Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood

[Manspeed]

Nobody really told me the whole plot. I have yet to actually play the game myself. I'm just repeating what people told me. They seemed to like things like that in the dialog, though.

[kirbychu]

I actually finished this game a few days ago.

My god.

I want the hours I spent on it back.

[Manspeed]

I actually got a chance to play it today. Two minutes in in already felt like a half-assed version of Mario & Luigi. Roughly 2-3% of the Sonic fans I've observed actually love the game. The rest think it needs work. Maybe that sequel they promised us will actually be of professional quality.

[kirbychu]

I think "half-assed version of Mario & Luigi" is being extremely generous.

It's much more like a half-assed version of one of 4Kids' flash mini-games.

And that is also being generous.

[Manspeed]

OK fine. It felt like a quarter-assed version of Mario & Luigi.

[Hiker of Games]

It's that bad, huh? I figured that given the people working on it, that it would be a rare moment of Sonic games being good. He usually has better luck on handhelds.

[kirbychu]

That's what I thought too. But this is by far the worst Sonic game I have played. Worse even than the Traveller's Tales games of the late 90s! Here's a paste from a post I made on another forum after finishing it...

"All in all, what with the constant references the game makes to BioWare's website... I feel like they just threw this game together as a cheap way to hook some DS-playing kids into their games using a well-known brand."

After finishing the first chapter, the game stops you to tell you to go to BioWare's website. It'll also remind you occasionally after battles, and here is an actual transcript of the game's ending...

* Ship gets shot down.
Tails: Wow! Do you believe that ending?
Sonic: Seriously! It looks like we're done for!
Tails: At the hands of Eggman, no less! I can't believe he'd turn on us like that!
Sonic: Yeah. Surprise, surprise.
Tails: My biggest concern is how he could have built up such an army so quickly. We weren't gone very long!
Sonic: I didn't recognize the world when we got back. It looked as if we'd been gone for years!
Tails: I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of things... if we manage to survive that crash!
Sonic: Good point. I guess we'll have to wait for the next episode.
Tails: What should we do in the meantime?
Sonic: We could talk about the team that came up with this caper in the first place.
Tails: That should kill some time! Great idea, Sonic!
Sonic: Yeah, I know.
Tails: This game was developed by BioWare. Did you know BioWare was founded by a pair of doctors?
Sonic: Doctors AND game developers? No way!
Tails: It's true! Dr. Greg Zeschuk is the President, and Dr. Ray Muzyka is the CEO of the studio.
Sonic: Did these guys make the game themselves? It would take a pair of real mathletes like YOU to do that.
Tails: No. They have a handheld group to do that for them. The handheld group is comprised of several departments.

They go on and on about BioWare for a while after that. They might as well have called the game "Sonic the Hedgehog Endorses BioWare Chronicles: The Brotherhood of Make Your Mom Buy BioWare Games".

I'm thinking I like my BioWare and Sonic seperate from now on, thanks, Sega. I have Mass Effect. I have Sonic Unleashed. Chronicles is like an unholy fusion of the two. A mutant bastard child that should be put down quickly.

[Hiker of Games]

... wow. That is unbelievably pathetic.

[Manspeed]

Some of the codex entries about the characters and stuff are actually copied right off of Wikipedia, from what I understand. Can a game be that amateurish?

[Da Robot]

Here's a little project that someone* playing this game should do.

1) Count up all the Bioware mentions/references.
2) See how long it takes to play through the entire game (should be pretty easy)
3) Calculate the "Bioware mention per minute ratio" using steps 1) and 2).


* Not one of us, find someone from a Sonic fansite to do it.

[Hiker of Games]

I think that might be against the Geneva Convention.