Sonic Omens is a fan game featuring Maria as a boss and Chris Thorndyke as a character, with a complex plot involving Sonic X and Sonic Unleashed. The game has faced criticism for its story, design, and Patreon use, while some fans praise it. A user shares their critical opinion of Sonic Omens, stating that it has good graphics, music, and gameplay but poor story and voice acting. They also complain about the controls and plane sections.
A Twitter account published a 20-page document showing the toxic behavior of developers against people who think badly of Sonic Omens, claiming that they have finally proven they can make a game as mediocre as Forces. Some fans argue that the game isn’t as bad as people say, and that people overlook the gameplay and treat it as a normal Infinity Engine Sonic fangame.
One of the bigger allegations is that Ouroboros Studio paywalled previews of the game through Patreon and ran ads for it on Game Jolt, suggesting that the team has been making money for the project. At first, Sonic Omens was hated for being monetized on Patreon and having many glitches. However, the game has since been praised for its amazing graphics, seemingly solid gameplay, and entertaining writing.
📹 The Sonic Omens Controversy
If you remember a year ago I uploaded a video talking about the Problem With a Sonic Fan Game known as Sonic Omens, well …
Why was Sonic Chronicles Cancelled?
BioWare, the parent company of Sonic Archie Comics, was acquired by Electronic Arts, leading to the cancellation of any upcoming games. In 2011, former head writer Ken Penders filed a lawsuit against Electronic Arts and Sega of America for plagiarism, making a sequel unlikely. The sequel was permanently cancelled, and it is unclear if Sonic will ever receive another RPG game. Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood remains a stand-alone game, but it could be possible for another RPG game with Sega’s recent acquisition of Atlas.
Is Sonic Omens worth it?
The author, a long-time Sonic fan, shares their love for the game from its early days in the PS2 port of Sonic Heroes to 2011’s Sonic Generations. They have tried to consume everything Sonic, including the TV series he was part of, like Sonic X. Despite the challenges of SEGA’s inconsistent treatment and a hostile fanbase, the author still takes moments to appreciate the old days.
Despite their love for Sonic, the author has never invested in the fangame scene. They have been aware of romhacks and mods but have never played full-fledged fangames or 3D fangames. They have only played one full-fledged game and have always been concerned about the complexity of these games. The soundtrack is also praised for its amazing quality.
In summary, the author shares their love for Sonic and their appreciation for the old days of fangames, despite the challenges of SEGA’s treatment and the complex nature of 3D fangames.
Who is the bad guy in Sonic Omens?
In Chapter 1 of the Sonic Omens fan game, the Exiled, a banished Metarex, is exiled by Dark Oak for disagreeing with his agenda. He was once befriended by Chris Thorndyke, who died of unknown cause. The Omens, monsters that protect emeralds, are involved in their fight. Sonic, Eggman, and Tails agree to stop the Omens and Exiled, and Shadow fights a hologram of Maria, who is actually Exiled. Sonic intervenes to stop Exiled from messing with the flow of space time, and Omens attack him with their super omen powers.
The Exiled dies, and the Emeralds are destroyed, causing the power to go into Chip’s bracelet. Sonic destroys the bracelet and saves the world, while Eggman, Tails look at the Exiled stronghold and give some last remarks.
Who is the bad version of Sonic?
Scourge, originally known as Evil Sonic, was a doppelganger of Sonic, with a black leather jacket, boots, and dark sunglasses. He occasionally wore Sonic’s shoes, but was heavily reinvented by artist Patrick Spaziante. Scourge’s appearance was more distinct, with angular ears, flame designs on his jacket, and a variety of colors on his shoes. He also had red sunglasses, two large scars on his abdomen, and an exaggerated pointy-toothed grin. His fur color varies between colorists, and he sometimes wore fingerless gloves, but standard white gloves are more common.
Scourge also wore a crown, a three-spiked, grooved dark piece on his forehead. Initially, a potential “golden” Super form was mentioned, but artist Tracy Yardley and writer Ian Flynn proposed alternate design concepts, ultimately resulting in an unusual Super form with purple fur, red eyes on black, and partially inverted colors on his clothing.
