ROSS’S GAME DUNGEON: SONIC HEROES

Yo @Ross Scott, I'm real happy for 'ya and imma let you finish, but The Geek Critique already created the best Sonic Heroes review of all time!*

...But in all seriousness, as something of a Sonic Cultist myself (but also a general game player who's played good games in general): In regards to the camera jerking, the automated sections sometimes not working correctly, not being able to judge 3D space in the levels, homing attack not working correctly, that one section in BINGO Highway, the issues pulling the switch in Final Fortress, rail switching not working sometimes, completely falling off a cliff, etc. ... It's not just you not being a Sonic fan or having Gaming Dementia. I can tell you right now: The game is rather glitchy and overall just... kinda sucks. And despite you playing the PC version, these issues were there even on the original console versions; given that I played the Gamecube version wayback as a kid and ran into most of those same problems as well. (I even had to do that exact Tails trick you pulled to get through that final giant laser in Final Fortress.) So you probably should've given this your "Love & Hate" award.

* I'd actually really recommend you watch TGC's reviews/retrospectives on Adventure 1, 2 (Battle), Sonic '06 and Shadow whenever you get the chance, Ross. They kinda give you an idea of what happened during the "Adventure Era" of the Sonic series development-wise.

Also, in regards to a Heroes PC widescreen mod, there was actually this mod that works a lot better that was released just one month/a few weeks before your review, so I don't blame you for not noticing it at the time of you recording your footage.

1 hour ago, RaTcHeT302 said:

where would you land or take off with a plane in the middle of nowhere

As long as you have a flat enough and long enough stretch of land, a plane can be landed on it. Many low-cost/private air fields are just flat patches of grass that they mow frequently when in use (video of a standard general aviation plane landing on a well-maintained grass airfield [jump to 4:50]). Any old field can also be used for emergency landings (video of emergency landing on a set of soccer fields [jump to 0:15]), farm fields are commonly used for emergency landings, they're a bit more rough due to the crops and furrows, but a plane typically isn't going to be destroyed by crops unless the pilot is very unlucky or the farmer's growing large, dense plants like watermelons or pumpkins. Furthermore, many pilots just like to explore and will fit larger tires on to their planes in order to land on rougher terrain (video of a "bushwacker" pilot performing short-takeoff and landings on rough terrain).

4 minutes ago, RaTcHeT302 said:

i would find it pretty challenging to land a plane in the middle of a canyon

The only special condition landing inside of a canyon would entail is a narrow field, all the other conditions such as wind (will be effected by canyon walls, but crosswinds would almost entirely be eliminated and they're the most annoying for takeoff or landing anyway), runway condition, aircraft characteristics, etc., but there's no reason an experienced pilot wouldn't be able to perform a narrow landing as long as they had enough straight and smooth enough runway for their plane (narrow grass field landing video).

3 minutes ago, RaTcHeT302 said:

anyway i just noticed that the hud is always in 4:3 mode and it kinda pisses me off LOL, but i blame the developers for not thinking ahead of time, they could've anchored the hud differently if they wanted to, there was no need for them to be this lazy, but... eh, whatever

Sonic Heroes was released in December 2003, in a time where people were mosting using [CRT] 4:3 resolution TV/computer monitors. Yes, there were some widescreen monitors at this time, and yes, some games even before that time did have widescreen support -- but in most cases, especially in regard to the latter, those were the exceptions and not the rule. Even during the late 2000s, when widescreen TVs were getting more and more commonplace, it took a while specifically in the USA for widescreen as a regular format to be more commonplace (some TV shows had to be editted from widescreen to a 4:3 aspect ratio, for example). It was what it was, and there wasn't much we could do about it.

12 minutes ago, RaTcHeT302 said:

i mean i think i saw the word "flash" on one of those game bananas pages, this game doesn't seriously use freakin flash for the hud right? i mean it really shows just how "professional" they truly were

https://gamebanana.com/guis/35818

Quote

This [mod] was entirely made from scratch using Flash Pro!

The creator of the widescreen Heroes mod I linked to used Flash and then exported the graphics to something readable by Heroes' engine for the mod. The original devs likely used other programs to create the graphics.

I feel like Ross nailed some of my experience game.  There's a lot of personality and good here, and a lot of, for a lack of a better term, jank.  I played the actual gamecube game and later the pc and I can confirm what was said in passing earlier, the PC version is built on an earlier version of the engine and has way more jank. 

