Jump to content


TSS Member
  • Content Count

  • Joined

  • Last visited

About Wordy

  • Rank
    Der Igel ist mir egal.

Profile Information

  • Interests
    Blue hedgehogs and red eggs.
  • Gender
  • Country
    United Kingdom
  • Location
    River Town

Recent Profile Visitors

10,251 profile views
  1. Interestingly the German language trailer has a few different scenes not included in US English one: At 00:17 he says: "Where am I? Why is it so dark here? What kinda level is this?" EDIT: Just seen this is dubbed over the UK one, which includes the extra scenes. Seeing the GHZ opening makes me further despair at the decision to make this live-action. Those few opening vistas look so damn gorgeous and the Sonic model really looks like he belongs there. Obviously, as it's all CGI the new design was able to be fully incorporated into that world. They've mostly done a really great job considering the time they've had, but there are some frames, particularly the close-ups, such as Sonic hiding under a chair, that look glaringly off in terms of lighting, proportions and overall quality of the model. It's unfortunate that the utter cock-up they made with the original design will leave its mark in the final product—at the end of the day these live-action shots were filmed with a different sized character in mind. As to overall impressions, echoing the majority here: I still think it looks like generic, uninspired pish but I am immensely thankful for the sensible improvements. This will likely just go under the radar now as another mediocre Hollywood game adaption rather than as another colossal, damaging embarrassment for the franchise. I can almost hear Aaron Webber's sigh of relief.
  2. Okay so Sonic's design in motion is pretty much as bad as I was expecting. Beyond the proportions being completely off and those weirdly protruding leg bones, his face and eyes are just so distractingly misshapen and unpleasant to look at it was honestly hard to pay attention properly. Not really a fan of Carey even on his more reputable outings and his interpretation seems really symptomatic of how this film is going to have very little to do with the franchise: Eggman is the bombastic, irascible, scheming, disgruntled, monolouging and moustache-twiddling star of the series, and I got absolutely zero of that from whatever Carey was doing. If you showed me that exchange with the soldier I wouldn't ever think that that was meant to be Eggman, which leaves me wondering if Carey has even seen anything of what the antagonist has come to be known for. This whole obnoxious, sassy ego-lord shtick felt completely incongruous to me, and not at all likeable. (There wasn't even a joke beyond him acting goofy, and the whole "your basic" comment was completely unrelated, no word play whatsoever. I'm not sure I understand those who believe Carey will "carry" this film as he left me completely unconvinced. But like I say, not a huge fan of the guy normally anyhow.) It's incredibly disappointing because Eggman is such an iconic pillar of the franchise and it would have been really interesting to see his character expanded beyond the games' simple plots or Boom's comedy. It is, of course, far too late for any of these poor decisions to be changed, but one thing that is completely baffling is the choice of song for the trailer. What does Gangster's Paradise have to do with anything? It certainly doesn't fit thematically and doesn't even fit the overall tone or the action sequences. I am honestly at a loss to understand how this was given the green light and sincerely believe that a better choice of song could have seriously reduced how bizarre this trailer comes across. I wish I could say I'm surprised but the direction of this franchise has always been an inconsistent clusterfuck, why would we get our hopes up that this film would be managed in a sensible manner? If you need any suggestion as to how this will be received — look at the like to dislike ration on this trailer already. This film is going to bomb and once again make Sonic a laughing stock and weird meme-fodder. I guess we'll have to see how it performs at the box office but I know one thing for sure, you won't see me queuing up to see it at theatres. You've kinda failed when a lifelong fan has *zero* desire to see the film. Honestly, I'm kinda stuck between disappointed and enraged at this point. The latter largely because this will likely be the only feature film we are ever going to get out of the franchise, and the project clearly has had some coin poured into it, yet this is what we get.
  3. From what we've seen, it really doesn't sound like anything to do with the games' logic or loose canon is particularly the priority for the writers or studio, so I wouldn't get our hopes up about them following even the vaguest motifs from the main series. I guess we could be seeing some robot version of Sonic though, would be a missed opportunity if not. Although, lord do I no desire to see how they'd butcher Amy's design. And serving up some cynicism here but I would be utterly astounded if this film does well enough to merit a sequel anyway. Forgetting that it already has been set up to be received as a laughing stock by the general public (don't forget people are already forming an opinion on it), it's up against some ridiculous competition come it's release.