Is Sonic exe good or evil?
Sonic. exe, also known as X, is the main antagonist in the Sonic. exe creepypasta and its sequel Round 2. He is an eldritch interdimensional energy-based entity created in a void and takes the form of Sonic. He plans to enslave humanity once it merges with Earth. Sonic. exe is known for killing his closest friends, including Tails, Knuckles, and Eggman, without regard for Sonic’s feelings or intentions.
What is the controversy with Sonic Chronicles?
Ken Penders filed a lawsuit against Sega of America and EA Games, alleging that the characters from Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood were heavily influenced by Archie Comics. The lawsuit was dismissed by Judge Otis Wright, despite mutual agreement between both parties. Penders refiled the case, and the trial was delayed until January 2012. The case was dismissed again by Judge Wright, and Penders filed an appeal with the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
In March, Penders filed an appeal with the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and Judge Berman ruled against summary judgement in the ACP v. Penders case. ACP and Penders agreed to terms of settlement, with Archie not agreeing with Penders’ claims of ownership but not pursuing a legal claim against him if he uses the properties.
Sonic the Hedgehog 247 was released in April, marking the final canonical appearance leading up to the Second Genesis Wave. Both ACP and Penders’ lawyers met in court and were desperate to settle. A settlement agreement was formalized in June, and on September 4, Sonic the Hedgehog 252 was released, with the terms of the settlement agreement and the Super Genesis Wave taking effect. The Ninth Circuit appellate court upheld Judge Wright’s initial ruling, and Penders continued to explore additional legal options.
Is Sonic Omens a real game?
Sonic Omens, a 3D platformer video game developed by Ouroboros Studio, was released on March 14, 2020, and is set between Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Colors. The game is an episodic format, with the final episodes set to release on August 10, 2022, on Gamejolt for Windows. The game uses Unreal Engine 4, a modified version of Oban’s Infinity Engine framework, and aims to explain the discontinuation of the Chaos Emeralds in modern Sonic games and connect Sonic X with the main Sonic canon.
Is Exeller a good guy?
Exeller, a former Highest from the extinct zero-class, is the main antagonist in the 2018 platformer game Sonic. exe: The Spirits of Hell and its 2021 sequel, Sally. exe: The Whisper of Soul. He is a cold-blooded murderer who spirals into insanity after a carefree life. He is the arch-nemesis of Sally Acorn and the brother of Alice. Exeller is voiced by DarkBox, who also voices Knuckles the Echidna, Pervision, Sark, and Negagen from the Sonic. exe: Nightmare Version series. He is also mentioned in Sally. exe: Continued Nightmare – Eye of Three.
Is Sonic Chaos bad?
Sonic Chaos, also known as Sonic and Tails, is a platforming video game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, developed by Aspect and published by Sega for the Sega Game Gear and Sega Master System. It is the third 8-bit game in the series and the follow-up to Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The plot begins when Doctor Eggman steals one of the six Chaos Emeralds, causing the other five to scatter and South Island to sink into the ocean. Sonic and Tails must retrieve the Emeralds and stop Eggman’s plan to save the island.
Chaos is based on its predecessor and features new movesets, power-ups, and mechanics. It is the first 8-bit Sonic title to feature Tails as a playable character. Initially, Sonic Chaos received positive reviews for its graphics and gameplay, but it received mixed reviews in retrospect, with many critics stating it was too easy and the presentation was lacking in quality.
Which Sonic game isn t canon?
Ian Flynn initially considered Sonic Spinball and Sonic Labyrinth non-canon, but later referred to them as part of the established timeline. The “Sonic canon” refers to all pieces of Sonic the Hedgehog media set within the same universe. This article is organized into the latest “official canon” of the series, which may change as the canonicity of the series and its spin-offs constantly changes. The main canon is introduced by titles in the Sonic the Hedgehog series of video games, with some minor titles left vaguely canon.
