Week 2 - Forcing My Way Through

 Week 2 of the Sonic 2021 Challenge is almost over, and wow what a frustrating week of gaming it's been! This is my first blog entry since I decided to start this wonderfully hair-brained idea of trying to get the true ending to 65 Sonic games, we've completed 8 games so far and the focus of this particular entry will be how each of those games went! So without further ado, here's the eight games we've completed so far...

 Sonic 1 (54 minutes) - a smooth run to get us started. Only used the save state system within Kega Fusion once for a Chaos Emerald, the rest was plain sailing. Could have maybe gone quicker, but happy to get it done under an hour.

 

Sonic 2 (1 hour 6 minutes) - first deathless run of the challenge! All emeralds gained within Emerald Hill, used a save state a couple of times to do it but after that it was a case of hold right, press jump, collect 50 rings and turn super. Also helps that after a high school loss in a competition(speedrun Death Egg, was given a dodgy controller to use) I've practised that last boss lots over the years. Can get it done quite quickly now!

Sonic Eraser (5 minutes) - first joke entry of the challenge, and another deathless/lossless run. Doesn't matter which mode you choose, you get the same ending - so I set the difficulty to 0 and went for it. Easy win.

Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (2 hours 12 minutes) - and then we get to the first shit game of the challenge. Puyo Puyo itself is a fun game, especially in multiplayer - but oh man, single player mode employs that most horrible of tropes, the Cheating Bastard AI. What should have been a simple run ended up with spending up to 20 minutes on some levels as it cheated that hard. "The AI can't possibly win now, it only has 2 gaps to hang on I lost just like that wtf" and it wasn't just the one time it happened. I actually won the game on a massive fluke, Robotnik threw the game by stacking all in one column for no reason and hitting the height limit. Very frustrating game to play, glad I don't have to go back to it.

Sonic 3 (1 hour 11 minutes) - all the endings are more or less the same bar a change of sprites, so I went for Sonic as he is without doubt the fastest character. All emeralds were easily acquired, abused Super Sonic where possible and if I'd pushed a bit harder, maybe I'd have gotten under the hour mark. Ah well.

Sonic & Knuckles (Sonic's path) (1 hour 48 minutes) - similar story to Sonic 3, except Warzak85DF asked if I was going to replay the game as Knuckles. The aim of the challenge is to get true endings, and S&K has two different paths with different endings. So it looks like I'll be revisiting these pair of games to complete them as Knuckles. As for the run itself, emerald big rings were tricky to find - I'm used to playing the two games as a complete experience, which means a lot of subtle differences including big ring locations. With a lot of patience and some help from the chat, we got them all come Lava Reef and blitzed the rest of the game.

Sonic 3D Blast (2 hours 10 minutes) - looking back I should have played this with an analog stick instead of a d-pad. Wasn't very well received at the time but has aged well, in my opinion. Especially if you use an analog stick! Emeralds were easy to gain(apart from that last one, screw you) and I died a small amount of times but they were by and large my fault. It was nice to play a non-Sonic Team Sonic game that let me feel like failure was my fault and not badly coded AI. If you ever get the chance, I implore you to find the Director's Cut of this game and try that.

Sonic Forces (3 hours 9 minutes) - a part of the challenge is to not skip cut scenes, so as to give the audience something to watch other than me holding right and pressing jump. I swear there were more cut scenes and pointless dialogue exchanges than actual gameplay,which was filled with challenge-less platforming and cheaty deaths. Boss fights were a test of endurance as opposed to skill(wait for the window of opportunity, press jump 3 times, repeat), and there was little to incentivise me to go do the side quests. I first played this when it originally came out three years ago, and uninstalled it after. This time, I was happy to have the chance to uninstall it on stream for everyone to bear witness to.

Elapsed time so far, 12hr 35min. Currently we're about 1/2 way through Sonic Spinball, another frustrating experience and I'm wearing out F5/F8 in Fusion. It's okay though, I'm happy to get another crap game out of the way - but I don't think I'll be playing '06 any time soon, I need to balance the books with a few more good games before then!