Sonic Lost World
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Rise against the Deadly Six!
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Sonic Lost World is a platform game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega. Initially, the game was a Wii U and 3DS exclusive due to an agreement between Nintendo and Sega.
A Steam port was released after the exclusivity deal expired.
Plot
At the beginning of the story, Sonic and Tails are chasing their long-time enemy Dr. Eggman and his robot henchmen, Orbot and Cubot, on the Tornado. Sonic demands Eggman to release the animals he is carrying in a capsule. Eggman complies with Sonic's demand but sends the animals falling to their doom. In an attempt to save the critters, Sonic spin dashes out of the Tornado, trying to unlock the capsule but misses the button on the capsule and before Tails is able to turn the Tornado around in order to give Sonic another chance to save the animals, Eggman fires a laser at the Tornado's wing, forcing the two to make an emergency landing on a mysterious floating continent known as "Lost Hex".
As Sonic and Tails go to rescue more animals under the request of Knuckles and Amy, Eggman has enslaved the Deadly Six, six demon-like creatures called Zeti, working for him. When Eggman says he wants Sonic destroyed, one of the Deadly Six, Zazz, goes after him, to which their leader, Zavok, is interested to find out more about him. Sonic defeats Zazz twice at Windy Hill.
After Tails fixes the Tornado, Sonic goes to Desert Ruins, where Eggman sends Zomom, the fat gluttonous Zeti, after Sonic. He is also revealed to be controlling the Deadly Six using the Cacophonic Conch which causes them pain if they disobey or offend him. After Sonic defeats Zomom the first time, Eggman activates a machine called the Extractor to drain energy from Earth so he can take it over. However, because the machine is unstable, he is forced to shut it down to avoid destroying Earth. Zavok eavesdrops at this event and expresses interest in doing so. After Sonic defeats Zomom a second time, he finds Eggman controlling the Deadly Six with his conch and kicks it away (ignoring Tails' warning not to). Because of this, the Deadly Six are now free of Eggman's enslavement and manipulate the magnetic fields around the Badniks and make them attack Eggman. In the resulting battle, Cubot's body is destroyed (with his voice chip damaged in the process) and Orbot takes his head to safety, while Tails is injured and Sonic grabs him to get him to safety. Sonic, Tails along with Eggman and the two robots escape from the battle.
As Sonic goes to Tropical Coast, the oldest member of the Deadly Six, Master Zik, goes to fight Sonic in order to test him. After Sonic defeats Zik the first time, Zomom expresses interest in killing and eating Eggman. Zavok decides to take revenge by destroying Earth and using its energy to increase their power and activates the unstable Extractor, which begins to drain Earth's energy. Amy, who is currently with Knuckles, tells Sonic of Earth's peril. After Sonic defeats Zik a second time, Eggman tells Sonic that the Deadly Six are destroying the earth. As destroying the Extractor would cause a cataclysmic explosion, Eggman must reprogram it to shut down. Thus, Sonic and Eggman must work together to stop the Deadly Six, against Tails' wishes, saying that they didn't need Eggman.
When Sonic enters Frozen Factory, after Tails fixes Cubot's broken voice chip (which made him talk like a pirate - again), he and Sonic get into an argument since Tails thinks that Sonic trusts Eggman more than him to shut the Extractor down, even though Sonic tries to explain himself. Zeena, the only female Zeti, is encountered by Sonic, but is busy with coating her nails. After Sonic defeats her twice, Orbot puts Cubot's head on a snowman. This inspires Tails to put his head on a destroyed Crabmeat. Eggman considers blowing up the Extractor to kill the Deadly Six even though it would mean killing many innocents. When Cubot turns aggressive and attacks Tails, Eggman unexpectedly saves him before Sonic knocks Cubot's head off, returning him to his senses. Sonic scolds Tails for nearly killing himself, further straining their relationship.
While at their base, Zavok begins to plan turning Sonic into a robot and make him their slave. Sonic, Tails and Eggman find a capsule in Silent Forest, and Sonic goes to activate it, but Tails realizes it is a trap and saves Sonic, but gets himself trapped inside the capsule, which is teleported to the Deadly Six's base. This makes Sonic grim and depressed. Zor, the sixth Zeti, and a depressing pessimist, encounters Sonic, and after Sonic defeats him, goes to tell the others that Sonic was not captured, but they have already found Tails in the capsule by now, and decide to use him for their plans instead.
Orbot goes to Sonic and asks if he can become Sonic's new sidekick if they don't find Tails, as he likes him better than Eggman; Sonic rejects the offer, saying that he will find Tails no matter the cost, but this only makes Orbot more inspired (in front of Eggman, no less). Cubot's head is attached to Orbot, much to their chagrin. Sonic fights Zavok at Sky Road and defeats him by knocking him off a robotic snake. Zavok survives, however, and plans to turn Tails into a robot and make him fight Sonic. As soon as Zavok and Zomom are out of sight, Tails grabs a toothpick in Zomom's sandwich with one of his tails and uses it to reprogram the machine.