This canon is shared by certain spin-off media, such as Sonic Prime and the IDW Sonic the Hedgehog comic series. However, the relation and chronological placement between events depicted across these forms of “main canon” media is often left ambiguous. The contents of this article may change completely in the future as the canonicity of the Sonic the Hedgehog series and its spin-offs constantly changes.
What is the Sonic Omen controversy?
Farkle has shared a document titled “Sonic Omens and the Downfall of Ouroboros”, which alleges that the team of Ouroboros Studio harassed negative feedback, replaced voice actors without warning, paid for previews through Patreon, made money through Game Jolt ads, and sexualized a 12-year-old child, Maria. The developers admitted to finishing the project “out of spite”. The team likely paid for previews through Patreon and ran ads on Game Jolt, which could be considered a violation of Sega’s copyright laws.
The music for the game was also alleged to be stolen, with composer John_R1se claiming to have stolen the track Oil Rig Race from Cars 2: The Video Game and altered the instruments, claiming it as his own work.
📹 The REAL Truth Behind Sonic Omens Controversy & Google Doc Drama
Sonic Omens Final Chapter just came out but the drama around it is MASSIVE. Lots to Review. The Maria problem is a valid …
IMPORTANT UPDATE: In response to this all, Ouroboros dropped their own document and it confirms everything I thought. It even goes into the Maria situation, and shows evidence and the artist, who’s a Ukrainian Girl. Lots in here, and it’s a quick read twitter.com/BOLT59117837/status/1561803237690429442?t=XNyW5wnm_Dfu7v8JCmuB4w&s=19
Honestly a part of me sees this game as a necessary evil. I feel like we needed a game like this to humble the community a bit cuz honestly I’m tired of every single fan game being treated like it’s the second coming of Christ and I’m just done with all the “SeGa HiRe tHIs mAN” crap. Although triple trouble 16-bit, and the fallen star are some good stuff.
As a person who beat omens and watched the whole article, i have a few things to say. What went on with the developers is wild af, it’s so divisive and messed up that I just shut my brain off. Yet when it comes to me as a player, by playing their game I’m not supporting it financially cause it’s free. I just played it for fun. So in terms of gameplay alone, it is very difficult, yet I thirsted for that kind of challenge. The controls aren’t terrible and you have to change your playstyle a bit, you can’t just boost like a maniac and if you want to beat the level faster you just need to memories (Like literally any sonic game). Most levels were actually really good, if I’m being honest this game is very difficult to speed wise and would take a lot of time to master, but the game is beatable. The cutscenes are decent and the voice acting is not great. The bosses are way too difficult and the tails plane levels are very semi-hit or miss. The story was good in the first few chapters but then got way too fan crazy by the end. Just a big bag of wild. And above all, The game graphically is very nice and the music is personally my favourite part of the game, even have a few of the songs downloaded for when I’m playing sonic generations Overall I really liked this fan game and just like the infinity engine, I don’t regret playing it but it still has many problems in-game and outside it.
Bringing some new info on the table. Sonic Omens was a project made out of spite and had a DLC planned. They stole assets from the Infinity+ framework and apologized only when this was made public (source : TheFizzWizz, creator of the I+ framework). So they credited IE+ staff, under the Backers&Contributors list, implying they may have paid to help the game. Because of this, the IE+ team had to rebrand. The Eggman VA for the game had a mental breakdown after struggling on the Maria boss, and the Dev team even mocked him on stream. Bolt mocked ChaosX on Twitter by saying his game had better physics. Which is why ChaosX, after all the OmensSweep, answered with a “Consider this your bad Omen” Shadow picture. If Omens had a couple of hundreds of dollars in their pockets and didn’t influence anybody, okay. But Omens has influenced a huge amount of people and some people in the future might also open a Patreon to make people pay for updates. They’re not the only ones and they won’t be the only ones, which is why Sega inspects their Discord. Now, some stuff I’ll add. Not everyone likes struggling against bosses until they break their controllers. In the bosses, you just hit the same spot over and over and flee (not for the plane bosses) And in my opinion, Tree Palace, every plane level, most bosses are bad. I loved Area 99 and Chaos Paradise. It’s not because a fangame has better quality overall than any previous fangame that you can’t critic it. No hate to Sonic Show and I don’t mean to in any way.
