Summer of Sonic (9): Sonic Lost World

I kinda wish the title of the game was Sonic's Lost World, and not the usual colon that poops all over like every game title forever. I guess they didn't, but it doesn't read like it doesn't, you know?

Anyway, big preface, big warning, big point: I haven't played Super Mario Galaxy. I'm told Sonic Lost World, hereby SLW, is either a giant rip-off or a homage or takes 'some ideas' or who knows what from SMG. I haven't played it, I don't know, I can't make much of a comparison. I think that's pretty important, but I'm bogged in a backlog, especially after doing so many extra Sonic games this "summer" (he writes as he publishes this in September, but hey, it's still routinely thirty degrees out) and I guess you'll forgive the lack of research.

So this is a review of SLW as an ending to playing through 20+ years of Sonic games, not as whatever game it is replicating or referencing or whatever else. This is the most recent full Sonic game produced by Sonic team; until next year's holiday "Sonic 2017 project not yet named" or whatever we're supposed to call it.

a golden shower of fun

I never understand why branding is so lazy with video games. The name of a game should always be catchy, right from the get-go. First bit of copy should have a name, a logo, and shit for people to get hype about. Sonic Mania is catchy, go with something like that. People are hyped for Sonic Mania. I am buying a Sonic Mania t-shirt as we speak! (why?) Instead the upcoming project just doesn't have a real name? Sonic Lost World is catchy, on that note.

A bit more catchy than the game itself is...

This is the final review in the Summer of Sonic! The previous review is here, and the wrap-up is here.



I'd actually struggle to describe what SLW actually "is", other than the fact it feels not very much like a Sonic game. I mean that in a further step away from my description of the usual "not muh sonic" I employed back in the Sonic CD review. SLW has Sonic in it, but it also has a run button and right from there you get the feeling something is going wrong. It's a sort of 3d platformer with some running 3d sections, and some 2d platforming as well, and the end result is honestly very strange. Some of the 2d platforming curves with the 'little world' set up it has got going, and some of it doesn't. Sometimes you use parkour and sometimes you use colour powers.

Sometimes it is good, but it is never as good as Generations. Not once.

Basically, this games does and tries a lot of things, none of which quite feel like Sonic - except Sonic 4, oddly enough, though it doesn't quite bother me as you'd imagine remembering that game would. It comes off as based around SMG, which I haven't played, but also the Sonic 2 special stage as well. And then other stuff, lots of other stuff.

Imagine SLW as a dessert; It's some sort of ice cream cake with popsicles and candy all driven into it, but none of them are quite finished and it just ends up looking rather mashed together. There's good parts in it, but it's not much for presentation or consistency.

SLW is visually very attractive, if highly simplified, with clean and crisp aesthetics based around hexagons and a lot of the old repeating pattern work of Sonic the Hedgehog (1991). The game does reference Sonic 2 and Sonic 3, with many returning badniks from earlier games, and some references I probably don't catch to middle era games as well. The badniks all look pretty good, but a lot of them behave weirdly in the mess of mechanics. There's visuals that aren't referential and those are consistently good too.

The music is... Uh, it's something alright. The tracks are pretty flaccid compared to good Sonic music, but most of them aren't necessarily good or bad, just sort of there. I liked a couple of them, and disliked more than a few. When you get the drill power up, it starts pounding beats dubstep style and no one in this game actually tested these sections because it's just pounding a beat in your ear for several minutes.

The game in theory has parkour elements but the control scheme is wildly difficult to get a handle on. Sonic wall-running and ledge-grabbing falls under those elements but does not seem to fully interface, either with the game or with my expectations. It all happens sort of automatically but it often feels kinda wrong. The physics in general are weird and the game honestly comes off as extremely untested. A lot of the mechanics feel way too contextual. You can homing attack to beat enemies, but you're not supposed to homing attack some enemies, and homing attack just flat out doesn't work with a couple as well.

It's all very poorly put together. There's parts where your jump just ... Doesn't feel right, like you know you can jump a distance, but you suddenly can't because the game world has changed rules on you.

The game's story is... Well, the voice acting isn't bad, but it's frankly just insulting and boring after you figure out what's going on. There's some other bad guys, they do things. I did laugh at a number of Eggman/Sonic interactions, but much of it is just droning and trope. There's some sexism and very regressive mockery of people with depression. I mean it's not a big deal or whatever, it's not especially vile stuff ... But it's very 70/80s comedy in part. Oh, and the one guy is fat, also another dude is old. Comedy gold!

The legitimate question of Sonic Lost World, which arguably the entire game hinges on, is - and I mean this very legitimately - Who exactly is this game even for? It's bouncy and kiddie, but it's also repulsively smug about its difficulty. The level design is just a slipshod mess, overcomplicated and overly willing to kill you over and over in just the dumbest ways. Sure, it hands out lives nonstop, but ... Are kids going to enjoy this game? Enjoy fighting with the control scheme and trying to puzzle out developer intent every other level? It's loaded with bottomless pits, weird contextual switches and all sorts of irritating nonsense.

One second you're doing a speedy 3d section and suddenly you're hurled into a pair of clouds with a turtle firing shells at you. The controls, on the cloud, are unresponsive and aggravating. Are you supposed to dodge? Get off the cloud? No, you're supposed to smash Sonic's face into the shells and then wait for it to happen and the whole game doesn't care if you're having fun.

I died in one section where you're supposed to jump on a rising statue that surges above the 'bottomless pit' line and then drops back down. The game is so incredibly willing to kill you at the slightest provocation that Sonic actually came up with it on screen, as though he'd never died. It's just dreadful.

On the other hand, it's seriously just ... Childish. It wants to be a Mario game and just pushes it too far. Yet it also has a lot of weird, creepy violent undertones and odd blobs of sexism as well, contradicting that appeal. You end up with a complete sense of dissonance to the entire production; I really don't understand who this game is for, or who to recommend it to. I wouldn't say I like or dislike it - it is certainly frustrating and kind of annoying in parts, but it's also capable of earning a laugh or having some really good sections too.

Ultimately, SLW is mediocre, but I don't know who they were making it for and I don't know who to review it for. The irritating obsession with constant and I do mean constant falling deaths, the very linear single track levels and weird bits of obtuse blandness all lead to a game without any real audience. I died more in SLW than I did in any of the other Sonic games I've played in the summer of sonic. Maybe more than I died in all the other Sonic games combined together! You can really tell they knew how sloppy they'd put it together, since 3-4 deaths will trigger a "skip section" power up, which I can tell you I used nonstop, as there are horrible obtuse sections of this game I have zero interest in figuring out the design intent behind. Awful sections like bouncing cloud garbage or the drill power up lasting multiple minutes of slamming noise in my ears.

I gave up on the game ... Somewhere in there. Honestly, fighting with the control scheme just gets progressively more and more depressing until you're just not enjoying the game at all. I don't play Sonic games to play the Dark Souls of garbage platformers, and I think Sonic team needs to learn this lesson.

Or maybe continue making games that sell poorly, I don't know. Sonic has tons of potential. This game has tons of potential it never uses. Instead it just does another gimmick. Oh well. Then another one. Then? Yep, another gimmick.

It's a real shame to end Summer of Sonic on this note, but next up is the wrap-up.