There are a lot of 'automatic' sections that fail for seemingly no reason.  And inputs sometimes just do random things because it does have the problem of, in trying to make a simplistic control scheme, having certain buttons do too many things that if it does the wrong one, you die horribly, notably switching rails and jumping off rails.  Personally I found the best way to make sure I mostly did what I wanted to do, was to make sure that the stuff I wanted to do, I took a quick breathe before doing anything, too many inputs too quickly really makes this game upset.  Want to switch rails? well make sure I took a breathe after switching a rail, or doing the hoppy acceleration thing.

The second thing that it took me a while to realize is how super super important the attack upgrade things are, it changes the damage and the visuals and even mechanics of some of the moves.  You get one by going through checkpoint with a character, or in certain balloons/item boxes etc. . . and each c haracter can hold 3 (it shows them on the thing) it turns tails air attack from absolute garbage to perfectly good. 

a lot of the 'dashing off or hopping off cliffs' is something that's plagued 3d sonic for a bit, some of it is acceleration and just the game not always handling speed well.  Given how big an improvement sonic heroes is over adventure in the sense of feeling in control of the character it's a good step forward, but it is something that for the most part gets better, like generations had much better 3d controls and platforming.

Depth perception/the camera are big enemies, or were to me too, and again I think that's some just due to nature of 3d platformers at the time, and good cameras being hard at the best of times, it's an art where it feels the divides keep getting bigger, but it's hard to really appreciate a great camera because it feels that's how it should be, and very very easy to recognize a bad or shakey camera.

In the end I always felt like this was one of my favorite 3d sonic games, I loved the aesthetics, theming, and personality of the game and it's like, if they spent a year or two refining or rethinking some of the ideas, it could be one of the best 3d sonic games very easily.  personally I remembered thinking the 3 teams should have been the switching, like a speed team, a flying team, and a fighter team and having the mechanics and exploration be drastically different, but then there is this issue that it'd be hard to get people to really want to play something other than speed team.

in the end, it's flawed, and in some ways massively, but when there's good, there's so much good.

And also, Ross, I have no idea why you had an aversion to checkpoints.  Did they say something mean to you as a child?  Did you just hate that they almost always came with a dialogue line?  I think you really need to s it down with your therapist to hash out this clearly deep seated issue.

2 hours ago, ultrayoba said:

About first of your question, about whole amy issue I always remembered a cinemotagraphic theory by Mike Stoklasa  about "not gay characters". Characters inserted just to show that other character not gay and nothing much more. The fact that sonik and tails have such... perfect duo, made it as requrement to insert someone to show that "they are just friends".

...and they managed to achieve the polarly opposite effect, considering how uninterested Sonic is in her

P.S. also I really like your screen name

1 hour ago, RaTcHeT302 said:

@Ross Scott some of your footage is corrupted

 

While it's possible it is elsewhere, that part isn't.  That's from in-game, I think the camera caught part of a platform for half a second.  If it's corrupted, you'll see dropped frames, then the timing being off.  I didn't notice it until 3/4 way through the video, then I fixed some segments that were really off.  I didn't have time to redo all the shots just in case, otherwise this would have been delayed at least another day.

1 hour ago, RaTcHeT302 said:

i mean, why would anybody think of checking game banana of all places lol

 

apparently this is a thing

 

https://gamebanana.com/wips/49828

 

I saw that literally while finishing up editing, but I saw a shot of their skybox and wasn't impressed (all the other stuff looked pretty sharp though), so it actually wasn't a fix for the textures that I most wanted changed.

26 minutes ago, ScumCoder said:

...and they managed to achieve the polarly opposite effect, considering how uninterested Sonic is in her

Ha ha, yea

Re: About plane landing, aren't it's same configuration that Tails transform "tornado 2" in-flight but can't transform back or land, so he can only crash anyway?

@Ross Scott this was one of (very few) videos I've ever seen that made me literally put it on pause to stop laughing. A couple times I laughed so hard that my diaphragm went into spasm and scared me that I won't be able to breathe.

4 hours ago, Ross Scott said:

...so is this a situation where a 12-years-old wants to marry Sonic, and Sonic is saying “Yeah, that’s nice, but you’re 12 years old. I can’t be with a 12 year old. That’s not cool”. So he gets all weirded out by this.

 

But now that she’s formed a team, she’s brought along Big the Cat as an enforcer. And the thing is, Sonic Adventure left me with an impression that he is mildly retarded. Literally. Sort of like Lennie from “Of Mice and Men”, except without the guidance of George. It seems like his main mentor is just some frog he found. It’s kind of tragic, really. He is not smart, but he is huge, and he follows orders; so now Amy’s recruited him to try and instigate a shotgun wedding for herself.

