When things go wrong... / Sonic
Lately everything has just been falling apart technology wise for me. You may recall I said I was getting Sky HD on the 23rd. Well that didn't happen. It was delayed until the 27th, one day after Man Utd vs Chelsea.
Annoying but Sky HD is awesome. Well worth it and Sky+ too it's actually got me excited about TV again.
Biggest problem though is that my gamertag is fucked. Actually I reckon Sonic is cursing me right now. On the day before I got Sonic Tiscali went down and thus no live. That wasn't going to get me to stop playing Sonic and I happily started a game offline. The Friday afterwards my Shadow theme doesn't pop up and I find out that my gamer profile is corrupt.
Delete and Recover, sounds simple right? Well here's the problem it won't let me recover. Everytime I get the same error message. It accepts my passport details but as it recovers the bar gets so far along before stopping dead, saying the server is unavailable. I know it's not because I can recover Masterhunter25 (an alternate account) fine.
So for the last week I've not been able to use my Joz the bat gamertag. Because of that no save files work and of course any achievements unlocked on Sonic won't count. I've tried more or less everything to get it back. I'm just hoping my Xbox360 isn't the problem. Barely a month old and already fucked.
Going back to Sky HD, the engineer used the main socket but due to a small ADSL cable we actually extended that socket with a wire stretching to the PC. The Sky HD is in my Room which is quite far for one cable. As such our internet's been slow until we could get a proper ADSL cable to reach from the main phone socket to my router. That's all sorted now.
But for some reason my sound card aint working again. I think it may just be loose or something. Nothing too serious. But definately a case of something going wrong then something else, then something else.
Well Sonic then, what are my views. Well despite the Gamertag problem I have continued on anyway. Screw the achievements, I'll just have to do the story twice. In the week I've played it I'm been met with mixed feelings.
First the positive, heaven knows the game needs some positive comments. The levels, particularly with Sonic are open to exploration this time, offering multiple routes throughout a level. Sonic's main style gameplay is pretty solid in comparison to Heroes and Shadow. Silver's game is different but quite well done. The use of Havok is inspired. Playing as SOME of the support characters is nice. Blaze is cool in 3D, Amy is interesting, Omega is fun and Rouge is pretty decent. Levels are also fairly long. Even with Sonic they can often take 10 minutes or so.
The story is pretty ace, well mostly, involving more scientific research, a couple of eveil entity's and a bad future waiting for the Heroes if it all falls apart. Music is great, the GC is extremely well done. It's oddly addictive, even those who slate it seem to finish the game at least.
The town stages have things to do in them this time and the bosses generally redefine the term boss, both in scale and stratedgy.
But now we get onto the bad. First thing screaming in my head is the awful way Tails has been added. For Sonic's Sidekick, a fox who can keep up with Sonic, he definately moves the SLOWEST. Even Silver feels faster and he's intensionally slower. Whoever came up with throwing dummy ring boxes needs to be shot too.
The dash stages while good in theory are clumsy in practise. Left and Right are far too sensitive and these areas are very unforgiving. In fact most of the time you'll fail the first level at first because of them. If this is what Secret Rings will be like I have serious doubts over it.
Probably the most glitchy Sonic I've played too. I've has Rouge shoot high above the stage and into a tower top she couldn't climb out off. I've had Silver fall through the floor. I've heard people complain of stuff like this before in the other games and I always felt a little weird that it didn't happen to me. Still they are few and far between.
Then there is Elise. Her only redeeming feature is that she's a redhead. Seriously appearance wise he legs look weird and overall out of place next to Sonic. The stages carrying her are oddly fun but other than that she's nothing more than a bad plot device. The Romance between her and Sonic is sickening. Not because it's Human/Hedgehog but because there has never been much romance in Sonic, which made the whole story unique.
I'm sick of main males falling in love with main females everytime. This hasn't happened in Sonic until, it seems, now. It's not needed and it feels like a part of me has died already.
But if I were to sum up Sonic in two words it would be Now Loading. Get used to those words if you decide to play it, cause you will see it a lot. I'm not kidding. Particularly in town stages where for some reason when you start a mission, it loads up an intro which is basically a grunt and some text. What the fuck is it loading that takes so long. Then we have another loading screen before the mission starts.
And occasionally you get bad save points. Like for example playing as Silver today. It asked me to save just after Aquatic Base. In between this and the next level you need to get through:
two rather long cutscenes (skippable) with loading screen in between
A crappy escort the weak civillian through a hoard of robots mission, with loading screen problems above
A long walk over a huge field
A mission where you fight a hoard of enemies with the loading screen problems above
A mission where you chose a portal based on an answer in a question. Each portal (3 in total) give you a loading screen, as well as the usual long loading screens
A mission where you fight another hoard of enemies with the loading screens
Then you finally get access to the next level. Fail to manually save and lose all lives in this level (very likely) and you have to repeat ALL of that, loading screens and all. Very frustrating.
So overall mixed impressions. Things are still broke and need improving but this doesn't mean it's a bad game. Hardly the most inspired Sonic game, or any game for that matter but if you think this is bad you should try something truely awful.
this may sound fanboyish but seriously it is not as bad as people generally are making it out to be.