I love myself a good dumpster fire. My take is that most of the controversy is overblown, my Racoon main man isn’t being given a fair shake, and the one seriously objectionable thing to the entire matter (The Maria deal) is probably due to a difference in Cultures. I would still rather play Omens over Sonic Forces.
Throughout this whole situation I’ve had a sense of neutrality. I will admit that in 2021 when the Patreon news broke loose I was negative but for some reason I couldn’t be brought to care much even with what was supposedly “more damning evidence”. The only thing that got me was the Maria stuff and yeah that’s pretty creepy and I do not condone it but I’m not gonna run around calling the creepo who did this and much less the entire team a bunch of p3dos. Other than that I kinda just watched one or 2 negative articles on it and filtered it out of my brain since I don’t have Twitter and don’t wanna download the game and have my computer explode on me. After putting some more thought into this time around, I did get really confused about the patreon stuff because the arguments in defense of stuff like fanart and Team S3ason being “SEGA’s a articlegame company. Obviously they would care more about articlegames” had me like “yeah, but they still make money through those other mediums and at the bottom line Sonic as a whole is their property” but just kinda went with the crowd on that one so my bad. I didn’t even know how little they were making on patreon. That’s bread crumbs for a 3D game. I still don’t have any intention to play Omens but this is the first time I’ve seen a lot of gameplay footage outside of the underwhelming Jungle level and while I can’t agree or disagree on the games quality, ngl, looks kinda fire. I’m glad this article exists to clear the air of misconceptions as well as actually looking more into the document no one (including me) read.
I first saw sonic 2020 and thought “this looks pretty alright” and “cool animated cutscenes” and left it at that. When I saw Sonic 2020 become Omens, I legit felt it looked great and was really excited to play the full finished product when it came out, but then “Sonic Fans” came in with their “controversy” bit and since I always steer away from drama around Omens and as much as I didn’t want to, turned a blind eye to the game in question. The last thing I wanted to do was play a game I would have genuinely enjoyed and had a lot of positive things to say about it, to only feel guilty about it and less talkative on social media than I already am. I appreciate this article because not only does it help me understand this horrid controversy, but gives me a better outlook on Omens again and I feel really excited again to try it out here soon… when I get a viable functioning computer since mine is walking on a tightrope right now lol. Oh also, the Maria thing is of course bad and is a huge no no to the person who deliberately kept the no no’s in game and did little to nothing to make better, and quite literally changed it to something that to me is just as bad if not worse. Also also, is it just me, or did someone seriously go through the games files to quite literally look for Maria’s panties??? Like what were you planning to find under that dress hmm? What made you think too look??? Whatever it’s just something I’d rather not think about. Either way, I can’t wait to play Omens as soon as I get the chance!
I’ll I’m gonna say right now is, I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk about spark the electric jester when you know nothing about it cause besides being sonic inspired it literally is it’s own thing and saying “it’s just a sonic game with the models swapped” is a big disservice to the game especially sense it’s not a fan game. Besides that there’s a few other problems to talk about here but I’m just too annoyed to talk about them.
GT has a smaller scope and completes what it aims to under that scope. The VA work in GT is still a yikes though. That being said, if you liked Omens this much, you’d LOVE Spark the Electric Jester 3 EDIT: I see that you mentioned it in passing during your article, and I IMPLORE you to give the game a chance. It’s not just some Sonic knock-off. Spark deserves more recognition and it’s kinda disappointing that you just diminished it’s appeal because others are doing the same to Omens, that’s not fair to it.
I honestly feel the sonic fanbase could be more gentle with how they critisice. I feel great knowing this project was finished, and in the end, i think it looks pretty good. I think we should support this kind of games and the creators, not attack them for listening and adding what the fans asked for.
