Sega are these the men you want to hire?
Look I just don't even know where to begin, Sonic Omens is awful like i normally want to be somewhat positive and give a game the benefit of the doubt but no man, this game is bad, like shockingly so, it's genuinely baffling to me how any game releases as this, and I'm gonna talk about it today.
This review is gonna be split in two, talking about the devs and the game itself so strap in folks because this is gonna be wild.
The Dodgy Development
Okay let's get this over with, the developers are poopy shitheads, if you want more on their wacky antics check this doc here but in short, they sexualised a minor, had beta builds hidden behind a paywall subscription on Patreon, stole the How to Train Your Dragon IP as their own, have ads on Game Jolt with an insane amount of Traffic, alleged stealing from Cars 2: The Video Game (the most evil thing here, seriously of all games to steal music from why the tie-in game to a bad film) and passing it as their own and Bolt/Joh being asshats and causing drama on Twitter, devs and fans bullying people who worked on the game, plus a plethora of other heinous stuff, so if you don't want to play this (I don't know why you would) then look here, I'm not focusing on it as i feel the game itself is more important to me but i cannot ignore the development of this game since it gives context to my experience with this game plus Midrulean already went somewhat in depth with the development so go check out his review if you haven't already.
Sonic Omens and the Cost of Ambition
Being Ambitious means you have to live up to people's justifiably high expectations, if you don't deliver you have big bag of wasted potential, many games do this but none so much as Sonic Omens, this game is awful, it's trying to be something it clearly can't be due to the humongous scope and clueless people working on it and yet it's so desperately trying be something it can't, a good game. But seriously, everything around this game can be seen through how ambitious it is, wanting to be a modern 2000s styled Sonic Adventure that serves as competition to Sonic's next Open-Zone game, and it fails spectacularly, what started as a ambitious quaint little fangame in 2020 that while flawed showed some promise made out of passion has ended up becoming show detested, reviled and contropassion finished out of spite.
I haven't heard many people talk about the story but wow it is messy despite a more simple premise, it's trying to be a surrogate game to the 2000s but doesn't work, like it's essentially comes to referencing it and not making an interesting story around it's concepts, it weirdly has some X stuff involved which is funny since they want me to care about X in a Mainline setting and a whole heap of forced references to make the meta era haters go "Awooga this game is great!" like the story has a super sonic final boss, The Metarex, Gaia Temples, Song cues from X and other games, Chip and Chris stuff, Shadaw, Maria, Rouge, Knuckles, the Tornado from X, Big cameos, G.U.N, music from Shadow and so much more. It's admirable i guess but is absolutely shattered by the Voice Acting, I can at least admire the people trying they're hardest since you can very much tell they aren't native english speakers but wow they couldn't have hired some other people? Delivery feels stiff and wooden and are trying so hard to replicate the 4kids cast but fail so hard, mostly with Shadow and Eggman. The dialogue also feels pretty clunky which isn't helped by the awkard delivery since you can barely understand what they're saying sometimes. One thing this game's plot attempts to do is explain why the Chaos Emeralds aren't used in mainline entires plot wise, placing this between after Unleashed and before Lost World… Did they even play the games? Barring Gens using the emeralds as the driving force of the plots they never really had a reason to use them in the plot because it'll boil down to a boring played out macguffin hunt which this game kinda is, so overall i don't see why the plot played this angle if they don't do anything interesting or compelling with it but the mediocre story is the least of our worries.
Presentation wise, Omens is very admirable though still not all that great when it comes to this, one thing I can't complain about is the Music because it's really great, using a lot of stuff in the 2000s, it isn't original but good nonetheless, i also like the character animation despite some stiff moments but it's very expressive for the most part especially with Sonic, but that's where a lot of my postives end with this game for me, the game for one is very glitchy and poorly optimized, frequent pop-in, clipping into objects, floating in the air, camera getting stuck on stuff, respawn not working, collision issues, game freezes/crashes and no sfx playing at one point but the visuals while do look decent some original characters and environments don't look very sonic like and seem like they're plopped fron radically different game plus the framerate isn't very smooth, it isn't my PC since the one i played on is pretty strong so i feel this is on the developers part.
