Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric - Wii U

I've seen people trashing this game before even having the chance to play it, and that's sad. Although this isn't a mainstream Sonic game, remember that this isn't replacing the traditional Sonic, just a new direction existing alongside it! Graphically the game is good. Not amazing by any means, but pretty at times, though some of the up close texture work needed some improvement except on the characters which was great. It has nice shadow effects like the ones cast from light beaming through the trees in the jungle and the stages feel vast and give the game a real sense of being a grand adventure, much different from the bite-size arcade style levels in Lost World. Control can feel a bit loose at first but once you play for a bit you get used to that and the combat is frantic and fun especially with 2 players (where one uses the gamepad screen. I LOVE that!). The camera...eh. Maybe I've gotten used to the spastic camera in most Sonic games. Sue me lol. The Sound is good. The music is different but not bad. It feels less pop than the scores from older Sonic games but that's to be expected since this wasn't developed by Sonic Team. Honestly my only gripe about the game is that the framerate has a tendency to be inconsistent. It never drops to anything near unplayable, but it can be noticeable when it does happen. Let's hope Sega releases a patch for that. P.S. Props to BigRedButton for making Amy's voice less annoying. I have bad flashbacks of her yelling "Sonic!" in that squeally high-pitched tone ugh...

I've been a Sonic fan for a very long time. I've bought nearly every one of the games, and I like nearly all of them. I love Sonic 2, Sonic 3&K, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Heroes, and Sonic Generations. No matter the era, I love Sonic! I even managed to have a decent amount of fun with Sonic 06. ( I can hear the criticism already.) But, this game is an absolute disaster! It's by far the worst Sonic game I've ever played.When I first saw the teaser trailer for this game I was so excited. Like many people, I thought it looked to be similar to the Sonic Adventure games. However, my hopes for this were dashed when I saw the E3 demo. Nonetheless I bought the game hoping I would still have fun...Sonic is known for his speed. His games usually have you running at a blazing fast pace through the enemies, and to the goal. Though I seriously prefer that version of Sonic, I don't mind an occasional change of pace. They made it clear during development that this would be more of an exploration, and fighting game. Very different from the normal Sonic games. The problem is that this game doesn't just stick with that kind gameplay. It tries to be 20 things at once, and fails at all of them.For the first time in a while Sonic is not the only playable character in the game. You can freely switch between Sonic, Tails, Amy, and Knuckles at almost any time during gameplay. Each character has a unique ability to tackle certain challenges the others can't. Sonic has spindash, Tails can hover, Amy triple jumps, and Knuckles climbs certain walls. This makes sense, but feels almost entirely pointless as the abilities are rarely used to their full potential, and all the characters move exactly the same.The exploration is mediocre at best. I don't know about you, but when I'm exploring I want lush, detailed environments with different paths that lead to different places. There are a few nice looking areas in this game, but they're few and far between. You're on more or less a set path. Sure, there will be times when you have to choose a certain path, and avoid another. But, they both lead to the same place, and are extremely short. You can also switch to the other path just by changing characters most of the time. Another key part of the exploration process is puzzle solving. Yes, puzzles solving. Of course the puzzles are so simple a 2 year old could solve them. Just in case the 2 year old (or your dog) is having difficulty, the characters will tell you exactly how to solve them before you even have a chance to reach them. They will then continue to tell you how to follow that stupid blue tile 25 more times within a 2 minute period. The only true exploring comes from the 2 different hub world environments. Huge, massive, decent looking open worlds.... that are almost entirely empty! There's nothing there! Just a few collectables to look for, and 1 or 2 pointless quests. It's such a waste! The best looking areas in the game, and there's nothing to do.The fighting is, well I'm sure you've already heard, bad. It's just mashing one button until everything is destroyed. Even though this is true of many games, it's not satisfying. All the moves, and animations are the same. There are no real combos you can do to mix things up. It couldn't be any easier, or anymore mind numbingly boring. As for the bosses, don't ask.Though the game mostly has Sonic at a walking pace, they added in high-speed running sections to give Sonic his signature speed. They're very short, and only last about a minute. They feel very automated, and like the rest of the game unbearably easy. You could probably just set the controller down, and still complete those sections. They also lag horribly, and glitch constantly. I once fell through the road and died. Not off it, THROUGH IT! In addition to the high speed sections, Sonic and Tails both have the ability to "hydro dash." It allows them to run on certain bodies of water at a high speeds. Hydro Dashing is slightly more enjoyable than the other high-speed sections, but not by much.The controls in this game are really lousy, and make the platforming sections miserable. I don't know how many easy jumps I missed simply because Sonic can't jump straight to save his life... literally. The camera is crappy, and will even glitch out sometimes. Especially during the high-speed sections. There was one time when it randomly stopped midway through the track, while Sonic was still running. It refused to reset behind him, and I watched Sonic get to size of a dot before disappearing from the screen altogether. This game has more glitches than any game I've ever played, period. People complained about the glitches in Sonic 06, but from my experience Sonic 06 has nothing on Rise of Lyric. Just from a normal playthough I experienced a huge variety of glitches. Things as small as grabbing an invisible platform, to huge things like falling into a bottomless pit and walking around it. There is simply no excuse for this.The story wasn't very interesting, and at times completely random. This was supposed to serve as a prequel to the show, but it's not very impressive. There wasn't any real character development, and no answers to obvious questions. (How the heck did Sonic and the gang end up living in that village anyway?) Many of the jokes made me want to bang my head against the wall, and the characters never stop talking! I remember watching an interview before this game came out that said they wanted to give Rise of Lyric a great story that shows Sonic going from a loner, to a guy who realizes the great value of friendship. "They wanted the story to be a very important part of the game." Clearly like with the rest of the game, they started on the idea and stopped a third of the way through. The cutscenes themselves look okay though.There are countless more things I could complain about in this game, (What have they done to Knuckles!) but I think the other reviewers pretty much covered those.The only things I liked about this game were that I could play as more characters than just Sonic, and the local co-op mode that lets you play through the game with your family or friends. (Make them suffer with you. XD)Overall I think Rise of Lyric was horribly rushed like Sonic 06, but unlike Sonic 06 I don't think more development time would have made it much better. (Aside from fixing the glitches.) This game was clearly made to be an easy, and frightfully dull TV series tie-in for young children. If you want a simple game without any real challenge that you can play with your 5 year old kid, this might actually be pretty good. But, if you're a Sonic fan looking for a cool new Sonic game STAY AWAY from this! Wait for the next game developed by Sonic Team instead.

