Entry #2: Sonic Super-Disasters

 

    Sonic Superstars is the most recent Classic Sonic game to come out. Supposedly, this game was supposed to be the successor to the beloved game, "Sonic Mania Plus," which was a love letter to any Classic Sonic fan. With it also coming out 3 days before the highly esteemed, "Super Mario Wonder," it is safe to say that it had very big shoes to fill. When the game finally released, fans were disappointed to say the least. I got my copy along with Super Mario Wonder, and now all I can do is wish that I could travel back in time and stop myself from getting Sonic Superstars in the first place. This game did not live up to the hype that it had at its reveal. So why is this game so bad? There actually is a lot of reasons as to why this game is bad, but before I go over the bad, I do want to go over the good in this game.

    To start with the good, this game has some amazing animation. The animation looks like it was ripped right out of the original games, and in some cases looks even better with some new animations that make the game look very stunning. The game also has some really good songs, and I mean really good. Sonic Mania was known for doing basically everything right, but if there is one thing they were mainly known for, it was their music. Some of the songs in this game sound great, with other songs sounding like they came straight out of Sonic Mania, since some of them were actually created by the same artist who made the music in Sonic Mania, Tee Lopes. Another strong suit that this game has are its controls, since it reuses the controls of Sonic Mania, which was highly praised by the Sonic Community as it was the first time in a very long while that they excellently recreated the feeling of the original Classic Sonic Games. This game also has some very impressive background sets in some levels, which make it look beautiful. They also bring back Fang the Hunter, a character that many fans have not been able to see in a very long time, as well as some new characters like Trip and the various new Metal character designs, created by Kazuyuki Hoshino, the original creator of the Metal Sonic design. Finally, as a little bonus, they allow you to use the Lego minifigures as skins for some of the characters.

Metal Designs of the four main characters (https://www.sonicstadium.org/news/games/a-closer-look-at-sonic-superstars-battle-mode-metal-amy-knuckles-r1579/)

    To start us off, this game is way too expensive, coming in at a whopping $60! That is the same price as Sonic Frontiers, which is a 3D Sonic game. To compare, you can buy both Sonic Origins and Sonic Mania for the exact same price as this game. In total, you could get 5 Sonic games for the same price as this one, with each of those games being better than this one. As anyone can imagine, this $60 price tag is horrendous, and only made worse by the fact that the game is not good enough to justify the price. Thankfully, the price has been cut in half to $30, but for those who paid the original price, such as me, you are all out of luck.

    This game also looks horrible on the Nintendo Switch. This is very common for the Nintendo Switch with higher end games, but for Sonic Superstars? It makes absolutely no sense since the game looks like it has at least Playstation 3 graphics, and at best Playstation 4 graphics, and yet the Nintendo Switch makes it look graphically worse than either of those two consoles, even though it can handle those kinds of graphics equally. 

Comparison Between the Playstation 5 and Nintendo Switch graphics (https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2023-sonic-superstars-df-tech-review)

    As well as bad bad optimization on the Nintendo Switch, this game has the most confusing story out of any Sonic game. Not because it is complex, but because it is so hidden and rarely even mentioned that it almost feels like an afterthought. The only details you actually get about the story are in some animatics released on YouTube, and you get even less information about the game's true final boss, which practically comes out of nowhere. The only time it is brought up is briefly in the animatics and very far in the background of an optional level. To make matters worse, the true final boss has horrible character design and is genuinely not fun to play at all.

    Speaking of having no fun, this game is just not fun to play. The level design is atrocious in various levels. For example, in one of the levels, you are forced into this section where you get turned into a mouse and have to traverse through a path full of enemies in order to reach the top. Normally, this would be good level design, as it is actually quite creative. The problem with this is that this a game all about going fast, and this section completely stops all idea of going fast. Classic Sonic games have done this in the past, and in almost every case it makes for a very awful time. In this case specifically, if you get hit once, you fall all the way back to the beginning and you will most likely lose all of your rings. What makes this worse are the horrendous controls in this section, as you are not allowed to go backwards at all. There are various examples of instances like this in the game, but what makes this game even more infuriating to play are the horrible boss fights. These boss fights can only be hit once at a time and take way too long to use their next attack. Some bosses can even take up to 10 minutes to beat! In past Classic Sonic games, you can hit a boss repeatedly until they go down whenever they are open for attack, making it quick but very fun to defeat them. This game scraps that for these fights which are sometimes completely unfair, such as moving the camera so slowly that you cannot see upcoming threats and even throwing in sucker punch attacks that instantly kill you, sending you back to the beginning of the fight where you have to spend another 10 minutes beating them all over again just to avoid one sucker punch. The Special Stages are also bad. Unlike the really fun Special Stages in Sonic Mania, this game has you swing from orb to orb to get the Chaos Emerald. The only problem is that the lock on system just does not work at all, making it feel like luck to actually get the emerald. Finally, the online battle mode is completely boring and has nothing actually fun to do other than being able to play as your customized Metal avatar.

Picture of Cyber Station Act 1 and the Dreaded Mouse section (https://www.emuglx.org/recenzije-igara/sonic-superstars-2023/)

    You may recall that I said this game controls wonderfully, and that is true... for most of the characters. For whatever reason, they decided to nerf Knuckles and make Amy obsolete. In past Classic Sonic games, whenever Knuckles went to glide into the air, he would build momentum and therefore fly faster through the air. In this game however, they completely removed that feature, yet still kept in his small jump, making him very dreadful to play as in this game. They also added Trip to this game, who does the exact same things that Amy does, but with the added bonus of being able to latch onto and climb walls just like Knuckles, and even gave her the ability to stick to ceilings. This makes Amy completely worthless since Trip can do everything she can do and more. I would even say this makes Knuckles obsolete too since his glide is no longer fun to use and his wall climb is worse than Trip's. They also nerfed the spin dash for all characters, making it slower and go less far than it used to.

    It is also laughable that the multiplayer mode, which is this game's selling point is horrendous to play. The game makes it to where the character closest to the right side of the screen is given the camera, and other players who fall behind this camera do not. If any character goes off camera, they immediately die and are forced to respawn. At least in past Classic Sonic games, the multiplayer mode was an after thought, but here it is completely advertised as the main reason to play this game.

    Finally, the worst crime of all is that this game does not have a consistently good soundtrack. Sonic games, no matter how bad, almost always have amazing soundtracks. Take, "Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)" for example. The game is unplayable, glitchy, with a messy story and an awful script, but the game has an amazing soundtrack that remains consistently good throughout the entire game. This game has only some good tracks, with others sounding like something you would hear a 3 year old make. In other words, some of these songs are terrible.

    This game does have some good qualities to it to be fair, but overall this game is just bad. The whole point of a game, as I mentioned in my first entry, is to be fun; something that this game clearly is not. I cannot recommend this game to anyone for its initial price tag. Nowadays with its adjusted price tag, I would only recommend it if you are really curious enough to want to play it. For anyone expecting this to be a return to the Classic Sonic games, or better yet a successor to Sonic Mania, I am sorry to tell you that the better game that released during this time is in another castle.

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