When Sonic, Eggman, Orbot and Cubot enter Lava Mountain, they are attacked by Zazz and Zomom with boulders, causing the bridge, which they are standing on, to collapse and Orbot and Cubot fall toward the lava below. Eggman then grabs the remaining piece of the bridge and grabs Sonic's hand. Eggman then tosses Sonic onto solid ground before Eggman careens into the lava. Sonic looks down and searches for Eggman before he's forced to fall back. Zazz, Master Zik and Zomom then encounter Sonic and prepare themselves to destroy him. After seeing Amy apparently die from a lack of energy due to the Extractor's destruction, Sonic becomes even more desperate. Then Sonic encounters Zavok, Zeena and Zor, who try to convince Sonic to join them but to no avail. They then send Tails, seemingly modified into a robotic slave, after him. But Tails, due to his reprogramming the machine, is still himself and attacks the three Zeti, who retreat. Sonic fights them one by one, presumably defeating Zeena in battle before sending Zor and Zavok falling into the lava.
Sonic and Tails go to turn off the Extractor, but it has already been turned off by Eggman, who used a jet pack to avoid falling into the lava and saved Orbot and Cubot as well. He faked his death so he could be separated from Sonic and use the extracted energy to create a giant mech and take over what's left of the world. Sonic, however, defeats Eggman and his mech, foiling his plans. After that, Tails reprograms the Extractor to return all of Earth's energy and Sonic apologizes to Tails forever doubting him, mending their friendship. Eggman tries to fly away with his jet pack, but due to Sonic taking the exhaust hose from the jet pack, Eggman falls over a cliff, down to Earth. Sonic and Tails return to Amy and Knuckles, and Sonic takes a nap after "a day like today".
In a post-credits scene, it is revealed that Eggman survived his fall, falling into a soft spot of dirt. Orbot and Cubot get him out, but not before half his mustache is torn off by a rabbit, who mistakenly believes it to be a carrot. Cubot tries to reveal this to Eggman, but Orbot silences him. Eggman eventually hears them discussing it, however, and they promptly run off as he throws another tantrum.
Good Qualities
- Beautiful and well-composed orchestra soundtrack that sounds like it was composed by Heitor Pereira.
- Nicely detailed graphics with vivid and vibrant colors.
- Good and responsive controls.
- The Wii U version includes DLC levels based on franchises like The Legend of Zelda and Yoshi's Island.
- The game has some elements from the canceled Sonic X-Treme game.
- The wisps are much better integrated into the 3DS version, where they are actual additions to Sonic's moveset (aside from places where they are mandatory to progress).
- The Two-Player Race/VS Mode is a fun side-mode to play.
- Each stage has five Red Rings to collect.
- Great voice acting, as usual.
- Sonic's moveset is more fleshed out than ever before:
- The main selling point - the parkour system - is very fun to use. You can use it to scale walls with ease and run alongside them as you please.
- The double jump returned from Colors. With this, you can save yourself from a bottomless pit. It also makes you a touch faster.
- The spin dash is awesome and allows you to cross levels at lightning speed. If you hold down the spin dash button, you can also spin the dash indefinitely, keeping the game fast.
- This is pretty much a combination of his moveset from the Adventure games (aside from the Light Speed Dash's absence, save for the Hover wisp's ability).
- Sonic can turn Super in both versions of the game (in the Wii U and PC versions you just have to finish the game, while in the 3DS version, you have to complete the special stages), and best of all, Super Sonic is a stellar improvement over Generations as you get additional speed and jump height and extra attack power for your homing attack.
- The 3DS version offers the classic way to collect the Chaos Emeralds along with cool-looking and original special stages (although ruined by the overreliance on the gyroscope feature).
- The story is an improvement from previous Sonic games written by the Pontaff duo (albeit still worse than games before it), as the stakes are slightly higher than usual, characters show some actual emotions, it can get serious/intense at times and Sonic (sometimes) knows when to shut up with the dumb jokes.
- The level design (for the Wii U/PC version at least) is usually amazing.
- Dr. Eggman is finally portrayed as a more serious character, rather than being played as a joke in previous games like Sonic Colors. He still has funny moments though.
