The Meta Era of Sonic Games started with Sonic Colors, and continued up until Forces for now, what did you think of the games within it?

I'll start first....I found this Era as lackluster and a pain. There are few exceptions to the rule, but the majority of the games disappointed me. This mostly have to do with the writing, dialog, characterizations, and what new characters introduced are just so bad. There is a trend in these games, and that Sonic team/Sega is pandering to the little kids. It frustrates me, I feel insulted by the way the writers panders to the children and putting off long time fans. Even when they tried doing Adventure-Styled writing in Forces, it still falls flat as the stakes are low and unimportant. The characters we all know and love suffers from bad writing, and the same thing is with the new characters such as the Deadly Six, who are so one-dimensional, that I already wrote them off. I am still puzzled as to why they keep insisting bringing back Zavoc without making improvements on him! Orbbot and Cubot are a waste of space, they didn't need to exist at all. I think Infinite has a lot of potential, but he is wasted. 

This also extends to Gameplay as well, the boosting thing gets old really fast because you are just holding a button to get fast, and that comes to a standstill with these horrible 2d sections that halts your progress by bad level design, gimmicks, enemy placements, and other hazards. Boss Battles are not really all that fun with very few exceptions. They are rehashed from different stages and even from different games.

Overall, it has left a bad taste in my mouth. Like i said, there are few exceptions,but the bad outweighs the good. I pray things change with Sonic Rangers where they put actual passion into it.

I was a little confused at first what you meant by the meta era, to be honest. Usually in my mind I sort Sonic game eras by gameplay style (Classic, Adventure, Boost; Boom is its own tumour). xD Under that kind of classification scheme I usually put Unleashed in the same category as the other boost games.

But, it looks like maybe you've categorized based on narrative and dialogue style. Looked at from that perspective, I see why Unleashed would be excluded.

As far as this specific era goes, I've got three main opinions, but it's probably my second favourite overall. xD

First and foremost, yeah the dialogue and narrative is very kiddy. I don't like it much, although I do often find it funny. But I think it's easy to forget, even the edgy Adventure era that I adore is kiddy in its own right. Being a 90s kid, that's my kind of kiddy. Back then, Sonic was cool. Nowadays he's much more washed up and survives in no small part due to meme culture and irony. Epic but extremely cheesy is the Sonic I grew up with and loved too, but I think this change makes a certain kind of sense, even if I'm not exactly a fan of it.

Secondly, boost gameplay. It is very much simplified compared to the much loved Classic era or even the Adventure era. More challenge would be nice (but really I just want more 3D stages, though we'll come back to this for the third point). But, having said that, personally I think the boost games are a heck of a lot of fun. I don't think anything else, Sonic or otherwise, can actually compete with the exhilarating sense of speed these games offer. Whatever the auto segments as well, the gameplay in between is like rhythmic perfectionism when you really get into it for its own sake rather than just to progress the plot. Boost could present more of a challenge, yeah, but it's definitely not a drag to play.

Finally, we get to the elephant in the room: Classic Sonic in particular and, more generally, 2D gameplay. This is probably my biggest play complaint for boost style Sonic games. I go in hoping for boost fun, and I almost always walk away with more of something else. Whether that something else be a Werehog, levels being overwhelmingly 2D (looking at you Colours), Classic Sonic, or (surprise!) Classic Sonic once again, there's always something that isn't 3D boost gameplay that I walk away with being the thing that took up most of my time. Sometimes these gimmick gameplays are fun, I occasionally think Werehog is okay and I actually really enjoyed the furry fan characters in Forces (especially in the stages with both them and Sonic!). But, the point is they often take up too much of the game for my liking. There are undoubtedly reasons why they exist (variety, lengthening playtime, budget and development hurdles, etc.) and I'm not opposed to there being other gameplay styles. It worked fine enough in Sonic Adventure 2 (and to a lesser extent in Adventure) and it was totally okay in the Classic Sonic games when Tails and Knuckles showed up. It's just that in the boost era, and by extension the meta era, there's too much. This has always been a risk, even the games that get this balance right have had me occasionally wary. It's just that the newer stuff is hit the hardest, despite Sonic's friends being largely relegated to cutscenes. Arguably Generations suffers the least from this issue given the roughly 50/50 split of classic and boost stages. Even then though, arbitrarily assuming each stage takes the same amount of time to play, that means you're playing in 2D a good 60-75% of the time.

Still, having said all that, I do genuinely enjoy a lot of these games. They're very fun, flawed or not, and it's a gameplay style I'd be sad to see go in favour of anything else besides maybe the Adventure style. I hear talk about leaks which suggest that may be exactly what we're getting with Rangers, but as always with Sonic, although I know I'll get it, I won't let myself get too excited until I know what exactly I'm getting myself into. xD

That is fair, i'm glad you found enjoyment in these games.

I enjoyed Unleashed(if that counts), Generations, Mania Plus, and the handhelds. I'm not saying that Boost Era didn't have anything good, its just that I felt things have become over-simplistic at the expense of well crafted gameplay, story, and other things. The previous eras weren't perfect, they had their fair share of problems, but I felt that there was passion and heart behind them, and they have treated their players with respect. Its just my opinion on the matter, it just disappointed me on how they went about this.

