Game Discussion of the Week: Sonic Heroes

I feel like the release of Sonic Heroes marked the blue blurs official decline in quality. It was the first "aggressively average" 3D Sonic game for me personally (not counting earlier spin-off titles like Sonic R and Sonic the Fighters, which I haven't even played), and in the years following its release the Sonic franchise plunged into arguably its darkest era with outright bad games like Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic and the Black Knight, and atrocities like Sonic '06 and Sonic the Hedgehog GBA. Needless to say I rapidly began to distance myself from the franchise after Sonic Heroes, and once I read the reviews and heard fan reception for Shadow the Hedgehog I officially ceased being a fanboy of the Sonic franchise.

About the game, Sonic Heroes isn't bad but I remember it fell noticebly short of SA 2 in most areas, particularly level design and audio design. The level design was now strictly linear as opposed to branching like it was in SA 2 for the Sonic/Shadow levels (from what I remember), which really hurt the replay value. Speaking of replay value, there was no longer anything else to do outside of the main game like multiplayer, chao garden or kart racing in SA 2, which gave me even less incentive to come back to the game. The audio consisted of cheery, college-band rock and roll crap that made me want to throw up (thinking mainly of the main theme), and I don't remember any stand-out or exceptional tracks like Meteor Herd, Wild Canyon, Mad Space, etc. in SA 2. The environments themselves didn't feel all that special and in fact felt very derivative of ones from the previous 3D Sonic games (ex: a beach level, a spooky graveyard/underworld level, a futuristic level, etc.). And finally the 3-member teamwork mechanic felt like a completely pointless gimmick (similar to the complaints that Knuckles Chaotix received for it's partner-based gameplay) and it would've been MUCH cooler to be able to play as all of the characters individually.

Overall it was a very average game by Sonic standards and even though I haven't played it in well over a decade and have long since sold my copy, I never feel the urge to pick it up again. In short, it felt like a missed opportunity and didn't offer anything exceptional, nor did it live up to the legacy of many of the previous Sonic games. That's why it's a 3/5 game for me. Little did Sonic fans know how shit the series would get after Sonic Heroes hit store shelves.

Did not like this one. The team mechanic bogged this game down. It could've done without having to switch between Speed/Fly/Power. I would've been happy with just Speed/Fly, but with press Y to go into Fly mode, like summoning Tails in Sonic 4 Ep 2.

I think they threw in all these characters just for the sake of it. The game felt grindy, having to repeat it with four teams.

I feel Sonic Team didn't get lazy, they were just uninspired, living a deception, and feeling heart broken. They felt like they were on the losing team of something they alone with their own creativity, and personal ingenuity built from scratch during the 16 bit era, and the decisions of some corporate non creative, non artistic people send everything to the trash.

Just put yourself in their shoes as a creative team, as creative minds. They realized their work didn't serve an artist purpose, but it was just a means to an end, a monetary, financial end, the most uninspiring thing you can think of for these type of people. So I imagine they thought, these people want a product, not art, and that's what we are going to give them.

In a way this was their subconscious way to protest, to speak up about how impotent they felt, that no matter how hard they try, it could still account for nothing because some corporate shithead made the wrong call.

The only reason they stepped up in Colors and Generations later on is because the stellar design of Galaxy and Galaxy 2 awaken again that sense of purpose and competitiveness that once inspired them in the past, but without having a proprietary platform to freely express themselves it is hard to sustain that motivation, specially considering that's the background in which they once flourished during their glory days.