- Despite the PC Version having shortcomings, it still has some good qualities;
- You get a ton of more animals, negating the need to grind for them;
- All the wisps are controlled by buttons;
- It can go up to 4K at 60FPS;
- It can also achieve a higher framerate (or lower) if you use launch option
--F{number}, or--Fto disable the framerate lock entirely (Be warned, this may break the game, though);
- It can also achieve a higher framerate (or lower) if you use launch option
- Cloud saves and other Steam bonuses;
- Like previously with Sonic Generations, the PC version has mod support. An Improvement Mod which fixes the problems with Sonic's controls and the Levels can be found and downloaded here.
Bad Qualities
- The whole game feels like a Mario game ripoff, from the 3D aesthetics and level design to the story. Speaking of the latter...
- Despite GQ#13, the storyline is still too basic, sloppy, and straightforward. Amy and Knuckles are not even worth mentioning, and Sonic constantly spouts out stupid jokes and corny lines. Tails are flanderized as an obnoxious and jealous brat who lashes at Sonic just because he "trusts Eggman more" (That being said, he's better-written here than in Forces) and Sonic even calls him out one scene (to be fair, he didn't want Tails to get hurt, so scolding him out in worry can be very understandable), and the moment where Sonic recklessly kicks Eggman's Cacophonic Conch and frees the Deadly Six to leech the planet's energy.
- Despite Eggman being a decent villain, he has some flawed writing regarding his personality. Especially for how he is meant to be a threatening antagonist who's also entertaining. In this game, his traits of being serious & comedic don't have a level of balance to them and the direction of his characterization can come off as vague and confusing in hindsight (a good example of this is how he had an infamous moment of getting seriously vengeful towards the Zeti by claiming how he wants to strangle them and eat them for being provoked by Zavok and Zazz, yet he is treated as the object of ridicule type of villain in later cutscenes).
- Even though the Deadly Six were okay introduced in this game. but they are forgettable. They are very generic and one-dimensional bad guys, as well as possible rip-offs of the Koopalings or even other fictional groups like the Suicide Squad.
- The cutscenes try way too hard to be funny & "edgy". Aside from two funny moments of Sonic roasting Zeena, Zomom whacking Sonic with a long sandwich for correcting Sonic's annoying retort, and the memorable scene of Eggman unleashing his anger onto the Zeti by punching a screen, it generally never works at all since the humor is very childish, insufferably unfunny and it's attempts at being edgy come off as hasty & lame than anything else.
- The Rhythm Wisp is the lamest of the bunch.
- Many levels have random and rather intrusive gimmicks that often don't control well.
- The parkour system is a bit of a hindrance until you get used to it.
- Collecting 100 rings originally didn't give you an extra life. This was later included in a patch due to fan backlash.
- Despite the decent controls, you need to hold a button to run (like most Mario games), which further emphasizes how this game tries to get a piggyback ride on Mario's success.
- The PC optimization is very mediocre, leading to several technical difficulties (which are frame drops), even on PCs that can run the game above its requirements. It can also consistently crash on high refresh-rate monitors, especially early game.
- Speaking of which, the PC Port is inferior to the Wii U version in many ways:
- As mentioned above, the optimization is terrible;
- The Zelda and Yoshi DLC packs were removed, but the Nightmare DLC remains;
- 2P Battle is gone;
- RC vehicles were canned;
- The carnival was removed, but the animal requirements have been adjusted accordingly, so at least you don't need to grind for them;
- There's no Anti-Aliasing or filtering of any kind;
- And the cutscenes look very bad. They weren't even re-rendered, and are super pixelated.
- In typical Pontaff duo fashion, it has some very cringeworthy lines, like "I've been dreamin' about pounding his sorry blue butt!" and "That was COOL; pun entirely intended."
- The Nintendo 3DS port, while not the worst Sonic game, is an inferior port due to this reason:
- Some levels are taking too long to complete, it can be 10 to 30 minutes of gameplay.
- The Bonus Level is worst due to mandatory gyro controls.
- The objective of the Bonus Levels is to collect as much as you get. The problem is the gyro controls are extremely unresponsive which can be a headache, and this bonus level is considered the worst bonus level ever in the Sonic games.
Reception
Sonic Lost World has a very polarizing reception, and critics disagreed over what to make of the game as a whole. The Wii U version has the highest ratings, standing at 63/100 on Metacritic, the 3DS version is the 2nd highest at 59/100, and the PC version has the worst reviews, standing at 53/100. Many reviews generally liked the level of designs, graphics, and music. The controls and the Wisps were criticized, at least on the HD Versions. The 3DS version was praised for the controls and the Wisps, but some disliked the level design. However, all versions were blasted for the gimmicky levels and story. Many critics noted the game's quality felt like a rollercoaster.
Trivia
- It spawned the Sexy Tails meme.
- It has 100 Steam Achievements, which is by far the largest of any Sonic game on there. For comparison, Sonic Generations has 49 and Sonic Forces has 48.
Videos
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