Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric & Shattered Crystal (Reviews)

I played both the Wii U and 3DS versions of the Sonic Boom game series. Now here's my opinion.

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Wii U version: -The game has horrible frame rates. Within my first 15 minutes of playing the game got down to less than 10 frames per second. -The game caps off at around 30 frames per second (most games have 60 frames or an unnoticeable 30). -This version has lots of bugs such as the homing attack not working randomly, and levels loading before there designated cut-scenes. -I had a loading screen crash on me right after beating a boss, meaning I had to repeat the previous fight. -Sonic is horrifically slow, his movements are not much more then a slight jog. This is an increased annoyance by how far away parts of the hub world are from each other. -There is no sense of direction, the map is hidden away on a second pause menu and it doesn't even tell you which way you are facing. The most the map tells you is a rough estimate on where you are located. -The hub word is huge, and empty. But what makes it terrible is that with sonic being so slow and the map being worthless I became infuriated with locating myself. -The story is alright. (It is defiantly not the 3DS version's horrible story, which I'll get to). The Wii u versions story is about an ancient evil snake, time travel, and collecting a bunch of crystals. -Hearing "That's got a nice ring to it." and other phrases every other ring you pick up begins to drive you up a wall. -The graphics look horrific as objects will appear and disappear in the background. The game just looks like a PS2 era game and not in any sort of good way. Somehow this game is suppose to be using the beautiful Cry engine and it falls short of being even the slightest bit good looking. Also the cut-scenes in my opinion look even more washed out then the game at times. -Another annoyance is how annoying the characters can be, I found myself constantly telling the characters to be quiet as they repeated the same one liners while fighting enemies. -All of the abilities and power ups are pointless in this game. -The Wii U version has the best abilities locked unless you complete the 3DS version and transfer data to the Wii U version. -You occasionally have to switch between characters to clear certain areas, but its basically pointless most of the time. -Also Knuckles is horrific looking, and his stupidity is way more exaggerated then I ever could have imagined.

SONIC BOOM WII U GETS A 3/10

(I personally prefer Sonic '06, the game everyone loves to hate on.) I back up this statement with the fact that the stages in Sonic '06 are actually fun even with how broken the game is. The stages are more interesting the enemies are more fun to fight, and the overall story is better as little as that matters for a Sonic Game.

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3DS version: -It plays faster then the Wii u version but not by much. -You have to switch between the characters in this version much more frequently, which is highly annoying as the levels are sectioned off for each meaningless task. So you will be switching constantly every 10 feet. -Amy is replaced with the new Sonic Boom original character named Sticks who I absolutely despise. Her personality is all over the place and she constantly speaks nonsense. -The story for this game is the worst Sonic story by far, it is just constant bickering of the characters back and forth. Nothing gets really accomplished with no outstanding resolution, it is all just really weird and out of place. There are a bunch of shoehorned jokes that are not funny and only deterred me from continuing. -There is only 1 boss fight -There are 3 pointless races. -5 or 6 speed stages which are like a horrible version of temple run, where the controls become reversed when sonic is upside down. -There are only 8 main stages in the game. -Unlockables in this version are very boring and unwanted. Things like the developers logo in 3D. The only good unlockables are the one's that help you find hidden objects however it only works in the places you have already been in the stages. -By far the absolute worst part of this game is the amount of back tracking. As you proceed through the game you will unlock the rest of the characters which will allow you to go to previous levels to collect missed hidden objects that are only accessible by certain characters. This would not be a problem if it was optional, however you are required to collect a set of objects on each of the levels to get completion tokens in order to proceed to other levels to complete the game.

EX: For example if I beat level 1 and 2 I received 2 tokens total, one for beating each stage. Now in order to play level 3 I need 4 tokens which I can only get for collecting all of the objects in the previous levels. This now means I have to go back through and find every little hidden object on the previous stages so I can complete the next level.

SONIC BOOM 3DS GETS A 2/10

This version seems to be more popular with other reviewers, however the monotony of going through each stage multiple times to complete the story ruins what would have been a mediocre expereience.