13:40 Okay, the reason why the Omens Patron thing was an issue is because Sonic article GAMES are Sega’s main source of revenue, the core of their business plan, their bread and butter in other words, when it comes to this franchise, not merchandise, not artwork, though those can also be notable sources of revenue as well. I mean, technically speaking, even selling fan art, merch, etc., is a legal no, no, but because that stuff is not the main source of revenue, Sega and other companies often allow them out of good will and may even use it as free advertisement. And when it comes to making official Sonic games and promoting them, Sega uses funding that they receive from investors who are promised to receive a cut of the revenue when the games are ready for consumers to buy. As such, if an unofficial party such as the Omens team decides to make a Sonic game and sell it without Sega’s permission, Sega will lose out of any potential profit that is made, which would, in turn, piss-off every investor who funded the development and marketing of the official Sonic brand and associated projects. If that happens, then investors have every right to and most likely WILL stop funding official Sonic stuff, and when that happens, well, you will end up with no more official Sonic games at all, because where is the funding going to come from exactly? This would also cause Sega staff who work on official Sonic stuff to lose their jobs or quit, so there is a lot at stake here. This is why the Omens Patron situation is an issue, that’s how it’s different from you, a Youtuber making Sonic news stuff and putting ads on your article, because if the Omens Team is allowed to get away with profiting off their little fan game in any way, shape, or form, which already infringes on Sega’s primary market by merely existing, then what exactly is there to stop other people from doing the same thing as well?
Does anyone ever think about how none of this ever ends up mattering? Like, it just seems like this is a classic case of a Patreon project not being as cool as promised. What a surprise. Do we need an hour and a half article detailing all of the sins of the developer? I feel like it would be a lot better for everyone’s mental health if we stopped being so damn clout-obsessed and, I dunno, lived for ourselves instead of dying on every lame Internet hill we can?
I always think when it comes to fangames, Patreon should probably be somewhat needed to help pay the devs/artists/VAs. Sure, “omg fangame bad!!1!!” but just because you think its bad doesn’t mean you shouldn’t support the devs. Games take a lot of time and effort to make. Plus you can’t work on an empty stomach.
I was getting VERY confused about all the hate this game got, was it really that bad as people say it was? Did it really have “terrible” level design? Was the controls that bad? So I played it to see if it’s REALLY as bad as people say it was, and so far… It’s probably one of the best 3d sonic fangames I ever played. The level design in most of the game is some of the best 3d sonic level design I experienced (Except for Tree Palace and some other stuff in the later levels, but shhh…), the controls were very smooth from the most part, besides Shadow’s Chaos spear and dash abilities and the Tails tornado sections being awkward at first but quickly got used to it. And now seeing your thoughts on the controversy, I’m just starting thinking all the negative criticism is overly exaggerated and just flat out rubbish coming out of people’s mouths Guess that’s the Sonic fanbase for ya…. Anyways, Great vid.
My frustration with a lot of the Sonic Omens “gameplay” critic is that when a lot of reviewers say the games bad they just use a lot of vaueg generalities. They don’t specifiy what’s wrong or even demonstrate on screen despite this being a article format. Then there are some who have issues with gameplay that you can fine someone else playing just fine. One complaint I’ve heard people have is about the homing attacks reliance on the camera facing enemies. On the other hand others praise the homing attack because that exact problem let’s you have greater control since you can use it to attack even enemies above you, which is something you couldn’t really do in older games.
As someone who read the entire Google Doc, i instatly skipped to the google doc part, because that seemed like the best start for me. And without even perusal the entire part, I already see how extremely biased this is. The part about GameJolt ads at 51:47 is taken out of context, the doc clearly says: “If you are using Game Jolt to publish your game, you have the option to turn ads on or off. The option even says “Only do this if you don’t want your game monetized, or if your game is subject to a license that doesn’t allow monetization.” “. I might extend this comment to point out some things that are just biased or an excuse and/or lie after i finish perusal this entire article tomorrow.