  4. Even if it does somehow broaden the brand's appeal, it's broadening the appeal and awareness of this weird version of it. I can honestly only see this hurting brand recognition as it just further confuses what Sonic looks like or is supposed to be about. And I don't think the superhero comparisons are particularly fair seeing as Sonic and his design are not nearly as ubiquitous in the general public's imagination. As we've seen you can't really get away with departing so radically from the original design with this sort of character as many people were unable to recognise or were confused by Sonic's silhouette (an absolute crime when it comes to animation if you ask me) due to the drastic changes in his proportions and features. A better comparison would perhaps be Mario. Why do you think he is so ubiquitously recognisable? It's because his 3D design has remained so darn consistent across games and merch for almost two decades now. Mario Bros, Mario Kart, Mario Party, Mario World, 3D Mario Adventures, Smash Bros? All very different games, but what's the one consistency? The plumber's design. You only need to see a portion of his silhouette on a T-shirt and you know it's a-Mario-time. That right there is fantastic branding. SEGA has gotten a lot better at bringing consistency to Sonic's design in the games and other media and marketing, so it just feels a real shame to see this film completely flip the table when it comes to respecting the core principles of the character. Like @Diogenes says, I'm not against change, and would be worried myself if it did look like just a 90 minute cutscene. The worlds and stories we see in the games rarely have enough elements or plot threads to satisfy the grand needs of a full-length feature film, so you are going to have to add new aspects and change existing ones in order for it to make sense as a movie. So it's absolutely not the change itself that bothers me, that's simply not what I'm arguing here. It's the way this Sonic The Hedgehog film now seems to be about a weird alien gremlin, a wannabe police officer and Jim Carrey. This buddy-cop movie premise isn't even that interesting or innovative when you ignore the fact that it's meant to be about Sonic. I think you're falling for the ostensible authenticity of such comments—at the end of the day it's just marketing. Look up any bad film and you will be able to find a behind-the-scenes or interview clip of one of the actors or directors prattling on about how unique and fantastic it's going to be. I mean, if you're working on the project, what are you going to say? Erm, film's a bit trash guys but Jim Carrey pulls a few hardy-hars!
  5. Christ, what does this film have to do with Sonic at all? Like why is this the Sonic film we are getting. It feels like someone who hasn't kept up with the series or even played the games has taken the most bare-bones sketch of what the franchise is—a blue hedgehog who runs fast—and decided to just create his own entire world and lore for the franchise using just the protagonist and his nemesis. It's not like the games have a particularly strong canon but there is at least some sort of continuity with characters, some locales and a general sense of what Sonic is. I'm so sick of Sonic media always feeling the need to completely separate itself from the games with new worlds or designs, always creating this bizarre off-shoot that only limply resembles what its meant to stem from. With Boom, for example, the redesigns and new setting ended up feeling totally unnecessary as they really didn't do anything unique or interesting with them; you could've just as easily had the normal designs hanging out in South Island/Green Hill or whatever. Here it seems like the other end of the spectrum: they've gone so far and used so little of the source material it feels like a different movie. Why is there only one anthropomorphic animal in my Sonic movie? Where are the Chaos Emeralds or literally any of the motifs we see in the games? Why is someone known for being incredibly goofy playing Eggman? Why is he suddenly called Robotnik again in this film after Sonic Team have spent years clearing up that localisation difference? Why is it live action? Ugh. This feels so removed from anything I associate with Sonic and from what we hear above, doesn't even sound particularly good on its own merit. I guess a couple of the lines sound sort of amusing, but I find it difficult to take any of this remotely seriously as it all just rings like meme fodder and weird fan-fiction considering it has so little to do with what we are used to. With all the money being poured into this and recent CGI films like Wreck-it-Ralph managing to craft exciting, intelligent, heart-warming and critically, commercially successful films about video game characters, I'm so disappointed that this is what we've ended up with as the Sonic movie after all these years. It's honestly a joke.
  6. Is it just me or have we seen strangely little of TSR so far? 

    1. Thigolf


      3 new stages in full, a couple snippets from the other stages, and some screenshots to the screenshots.


