SEGA has released a pair of trailers for Sonic Lost World, out now in Europe and releasing October 29th in the United States for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. The embargo has lifted and reviews have been pouring in, and if you frequent any gaming forum you’ll know that reviews are quite varied. Sonic Stadium has been building a handy review list, with Famitsu, Nintendo World Report, Games Radar, The Guardian, GamesReactor, Digital Spy, GameTrailers and (gasp!) Destructoid all giving favorable reviews in the 9 to 7/10 range. Sites including IGN, Gamespot, Joystiq, Gameinformer, Edge and Eurogamer fall in the negative end of the spectrum with reviews ranging from 5 to 4/10. As SEGAbits is largely based in the US, expect our full reviews for both versions early November.
While reviews are an important gauge for consumers to figure out if a game is worth their money, it’s important to READ the reviews and not just go by the final tally. Should a demo release before the 29th, play the game for yourself or speak with friends. I’ve always found firsthand experience or the words or a trusted friend to be far more reliable than some guy on the internet. And yes, I realize the irony in that you’re probably reading this from me, some guy on the internet.
After the break, check out the 3DS trailer.
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I read a slew of reviews this morning, mainly of the 3DS version, and while some seem based personal taste, the overall issues are the same and highlighted by each review fairly. The WiiU version seems like an “okay” title overall, while the 3DS version appears to be pretty bad from a gameplay standpoint (but not technically/visually where it excels). This is unfortunate as I was looking forward to both. I can’t wait for the SEGAbits reviews!
Speaking of reviews, sadly, it’s not looking good from Edge Magazine’s perspective, (Edge being considered the perfect quintessential bible of video game culture).
Edge says this before awarding it a paltry 4;
“Should time travel ever become a reality, you can send us straight back to the early ’90s so we can tell all those people who wrote into the game magazines of the era that they were right. OK, back then they were making it up – their friend’s dad never really was an industry insider – but here we are: a new Sonic The Hedgehog game, exclusive to Wii U and 3DS, that’s published not by Sega, but Nintendo. Sadly, neither Sonic Team nor the blue hedgehog himself have much clout these days, and Sonic: Lost World is a far cry from the game those ’90s dreamers had in mind.”
“Continuing the Hell-freezing-over theme, series antagonist Dr Robotnik – sorry, Eggman – spends most of Lost World as an ally to Sonic and Tails (although the latter only appears in the cutscenes that bookend the lengthy levels). Eggman’s still the bad guy at the outset, capturing Sonic’s furry friends and encasing them in his various deadly robot designs. It’s in pursuit of their moustachioed aggressor that Sonic and Tails crash land on the otherworldly Lost Hex, a planet made of hexagons serving as Eggman’s new base of operations. The villain’s not just there because of the planet’s platformer-friendly climates and varied topography, but to enlist the services of The Deadly Six, a native band of cartoonish ne’er-do-wells and Lost World’s bosses.”
“But Eggman being Eggman, he’s not recruited them so much as enslaved them using the song of a mystical conch. When Sonic knocks it from his hand, the Six are freed, and Sonic and Eggman are forced to work together. Despite this unlikely union, this is definitely Sonic’s game, and any external influence on proceedings has come not from within the Sonic universe, but another platform holder’s mascot with whom he jostled for prominence in the 16bit era, the golden age of gaming.”
“This isn’t quite Sonic Galaxy, however. OK, some levels send you ping-ponging from one small sphere to another, but they’re the exception, not the rule. The bulk of the action switches between traditional 2D sidescrolling and into-the-screen 3D in the style of Wii’s Sonic And The Secret Rings. The latter sections feel more Super Monkey Ball than Super Mario – you’re not moving Sonic around the level but the ground beneath his feet, something that’s put to smart use in one instance by letting you send oncoming boulders careening off course and into the abyss. It can, however, be disorienting, especially when control is abruptly returned to you after the automatic forward momentum from a chain of boost and jump pads runs out, leaving you upside down and perilously close to a fatal drop. Such moments are rare, but do contribute to the game’s fractured pace. Sonic is built for speed, but only really shows it in moments when control is wrested from you. There are so many traps and enemies that you’re best off taking it slow anyway, although you’re given a wide set of tools to compensate for all the danger.”
“While Sonic’s traditional moveset remains – a jump, spin attack, dash and the homing attack introduced in Dreamcast outing Sonic Adventure – he has a few new tricks at his disposal. Results are mixed. He can run up walls briefly before gravity kicks in. He can pull himself up ledges, too, though the laborious animation further breaks up an already stuttering pace. Deliberately placed power-ups give brief access to GamePad trickery, using the touchscreen to drill below ground, for instance, or the gyroscope to point a crosshair at a nearby landmass in one of the more overt nods to Mario Galaxy.”
“There’s a double jump, too. It’s smartly balanced in theory – it takes you out of your spin state and the invincibility that comes with it, making you vulnerable to enemy attacks – but it’s botched in execution. It’s mapped to the same button as the homing attack; lose a lock-on and rather than dive in for the kill, you’ll jump briefly into the air before falling on your intended quarry. The reverse can happen, too, when a lock-on you didn’t want sends you plummeting to your doom chasing an enemy that’s just fallen off a platform, or right onto the spiky exterior of a foe, knocking you back, your collection of rings scattering around you.”