The handhelds are somewhat their own beast, but I do enjoy many of them as well, particularly the Advance trilogy. xD

I do think story in particular has sort of fallen off from Colours forward, just pretty much a skeleton holding some jokes at this point. I can enjoy it, but it's definitely a downgrade. As far as gameplay goes, I actually don't know if I could say less care is put into it. xD Sonic games have always been kinda jank and buggy, even and perhaps especially (excepting Boom) the best ones. Spin and ring dash being on the same button in SA2 is occasionally agony. In Sonic Heroes, homing attacks can result in a seemingly infinite spiraling around the target if you're unlucky (and don't get me started on switching grinding rails in that game, haha). If anything, setting aside Boom, I think maybe I've witnessed less bugs from Unleashed forward.

Though, in the end of the day, I'd certainly rather an Adventure style game given the choice. I go back to SA2 most of any game in the series. xD

The two biggest pet peeves in the Advanced games are too many pits and the horrible emerald hunting. Otherwise, they are pretty cool

Yeah of course. I find it jarring and hilarious in Heroes when things become demented. I will say that stages tend to be very long as you progress, its worse with Team Sonic/Dark in the later levels. I don't wanna spend more than six minutes to complete a stage! lol

hmm, I have a question though, what do you think of the characters?

Honestly, I didn't even know from Colors on was called the "meta era," so the naming of this is news to me. I always considered this to still be modern (Sonic Adventure on) and Boom being more of a spin-off series (cartoons and games).

Personally, I enjoyed the games, Sonic Colors, Sonic Lost World, and while it's an unpopular opinion, Sonic Forces. I was very late to the Sonic Generations party as I bought the game when I got a new PC a couple of years back. I think the stories and cutscenes, at least in Colors and Lost World, felt more like a cartoon for lack of a better way of describing it. Never really had a problem with less serious Sonic stories, honestly, it was one of the reasons why I enjoyed Riders. Not to mention I tend to enjoy cartoons in general, so that helped I think. The gameplay itself, I still had fun with it. I will admit Sonic Lost World did get a bit confusing at times.

(09-19-2021, 05:00 PM)SakuraSweets Wrote: The two biggest pet peeves in the Advanced games are too many pits and the horrible emerald hunting. Otherwise, they are pretty cool

Yeah of course. I find it jarring and hilarious in Heroes when things become demented. I will say that stages tend to be very long as you progress, its worse with Team Sonic/Dark in the later levels. I don't wanna spend more than six minutes to complete a stage! lol

hmm, I have a question though, what do you think of the characters?

The characters? I've always been fond of Shadow. Sonic is cool. I like most of the older characters, though some of them are rather under utilized in stories. In terms of new characters, I think the only one from Unleashed forward I've especially liked so far is Infinite. Extremely edgy, very entertaining. xD

(10-02-2021, 01:35 PM)YamiShadow Wrote:

(09-19-2021, 05:00 PM)SakuraSweets Wrote: The two biggest pet peeves in the Advanced games are too many pits and the horrible emerald hunting. Otherwise, they are pretty cool

Yeah of course. I find it jarring and hilarious in Heroes when things become demented. I will say that stages tend to be very long as you progress, its worse with Team Sonic/Dark in the later levels. I don't wanna spend more than six minutes to complete a stage! lol

hmm, I have a question though, what do you think of the characters?

The characters? I've always been fond of Shadow. Sonic is cool. I like most of the older characters, though some of them are rather under utilized in stories. In terms of new characters, I think the only one from Unleashed forward I've especially liked so far is Infinite. Extremely edgy, very entertaining. xD

That's fine, but that's not what I meant lol

I meant how the characters behaved during this time period, their words, their actions, the writer's portrayals of the characters

In the Meta era, the characterizations...are pretty bad. With few exceptions, the characters are either written either as extreme jerks or or just one note. Tails is a constant victim of this, as the writers have no idea how to handle, and Lost World was at his worst, turning him into a jealous idiot for no reason.

@ I agree with you on the dialogue. Sonic Colors started what I'd call "lazy" writing for the sake of not coming off as cheesy? It felt like they were too scared to write something with depth so they copped out and went with something easy and light enough to mask the bad writing.

The characterizations of the characters were terrible too. Most notably in Forces where Tails cowers in front of Chaos and begs Sonic to save him. Tails was never a coward or useless. He was absolutely useless in that scene, couldn't do anything for himself. What happened to the Tails of the Adventure games where he was willing to help Sonic out and do things on his own? Or the Tails of the cartoons where he was able to take on tasks. Yeah we get he's a genius, but making him useless without Sonic was a terrible decision.

Also not a big fan of Knuckles being Sonic and Tail's bud in the newer games. I'm not saying he has to be Sonic's adversary like in Sonic 3 and Sonic Adventure(for a short time) by being tricked by Eggman but I kinda like him and Sonic to have disagreements and only team up when needed. It seems to me that Shadow has filled the role that Knuckles used to and they didn't know what to do with Knuckles so they just made him another "pal" for Sonic.

Indeed, there is nothing wrong having light-hearted dialog, but not at the expense of effort. This honestly felt like they are treating us like dumb kids, its rather insulting.
They did play it too safe, I can let it go the first time around when they start it out, getting their footing, but they just keep doing it. Even when they tried with Forces to write something serious, old habits die hard. I wanted Ken Pontac and Warren Graff to improve so badly, to step out of their comfort zone and take a risk!