Personally, I really enjoyed Fire and Ice. The ability to switch between characters on the fly is something I really wish was in more Sonic games because the colorful character roster is easily one of my favorite parts of Sonic as a whole. The exploration elements were actually pretty enjoyable coming off of Shattered Crystal and I really enjoy the timing based platforming seen through the Enderbeam grappling and Sonic's multiple dashes. Gives you just so much aerial control
Fire and Ice really goes to show how determined the developers were to fixing most of the stuff that no one liked and refining them to make a somewhat enjoyable experience, and that is something even SEGA doesn't do nowadays since they scrap any concepts that didn't work rather than refining them.
@@Kaplykos “some stuff” being the cyberspace levels and that’s pretty much it. The stuff in question are the level themes (and layouts) and I don’t think that counts
Minor correction: Sonic Runners is actually no longer defunct… unofficially. It’s been revived a few years ago as Sonic Runners Revival, which removes all monetization and uses custom servers to make the game playable once more!
@@miimiiandco - Me too. But after watching one of MattKC’s videos, I became aware of it and BEELINED for the project! I loved it back then and still do today! It’s an easy install for Android, as expected. But it’s also surprisingly easy to install on iOS, even without jailbreaking. Apparently. I have yet to try it though.
I'm shocked that I completely forgot that Fire and Ice existed until now. I even remember the weird spinoffs but Fire and Ice was totally erased from my mind.
"sonic was preety cool" YES! HE WAS!... but everyone had to loose to finally give it the value it truly deserves... but guess what? it's too late! sonic frontiers you have one job, and I hope you achieve that cause i want the real sonic back...i miss it a lot
I somehow got a bugged copy of Shattered Crystal, one of the REQUIRED collectables wouldn't spawn in and would keep me from leaving the very first stage lmao. A level that would take about 10 minutes I've spent several hours searching for a single thing. I've even looked up where each collectable spawns and went to each location but there was nothing.
Your sonic reviewing series is a one of the best source of knowledge about the sonic the hedgehog (one of the best documentaries about sonic the hedgehog if you well),keep the hard work goin!
You touched on it a little bit, but where the developers tried and failed to add Metroid elements was in the fact that, in Metroid, collectibles aren't arbitrary. You're not just picking up interchangeable tokens or keys in order to progress. Progression in Metroid is linked to Samus' equipment. A pathway isn't unreachable because you lack a key or something, it's because you don't have the High Jump Boots or Morph Ball Bombs yet. Locked doors require certain types of weapons so you can shoot them open. So on and so forth. In this way, progression is inextricably linked to Samus becoming more powerful. Her weapons *are* the keys to progressing. But so many other games that try to mimic this design, this game included, just throw a bunch of random arbitrary keys and tokens around and call themselves "Metroid-inspired" when that's really not how Metroid games work.
Fire and Ice was the first Sonic game I ever touched. I was impressed by the speed of the classic and modern Sonic era. I already knew the notoriety of Toon's Knuckles from the play videos, but it took me a while to get used to it.
Predictions for the titles of J’s next Sonic reviews: Why Sonic Mania was a successful nostalgia trip… Why Sonic Forces was a disappointing failure… And lastly: Sonic Frontiers, the good, the bad… and the ugly…
Frontiers is almost here! It will be my first Sonic game in 15 years. I'm soo excited, thank you for all of the Sonic game reviews! I can't wait for your reaction to the new one
I used to find it odd that Sonic Lost World was a 3D game and the Sonic Boom games were not but now I realize that may have been because of a low budget.
I played a demo for Shattered Crystal before it came out. I thought it was okay, but didn't pick up the game when it came out. I did get it on the eShop when it was on sale for like 5 bucks. I'd say for what the game is, that's an alright deal.
I just beat both of the first Boom games this week and maybe it’s the Wii U game being patched but idk man I had more fun with it than Jak 3 or the PSP Jak game. And the 3DS game was more than fine, better than Zip Lash and Hey Pikmin. Similar games that somehow reviewed far better.
Sticks was a very fun character. They also did a good job making others entertaining. One of the best iterations of characters, IMHO. Yes, even Knuckles and Knuckles.