1:20:20 spark the electric jester 3 is an original game and the only things that resemble sonic are loops, bouncepads, a homing attack for small enemies, and speed. It’s a sort of spiritual successor to the adventure games and feels significantly different from an actual sonic game. For instance, you have a speed ranking system, and a score ranking system with combat and a combo system, difficulty options, and it also still retains the spirit of sonic. The difference though is that the studio founder made Sonic Before and After the sequel, and put a cameo of spark’s first game in when he put the kirby beam hat on sonic as an easter egg. Free fangame made with passion, then transitioned to an original IP so he could get money.
I gotta say, I love you, I really do. Usually your takes are actually well made! But this article irks me personally. You say it’s no eggplant riding but outside the maria situation all you did was defend them or minimize the issues. Just so you know contextually, I’m a longtime Sonic player, I was never bothered with the Patreon thing long ago, to be honest I think it should be less stigmatized so better games are made (Granted Sega never takes drastic measure from it). And I don’t think the docs was released when I played the final build… All this to say, I’m not going by the background behind Omens to criticize it. I played Omens first when the public demo was released. I was hyped because I heard so much good from it. And the first few levels were good, I think they’re the best of the game! (Minus the tails level and tree level those were real pace breakers). What pissed me off then was the buggy mess I can’t seem to stop encountering and killed me multiple times when I was trying to enjoy it. But you know what? I was cool enough to let it go because it’s a demo, it could be fixed and so could have been the later levels’ layout. And hey the devs said they listened to what the criticism said a few months before the full release. So I thought, yes! I can finally enjoy its full potential. That was a big lie. Barely anything from the demo was fixed, no lessons were learned. If anything the last two speed sections was of lower quality. I don’t think you’ve looked at the games critically enough.
for me its as simple as this when it comes to gameplay and level design: – game has controller support (thats not the bad part) – it has a very lackluster controller support which forces you do keep your thumb on the right stick at all times basically – you cant do that cause you have to use ABXY as well – moving left/right when boosting is overly sensitive and doesnt flow well with having boost capsules that are really easy to miss – boost gameplay the way its done in omens isnt suited for the level design they were going for. when you have to constantly boost, jump, slide, whatever, and move the camera around cause the road is turning left/right or whatever, it doesnt feel good to play. “use a mouse and keyboard” i hear some people saying, and idk about you but thats not a solution. playing games with a touchpad is very uncomfortable for some, me included. – this also makes the quickstep a real bother to use cause you dont have a clear idea where youre going to end up when you do quick step – things just dont exist/dont work once theyre not on the screen so things like homing attack breaks. you have to move the camera to se it, and then it works. again, controller. keep that in mind after that mess, i made up my mind that omens isnt thought out well, and i dont plan to give it another chance cause these issues are not something you can fix easily, at least i dont think (edit: i decided to give it another shot with kb+mouse anyway… i dont want to hate this game but it really left a bad impression on me, and it sucks that i cant play it with my controller cause my hands hurt otherwise but oh well i guess.
For the Cars 2 music thing. I wouldn’t say it was stolen. Moreso heavily inspired by it. From the instruments sounding very familiar, to a piece that feels like a motif of Oil Rig race. I’m glad that I can see both sides to the argument through different perspectives. Thanks Sonic Show for giving an actual good argument that favors this game. I’m still kind of split myself but… To think a fangame would be as divisive as Forces…
12:27 is surprisingly simple to answer: Strictly talking about the engine itself, the lighting and effects are blinding when there’s any light, and pitch-dark when it’s darker (most notable on the build of Crisis City ported to the Infinity Engine.) The least thing you want when coursing through at warp speed is to not see anything.
I feel like with the maria situation everyone has forgotten that, while the panties were a hidden Easter egg texture. . . Ok just level with me. How many cutscenes in SONIC HEROES of all things have instances where there are INTENTIONAL PANTY SHOTS FOR AMY. AMY IS ALSO 12 AND THOSE ONES ARE ACTIVELY VISIBLE ON THE DAMN MODEL. AND THE SAME EVER GOES FOR CREAM I’m not trying to defend the person or anything, all I’m saying is that shit like this isn’t uncommon within the sonic series itself. And yes its still fucked up, yet no ones getting on SEGA’s case for it so like. C’mon guys. . .