first of all Do not listen to what the bad reviews say. This is a great sonic game. Probably the best sonic game ever. There are glitches but they do not interfere with the gameplay. I agree that sonic was redisined but they made him cooler! not that he wasn't awesome before but now he has a laser lasso! The gameplay is good especially the parts where you are running and the bosses are hardcore! You fight against a robot octopus named the guardian, a giant robot worm, even classic baddies like metal sonic, and shadow not saying that shadow ls a bad guy he is more of an anti hero and of course you fight eggman and the new villan lyric. I agree that lyric is not a villain name l mean when I hear his name l think of playing the guitar but lyric is a power mad cyborg snake trying to wipe out all life in sonic's world and replace it robots. So he is more hardcore than he sounds. So this is a great sonic game and the levels are cool and there is dialogue throughout. Seriously don't listen to the bad reviews. Haters gona hate.

Although you may hear alot of negative comments about this game, I think it's worth the shot. I got this game having a positive attitude but still being iffy do to bad reviews and scores, but I never let reviews make my judgement on a game 'till I play it for myself. I got the game 2 days early and played some of it. It was actually quite fun, but everyone was complaining about the repetitiveness of the game and since I was at the beginning I couldn't clearly make a judgment. Now I am on the final level of the game and the only problems I personally have with the game are frame rate issues (barely) and the co-op completely down grades the graphis/frame rate, (thus why I gave the game 4 stars instead of 5.) The game also lacked a good story but it offered many LOL moments. I just wanted to say if you want a game about exploration and you can't afford or find Xenoblade Chronicles or X than this is a good pick up. Besides it's at a reasonably low price and by my standards it's a decent game so I say give it a shot if your wiling to.