    2. PaddyFancy


      And tons and tons of music

  7. I find it astounding the amount of leavers who have changed their tune, now claiming they 'didn't vote for a deal.' How in the internet age we can be so forgetful is beyond me. This was not the rhetoric they were spouting at the time of the referendum. I guess only some of us are allowed to change our minds. There is an awful lot of lauding of principles at the moment, as if that wasn't the problem that got us here in the first place: go back to 2016, or even now for that matter, and ask 20 people what Brexit actually means: you will not get a consensus. I'm far more concerned about the actual reality of what the UK leaving the EU will look like, rather than the supposedly untouchable principle of following a contrived referendum that merely showed how split the nation (and the union, less we forget Scotland and Northern Ireland's clear opposition) is on the issue. When people shout 17 million, I shout 16 million right back at them. I cannot understand how people see this very slim majority as a sacrosanct mandate to radically change the fabric of our country's economic, political and judicial frameworks, especially when there isn't even a remotely clear understanding of what the outcome will be, or what we are even doing it for in the first place. (The EU, by definition, is a democratic organisation. The EU does not prevent us from putting tighter restrictions on European migration, it is the government that has not implemented these. It is absolutely disingenuous to suppose that leaving guarantees fabulous new opportunities as a small island vs. the position of being in the largest single market economy in the world. The list goes on...) The idea that democracy is somehow destroyed if we have another vote, more often than not, simply reads to me as leavers worried the public no longer support Brexit. They know it was a laughably close margin for such a monumental decision; they know it was won on misinformation and on the back of a decades long propaganda campaign by the gutter press; they know it is so much more difficult to convince people to vote for something once you have a reality on the table, and not just a vague concept. The whole thing is an utter shambles and I'm livid with politicians clinging to the result of a referendum that they never should have sanctioned in the first place. When the Scottish independence referendum was held, there was a clear plan published before the vote of how the Scottish government would go about becoming independent if the public decided to leave the union. The referendum question we were faced with in 2016 was ridiculous from the beginning, in that the remain campaign were tasked with competing against an undefined, seemingly limitless concept. They could only wield their measly facts or the supposedly reassuring adage of 'keeping things how they are'. It was an up-hill battle: life is not good under this government for many, particularly the working class. For many, a vote for leave was an act of rebellion against the government and the status-quo. It's funny, I watched a video the other day of people's reactions after the vote in 2016, and a guy who had voted leave reasoned that, "I mean, surely they'd have it all figured out and stuff, they wouldn't have asked us if not." Oh you'd think Barry, you'd think.
  8. That was lovely; great to see Amy introduced into the universe beyond a cameo.
  9. Somewhat telling when a late-night political comedy show makes a jab at the design. Sonic's design is up there with Mickey and Mario in terms of iconicity - people know what he looks like. Small changes like colour of arms and green eyes might go over the heads of almost, but such an overhaul of the defining cartoony proportions and silhouette, along with the uncanny use of realistic fur does get noticed. I'll say it again: this is going to be laughed at and not taken seriously by most. (as we have already seen!) It's simply mind-boggling to me that you would go with a 'realistic' route for this. Would that ever be considered a good idea for Mickey or Bugs?
  10. What's this referring to? I really don't get what planet they're living on that they think this would have ever been received well. What is this obsession in Hollywood with trying to make very cartoony designs fit in with the aesthetic of the real world. It's inevitably going to look jarring as you're trying to apply realistic proportions to characters whose designs depend upon their wonky limbs, ginormous heads and unnatural eyes. Seriously, what are they going to do with those peepers? Sonic's eyes are a classic cartoon staple of a single white void with oval dots in the middle. I pray the rumours aren't true and we aren't getting some sort of weird beady-eyed hedgehog thing. Had they used the current design - a tried and tested one - there simply wouldn't have been a backlash. The whole project would've likely been easier to promote too; you could have a tie-in game, references in current Sonic titles etc.