But yeah I know, I've been trying to avoid but Sonic Omens has got to be one of the worst gameplay experiences I've ever had, this game is trying to be more like Unleashed and maybe a bit of Generations in terms of mechanics but feels like Forces 2 in this regard. Sonic controls way too slippery and his jump is too limiting making platform into a chore, he has a lot of moves from the previous games like the bonuce which was welcome, light speed dash, stomp and the boost with a screen nuke and a grappling hook plus a plethora of Chaos abilities for Shadow but they aren't put to good use, i feel the lack of a drift function hurts this game even more than Forces since they're some very sharp turns that you sure as hell can't pull with the base movement, the boost meter depletes too quickly leading to moments where you a searching for rings and boost orbs.
This wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't for the god awful level design (I mean if the game tells you that you need to respawn frequently then you're in for a treat), Disney's Bolt and his team decide too pull a Balan Wonderworld and use 2 completely near incompatible gameplay styles into one, this is time with Boost and Adventure level design, what you have are the most inexplicably open, spectacle relient and boring stages ever concived in a Sonic game, It's laughable how confusing the levels are, I don't know where I'm going most of the time only to have a giant arrow pointing to where I am, toppped with the controls, the levels utterly become both frustrating, confusing and boring all at once, death zones don't even make sense at points, when the game tries to pull force combat it takes way too long, Shadow's stages are way worse given how the destroy the pace of each stage using chaos powers and you can even get softlocked at points just again you can tell they wanted to do so many things with this game but it utterly falls flat on it's entire body, I was gonna do an episode by episode review of this game but what's the point? I'd be blabbering saying the exact same stuff about the levels since the marginally get better, the low point of the levels are the latter half of Episode 3 where they focus on the water parts, and now there's a very good reason why most sonic games don't have 3d water levels, You're scalling up this big tree and this was one of the breaking points for me, you have to be very precise with the platforming, almost too precise with the general structure of the tree just being annoying and monotonous especially with the water, switch and aforementioned control issues, when i lost nearly 30 Minutes of progress by a mistaken homing attack i just gave up and used a save file, this game does not respect your time and I won't either so i wanted to see if it got any better and it did, barely, the 3rd Episode as whole isn't great especially with the water escape sequence, good lord that was horrible especially with the amount of near unavoidable death zones you have in this, making you really wonder if they properly playtested this game and fixed the issues many people already had but no they barely did. But i mean when a lot of the unfair BS is over with Omens is as good as Forces worst moments so that's something i guess, I'd say Episode 1 is solid enough and Area 99 (nice X reference) is too but they have their fair share of BS and what i like to call OH WOW LOOK AT DA BLOOM AND THE SPECTACLE WOW THIS GAME IS GOOD like seriously it's in every level and I don't get why.
But i mean i would have rated this game a 3 maybe even 4/10 if it was just the levels… Then the Bosses and Tornado sections come in, seriously every single Boss is awful especially the final boss, way too long, the camera doesn't focus on them, bullshit insta kill moves, awful pacing, severe lack of rings in them and overall just not a fun time, I don't feel like i overcame a good challenge i feel relived that i don't have to undergo a painful experience.
And finally the crown shit jewel of this game, the Tornado sections. Just what the hell happened? The Tornado moves way too slow especially in reverse and moving upwards, the blaster does some pitful damage, the missles while can do some damage don't go far, Boosting has a risk reward system where you move faster but when you hit something you get damaged even more which is piled by the horrendous design which is the shining example of everything this game gets wrong, confusing because of how the world design and controls, boring because of how the Tornado feels and frustrating because of how the enemies have the giant near unavoidable laser and the entire 2nd Act of the Escape sequence due to the worm, truly one of the worst experiences I've ever had the pleasure of playing in a video game, I must apologize to Balan Wonderworld because at least that game was consistent in it's awfulness and never came close to this.
Conclusion
This game is awful, i put this game in my least favourite games list but removed it but i think Apollo Justice will be execused (for now) but i could just conclude saying "game bad bye bye now" but going back to the start of this review, the cost of ambition pays a heavy toll, every issue this game faces is linked due to ambition, the 2000s esque story, the next-gen presentation, advancing and expanding the boost gameplay, the Bosses and Tornado being more elaborate and in-depth than ever before, all linked due to the ambition this game wants to do and it would be if the developers weren't assholes and the game wasn't this horrible, like yeah it's somewhat impressive to have a near 3d sonic console game made by fans but Sonic GT beat them to it and is way better, so i don't think i even need to say why you shouldn't waste 14GB on this game and play many other Sonic fangames, mainly the Spark Trilogy and Sonic GT, that being said:
Game bad bye bye now
Look I just don't even know where to begin, Sonic Omens is awful like i normally want to be somewhat positive and give a game the benefit of the doubt but no man, this game is bad, like shockingly so, it's genuinely baffling to me how any game releases as this, and I'm gonna talk about it today.