I did actually enjoy Knuckles in the show, though I do credit that in part to the fact that Travis Willingham has a great voice and delivery for that sort of character.
I remember years Ago Sega once Posted art of Boom Sonic and Eggman Playing a Nintendo switch My guess is a Boom Game may have been at one point planned before it was Scrapped
The only Boom game I've played is Fire & Ice. I picked up the demo back in college, and I remember I actually quite liked it as a demo, but I didn't feel like it would work as anything bigger than that.
I said it before and I’ll say it again. This was supposed to be a reboot of the franchise because Lost World underperformed and many journalists hated it so Sega responded by restarting everything
I hated Sonic Boom as kid for basically delaying the chances of a new 3d Sonic game like Generations or Unleashed to come out. To this day that still has not happened to the extend I would be happy with (frontiers was fine, just not what I was looking for).
Lost World going for a different gameplay style I assume threw you off and this was like how Heroes abandoned the formula Adventure and Adventure 2 used in favor of it’s own gimmicks
@@drrockstar4040 but then Forces happened and because that game got poorly received Sega completely dropped the boost formula because their mentality was to scrap a gameplay style if it gets criticized while Colors only went with the boost gameplay because the day stages were acclaimed but not the night stages
9:25 - 9:40 wow it's crazy to think back to how much different the consensus and discussion around Sonic games was not even that long ago. Most of us *really* were conditioned to believe that the Dreamcast & Dark Age games 2000s - 2010s kids grew up with were garbage when contrasted to the classics, Gens and Colors. These days in comparison are much better even if we do tend to bicker quite a bit...now that we're all older we're starting to see quite the shift in community perception for these older Sonic games that honestly didn't deserve the flak they got when they came out. Just gotta make sure we don't bully fans who like the Sonic games we now consider to be bad the same way that we got brainwashed back in the day
Gonna be honest: I think the Boom games are just truly sad. I really like the artdesign. In general, all the locations, the character designs, and similar stuff. Yes, it's nothing we haven't seen before, but it's better than seeing Green Hill for the 20th time. It's just sad how they somewhat screwed up every single game... I think the modern voice cast works really well for the Boom characters, but they never really got a chance to shine. Yes, the show is pretty good, but Sonic is, to me at least, a gaming IP first. Driving the games at the wall basically killed the Boom cast and simultaneously killed the potential the modern VAs have with this cast... There could have been something here. But well, now we just have a similar situation to 06...only that the Boom franchise basically doesn't exist anymore, but the mainline games continued on.
Both the Boom 3DS games just bored me, especially Shattered Crystal. I played as much as I could of Shattered Crystal, but I didn't get very far before I was done with it. I actually finished Fire & Ice, but overall I had a very meh time with it. It's technically the best Boom game, but honestly, I got more out of Rise of Lyric than the 3DS games. While Rise of Lyric was bad and somewhat boring, the 3DS games were almost purely boring, which to me can be worse than a bad game. The best thing that happened to the Boom brand was the cartoon. That cartoon had no right being as funny and clever as it was for a Sonic cartoon. Don't get me wrong, the cartoon had its downsides, such as having moments of cringe humor and problems you see in a lot of 3D animated shows. But it was overall a great show.