 

And the thing is, no one understands why this is a problem. No one on her team has the mental capacity to understand why she can’t marry Sonic. So they have to work their relationship problems out in public in a giant team brawl. Yeah, I take back what I said; this is fascinating writing. In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing a real life enactment of this: a 12 year old girl with a hammer, some toddlers and a hulk, beating up her beau and friends to marry him.

 

…they fling themselves over the edge to fall to their imminent deaths. Sure, I’ll marry you, Amy. Till Death do us part.

So yeah, that was kind of tragic and brutal. Wasn’t expecting that.

It doesn't matter how long these videos take to make if they will continue to shine decades later.

Game: "Just barely good enough".

Ross: [Nyet 3 scream]

About 06, It has most mind blowing envieroments later in game. First stage is boring but later it is post apocalyptic city, ancient palace ruins, egypt, some water base in water with water.
 

8 hours ago, Ross Scott said:

I noticed there were a lot of wrong guesses, I wanted to keep it a surprise.  Sonic Heroes has that blend that can make for interesting episodes.  It really is a game that stands out in my memory.

honestly, there was a part of me that was thinking you were just going to cover some games that were a part of SAGE (the Sonic Amateur Games Expo), because at the time you were posting about the episode on twitter, SAGE was around the corner.

16 hours ago, MrDowntempo said:

regarding Tails' tails. My theory is they're connected to his behind with a ball joint, like your arm in your shoulder.

Uh... I'm pretty sure no mammal on Earth has joints that allow things like this:

13 minutes ago, ScumCoder said:

Uh... I'm pretty sure no mammal on Earth has joints that allow things like this:

According to all known laws of nature, no, but a quick wiki-skim shows that the concept isn't entirely unheard of, but appears to mostly exist on a microscopic level when it exists at all (wiki). The closest thing to Tails' tails would appear to be Flagellum and I've attached an image from the wiki for reference, the prokaryotic flagellum definitively looks like it could emulate Tails' tails. (wiki).

14 minutes ago, ThatOneDraffan said:

 

I know that microscopic creatures have all kinds of weird mechanical systems (even insects can have freaking gears in their legs). That's why I specifically mentioned "mammals".

I now decided to try to process an FMV with the texture ripping tools. 

4 hours ago, RaTcHeT302 said:

those loading times are not worth it, plus the game is a god damn eye sore, somehow sonic heroes looks BETTER than a "next gen" game

 

sonic 2006 is not worth it

Luckily people have ported most if not all of the maps for it, Unleashed, and more to Sonic Generations on PC. That way you can experience the nice level design without the glaring flaws.

8 hours ago, SomethingOther said:

Yo @Ross Scott, I'm real happy for 'ya and imma let you finish, but The Geek Critique already created the best Sonic Heroes review of all time!*

...But in all seriousness, as something of a Sonic Cultist myself (but also a general game player who's played good games in general): In regards to the camera jerking, the automated sections sometimes not working correctly, not being able to judge 3D space in the levels, homing attack not working correctly, that one section in BINGO Highway, the issues pulling the switch in Final Fortress, rail switching not working sometimes, completely falling off a cliff, etc. ... It's not just you not being a Sonic fan or having Gaming Dementia. I can tell you right now: The game is rather glitchy and overall just... kinda sucks. And despite you playing the PC version, these issues were there even on the original console versions; given that I played the Gamecube version wayback as a kid and ran into most of those same problems as well. (I even had to do that exact Tails trick you pulled to get through that final giant laser in Final Fortress.) So you probably should've given this your "Love & Hate" award.

* I'd actually really recommend you watch TGC's reviews/retrospectives on Adventure 1, 2 (Battle), Sonic '06 and Shadow whenever you get the chance, Ross. They kinda give you an idea of what happened during the "Adventure Era" of the Sonic series development-wise.

 

Because of this comment I've been watching his reviews all day. I quite enjoy his breakdowns but wow is he harsh on Heroes. I'd heard nothing about this game before yesterday. Ross made me love it, now I don't know what to think.

3 minutes ago, steviewonder322 said:

Luckily people have ported most if not all of the maps for it, Unleashed, and more to Sonic Generations on PC. That way you can experience the nice level design without the glaring flaws.

Honestly, while I do love the Unleashed Project for Generations, I still prefer playing the Unleashed day levels in Unleashed