I'll close this post with a comment on progress. There has been none. I just can't seem to find the time to do stuff anymore.
Annoying but Sky HD is awesome. Well worth it and Sky+ too it's actually got me excited about TV again.
Biggest problem though is that my gamertag is fucked. Actually I reckon Sonic is cursing me right now. On the day before I got Sonic Tiscali went down and thus no live. That wasn't going to get me to stop playing Sonic and I happily started a game offline. The Friday afterwards my Shadow theme doesn't pop up and I find out that my gamer profile is corrupt.
Delete and Recover, sounds simple right? Well here's the problem it won't let me recover. Everytime I get the same error message. It accepts my passport details but as it recovers the bar gets so far along before stopping dead, saying the server is unavailable. I know it's not because I can recover Masterhunter25 (an alternate account) fine.
So for the last week I've not been able to use my Joz the bat gamertag. Because of that no save files work and of course any achievements unlocked on Sonic won't count. I've tried more or less everything to get it back. I'm just hoping my Xbox360 isn't the problem. Barely a month old and already fucked.
Going back to Sky HD, the engineer used the main socket but due to a small ADSL cable we actually extended that socket with a wire stretching to the PC. The Sky HD is in my Room which is quite far for one cable. As such our internet's been slow until we could get a proper ADSL cable to reach from the main phone socket to my router. That's all sorted now.
But for some reason my sound card aint working again. I think it may just be loose or something. Nothing too serious. But definately a case of something going wrong then something else, then something else.
Well Sonic then, what are my views. Well despite the Gamertag problem I have continued on anyway. Screw the achievements, I'll just have to do the story twice. In the week I've played it I'm been met with mixed feelings.
First the positive, heaven knows the game needs some positive comments. The levels, particularly with Sonic are open to exploration this time, offering multiple routes throughout a level. Sonic's main style gameplay is pretty solid in comparison to Heroes and Shadow. Silver's game is different but quite well done. The use of Havok is inspired. Playing as SOME of the support characters is nice. Blaze is cool in 3D, Amy is interesting, Omega is fun and Rouge is pretty decent. Levels are also fairly long. Even with Sonic they can often take 10 minutes or so.
The story is pretty ace, well mostly, involving more scientific research, a couple of eveil entity's and a bad future waiting for the Heroes if it all falls apart. Music is great, the GC is extremely well done. It's oddly addictive, even those who slate it seem to finish the game at least.
The town stages have things to do in them this time and the bosses generally redefine the term boss, both in scale and stratedgy.
But now we get onto the bad. First thing screaming in my head is the awful way Tails has been added. For Sonic's Sidekick, a fox who can keep up with Sonic, he definately moves the SLOWEST. Even Silver feels faster and he's intensionally slower. Whoever came up with throwing dummy ring boxes needs to be shot too.
The dash stages while good in theory are clumsy in practise. Left and Right are far too sensitive and these areas are very unforgiving. In fact most of the time you'll fail the first level at first because of them. If this is what Secret Rings will be like I have serious doubts over it.
Probably the most glitchy Sonic I've played too. I've has Rouge shoot high above the stage and into a tower top she couldn't climb out off. I've had Silver fall through the floor. I've heard people complain of stuff like this before in the other games and I always felt a little weird that it didn't happen to me. Still they are few and far between.
Then there is Elise. Her only redeeming feature is that she's a redhead. Seriously appearance wise he legs look weird and overall out of place next to Sonic. The stages carrying her are oddly fun but other than that she's nothing more than a bad plot device. The Romance between her and Sonic is sickening. Not because it's Human/Hedgehog but because there has never been much romance in Sonic, which made the whole story unique.
I'm sick of main males falling in love with main females everytime. This hasn't happened in Sonic until, it seems, now. It's not needed and it feels like a part of me has died already.
But if I were to sum up Sonic in two words it would be Now Loading. Get used to those words if you decide to play it, cause you will see it a lot. I'm not kidding. Particularly in town stages where for some reason when you start a mission, it loads up an intro which is basically a grunt and some text. What the fuck is it loading that takes so long. Then we have another loading screen before the mission starts.
And occasionally you get bad save points. Like for example playing as Silver today. It asked me to save just after Aquatic Base. In between this and the next level you need to get through:
two rather long cutscenes (skippable) with loading screen in between
A crappy escort the weak civillian through a hoard of robots mission, with loading screen problems above
A long walk over a huge field
A mission where you fight a hoard of enemies with the loading screen problems above
A mission where you chose a portal based on an answer in a question. Each portal (3 in total) give you a loading screen, as well as the usual long loading screens
A mission where you fight another hoard of enemies with the loading screens
Then you finally get access to the next level. Fail to manually save and lose all lives in this level (very likely) and you have to repeat ALL of that, loading screens and all. Very frustrating.
So overall mixed impressions. Things are still broke and need improving but this doesn't mean it's a bad game. Hardly the most inspired Sonic game, or any game for that matter but if you think this is bad you should try something truely awful.
this may sound fanboyish but seriously it is not as bad as people generally are making it out to be.
I'll close this post with a comment on progress. There has been none. I just can't seem to find the time to do stuff anymore.
posted by Master hunter at 11:48 pm
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