This review is gonna be split in two, talking about the devs and the game itself so strap in folks because this is gonna be wild.
The Dodgy Development
Okay let's get this over with, the developers are poopy shitheads, if you want more on their wacky antics check this doc here but in short, they sexualised a minor, had beta builds hidden behind a paywall subscription on Patreon, stole the How to Train Your Dragon IP as their own, have ads on Game Jolt with an insane amount of Traffic, alleged stealing from Cars 2: The Video Game (the most evil thing here, seriously of all games to steal music from why the tie-in game to a bad film) and passing it as their own and Bolt/Joh being asshats and causing drama on Twitter, devs and fans bullying people who worked on the game, plus a plethora of other heinous stuff, so if you don't want to play this (I don't know why you would) then look here, I'm not focusing on it as i feel the game itself is more important to me but i cannot ignore the development of this game since it gives context to my experience with this game plus Midrulean already went somewhat in depth with the development so go check out his review if you haven't already.
Sonic Omens and the Cost of Ambition
Being Ambitious means you have to live up to people's justifiably high expectations, if you don't deliver you have big bag of wasted potential, many games do this but none so much as Sonic Omens, this game is awful, it's trying to be something it clearly can't be due to the humongous scope and clueless people working on it and yet it's so desperately trying be something it can't, a good game. But seriously, everything around this game can be seen through how ambitious it is, wanting to be a modern 2000s styled Sonic Adventure that serves as competition to Sonic's next Open-Zone game, and it fails spectacularly, what started as a ambitious quaint little fangame in 2020 that while flawed showed some promise made out of passion has ended up becoming show detested, reviled and contropassion finished out of spite.
I haven't heard many people talk about the story but wow it is messy despite a more simple premise, it's trying to be a surrogate game to the 2000s but doesn't work, like it's essentially comes to referencing it and not making an interesting story around it's concepts, it weirdly has some X stuff involved which is funny since they want me to care about X in a Mainline setting and a whole heap of forced references to make the meta era haters go "Awooga this game is great!" like the story has a super sonic final boss, The Metarex, Gaia Temples, Song cues from X and other games, Chip and Chris stuff, Shadaw, Maria, Rouge, Knuckles, the Tornado from X, Big cameos, G.U.N, music from Shadow and so much more. It's admirable i guess but is absolutely shattered by the Voice Acting, I can at least admire the people trying they're hardest since you can very much tell they aren't native english speakers but wow they couldn't have hired some other people? Delivery feels stiff and wooden and are trying so hard to replicate the 4kids cast but fail so hard, mostly with Shadow and Eggman. The dialogue also feels pretty clunky which isn't helped by the awkard delivery since you can barely understand what they're saying sometimes. One thing this game's plot attempts to do is explain why the Chaos Emeralds aren't used in mainline entires plot wise, placing this between after Unleashed and before Lost World… Did they even play the games? Barring Gens using the emeralds as the driving force of the plots they never really had a reason to use them in the plot because it'll boil down to a boring played out macguffin hunt which this game kinda is, so overall i don't see why the plot played this angle if they don't do anything interesting or compelling with it but the mediocre story is the least of our worries.
Presentation wise, Omens is very admirable though still not all that great when it comes to this, one thing I can't complain about is the Music because it's really great, using a lot of stuff in the 2000s, it isn't original but good nonetheless, i also like the character animation despite some stiff moments but it's very expressive for the most part especially with Sonic, but that's where a lot of my postives end with this game for me, the game for one is very glitchy and poorly optimized, frequent pop-in, clipping into objects, floating in the air, camera getting stuck on stuff, respawn not working, collision issues, game freezes/crashes and no sfx playing at one point but the visuals while do look decent some original characters and environments don't look very sonic like and seem like they're plopped fron radically different game plus the framerate isn't very smooth, it isn't my PC since the one i played on is pretty strong so i feel this is on the developers part.