  11. I honestly despair at how the main draw of Sonic's design has once again been ignored here - its simplicity. Why would you completely change the look of a nostalgic icon for a film where the whole appeal is the presence of said icon? As has been said, Sonic's design is a deft yet simplistic hybrid of Japanese and American cartoonism that allows people to recognise the brand from just the sight of a blue spikey thing with one eye. Why why why would you mess with that? I just really don't understand why there is this seemingly constant need to redesign every time Sonic enters a new genre or field. Can we not just have some consistency in this franchise? A few changes are of course to be expected, but honestly, what are they smoking over there at Paramount to think that this sort of Frankensteine nightmare would not be a bad, or at the very least, a risky idea. We're talking about a franchise that has a wobbly reception and already invites weird associations or ridicule due to the character's being anthropomorphic animals. The entire management of this franchise is honestly so frustrating - why do they always insist on taking these damn risks? I echo the opinion that this will simply be laughed at. Had they gone down the road of Pixar/Wreck-it-Ralph with a fully CGI adventure where the focus is instead on some gorgeous animation and engaging writing that could breathe some life into the pre-established world, or heck even a new universe, I would have gladly gone to see it in theatres. From the looks of it, I'll be holding my head in my hands to even watch the reviews at home. Calling it now - this is gonna tank. Also - what does that tagline even mean? "A whole new speed of hero" That was what they came up with?
  12. Does anyone else find this kinda...offensively lazy at this point? This is honestly something I expect from handhelds/mobile games, not full console releases in 2018. Starting to appreciate from numerous comments that there probably is a significant budget issue with recent Sonic games, so perhaps unfair to compare to the past, but damn I miss the consistently impressive CGI cutscenes we were treated to in the 00's. Especially as a kid, they were such a huge part of what made the experience of the story, however clumsily plotted or embarrassingly dubbed over it was, so exciting to play through. The text boxes in Free Riders were the most uninspiring and tedious way to experience the little plot that game had. This way of storytelling often tends to be far too verbose - I love hearing more from these characters, but when the dialogue is so plodding that characters simply spend five to ten minutes monotonously stroking their own egos and making lame jibes at each other like broken records, all whilst Omochao feels the need to literally spell-out everything that we've already seen happen, I'm the opposite of engaged. There's a benefit to cutscenes here - due to the expense of animation, they're often forced to keep dialogue short and sweet and focus on how the interaction can either drive the plot or provide something visually pleasing for the player. Look at Sonic Heroes. This also just gives me the impression that we're just going to get nothing but the same lame "nah but I'm gonna win" banter, especially considering how all the interviewees from SUMO seem very conscious of underlining the fact that the story is "casual", "fun" or "light." - Is it too far too dream of them getting in a couple of decent writers in who string together some sort of plot explaining why they're all there, includes a few entertaining yet meaningful character interactions whilst also featuring some sort of plot intrigue/action scenes that makes you wanna play on to find out what happens? I honestly don't know why they bother at all if its just gonna be these text boxes. Look at Riders 1 - just another spin-off racing game. The story is a bit melodramatic, overplotted and silly, but I'll still happily watch those incredibly cinematic, nicely choreographed CGI cutscenes that can often times still aesthetically hold up to today's standards. The intro heroes cutscene really establishes the world aesthetic and a sense of adventure for the rest of the game. Oh, and that animie opening thou...
  13. Sad to have to bring another negative outlook to the table - but this game has yet to spark any excitement or interest in me. It just looks so linear and lifeless compared to Transformed, which as many have pointed out, came out six years ago. Every stage in that game just brims with cinematic, high-velocity action; incredibly dynamic stages that explode with colour, movement, life, directly interacting with the player through track-specific hazards that feel like they naturally belong in the environment - not just some out-of-place looking ice pillars clumsily dropped in the middle of a corridor track. And although we admittedly haven't yet seen much, I'm still confused as to how this game manages to look objectively far less impressive in the graphics and design department than a game that came out over half a decade ago, on the last generation of consoles. Quite a few of the background decorations, especially the crowds cheering at the beginning of Planet Wisp, look like two frame N64 sprites. Is that not something kinda unacceptable with this generation of hardware for a big budget game? It's not like the tracks are all that complex... With this new edition we seem to have bendy-hall-way stages set against cute, but inconsequential backdrops, which the player does not really interact with, whilst the track itself seems to almost completely lack any real challenge for the player in terms of the racing itself. Seriously, why are we driving on a linear concrete/dirt-track when we could be racing through the vast, twisting forests of Planet Wisp before whizzing up the labyrinths of Eggman's multi-tired factories. Just imagine what a bore that stage is going to be if you play with no items. Compare that to Transformed, where even watching game-play footage gets me hyped... There is not a single stage in that game, even the opening Seaside Hill, that feels lazy in its track design, monotonous in its stage hazards or that does not live up to the incredibly high cinematic standard