Greetings! Voice actor for Shadow and Vector from Sonic Omens here. First and foremost, I’d like to make an official statement: your raccoon pics are so incredibly cute!!! :3 Secondly, you are an absolute GIGACHAD for daring to make such article at this point in time. It takes balls of steel to do what you did, especially when the stakes are as high as yours. You dared to talk about so many inconvenitent truths that people hating on Omens don’t want to hear. You have my respect for that! However, there’s one thing among your points I cannot grasp. When you mentioned bad voice acting, I was mentally prepared to take a well-deserved beating from you. What I was not prepared for is you actually naming me as one of the BETTER voice actors on the project, while absolutely condemning our Sonic voice actor, who is, as far as I know, the only actual professional voice actor on the project and who, unlike me, does an exceptionally great job making an impression of Jason Griffith’s Sonic. Could it be that you just can’t stand Jason Griffith’s Sonic for some reason? If so, that has nothing to do with the quality of voice acting of our Sonic’s VA. If there’s any voice actor on the project who deserves getting condemned, that would be me. However, considering that: 1) it’s a fan game, 2) it was literally my very first proper voice acting experience, 3) English is not my mother tongue (that would be Russian), 4) I never stopped trying to improve, including redoing all of my lines from the 4th episode of the previous releases.
The Cars 2 thing is stupid. A lot of rock music does that whole “play the root note, then the octave above, down to the minor 7th, and back to the above octave” thing. It’s been done to death even since the 50s, and there are trillion examples of it. The songs are both based in C, but so are a million other songs.
I’ve always been in support of Omens (mostly) and your article basically sums up my thoughts. I do think that you don’t really need to bring down GT or Spark (in which the creator, who also made BTS and ATS, is also at least neutral towards Omens) to praise Omens because it’s just disrespectful. But hey, great article. Bolt also issued a statement including a response to the Maria textures, which I’m more inclined to believe it’s a cultural issue (which might still be inappropriate by twitter standards). But anyway they’re removing it in the next patch so all’s well that ends well. I’m really not a fan of people attacking their Patreon, people are specifically asking fangame developers to be Saints, creating games out of thin air for our own enjoyment. People like Tripplejaz and LakeFeperd getting cancelled because they piqued interest in Omen’s favour and tried to be neutral really proved how immature and hiveminded this fanbase is (or just twitter in general, who knows). At least we can be certain that there will be no 3D fangames of this scale ever again, thanks to the Sonic fanbase.
While I agree with much of this article especially with the parts about the documents not really being too much of a reliable source, I don’t agree with the spark the electric jester comparison. Spark the electric jester isn’t a sonic fan game it’s an original IP that takes inspiration from sonic. The spark games aren’t just sonic games with the characters replaced with spark characters they have gameplay elements from the adventure games yes but also take other gameplay elements like combat and the use of different abilities similar to mega man or kirby. Just because a game takes inspiration doesn’t mean it’s a complete copy and paste cause by that logic undertale is just earthbound but with the undertale characters placed over earthbound characters.
This Farkle person certainly has to be some young kid who certainly needs to see a psychiatrist, should’ve been obvious from the start to people that this person had ill intent with his actions, a real shame that so many fell for his crap rather than actually fact check everything he said, then again a lot of people are doing that. Those people that fell for this probably need to see a psychiatrist as well. Apparently the warnings of fake news didn’t reach enough people. Hopefully Oroborus will create more Sonic games in the future with lessons learned and I will happily support them
“Well, if that’s the case, then where are all of the better 3D fangames?” The other 3D fangames didn’t have MONEY behind them because Oroboros Studios broke the biggest rule of fangames. Omens is polished because they were able to PAY people to make it polished. Omens has nice graphics with original 3D assets because they PAID people to make assets using crowd-funded money. In short: If we were going to pit 3D Sonic fangames against each other in some kind of competition then, yeah! Omens would be a contender for one of the best! But only because… They cheated.