But yeah I know, I've been trying to avoid but Sonic Omens has got to be one of the worst gameplay experiences I've ever had, this game is trying to be more like Unleashed and maybe a bit of Generations in terms of mechanics but feels like Forces 2 in this regard. Sonic controls way too slippery and his jump is too limiting making platform into a chore, he has a lot of moves from the previous games like the bonuce which was welcome, light speed dash, stomp and the boost with a screen nuke and a grappling hook plus a plethora of Chaos abilities for Shadow but they aren't put to good use, i feel the lack of a drift function hurts this game even more than Forces since they're some very sharp turns that you sure as hell can't pull with the base movement, the boost meter depletes too quickly leading to moments where you a searching for rings and boost orbs.
This wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't for the god awful level design (I mean if the game tells you that you need to respawn frequently then you're in for a treat), Disney's Bolt and his team decide too pull a Balan Wonderworld and use 2 completely near incompatible gameplay styles into one, this is time with Boost and Adventure level design, what you have are the most inexplicably open, spectacle relient and boring stages ever concived in a Sonic game, It's laughable how confusing the levels are, I don't know where I'm going most of the time only to have a giant arrow pointing to where I am, toppped with the controls, the levels utterly become both frustrating, confusing and boring all at once, death zones don't even make sense at points, when the game tries to pull force combat it takes way too long, Shadow's stages are way worse given how the destroy the pace of each stage using chaos powers and you can even get softlocked at points just again you can tell they wanted to do so many things with this game but it utterly falls flat on it's entire body, I was gonna do an episode by episode review of this game but what's the point? I'd be blabbering saying the exact same stuff about the levels since the marginally get better, the low point of the levels are the latter half of Episode 3 where they focus on the water parts, and now there's a very good reason why most sonic games don't have 3d water levels, You're scalling up this big tree and this was one of the breaking points for me, you have to be very precise with the platforming, almost too precise with the general structure of the tree just being annoying and monotonous especially with the water, switch and aforementioned control issues, when i lost nearly 30 Minutes of progress by a mistaken homing attack i just gave up and used a save file, this game does not respect your time and I won't either so i wanted to see if it got any better and it did, barely, the 3rd Episode as whole isn't great especially with the water escape sequence, good lord that was horrible especially with the amount of near unavoidable death zones you have in this, making you really wonder if they properly playtested this game and fixed the issues many people already had but no they barely did. But i mean when a lot of the unfair BS is over with Omens is as good as Forces worst moments so that's something i guess, I'd say Episode 1 is solid enough and Area 99 (nice X reference) is too but they have their fair share of BS and what i like to call OH WOW LOOK AT DA BLOOM AND THE SPECTACLE WOW THIS GAME IS GOOD like seriously it's in every level and I don't get why.
But i mean i would have rated this game a 3 maybe even 4/10 if it was just the levels… Then the Bosses and Tornado sections come in, seriously every single Boss is awful especially the final boss, way too long, the camera doesn't focus on them, bullshit insta kill moves, awful pacing, severe lack of rings in them and overall just not a fun time, I don't feel like i overcame a good challenge i feel relived that i don't have to undergo a painful experience.
And finally the crown shit jewel of this game, the Tornado sections. Just what the hell happened? The Tornado moves way too slow especially in reverse and moving upwards, the blaster does some pitful damage, the missles while can do some damage don't go far, Boosting has a risk reward system where you move faster but when you hit something you get damaged even more which is piled by the horrendous design which is the shining example of everything this game gets wrong, confusing because of how the world design and controls, boring because of how the Tornado feels and frustrating because of how the enemies have the giant near unavoidable laser and the entire 2nd Act of the Escape sequence due to the worm, truly one of the worst experiences I've ever had the pleasure of playing in a video game, I must apologize to Balan Wonderworld because at least that game was consistent in it's awfulness and never came close to this.
Conclusion
This game is awful, i put this game in my least favourite games list but removed it but i think Apollo Justice will be execused (for now) but i could just conclude saying "game bad bye bye now" but going back to the start of this review, the cost of ambition pays a heavy toll, every issue this game faces is linked due to ambition, the 2000s esque story, the next-gen presentation, advancing and expanding the boost gameplay, the Bosses and Tornado being more elaborate and in-depth than ever before, all linked due to the ambition this game wants to do and it would be if the developers weren't assholes and the game wasn't this horrible, like yeah it's somewhat impressive to have a near 3d sonic console game made by fans but Sonic GT beat them to it and is way better, so i don't think i even need to say why you shouldn't waste 14GB on this game and play many other Sonic fangames, mainly the Spark Trilogy and Sonic GT, that being said:
Game bad bye bye now
2 Comments
The hell's a taco bell?
HylianBran
1 year ago