Tumgik
#(i know i'm poking the hornet's nest with this but i also invite chaos into my life on a regular basis :D
skysometric · 3 months
Note
top 5 sonic games go
warning: i am inviting you to poke a hornet's nest and i am the hornet
oh i am very aware of your Unique sonic opinions...
by contrast my opinions are gonna be more on the basic side! i'm a simple gal, i like going fast and letting the wind take me down routes i've never seen before. getting to explore big, open levels is one of the series biggest strong suits!
this is a hard list to narrow down, partly because the sonic series is so diverse and there's so much to love... but mostly because i haven't gotten to play a whole lot of sonic recently? i'm slowly trying to change that, like i just finished sonic battle last week and sonic origins the other day. to keep it easy, we're gonna stick to the main series only – i'd probably explode if i had to rank the spinoffs...
all told, that means my two biggest ranking factors here are Level Design and Nostalgia, so i doubt this list is particularly set in stone. as i replay more of the games, my top 5 will probably change – but for now, here's my best attempt at:
My Top 5 Sonic Games
5. Sonic Advance 2
Tumblr media
the Rush games are stylish, fluid, and set the blueprint for modern sonic as we know it – but the granddaddy of them all was Sonic Advance 2, and i can confidently say that i've sunk more time into this one than any of its successors.
honestly, advance 2 is one of my most replayed games of all time! it's so easy to jump in from the beginning and let the game carry you through to the end in one sitting. i always think of the other sonic games as more of a commitment, something i have to plan around playing... not so with this one, i can blast through it in an hour or two and love it the whole way through.
i'd say this game's biggest strength is its level themes – this is peak modern sonic aesthetic, with some really unique level tropes and some of the most gorgeous pixel art on the gba. i know the gba's sound chip isn't for everyone, but i think advance 2 makes great use of it!
i know this game has a LOT of flaws – the chaos emeralds are a pain in the ass to acquire, and so many of the game's best features are locked behind getting the emeralds with every single character??? but i'm not thinking about the meta-game when i choose to blast through the levels in one sitting, and i've played it so much that i know where all the bottomless pits are and how to avoid them.
all told, sonic advance 2 is my most comfy sonic, so it deserves a spot on the list.
4. Sonic Adventure 2
Tumblr media
if you read the story behind my least favorite game, then you probably saw this coming – adventure 2 is the game i played most with friends, long ago when i had my dreamcast. of course i still have a soft spot for it!
what i didn't mention in that post is how much mileage i got out of the chao garden, but that's because i put in most of those hours on the gamecube. i was obsessed with boosting my chao's stats with the little critters i found on my adventures 💙 so one of my favorite comfy ways to spend a saturday morning was to go collect animals for my chao...
...in the hunting stages. i actually love the hunting stages! and i really like the mech stages too! this isn't just nostalgia for sonic and shadow – i genuinely love playing the whole game, through and through.
thinking about it now, i sunk SO MANY HOURS into this game... that i got a little tired of it and stopped playing it for years. even when i picked it up on pc as an adult, i had no desire to actually replay it – why would i, when i have the whole game memorized? but maybe it's time to revisit this for a casual playthrough sometime soon...
3. Sonic Generations
Tumblr media
i will freely admit that this one's cheating: half of the reason i love this game is because of the Unleashed Project mod. i haven't yet played unleashed, but one thing this mod taught me is that the level design is immaculate – infinitely replayable, highly rewarding to get good at, and a feeling of speed unlike any other sonic game.
but it's also kinda hard for most casual players! this is where the original generations comes in: it has less punishing low routes, and as a result, it was my gateway to modern sonic in 3d.
my pipeline was simple: i loved the hell out of my first playthrough of generations, so i replayed it enough to learn the stages and routes. by the time unleashed project released, i was good enough at modern sonic to not fail endlessly – so i loved my first playthough of unleashed project, and replayed that a ton to learn the (more advanced) stages and routes. a perfect pairing!
...but don't sleep on classic sonic either! i genuinely enjoy the classic sonic stages in generations, and i think it's a crying shame that people love to hate on them these days. it makes me think less "classic sonic" and more "sonic advance 4" in a way that makes my nostalgia happy 💙
1. Sonic Mania
Tumblr media
no, that's not a typo, and i didn't skip one: my top 2 sonic games are tied for first place. i can't choose which one i love better!
what is there to say about mania that hasn't already been said? it's classic sonic perfected for the modern era, with gorgeous pixel art and the best level designs in the series. if you've never played a sonic game, start here and you'll fall in love.
sonic fans sometimes rag on the fact that mania leans so heavily on reused zones and nostalgia, with only a handful of new zones. that's a fair criticism, but let me flip that on its head:
i love that they revisited these old zones, not for nostalgia's sake... but because they could revisit some of the old games' biggest flaws, and smooth those over. then, in act 2, they expanded each one with new mechanics and flavors, remixing the nostalgia into a new experience that's more than the sum of its parts.
that is the impossible dream for a sonic game! that's never happened before! and it may never happen again. but at least they caught lightning in a bottle once, and it'll be with us forever, just like the memories of old.
1. Sonic 3 & Knuckles
Tumblr media
shocker: sonic fan likes the popular game, more at 11
no, see, i grew up with sonic 2. and to be honest, i'm a little sad i didn't get to fit it on this list for nostalgic reasons. sonic 3k is everything i love about sonic 2, but bigger.
i just got through replaying this in sonic origins, and the game is just as magical now as it was when i was a kid. possibly moreso now that i know how to get past that damn barrel! let's be honest, the original games had some mean level design, and my recent playthrough wasn't 100% smooth... but nostalgia wins the day.
this game defined my childhood – even when it kicked my ass – because i had the power of a long lost art in video games: cheat codes. i got my mileage out of exploring this game simply by picking whichever zones i wanted to play in the level select and going ham! even the game's debug mode turned each zone into a playground where i could spend hours just experimenting and exploring.
then, one day, i got good enough at the game to beat it legit, with all the emeralds... fulfilling a journey that lasted so many formative years of my childhood. this is a special game to me for so many more reasons than i could list in one post, but i hope i summarized it well.
...oh, and even with all the debug mode as a kid, i still found new routes in this game last playthrough lmfao
4 notes · View notes
legobiwan · 3 years
Note
Ngl, half the time I hear Order criticism I sideye the people saying because they have zero ground to talk shit, as seen with Ven-"mass murderer and torturer"-tress.
hahaha, fair enough. I’m not going to get into a long breakdown on my views regarding the Order right now (just because I’m short on time and I shouldn’t even be on Tumblr right now. Hopefully, I can come back to this post next week when life relents for a couple of days.) This being said, there are valid criticisms to be made of the Order without painting them as a “baby-snatching cult bent on government takeover.” (I can’t help but think of the wild conspiracy theories circulating around mainstream US politics, especially in regards to Pizza/children-napping/and Hillary Clinton and draw some parallels in terms of propaganda. The one thing I will say about the Order is that they lost the PR battle, badly, and that didn’t help their overall cause towards the end of the war. I mean, substitute pizza joints with Dex’s diner and Hilary with some Order member and you get some weird-ass parallels, right down to the religious cult aspect of it all. Life imitates art, or something like that.) 
And while Ventress doesn’t have the moral high ground, that doesn’t necessarily preclude her from making valid observations about the Order (or anything else, for that matter.) Same with Dooku and a host of other characters. The ambiguity of the Prequel-era is one of its most delicious aspects, in my mind. That, and Obi-wan’s hair, of course ;)
12 notes · View notes