sonic superstars - 4/10
its no mania 2.
if you can find this on sale or a keyshop for like $5-$10, shoot. its fine. $60 though? no. absolutely not.
it is a competent classic-styled sonic game, we thankfully don't have another sonic 4 on our hands here, but in the face of mania, a game with far better... uh, well, everything, it's bound to be disappointing. it was already going to be in my bad books and working it's way out based on the fact that they excommunicated stealth and taxman in favour of arzest. if it had have happened any time before 2021, i would have been elated - oh, my god! naoto oshima and potentially even yuji naka back on sonic for the first time in decades? that sounds amazing!
however, arzest are also responsible for, uhm... how do i put this generously... complete cut-rate slop?
like, their back catalogue includes such wondrous, dizzying heights as "spooky search from wii play motion", and "yoshi's new island aka the worst one", and even "hey! pikmin, the pretty mediocre-at-best 2d platformer that isn't pikmin". they were already pretty bad, and would have given me some cause for concern, but hey, i can excuse those, they weren't in their proper swing yet, they weren't cracking at something like our man sonic again!
in 2021, arzest infamously were the ones behind balan wonderworld. a game so supremely confused about whether it wanted to be a nights follow-up, some sort of puzzle platformer, naka's evolution of his one-button ideals, a broadway musical, or anything in-between that it fancied swinging at on it's way down. i don't need to say that it failed, really, nor that it massively reduced estimations of the work that this studio could produce. it was, arguably still is, a laughing stock.
so colour me surprised to be able to say that this game is a resounding "slightly below average".
again, it's no sonic 4, thankfully, it avoids being that woefully dull and derivative, but you're also not exactly going to be expecting mania levels of quality, and certainly nothing near 3&k. i would place this game on a similar level to sonic 2; sonic 2 itself to me being a game that rapidly deteriorates in quality in its second half by a quite significant margin, that is somewhat of a backhanded compliment. but where sonic 2 starts stellar and peters off into quite possibly some of my least favourite levels in the series, superstars, in a shocking display, actually manages to stay pretty consistent.
it's far from electrifying and certainly leagues away from originality. the level motifs are all borrowed from prior entries with barely any unique spin put on them. the new gimmicks have their moments, but likewise have such little mental staying power in my mind versus even the weakest mania stages. in terms of the moment-to-moment sonic gameplay, you can do far worse, but there's also been way better available long before it.
no, where the true complaints for me come in are with two things: the soundtrack and the bosses. let's begin with the soundtrack, as i'm actually far less scathing on it.
we have a few composers scattered across the ost this time; we have the goat tee lopes returning from sonic mania, providing more wonderful music, even if i would say that they are a fair bit more forgettable than that game, but then that's just the theme with this one; rintaro soma, returning from sonic frontiers' cyber world stages, and the fare here is comparable to there, that is to say, nowhere near my cup of tea and certainly nothing i'd be listening to on my own time, but it's alright in the moment; takahiro kai, returning from yakuzas 4, dead souls and lost judgment (i believe they may have also arranged the alex kidd theme in sonic and sega all-stars racing? don't quote me on that), whose compositions are... fine? they're oddly reminiscent of sonic jam's original score in a way, utilising a lot of wind instruments to create this breezy sound that i'm quite a fan of, honestly; ryo fukuda, coming in from yakuza as well, i believe the gaidens and infinite wealth, and... okay, we're starting to stumble a bit here. this is that kind of synth usage that just screams out "i have no idea how to actually make an old soundchip sound good so i'm just going to make some noise and call it a day", which pains me to say because his compositions on the aforementioned yakuza titles are absolutely killer, with "psycho anthem", "receive and believe you" and "bodybag" being some absolute bangers; there are a few other artists featured here, but a majority of them, i will be perfectly forthcoming, i have no prior experience with, and would therefore be unable to comment in good mind.
know which one i do know?
jun senoue.
oh my god how did it happen again.
so, you know how my praise for this game has very much been centred around this not being sonic 4? well, looks like mr. senoue didn't get the memo, because his god-awful inability to make anything good sounding with the genesis soundfont makes it's wondrous return after 10 years of grave-dancing. 10-second at best loops? you got it. overpowering genesis snare? oh, you bet you. compositions that sound outright unfitting or just plain bad? oh, for sure.
i don't know why, despite us having this 2.5d artstyle that's clearly trying to bridge this type of sonic gameplay away from being just pixellated mega drive games, we're still trying to adhere to this retro sonic (haha) signature. jun senoue has always excelled with real instruments, especially his guitar work on this franchise over the years that saw him go from being barely remembered to be credited on sonic 3, to arguably the fucking face of music in the franchise for a hot second there. but ever since he's been able to dabble back into the mega drive synth, we're seeing why he was told to sit out more and more. the man can play instruments, he can make great compositions and arrangements, but uh... yeah, no, these synthesised tracks are surely not it. his attempts this time around are so bad that they make the boss track from sonic 4 blush, and more often than not lead to me outright muting the damn music because it gives me a pounding headache.
and that was something i was light on! those boss fights, now.
yes, in keeping with the repeated mistakes, sonic superstars' boss design feels very much in line with the worst of sonic 4 episode ii's boss design - that is to say, you can hit the things once per fortnight if you remember to file a claim, and if you miss your window, you're sat twiddling your thumbs for another year afterwards whilst robotnik finishes making himself a croissant in the background or something. seriously, what gives with the incredibly, incredibly long-winded boss animations? it's consistently a slog whenever you get to a boss on account of them being invulnerable for large swathes of their encounters, and when you think you might be able to do the ol' sonic special of getting multiple bonks in at once in a satisfying manner to demonstrate your skill and knowledge of said encounter, uhh, no, actually. there seems to be a solid 10 seconds of boss i-frames before you can even think about hitting them again, a feat that might actually be worse than s4e2, which is certainly an achievement of some sort. it is truly hair-pulling how utterly banal the boss encounters themselves are, too, more often than not killing me due to attrition more so than any actual mistakes i made. seriously, i timed out on bosses in this game a few times, just because you need to have a few minutes set aside in order to actually fight them. the most aggressive examples of this are, of course, the final boss(es), and as a result, are an exercise in frustration. a truly sour note to end the game on.
but, for what's here in the regular gameplay department, the first playable amy since, like, 2006, and the addition of trip, who i do really like as a character, it gets a passing grade. it's nothing to exactly write home about (despite what my wall of writing here might imply), but it's also largely inoffensive. until it is.