I thought it was so weird that Sticks the Badger was a main character in Shattered Crystal and the TV show, but relegated to a minor role for a completely optional side quest in Rise of Lyric, where it comes off as if nobody on Team Sonic knows who she is, and nothing indicates she'd shape up to be the fifth member or Amy's best friend. Then I realized how Rise of Lyric wasn't even supposed to be related to the TV series until less than a year before release, when SEGA started putting the show's writers on board to change the script. It's very apparent too, as the only things consistent to the show were the main voice cast, the designs of the main characters and some side characters, as well as objects being lifted from it, like the ancient plane(for one episode before it's scrapped and replaced), the Enerbeams(which don't even come from the same shackles from Rise of Lyric), and the blue button Eggman stole from Lyric(which, as indicated in a few episodes, is treated like it was just something Eggman always had; Lyric's robots don't even appear in the show, and Metal Sonic only appears in half of two episodes). Other than that, most of the side characters that do show up in the TV series have completely different personalities, and some with different voice actors. The Ancients are mentioned a few times as well, but the show's remnants of them are so vague that their indirect inclusion matters none. On the other hand, characters like Cliff, QNC, and Lyric himself, who were treated with a more major status, don't even get a mention in the show. And even in a post-Rise of Lyric era, the show only strayed away from even slightly referencing that game and further morphed into its own thing entirely going forward to its cancellation, outside of the one episode that suddenly tied into Fire and Ice, then never again, that episode being one of the worst-written in the series(and the only one that lists Pontac and Graff as the main writers). Even Rise of Lyric's writing itself, despite being penned by the show's writers, still has a different tone from the show. Sometimes it's serious, but then sometimes characters are just spouting comedic lines. It just goes to show how much stuff was being forcefed by SEGA into Rise of Lyric to make it coincide with an unrelated TV show, and even STILL, the game doesn't work as an origin story for the show. Rise of Lyric would've been better off taking place in a different universe as originally intended, with Big Red Button being allowed more creative freedom with only some slight intervention from SEGA in terms of character design. No shoving in assets like Shadow or Metal Sonic for painfully glorified minor appearances, no stuffing the script with non-sequitors from writers of an unfitting cartoon, none of that. Rise of Lyric, or Sonic Synergy, should've been allowed to stand on its own, and if the TV show absolutely needed a tie-in game, something similar to Shattered Crystal or Fire and Ice would've relatively sufficed. As it stands, Rise of Lyric has nothing to say, nothing to offer, and it's saddening how all it led to was a development team being catastrophically fucked over by a company that TO THIS DAY, doesn't fully understand that its mascots' games need more time in the oven before release. It's without a doubt the most notably tragic development cycle a Sonic game has ever been the product of in the 2010s, and it angers me how SEGA seemingly has learned very little from it.
It really makes me sad. If they really wanted to morph Synergy into Boom, then they could have just done it like Sonic X(Even tho I don't even think that show does it that well), where it's clearly an alternate universe to the games but knowledge about the games still applies. If they played their cards right, they could have even had an eventual crossover between the serious version of the boom-world and the one from the show/handheld-games.
Yeah, it's too bad that the Boom sub-franchise was pretty much unsalvageable by the time it came out. Fire and Ice is the only one I have, and I bought it right before I had to get on a 20 hour flight and I was desperate for ANYTHING new. And I was pleasantly surprised.
And with that we say Sayonara to Sonic Boom. You were meant for greatness, but corporate greed shot you in the heart and SEGA's to blame... they give game development a bad name.
@@ShockwaveFPSStudios Part of me is curious if the show got better reception because expectations were set so low? I fully own that I haven't seen much episodes, but the clips shared around mostly seem to point to meta humor, which was Sonic's saving grace around the time when people dogged on the franchise taking itself too seriously... And the general writing feels like you could swap Sonic and friends with any other characters, and little would really change. To take from some other critics, it felt less like a Sonic show, and more like a show with Sonic in it.
Sonic Boom should’ve only been a TV series like X, imagine if we got Sonic X games with everyone’s favorite character Chris stealing all the spotlight lmao.
"Sonic Boom's so boring, I can feel my soul gradually leaving my body" Jup, my thoughts 100%. This is the only Sonic game I never managed to beat, not because it's too hard, but because my brain leaves to a different planet after 10 minutes of gameplay. The artwork's nice, tough. Oh, Ice and Fire not getting a seperate video? Shame, I do like that one. I mean, compared with the other Boom games.
Damn, this retrospective is almost over, and Frontiers is right around the corner, kind of a crazy journey ngl. Also speaking of that part where you mentioned how people started to look back at older games, and the whole "era" wars, I myself have replayed quite a bunch of older Sonic games and I have to say: My opinions on a number of them have changed drastically as well, retrospect can be such a scary thing at times can't it?
People who started in the 2010s and beyond certainly have the advantage that they are able to see the entire catalogue of the series in context. I have an easier time appreciating the good parts of Secret Rings now that I know that(ignoring Free Riders) they never put out another game suffering from unfinished controls. But it must have been scary as heck back then, considering it came out just a year after 06 and Sonic Genesis GBA.
