though I'll be relaxing, I do plan on playing some DS and GBA games like The World Ends With You (still need to finish that one), Contra 4 (time to work on the Hard setting), Final Fantasy VI (again, still need to finish it),Tales Of Phantasia (I doubt I'll be playing it since it's kind of boring), and Drill Dozer (new game I got from my mom for $10 at Wal-Mart). Other than gaming, there's a 2-3 page paper I'd like to get out of the way, and that shouldn't be hard to do. :) Plus, I need to finish that comic for a friend on DA. I'm long overdue on that, but I don't think he will mind if I get it in late. Anyway, it's time to go into detail about a few things I'd like to mention.

DRILL DOZER

When I first heard about this game back when it was released, I shrugged at it despite it getting good reviews. I mean I didn't doubt that it was a good game. It's just that it didn't look very appealing to me. Then, my mom called me last month telling me that Wal-Mart had some games that were on sale, and Drill Dozer was one of them (I hope she got Metal Slug Anthology for the Wii since that was one of those games). So I told that I had heard good things about it and decided to try it out. After receiving in a package full of goodies (candy, gaming magazines, and T-shirt), I popped in the game on my DS, and I was impressed with how the game plays. What really amazed me was that this game is developed by Game Freak, Inc., of Pokemon fame. As I play this game, I think to myself, "Wow. These guys could try games like this other than Pokemon." I know there are a lot of you that continue to play Pokemon, and I really have nothing against that......well, you could say that I'm tired of Nintendo continuing the franchise. Anyway, it's just that after seeing this game I would like for them to try new things out other than the Pokemon franchise. I know that they have done other things before Pokemon, but it wouldn't hurt for them to experiment with new ideas. :)

DRAWING

Like I said earlier, I still need to finish that comic for a friend. I'm almost finished with the third page, and the fourth one is going to be my last for the comic. I hope he likes it. I've already shown him the first one, and he liked what he saw. So, it shouldn't be so bad. :) Other than that, I hope to at least do some serious drawing such as doing some gift art as a way of thanking those that have been helpful and have been such good friends. Keep in mind that this is mainly for the ones in DeviantART. :) Also, I've discovered something that could help me give some color to my artwork. I've tried doing the traditional way by using colored pencils, but it has proven that I would need more practice to get the colors to where I want them. So if I want to get things out of the way quickly, the only thing I can rely on is Adobe Photoshop. Take this for example. I was told by one of my professors in the digital media department to try using the wand tool to highlight a spot I want to color. I know that it's not the best method, but I'm sure that he wanted me to experiment after I got the hang of it. Thanks to SciFiCat for telling me a better method of doing digital color with Photoshop, I went back to give the same drawing another try. This time I'm applying line-art over the sketch, and I'm rather pleased with how it's turning out so far. After I got all the flat colors I wanted for it, I showed it to my professor, and he showed me how to use the burn tool for shadows and the dodge tool for highlights. I was amazed how much better my picture turned out. So, I plan on doing using those tools in the near future. :D Don't worry, I'm not going to be cheap by showing you guys the final product with his work by using those tools. I'll be sure to go by that example though. If you guys are curious about my gallery, you'll be able to view it if you go to the hyperlink that shows the colored version of my fursona I used for this part of the blog. :D

NEXT FRIDAY

Yep. It's coming. Right now, I'm not so sure if it will be a good or bad thing. We'll just have to wait and see. :P In case you guys still don't know, I'll be turning 21 next Friday. I'll be sure to post something on that day just so I feel more special from you guys. :D I wonder what I'll end up getting. Here's my birthday list as of now: