Ha. Never noticed that.
Finished Sonic Prime tonight. It quite enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun, but man the pirates episodes made me want a Skies of Arcadia series.
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Watched this video on a Youtube channel I’ve gotten into lately. This one’s simply titled “Sonic Adventure is Beautiful” … and she’s right! I love the look, sound, and feel of every hub area and action stage of Sonic Adventure. It’s such a nice little polygon world, half cozy and half exciting.
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I’ve been thinking about @corpseprincess’s Ken Penders comments for a few days, because I feel like part of me understands where she’s coming from and I feel bad not acknowledging that.
When you compare what Penders was doing in Knuckles to the main Sonic title at the time, it’s just miles ahead in terms of establishing a world and telling an epic, continuous narrative. Without his stories, it’s possible that the series would have stuck to the sort of forgettable licensed humor angle and faded away (like Valiant’s Mario comics did).
So I’d be lying if I said I didn’t revisit those comics from time to time with a genuine fondness. They’re easier to go back to than the Manak/Gallagher goofy era for me. When I went to Comic Con in 2007 and walked by Ken’s booth, I said hello and told him I was a fan of those books.
That said, looking at them with fresh eyes today, I think it’s a bit more clear to me now that Penders’ ideas aren’t very original, or respectful of the source material. I think he used the characters as an outlet for a lot of generic sci-fi and fantasy tropes that never really resolve. And I’m really not a fan of how he handled certain female characters over time (Julie-Su and Bunnie Rabbot deserved better).
And it’s hard these days to separate the man from his work. His online presence and fan community seem absolutely vile.
But I completely get and share the appreciation for those comics. There’s a reason I still have them bagged and boarded in my short boxes.
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I can understand all of that (I’ve not actually read the Knuckles stuff. I’ve the Archives, but not dug into them,) but what really grates with me - and maybe this is because I really got into the comic after Penders - is how he used Sonic and the Sonic licence to basically promote his own - horrible - “art.”
The man single handedly killed the Archie book, and he’s one of the reasons Dark Brotherhood never got a sequel (a small reason, but still). He’s constantly trying to bad moth Archie, Sonic, Sega, Ian Flynn and IDW online. At one point he reckoned he was even going to try and sue Paramount over some throwaway line on of the the films that he claimed was somehow related to his work.
And when all of that is in the aid of promoting this monstrosity (linked because you’ll need gallons of beach to clear your eyes after - you have been warned!) I simply can not respect the man at all.
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Blue streek, speeds by, Sonic the hedgehog.
Too fast, for the naked eye.
Sonic the hedgehog.
Sonic! He can really move.
Sonic! He’s got an attitude!
Sonic! He’s the fastest thing alive!
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Got Sonic Frontiers for Christmas…
Digging it so far! New physics and all these combat moves will take some getting used to, but I’m mostly just enjoying running around in the overworld, just vibing.
One small thing I’ve got to mention: the voice acting in this game is, uh… good?! tbh I’m kind of thrown off by it, since I’m so used to more cheesy fare (which I’ve generally been fine with, I’ll note). It’s refreshing though to hear the characters taking things seriously this time around though, but not to the point where it feels overdone. The setting is dreary, but characters can still make the occasional quip.
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I don’t see a problem here. Seems normal and healthy.
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Sonic Frontiers playthrough moving along nicely. Just when I was starting to feel a tad bored, the next island opened up, full of new enemies and challenges. So that was nice!
I’m finding myself surprised by general comments of the game feeling too empty. I see little obstacle courses literally everywhere – seems you can’t run for very long without coming across another set of springs, poles, rails, runnable walls, and the like to try working your way through for the sake of whatever goodie is at the end. Guess you find it engaging or you don’t – but when I want a break from that loop, there’s always the boost stages to replay, as well as a few oddball mini-games (nothing particularly great about any of them, but they work as brief diversions).
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Lol, I’ve been accused of being a Sonic fanboy on other sites for mentioning what you just did, and I find that funny because historically I was definitely not one. Regardless, I do think “the world feels empty” can be a real criticism of open world games but it can also serve as an overused criticism when people don’t enjoy a game and don’t really have anything more concrete to critique. It’s also used as a critique with wide latitude, wherein it’s levied against one game and not another despite them sharing characteristics in their open worlds simply because the person is a fan of the latter game. But we all forgive games we love of their shortcomings I suppose.
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I’m sure to some degree it also comes down to how much you play open-world games in general. I only play one every once in a blue moon (and still haven’t played any Assassin’s Creed games… I’ll get around to one of them one day), so I probably don’t get the “open-world fatigue” as quickly as a lot of other folks do.
The topic of how much to engage with what a game offers reminds me a lot of how for many games, I’ve often seen complaints along the lines of “extremely repetitive combat” or “boring, just mash the X button the whole game,” and I think… Really? That game which has four different fighting styles and fifty different moves to learn? Of course, at the end of the day it’s technically possible in a lot of games to just repeat a basic attack for 20 hours and scrape by, but like… you could also… not do that, lol.
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When you start re-buying them across multiple consoles, that’s when you know you have a problem. 
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Uh-oh!! Don’t look at my console game collection! 
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How is that even possible? 
Just started reading this to my son tonight. I’m creating another member to join the fan club in like 20 years when I let him get on the internet 
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I’m fairly surprised how good these comics are so far. The art is really good (at least to me it is), and the story is pretty interesting. I’m not sure how much my son is picking up of the story, but he loves all of the characters in the world. I might be coming around to understand why people love Sonic so much.
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It gets surprisingly dark at times, especially for a kids comic. Wait until you get to the Metal Virus arc. It’s nuts!
I might be coming around to understand why people love Sonic so much
Honestly not sure how to take that… 
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