Filling

So, while my new job has caused me to go to a normal work schedule, like a heathen, I've been trying to come up with something to write about. I had all but decided to go for a second consecutive week without a post until a friend of mine specifically requested that I write something presumably because he gets really bored and wants to read something. So, while I don't have anything really on my mind, I do have a near inexhaustible resource of ranting that I could do, so here it goes:

Sonic the flipping Hedgehog: what the hell happened to my favorite childhood hero?! I'm not just saying that I'm a fan of Sonic, but I did literally wait for the night where I had a dream about hanging out with the hog. I'm still freaking waiting!

Maybe I should explain a little before I get to share some things that will get really creepy. We never had a Genesis in the house. We were a Nintendo family. But, every Thanksgiving, we'd drive up to Meridian, Idaho where my grandparents lived along with my degenerate uncle Rodger. He was cool to a little six year old. He smelled faintly like smoke, had his own computer and had a TV in his room! His copy of Sonic 2 was actually Wonder Boy in Monster Land (which, incidentally, totally needs a sequel). He swapped out the ROM boards after renting the game from Blockbuster. (Which I thought was totally badass and clever) But most importantly, and should've been included before I mentioned Sonic 2 so the narrative would've flown better, he had a Sega Genesis.

I spent hours at that thing. I would play from sun-up till about sundown. It would slowly get dark and I'd be so glued to his TV that I wouldn't notice or bother flipping the light switch. I'd slowly go through his game collection until I had exhausted all of my favorite games, and would swear that this year I was old enough and mature enough to not totally freak out at playing games like Bram Stoker's Dracula or Warlock. Both are great nightmare fuel to a little kid and doubly so when playing it in a strange house in the dark by yourself. So, after getting shaken up, I'd invariably decide to try playing a game to get my mind off how freaked out I was. If I was smart, I'd pop in Sonic. If I was dumb, I'd pop in Kid Chameleon, die, and then race out of the room as fast as I could because of the demons shouting, "DIE" when you die in that game. (And now you know all about my obsession with Kid Chameleon, which will get more attention at a later date, I guarantee it)

Sonic was the coolest character in town. He was fast, had a kick-ass TV show, and dated a chick who sometimes, wore nothing more than boots.

First cartoon crush and first sign that I would someday be a furry.

He stood up against the pollution stereotype that was so prevalent in the 90s, but didn't feel the need to be preachy about it. Instead, he'd just smash the hell out of some robots. The games had awesome music, the cartoon series was jaw-droppingly awesome, and Sonic could do no wrong in my eyes. (I hadn't seen Sonic Underground yet, but it's awesome in a totally different way.)

Jump to today. Sonic has gotten so ingrained into the pop-culture that he's now selling insurance. And yet he's in some of the worst games to ever disgrace my PS3. I played through Sonic 06. I must admit that I never saw the "true ending" since I couldn't stomach the Shadow levels, and to be honest, I still find the whole human/hedgehog shipping to be a bit distasteful. (I know, I'm hypocritical, so sue me.)

The game had me frothing at the mouth while I waited three minutes for the game to load two lines of written dialogue and then have me wait another three minutes. Anyone who has played this game knows what I'm talking about. Now, I'm not going to say that it's the worst game I've ever played. (I'm sure Dino Riki is still topping that list) but it was kind of an eye opener that I just didn't love Sonic like I used to.

For me, Sonic started going downhill in Sonic Heroes. I beat that game completely and was pleasantly surprised by Big the Cat showing up (the best third-tier character in the Sonicverse) but had started noticing a few things that had gone on for far too long. Things like endless rails over nowhere, a huge focus on the Chaos Emeralds, and sub-par dialogue.

This had actually all started with Sonic Adventure, but it was his debut to 3D and there were far worse games out there. In fact, it was just a matter of fact that we accepted poor 3D platforming because we didn't have anything to compare it to. The graphics were ahead of its time, but the animation was poor during certain cut scenes, the voice acting was irritating at best, and the camera had its issues too. But we overlooked all of that because we were kids and we didn't know better. Neither did the industry. Sonic Adventure 2 should've alleviated those problems, and while the lip-syncing was a lot better (since they decided to get rid of the tongues in the mouths) and the dialogue just tiny less bit cheesy, the game still suffered from flaws that were growing. Things like instant-death scenarios, since falling caused you to die and all of the levels were effectively large floating islands in the nether. Wonky camera that wanted you to focus on the truck behind you, while still expecting you to dodge obstacles in front of you. (This would be amped up in Sonic 06) And of course, attacks that would either kill the enemy, hurt you for some reason, or hurl you into who knows which direction. But, Sonic Adventure 2 was one of my favorite games at the time, and being about 12 when I first played it, I can think of two reasons:

By now I knew that I wasn't normal.