As bad as the Boom Era was, I actually think Sonic's inclusion in Lego Dimensions was one of the best extensions of that game. It's not only actually funny, with a lot of the charm of your standard Lego videogame mixed with the world of Sonic. And best of all, it feels like an overall tribute to Sonic's 25 year long history. I think it's pretty underrated.
There was also a Sonic Boom mobile game released at the same time as Sonic Runners. It was called Sonic Dash 2: Sonic Boom. Essentially a sequel to the original Sonic Dash, but with less characters and levels, plus you get to control the enerbeam with the iPhone's motion sensing.
And I finally played Shattered Crystal, and.... I liked it??? Hardly a memorable game, and it does suffer from the usual small screen reaction problems in that you run into enemies unexpectedly in tight corridors. But otherwise, it's an interesting metroidvania-esque take on the franchise that i actually enjoyed. I also enjoyed the Worm Tunnel segments quite a bit. It encourages you to memorize and get all the rings and improve your times. And after suffering through Lost World 3DS, this was a breath of fresh air by comparison.
Wait what, Sonic Rush has a dumb plot?8:35 You can knock on the Rivals games all you want but that's where I draw the line. Eggman Nega is kinda dumb but Blaze is badass, and her arc about defrosting really fits with a Sonic story. This series is built on thematic inversions (Nature vs Technology, Speed vs Strength, the Original vs the Copy, Experience vs Naivete, Past vs Future, etc.) Blaze slots in pretty nicely as the "Isolation" to Sonic & Co's "Teamwork".
Bad stories can have good aspects. All it ends up with is Sonic and Blaze semi-randomly running around, having a villainswap that doesn't matter much because the only diffrence between the Eggmen is that Nega is nuts and cream cheering for Blaze to beat up Sonic because violent cream-memes. Most of the dialogue is pretty clunky and not really great either.
His review on Rush said that the story has good intensions and cute moments, but the execution is off The dialogue is very stiff, the characters has some weird interactions, and the "friendship is good" message is even more cranked up than in Heroes It's an inoffensive and neat story, but kinda flawed and is easy to make fun of
Upon a revisit to the game I thought Blaze was super annoying in Rush 1 as the game literally beats you over the head that she thinks she can’t depend on overs then gets her ass kicked then thinks “Maybe I should depend on others”. Also there’s the dialogue which is kind of okay at best but it half of it is everyone just saying the power of friendship saves the day all the time. The worst example of this is the last story because after both Eggman’s jump Blaze the characters basically talk about friendship for 8 minutes until Super Sonic and Burning Blaze stop the Eggmen. Blaze goes home in a cutscene that takes eons to get through then the game ends. I mean I don’t think the writing is garbage or anything but it adds to Rush 1 being a snooze fest for me.
Guys I hear ya, but Sonic games' dubs are usually pretty overly corny and awkward (*see Heroes), that's their charm. Rush just had a lot of nice moments and the actual plot itself wasn't half bad.
Shattered Crystal is definitely better than the Wii U game but the problem is that you have to get all the items in each stage just to progress to the next world.
it's so crazy that after all these years this retrospectives going to be over. These videos were all made really well, always had me exited for the next one
I've already made a stupidly long 2 part rambling in the comment section of the previous video about my apologetic admiration towards the _Sonic Boom_ sub-franchise as a whole and how it deserves a second chance for a full redemption arc, so I'll just continue where I left off. _Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal_ is better. . .but not that much, but it's sequal though, nah man, that game is a solid time actually, and I'm glad I'm not the only one when viewing the comments here. _Sonic Boom: Fire and Ice_ improves apon its predecessor in nearly every way. It's an underrated gem in my eye, due to at the time, the _Sonic Boom_ sub-franchise dwindling relevance as said in this video, despite from the TV show's continued praise within the fandom, especially when it entered into its superior 2nd season. It was like it was one of few signs of redemption for _Sonic Boom_ , but was cut short because of the lingering legacy that _Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric_ left on the entire sub-franchise. A real damn shame if you ask me *(insert the 2nd part of my comment from the last video here)* . In regards about the canonicity of _Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal_ , there's an interview about the game out there stating that this game actually does takes place sometime after it's Wii U sibling title. For the life of me, I cannot find this interview, but GameXplain's review of the game does confirm its existence. Further inspection of the game's plot does contain visual clues that does confirm this as well to a degree. However the characters not remembering Lyric and a a couple other details does muddy the waters a bit in terms of the connections of both prequal games. Therefore as it stands, _Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal_ is technically a stand-alone sequal to _Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric_ . Also a correction: Ken Pontac and Warren Graff only wrote one episode for the _Sonic Boom_ TV show.