that was clearly set. And its not all looks - the transforming mechanic constantly keeps you on your toes and the racing experience fresh, all amongst some really tight controls that hold it all together. Like any racing game, there are a couple of issues with controls and with some track layouts, but overall they hit such a home-run with making Transformed a really exciting game to play. They really needed to do something incredibly innovative, different or at least something that rejuvenated the pre-established formular to shake things up. TSR certainly doesn't look bad by any means, instead it just resembles a perfectly stable, albeit uninspired, racing game that you could kill some time with. This team dynamic gimmick, while a nice addition, just isn't enough for the entire game to ride on, especially when everything else about it looks rather unremarkable. From what we've seen, this feels like a downgrade - 6 years later.
  14. What even was that story? It really feels like a lot of elements were cut out of the final product without any sort of replacement. Not sure I even understand the whole Phantom Ruby stuff, but the worst part is that whilst watching, I really didn't care. Despite all the melodramatic lines and purported high stakes, the reactions from the main cast, along with the tone and framing of the cutscenes left me feeling simply slightly confused and a little bored. The tertiary characters, whose return we have been clammering for for years now, all sound like lifeless robots, all mindlessly chanting these empty lines about teamwork or being yourself or something. And it's not even done with a touch of self-awareness at how lame it all comes off. It was truly difficult to watch at times. I honestly think that Heroes, widely considered to be the height of Sonic's cringe-worthy synergy rhetoric, executed the delivery of its story a whole lot better. It is consistent in its snappy and colourful presentation, the way it deals with themes and how it unveils clues for the final reveal. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but at least it knew what it was trying to do. Forces feels like they tried to mash together two opposites: the low-stake, children's Saturday morning show presentation of Sonic's latest outings with this epic, dark apocalyptic premise where there is no time to jokes. (Seriously, more lines and characters than we've had in years, and not a single joke/pun?) And it seems they just took the worst of both. Honestly feels like we're back to '06 Quality in terms of dialogue. It's like the characters aren't actually in the same room as each other sometimes, instead just reeling off these mind-numbingly repetitive monologues that are vaguely connected to the last line said, but with no natural sounding progression of conversation or banter. Even the characters' movements seem to be less natural than as of late, which is incredibly frustrating when you look at the leaps and bounds Colours or Lost World had made in character model animations. There's even something about a lot of the camera work, scenery and the lighting in particular that is often at complete odds with the tension of the scene, such as where Sonic gets chucked into the black hole, or returns to the base after everyone thought he was dead or whatever. (Tonally and structurally, none of the Sonic's dead/captured/beaten stuff even made much sense or felt like it had a satisfactory pay-off) After all this build-up, I am immensely disappointed with this.
  15. Although it may be only a small snippet, the various videos of this new demo are somewhat relieving. It doesn't seem to be quite as bad as the train wreck Hogfather painted in his review of previous demos. And yet, I am incredibly disappointed. I'm at a loss to understand how six years have passed since the release of Generations, and this is where we are at. As has been said, whilst from the looks of this demo, Forces is not going to be an overtly bad game, it is disheartening to realise that this is likely to be an almighty step back, or at least a weird flop to the side. It is as if they have taken the core concept of what made Modern's gameplay in Generations good and failed to see how they could improve on it. What we have here instead appears to be a diluted version, with new, unnecessary and even previously panned elements, which we all thought had long since been abandoned, reintroduced, as if the team have learnt nothing. The confusing double-jump/homing attack input has returned; once again we are bombarded with incessant, repetitive and needless quips from characters that belong instead during fleshed out cutscenes and not the gameplay itself; (how many playthroughs before that charming Sand-Hill comment makes you feel like eating real sand?) and above all, the stages we have seen here are objectively much shorter, more linear, offer less scope for exploration and replay, and on the whole appear to be less invigorating, less whimsical and paltry concepts compared with Generations' delightful reimaginings. The worst part of this is that many ideas and themes have been recycled, eschewing not only a lack of originality from the project, but also further leading us to compare the two titles and it seems obstinately clear to me which one wins on both gameplay and graphical (re)interpretation of zones - the one that came out six years ago. And I didn't think it would bother me, but there's something really unnatural about how Classic can't recollect any fallen rings after taking damage. It's such a token benchmark of how Classic Sonic works, why change it?
  • Create New...

Important Information
