Summer of Sonic (3): Sonic CD

For a long time in my childhood and even into my adulthood, I completely did not realize Sonic CD was really a thing. I imagine I had at some point seen or heard about it, but my affection for the Genesis was never so great as to spend that kind of money on a wasted peripheral. So I just put it into the back of my mind and never considered it. Sonic to me, like many franchises, was swallowed up in the 3D era and forgotten about. Which is to say I pretty uniformly hated each and every transitional game of 2D into 3D. Yes, even that one, or that other one you're excited about. Yes, Sonic CD is 2D and gorgeous 2D at that, but by the time I had the funds to pursue a Sega CD, I certainly wasn't interested in doing so.

I believe the game was ported to be PC a long time ago, but I never saw that either. I hadn't realized I could be playing the game until it was ported to Steam, and even then, I think I pirated it and played it briefly before forgetting about it.

Sonic CD has, to my understanding, an interesting history. It is a marquee title for a system that sold very few copies. It is basically like headlining the titanic. It is also the product of splitting the Sonic team in half and producing two Sonic games at once, with rapidly divergent design perspectives. I feel that itching in the back of my teeth when I read about it, that sensation that the whole story isn't being properly presented to me, so I'll let readers do their own digging. It's certainly an interesting way to continue a franchise.

Sonic CD on Steam is, to my understanding, the Taxman / Christian Whitehead port in all its glory, and it does run well. There's a story about that guy in the first half of this Superbunny Hop video here, which deals with Sonic Mania, the announcement of which feels oddly coincidental. I didn't know, but realizing I picked up the anniversary bundle and this is the 25th anniversary announcement, it actually isn't much of a coincidence.

This is Sonic game #3 (done in chronological order) of Summer of Sonic. The previous game is here, and the next game will be here, once I actually get that written up.

Bad gaming: Bound by Flame

So back in like February or whatever I was planning around doing a March bad games month while doing various RPGs and the like. Then I played more than a few bad games, in a row, and just felt exhausted with gaming. It turns out in order to play bad games, you need to have played good games. Too many bad games and you just hate gaming.

Bound by Flame was on the bad games list, but I didn't work up the energy to get down to it until April, and even then this game... Well, it has a Mixed rating on Steam and that's often for a reason. There's lots of games on Steam that get an unfair rap, and lots that get a gushy rating when they're nothing special, but straight to the point I would say this game definitely earns its Mixed rating. And yeah, I realize I played this in April... I tried replaying it recently and it's just a no-go. So this is a review written in april of a game I was so frustrated with I didn't get to it until now.

Bound by Flame is sort of the generic behind the back action roleplaying game we're all quite accustomed to at this point. I think comparing it to the Witcher is incredibly fair, as the game feels like a discount store version of the Witcher 2. This isn't to say the game is innately awful, but it shares a lot of the jank in writing and tone that makes the Witcher charming. Here it sort of works, sort of doesn't.

The basic story is there's a bunch of rather untoward cold-fueled undead and you're a mercenary protecting a band of researchers at the 'temple on top of the world'. The undead don't look or act anything like the warcraft Scourge, if you're wondering, or at least they don't early on. You end up - I guess this is a minor spoiler, but it is on the box - disrupting their ritual and have a demon stuck in your soul.

See, they're cold undead, so you fight cold undead with a fiery demon. There's a bit of witcher in there, but taken to the next level and I'm going to say I actually like the core thrust of the fiction even. I want to like this game.

Summer of Sonic (2): Sonic the Hedgehog 2

So the Summer of Sonic, brought to you by spending $10 at humble bundle on the Sonic anniversary special, continues spinning on. You can check out  the previous entry here and the next entry, when it goes up, here.

Sonic 2 is more interesting to talk about than Sonic 1, for several reasons. It is a big step forward from the original game, on essentially every single level. That isn't especially interesting, but I guess we'll get into that. What is sort of interesting is that Sonic 2 was produced at the same time as Sonic CD, which leads you to see some interesting changes in design and ideas, but also it feels like something is missing from Sonic 1. Did it go to Sonic CD? I'm not really sure, but Sonic CD (which I've only played a little of, for now) certainly feels and looks more like the original than 2 does.

The other interesting thing is the fact Sonic the Hedgehog 2 introduces the first of what will eventually become an avalanche of side-characters of all shapes and sizes. What is interesting in this is it begins a certain weird facet of Sonic and how Sonic is evaluated.

Everything Sonic does wrong - other than the blatantly obvious, like shipping an unfinished beta as a product - is generally along a spectrum. People complain there are too many characters, and that's true, but Tails, Amy and Knuckles were all well received at the time. It's all in the transition, a moment of 'knowing when you see it' (usually when Shadow shows up) but each individual doesn't seem so bad back in the day.

Even Shadow is pretty damn hilarious at the moment, mind you...

Like, right at the beginning, with nearly the best game in the series, you can already see it starting to fall apart. Corporate mismanagement aside, it's already there, waiting in the weeds.

