Sega Sucks

This article was published on 04/29/2007.

Let's get the facts straight here: Sega sucks to an unbelievable extent. They were in their prime during the 1990s, but ever since the release of Sonic Adventure 2 on the Sega Dreamcast, they've been spiraling out of control with their impending death wish. Some would say their decline began with such terrible console add-ons as the Sega CD and Sega 32X, which were both complete failures. Others say it is due to the overly moronic tactics that they employed during the Sega Saturn release. I'd imagine it went, "Hey, here's a great idea. Let's release our console several months ahead of schedule, in complete secrecy!" The Dreamcast wasn't as big a failure as the Saturn, but it still left on a sour note, not providing the amount of presence it rightfully deserved. It was after this that Sega finally realized that they are incapable when it comes to consoles, and maybe, they should just stick to the things they were good at, such as developing video games. However, this is not what truly destroyed their credibility as a respectable game company. Sure, these things were an extreme display of incompetence on Sega's part, but it's not the final nail in the coffin... at least, not quite yet.

Sonic sucks. Here's some background information so you can understand where I'm coming from with that statement: during the 1990s, when Mario and Sonic were hard at work in their battle of the mascot titans, I was a fairly huge Sonic the Hedgehog fan, and you could even say I liked Sonic more so than Mario. I'd like to think that for many, this was true. I am still a Sonic and Sega fan at heart, even now. So when I say "Sonic sucks" or "Sega sucks," I'm not saying this as someone who's biased against Sonic or Sega, but as a fan who feels a little irritated at the recent turn of events. It is precisely that I'm a huge Sonic and Sega fan, that I'm able to come to terms with just how far they've fallen. In this article, we're going to ignore the multitude of Sega's other moronic actions, and focus squarely on Sonic and his recent endeavors. I feel that there is enough wrong with Sonic that we don't need to delve into every other poorly made decision Sega has made recently. If we were to count all of Sega's faults, then this would be the longest article in history.

As I said before, Sonic has lost his luster. His games weren't always this bad, and he arguably began trekking this path after his last decent outing in Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast. This outing was still no match for Sonic's classic Sega Genesis line up, but was still good for a first attempt at a 3-D Sonic game. Sonic was looking toward a bright future. Alas, such an outlook evaporated with Sonic Adventure 2. Granted, this game still was in no way nearly as bad as the future Sonic games, and for some, it was still quite playable. But there was definitely something wrong, with how 80% of the game consisted of Tails and Dr. Eggman slowly trotting through levels in their sluggish robots, locking on and blasting targets with their firearms. This wasn't what I wanted when I sat down to play a Sonic game. I wanted Sonic and awesome levels to run through. While there were indeed some of those levels present, they were few and far between, obscured by ridiculous gameplay segments of traversing orbit to collect emerald shards. I don't want to spend an eternity running through a boring mine shaft searching for emerald shards in my Sonic game. Considering all of this, though, I was still hopeful for the future of Sonic, and when Sonic Heroes was announced to be the Sonic game to return to Sonic's roots, I got a bit excited. Deep down, I had a feeling it would be a total disaster, but those words echoed in my head, giving me hope.

Sonic Heroes was a travesty. This one is hard to disagree with, even for most Sonic fans. It was absolutely horrible and playing it felt like a form of torture effective enough to have me fork over the coordinates to my top secret lair. It's hard for me to even begin to describe just how bad this game is. First of all, Sega lied. This wasn't a real Sonic game. If it were, it would at the very least resemble something like Sonic Adventure. The game employed a different form of gameplay that was completely and utterly flawed. Initially, the concept sounds innocent enough: you control a team of three characters simultaneously during the stages. You can switch between the three at any given time, and each character had a unique ability. These abilities are required to get through the levels, but you'll primarily spend your time in combat with enemies. You will be locked inside rooms, Zelda style, and then be forced to fight badly programmed enemies. By badly programmed, I don't just mean they had terrible artificial intelligence; I mean it would sometimes take forever to kill these robots because of stupid hit detection issues. This isn't normally a problem for most games, but it was a huge deal of a problem in this one. On top of that, the graphics were terrible. What went wrong?

Sega followed Sonic Hero's putrid release with Shadow the Hedgehog, which defied all known logic and somehow managed to be a far worse game than Sonic Heroes. I'm being completely sincere here. This game makes Sonic Heroes look like one of the best video games ever made. It's just terrible in every way imaginable. I honestly thought Shadow the Hedgehog was a hoax when I first watched the trailer. Then the game actually came out, much to my surprise. After the release of Shadow the Hedgehog, I was convinced that there would be no conceivable way to top this off, no way for Sega to make an even more atrocious Sonic game. I was wrong. Sega released "Sonic the Hedgehog" for the X-Box 360 and PlayStation 3. It was a reboot of the franchise, bearing the same name as the original Sonic the Hedgehog for the Genesis. I find it downright blasphemous that they would use that name for such a bad game. In no way was this representative of what the original Sonic was like. Many people refer to this new Sonic as Sonic '06, because it was first released in 2006. Sonic '06 is, by far, one of the worst Sonic games ever released. There's just no stopping Sega now. Sega has ruined Sonic. It's clear that Sega bears ill will towards their little mascot, perhaps hoping to cease his fame indefinitely. Or maybe Sega just really, really sucks. I'm more inclined to believe the latter now, as their overall performance as a game company has gone down the toilet. Sega doesn't just make bad Sonic games, but bad games in general. If you were to travel to the past and tell me this during the 1990s, I wouldn't believe you. This is just how it turned out for Sega, for whatever the reasons may be.

Closing this up, there's just one thing left to say: Sega sucks. There's no way around it. Perhaps a viable explanation as to why Sega is no longer any good, at least as far as Sonic is concerned, is that various people have left Sonic Team, including Yuji Naka. The name "Sonic Team" used to mean something substantial, but now it describes a wild pack of hyenas that try to embarrass themselves at every turn. In any case, that's just how the cookie crumbles.

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