“In fact, you’ll be hit so frequently that you’ll soon decide to ignore rings almost entirely. Whether you’ve got one or a hundred, you’re only a single mistake away from losing the lot, and then another hit from death. Unless you’re chasing a leaderboard spot, one ring is all you really need. There’s the same satisfaction to be had from following the developer’s breadcrumb trail of rings through a level as you get with Mario’s coins or Rayman’s Lums, but satisfaction is the only reward on offer, with no extra lives for collecting a certain amount.”
“And it’s here that Lost World falls apart. While Mario games spit out 1-Ups with such frequency that you question whether the lives system needs to be there at all, Lost World takes the opposite tack. There might be the odd extra life hidden away in a level, but its stages are so long (the timer frequently ticks down from 15 minutes) and its use of trial and error so extreme that you’ll quickly become closely acquainted with the Game Over screen. Stages are best thought of as four or five levels stitched together. Fail on the fourth or fifth, and you’re sent back to the first. Die once or twice early on in a stage and the most efficient course of action is to lose your remaining lives as quickly as possible.”
“Sonic games, and platformers in general, have always been about memorising the lay of the land, but rarely have mistakes been so costly or heavily punished, and it says much that one retailer’s preorder bonus consists solely of 25 additional lives. This isn’t a question of difficulty, but of design: unfortunately for Sonic, people who have grown up with Nintendo hardware have come to expect much better than this.”*
*Sonic: Lost World is out now in Europe on 3DS and Wii U. It will be released in the US on October 29. Wii U version tested.
Well, after reading that review, one thing is proven right after some time, that this isn’t truly a Sega title, if Sega did not publish it, then it technically and officially, is not a Sega title, it may have Sega’s IP, but it’s irrelevant.
Maybe it will still be worth picking this up eventually at some point, even though it’s initially a disappointment, though either way, one thing I’m personally pleased with, is that it will finally shut up all those idiots on the Wii bandwagon (Like NTom64 from Youtube) stating that a Nintendo released Sonic game would be far better than a Sega one, and that Sonic should be a Nintendo mascot/IP/character, not so evidently.
“one thing I’m personally pleased with, is that it will finally shut up all those idiots on the Wii bandwagon (Like NTom64 from Youtube) stating that a Nintendo released Sonic game would be far better than a Sega one, and that Sonic should be a Nintendo mascot/IP/character, not so evidently.”
I think he means a Nintendo-developed game. This is still a Sonic Team game.
True, though you could even argue that this is a ‘Sega-developed’ game – seeing as Sonic Team is merely one in-house part of Sega as a whole, a Sega studio, like Sega’s other well known in-house studio AM2.
Then it’s just a matter of how much influence that the publisher (Nintendo in this case) has over the developers, and nearly all the time, it is a lot.
Without the publisher, the game can’t exist, the publisher acts as the owner, the legal guardian of the product and therefore they’re official held accountable for the product itself, the publisher also finances the game’s development – and with that, likely the direction on the project itself too along with getting it on shop shelves.
Your conclusion is nonsense. The review heavily criticizes the game for its cheap/unfair level design, not its similarities with a Nintendo title. This was developed by Sonic Team and the fault lies with them.
I doubt Nintendo would ever release a game in this shape if they were developing it themselves.
Was that directed at me?
If so, it’s not mine, it was quoted from Edge, I never claimed what the review heavily criticised, Edge did.
As for Nintendo, “they would never release a game in this shape”? They just did, Nintendo published this, not Sega, Sonic Team is only the developer – it’s only one part of Sega (an in-house Sega studio) Sega’s only in the credits for the simple fact that it is still Sega’s IP, not Nintendo’s.
Nintendo is the official publisher of this, that was part of the deal they made with Sega earlier this year, just like the Mario and Sonic at the Olympics series is a Sega and Nintendo joint deal that’s been going on for a couple of years now, that Sega owns, Sega published it so it’s legally a Sega series/franchise that contains both their own IP and some of Nintendo’s.
The developer is not the same entity as the publisher, yes Sonic Team is part of Sega as an in-house, but Sega themselves did not publish this, that’s the reason the deal was made to make the title exclusive to the Wii U and 3DS. The publisher takes sole responsibility for the finance and development direction of the title, the actual development team just takes the instructions and follows through with it.
Yes, I was responding to you. The review does nothing to support your conclusion that game is somehow not a “sega title” or that sonic wouldn’t be in better hands with nintendo.
Nintendo is only publishing the game in Europe. Does that mean they are magically only responsible for the game’s quality in one territory? It’s ridiculous to assume that anyone other than Sega/SonicTeam, who has an extremely spotty record in terms of quality, is responsible for the game’s faults.
I wouldn’t say Nintendo is entirely free of blame, i mean, they did buy this game from SEGA after all. They must of been happy with what they saw.
Personally, I think SEGA got the much better end of this deal. Took advantage of how desperate Iwata was for Wii u games. I wonder how much money SEGA got from Nintendo, it’s probably being used to help fund Yakuza Ishin and the next gen Sonic game.
ha ha ha
Since when has/is Edge been “considered the perfect quintessential bible of video game culture.”
they have always been considered the best for some reason, no idea why
I’ve always thought they have been way too harsh towards Sonic games, they seem to have something against him 😛 They gave Generations a 5