Too many game-hours to count...

While I still have the game in my GameCube stash, I haven't played it in a long time. Partly because the game hasn't aged well, but also because I lost my Tails Chao from Phantasy Star Online and until I can get another one, I don't even want to see the Chao Garden. (You only love once...)

Next was Sonic Heroes which crushed my dreams of a new and improved Chao Garden, but did bring back Big, which as I said before, was a pleasant surprise. It also brought in the Chaotix crew which was even more interesting. But the game had some terrible lines and some terrible rail controls that made me very angry. This was the first time that I really started to notice how much I was starting to hate the direction the games were going.

Touche...

First of all, the stories were getting more and more repetitive. How many times can Dr. Eggman steal the Chaos Emeralds until he realizes that any plan that involves the word "CHAOS" as part of an energy source cannot, by its very definition, go according to plan? What's more, with the introduction of Shadow, the side-story was getting more and more convoluted.

By now, I had realized that the games were trying to be more story driven, which would be a good thing, except that they were still neglecting some serious camera control and artificial difficulty issues. Also, the story would've been helped a bit if the characters had a little bit more background than just a theme song and a brief introduction in the manual. Somehow, we were supposed to know that Tails was slowly getting sick of being in Sonic's shadow but didn't want to abandon his friend either. Knuckles never had any motivation except to protect the Master Emerald (and for some "fists metal crackle" according to his rap song about Pumpkin Hill.) Amy still is the most two-dimensional character out there with nothing in her motivation but pure, white-hot hatred love for Sonic.

We can assume that Rouge is still there for the emeralds that she knows she'll never have, and for the echidna which she should never have, since monotremes and mammals should never mix. Big never had any sort of motivation except for his friend Froggy making him much like Cream in the sense that without the person their looking for, they loose all character motivation. Omega honestly shouldn't exist, since Dr. Eggman couldn't possibly create AI that would have unshackled freedom to turn on him like he does. This list obviously omits dozens of other characters whom I either don't care about (Charmy) or just don't know anything about (Nack). In the end, while all of these characters seem just interesting enough to keep them around, their whole story is never investigated in satisfying way to keep them interesting.

Nope, never investigated in a satisfying way.

 Sonic 06 is the epitome of the worst of all of these things. The camera that forces you to rush ahead while dodging obstacles that you can't see because the camera wants to show you that totally bitchin' tornado behind you was implemented in Sonic's stages, presumably because Sega hadn't figured out how to make people see red when they saw the blue blur. The game's loading times were a joke for a current-gen console. While the graphics were undeniably pretty, it was hard to focus on them when they were falling through the ground for no apparent reason. The new character introduced here was Elise which delegated Sonic's role to that of a Mary Sue, as someone on TVTropes pointed out. He literally only exists in the story to fall in love with Elise in order to have someone cry at his passing. All the rest of the actual plot is taken care of by secondary characters, like Shadow or Silver. (Who, incidentally, is one of my favorite Sonic characters, as fate would have it.) The story gets even more ridiculous when someone pointed out that with the time-travel and chaos emerald swapping, one of the emeralds, stays in an impossible paradoxical loop.

Timelines solve everything.

Logically, that means that the blue chaos emerald cannot be possibly used in any other event in any Sonic story. If Sonic 06 were to stay canon, no other Sonic game that included the blue chaos emerald could be accepted canonically too. Which pretty much just leaves us with Sonic CD, since those were Time Crystals or something. And I think that Knuckles Chaotix could exist, too, I guess. Still, that's pretty damn bleak if the Sonic 06 game is so bad that if taken seriously, not only ruins itself (on account of it being so bad) but also ruins retroactively the rest of the series!

It was the last Sonic game I've played. I've been told that the newer ones are getting better, but until they figure out how to catch the same spirit of the game I'd been playing since I was 5, it's going to be hard to convince me that they're still worth my time.

Instead, I'll stick to the Archie Comics who seem to treat all of the characters with a bit more respect.

Except Marina. 'Strewth.