this is kinda what happens when Rise of Lyric and Shattered crystal start developement arround the same time and rise of lyric never actually got finished story wise, its likely the shattered crystal team had to go off really nebolous details and never actually got a full explaination... though it is funny that shattered crystal implies that amy literally turned Lyric into a pair of boots after he gets beaten in the final fight.
i used to play sonic boom fire and ice and i thought it was fine and it's basically in a box of games i have and i didn't remember i had it till this came out and i still have the same opinion it's fine but my brother should enjoy it (at least i hope so)
In the end the Sonic Boom brand failing was SEGA's own fault. They pushed two rushed, awful titles on fans along with a tv show they sent out to die. It ended up costing them millions and now they're trying to forget the brand they so foolishly created.
Wonder if you thought about doing one of these perspectives for Pac-Man. It's one of those series that never left, but you sit there at it's catalogue and are bewildered at some of the directions the series went
I’ve never played Sonic Boom Shattered Crystal myself, but what I can tell you is that it has the worst story in the series. Worse then Shadow, worse then 06, worse then Lost World, worse then Rise of Lyric (which is the worst game I’ve ever played, so that’s a huge accomplishment in awfulness), and worst then Forces.
I agree with you about everyone being sick of boom in 2015 and everyone being more sick of boom by 2016 especially since once mania and forces were announced everyone forgot about boom for obvious reasons and I personally would’ve much rather take a third story book game and another sonic rush game over freaking sonic boom
The reception Sonic fans had for the handheld titles when they came out really bothered me. The passionate ones initially defended the Wii U game on the basis that “it was trying something new for the franchise” and we needed to give it a chance. But, then when that one failed, they suddenly changed their tunes with the 3Ds games claiming it “good traditional side scrolling action”. So all that talk about Boom trying new things was BS when the 3Ds games were praised for being traditional 2D Sonic gameplay. Talk about goal post shifting.
It's pretty clear that SEGA wanted the Boom series to be a mainstay given Sticks appeared in spinoffs like Sonic Runners and Mario & Sonic Rio 2016 on top of the fact SEGA gave the Sonic Boom series its own version of Sonic Dash called Sonic Dash 2: Sonic Boom. But as usual, bad planning and poor management caused the decline of something that could've been amazing had SEGA not poked their heads in to tell Big Red Button what they needed to do and just made something original for Nintendo's failing console. They did it before with Sonic 2006 and made Secret Rings after realizing the Wii couldn't do what they wanted it to do.
The one thing I never liked about Fire & Ice was that it showed a comptent company was behind it, They put effort into taking the critiscm and making a better game to then be basically told "You fell off" because Boom was dead to most people, genuine shame since yeah it's alright. But I like seeing game devs improve on what they had especially being one myself. They just needed to add more to the game as there are some neat challenges there, but it needed to achieve more than just that and amy.
Very enjoyable review, just wanted bring up a slight detail on the writing for Sonic Boom & the games writing. Pontaff was actually responsible for the writing of both Shattered Crystal & Fire and Ice. Which is why both games have shit writing. Also the boom tv series never really used Pontaff at all for the writing of the show. They only wrote 1 episode called "Return to Beyond the Valley of the Cubots" which is regarded to be one of the worst episodes of the series. Mostly of the tv show actually had moderately solid writing compared to the extremely childish writing Pontaff would make.
The reason he won't is because unlike shattered crystal or other soul sucking games, chronicles is long because it's an RPG, and J isn't into RPG's so it's basically a really bad combination, at least free riders isn't as long as chronicles.
I might be mistaken, but I don't think Pontac and Graff worked on the Boom TV series. The most evidence I have of that though is that the TV series is actually funny.
Maybe after This retrospective is done, how about inviting guests to spice up you're none game reviews, like revaluating a certain"Galaxy fare(2x) away"?😉 Did same with dark age Sonic!