Muffin Knight

There's not really much to review here, so we'll keep it snappy and quick. I sometimes watch Total Biscuit's output on youtube, ideally, the videos where he doesn't get a bit too self-righteous or rambles on about esoteric video settings I can not care about. When he's actually reviewing things, though, I kinda get the impression we're very similar gamers.

So he mentioned some... I don't even know, Crate game? While reviewing 'Super Mutant Alien Assault' which, the game itself, looked pretty good. What does this have to do with Muffin Knight? Apparently this is some sort of platforming action sub-genre, and SMAA is 'better' than Muffin Knight, which is apparently a straight clone. I've never played whatever the original title in this equation is, but I do own Muffin Knight from a bundle or something, and SMAA looked pretty good in his review.

So I installed Muffin Knight and ... Well, for one thing, the game is another one of those 'SNES 16-bit era' looking visual treats. I'm not sure as to the exact rendering style, but it isn't that it is pixel art but rather that it is nice and easy on the eyes. Picking up the game is really easy and visual elements just work nicely. Lots of green.

Summer of Sonic (1): Sonic the Hedgehog

I had been thinking about picking up Sonic: Lost World whenever I next saw it on sale when humble bundle dropped the Sonic 25th anniversary bundle. I was going to buy it, when I realized it had tiered keys, which I rather hate. Then the latest Steam sale began and... Ugh... So I just cashed the $10 tier.

This steam sale was terrible! None of my friends really bought much of anything. Oh, it was also the highest grossing steam sale. Hurray for average consumers! You've gone mainstream, Valve, extract money from da dopes. Whatever. I bought a bundle.

And then decided I should review a chunk of Sonic games, to go with said anniversary. I'm technically a Sega and Sonic kid; my parents bought me a revision 1 Genesis and it is probably the console I've played the most in my life. I'm not going to review every Sonic game (good lord) or even every Sonic game in the bundle, rather spend the next eight weeks going through a selection of them depending on how much I enjoy myself.

Sonic the Hedgehog, the first, has a copyright of 1991 on the title screen. I can actually remember getting this game as a rental even, right after it came out. I remember because I was so upset I couldn't get Sonic to move when I first tried to play it. Turns out the controller was half-plugged in and the d-pad wouldn't work. That moment always stood out to me as memorable, mostly because he would jump up and down but he could not go fast. Since I didn't own it, I never actually beat Sonic the first as a kid, doing it much later in maybe 2010 or so.

Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas

There are a fair number of mascot, high profile games that define or defined a genre that you see surprisingly few clones or at least attempts at. For all the complaining about Darksiders being a 'zelda clone' (whatever) you really don't see many others in spite of it being a pillar franchise for an entire console. There's not really many Megaman clones - not precisely, not really - and very few Sonic clones. There are lots of platformers, of course, but of those very few really live up to Sonic or Mario. They're all brownity torture platformers that don't really have the same crisp, refreshing feel of those games.

(I've always been, as a total aside, completely baffled by the treatment of a lot of mascots and their games. Sonic is obviously the most confusing one, where they seemingly just toss out random garbage to weaken the brand, but it feels like the recent efforts in Starfox and Metroid are just baffling. Metroid especially. Metroidvanias have a market, Metroid has a market, Nintendo has ... Never mind)

Oceanhorn is ostensibly a zelda clone, or something, although I haven't played enough recent Zelda games to pretend I'm much of an expert on the matter. It is a Zeldalike more toward the charm and simple puzzle solving, also it has boats and I feel like there's some major Zelda games that had boats. It is otherwise a charming, colorful game about a boy with a sword and a shield and he has bombs and hearts.

Yay.

Bad Gaming, maybe: Sacred 3

One of the interesting things to me about living in this "accursed millennial age" is the outlook people have on sequels, reboots, remakes and that weird thing where Doom4, which is a sequel to Doom64 and not Doom3, was just titled Doom in spite of referencing Doom. which is weird. But the thing that interests me is the fact people complain a great deal about it happening, but usually the complaining doesn't actually matter. It most cases people who complain are invested fans. You think the people who lined up to buy Doom 3, who later complained about "the flashlight" (hint: light the darkness with the shotgun like a proper doom slayer) didn't come back for more when Doom came out? Yeah, they did. They complain then they buy.

In Sacred 3's case, it seems to have done so. This is pretty unique to me.

I haven't played Sacred 1 or 2, but I have played Sacred Citadel, which was a button mashing pretty decent side-scrolling brawler. It wasn't exactly stellar, and I think I reviewed it at a C grade a couple years back, but it was decent enough at being what it was. It had bright colorful art and a silly, vibrant style that matched up with it well. It was a humorous game, in that janky european way, so that and that alone colors my expectations.

Meanwhile Sacred 3's rating on Steam is ... Man, it is bad. It is "Mostly Negative" which is a pretty low bar. I mean, for example, Bound by Flame is "Mixed" and Blood Knights is "Mixed" as well. Both of those are janky, weird games, and Sacred 3's rating is far lower. I mean that is bad, that is hobo in a greasefire bad.

So when the humblest of bundles ran a Deep Silver 2 bundle, which put Sacred 3 with all the DLC up for a $1. And some other games, most of them I already have. So yeah, $1 to see this "mostly negative" disaster? Sounds like a plan!