QCF: Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric

hen the concept art for the new character designs of Sonic and his friends was first revealed, I was immediately outraged as I’m sure everyone else was, but I knew that even though I didn't like the designs, that didn't necessarily mean Sega would put out yet another terrible Sonic game.

 I was wrong.

Immediately after starting up the game and selecting a new game file, the audio started skipping and frames started dropping...this is one of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric’s many innovative new features.

As the first cut scene started, all I could seem to focus on was the background, which was comprised of low-res textures slapped on jagged polygons. Even the leaves on the trees collectively made up an obvious shape. This isn’t just exclusive to the cut scenes either.

The entire game looks as though it was developed for the PlayStation 2. As far as gameplay goes, the game is a “Frankensteined” cornucopia of a bunch of different genres, including platforming, puzzle, hack n slash, exploration, and more...the game has absolutely no idea what it wants to be. 

Sonic Boom combines numerous styles of gameplay, and does them all badly. For example, 75% of this entire game is comprised of puzzles... or at least that's what the developers want you to think, because these puzzles are nothing more than “locate a green button and press it.” Which is not only isn’t difficult to do, at all, but it's extremely tedious....

To make matters worse, Sonic and his friends are constantly blurting out observations about the green buttons. So not only are you giving me a shitty and easy task to do in order to progress through the game; you're now insulting my intelligence.  Sonic Boom will do this, by assuming that perhaps, I wouldn't be able to deduce that I should press the giant glowing green button, so that I could then proceed—in spite of just how frequently the game tasked me do it from the countless times I had already done so...

And that's most of the game, or at least a big portion of it.

Big Red Button successfully managed to make a game about big green buttons.

When Sonic and the gang aren't pointing out obvious things that are right in front of your face, they're spewing out corny one liners which even a 6 year old wouldn't find funny. As far as the combat system goes, you essentially just mash the attack button to dispatch any enemies that come your way. You fight the same group of robot enemies throughout the entire game, and each fight is more boring and uninspired as the next. The combat system has no strategy involved whatsoever.

Sonic boom does a super great job at explaining absolutely nothing. The title does nothing more than simply throwing you into this new world, with zero backstory. Are we just supposed to assume each character’s backstory is the same as it was before? Moreover, if that were the case, what was the point of even re-designing the characters and playing it off as a separate universe? 

You aren't told where you are, why, how, nothing...the games story is an allegory for the fact that Sonic boom lacks any identity at all.

It doesn't take long to realize this game is one big, convoluted, boring, glitchy mess. The games “levels” are connected by a vast and barren hub world, filled with towns and areas span out into a whole lot of nothing and only a handful of NPC's are strewn about, which serve no purpose other than to task you with boring and tedious side quests to ultimately obtain power ups that don't do much of anything.

The hub world is expansive and confusing, and half the time I have no idea where I’m even supposed to go—it's so easy to get lost in this game that it’s insane.

Sonic Boom is riddled with glitches and bugs, it has a terribly low and erratic framerate, and if I haven’t mentioned it already; knuckles looks absolutely ridiculous. The dialogue is extremely corny, and yes, the story is completely stupid and while almost nothing is explained, I could, and would have ignored all of that and possibly even  forgiven all of the games flaws if I was at the very least having fun while playing it, but I wasn't...

That is Sonic Boom's absolute biggest flaw. The game is just outright not fun. Every stage I entered, every enemy I fought, it all just felt like I was going through the motions, and it all just lacked enjoyment, soul even.

The experience I had while playing this game was me constantly hoping the current stage I was on would end...not due to hard difficulty, but due to sheer boredom. Its' a game about pushing green buttons and mindlessly mashing the attack button on your controller, all while listening to Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy inappropriately blurt out random shit through the course of every level, and verbally acknowledge literally every single thing they see like a baby learning how to talk.