I’m so glad to finally see someone who has this opinion, also what an amazing article. It’s honestly been really sad and somewhat annoying seeing all the hate this game has faced due to the document. I know they did a mistake for trying to get paid for this game which I believe is reall the only real significant point, which they sorted out ages ago; as a game designer (well studying to be one), seeing all that passion they put into the game just for it to be considered hot garbage by so many sonic fans, even going to say that there isn’t any passion what so ever, (tho I know there are many who might not like the game despite of the drama) because of the drama just never set right with me. I’m glad to see this game receive some justice for once.
I wanted to like this game, but I really just see it as way too unfair in terms of a lot of its level and boss design, with a messy, confusing story, and pretty bad voice acting. There is a lot to love, like the music (despite the weird choice to copy music from Cars 2), a few of the main stages, and I especially love some of the ideas and concepts behind some bosses, like the broken Egg Dragoon, Maria, and the Exiled. I absolutely cannot excuse the horrible stuff behind the game though, like the Patreon stuff, the fact it was finished out of spite, and the baffling textures for Maria (like seriously, what were they thinking?), and that’s really why I don’t want to support the game any further
There’s some issues with your take on the Patreon issue and comparing it to Spark 3, fan art, shirts, cartoons, Youtubers etc. Yes they’re all using SEGA’s IP and gaining money from it. The difference is; SEGA is a company that makes most of its profit off of article games. A fan using SEGA’s IP for money in a Game, is a form of media that competes with SEGA’s main source of profit (Games). Art, shirts, cartoons Youtubers etc Do Not. Sonic Omens uses SEGA’s IP, Characters, world, story elements ect which draws in fans and money. Sparks The Electric Jester is its own separate IP Characters, world ect. While the gameplay is inspired by Sonic’s platformer/momentum/speed gameplay, SGEA doesn’t own that. And the combat gameplay differentiates it enough for it to be its own thing. There’s a difference between taking inspiration and just taking. The comparisons you make don’t work because there are key differences you’ve missed. Comparing a fan game to fan art, shirts ect doesn’t work because that’s not what SEGA thrives off of producing. Comparing a game that uses SEGA’s IP to a Game with its own IP and gameplay neither owned by or ripped from SEGA makes no sense
I don’t typically get into fan games because it’s not like it’s gonna make a significant change to the canon or anything. To me personally, I find it weird that all these massive drama things and controversy is clouding around some fan project that Sega isn’t even a part of. People in this community are just so toxic and overreactive when it comes to gameplay physics and all that. That’s why I just stay away from the whole “SEGA THIS GUY MAKES BETTER GAMES THAN YOU” and “FRONTIERS IS NOTHING COMPARE TO THIS MaStErPiEcE” types of people, because they’re typically 5 year olds that have no development experience and haven’t played Frontiers yet because it’s not even out. Now if you excuse me, imma put on my earplugs so people bashing this comment can’t do anything about it
I’ve been repeating this under MOST Omens related articles. People’s hatred is completely misguided. Feel free to hate Omens’ creators as much as you want, they are not good people and while i personally don’t care about the controversy i can fully understand why would you be upset with them HOWEVER just because you hate the devs doesn’t automatically mean you should be attacking Omens. True, the game HAS obvious Flaws. But it is, quite literally one of THE Best 3D Fangames ever made and this fact is simply undeniable. For starters The voice acting. Sure it isn’t the greatest especially Shadow’s voice which is almost meme worthy but name me ONE fangame that has a proper voice acting in the first place. Next the story and writing. People call it the worst Sonic story ever which is simply a laughable statement considering we’re talking franchise which has such masterpieces of storytelling like Sonic 06, Shadow or Forces. Personally i don’t even care about the story because it’s focused around Sonic X which i never watched so whatever for from what i remember it wasn’t anywhere near 06’s levels of awful i also noticed people giving Omens shit for having couple grammar mistakes now just how pitiful you have to be? Dev’s first language isn’t english so those are to be expected and it’s not like they’re so numberous you can spot them in every text box. Next criticism the level design. Now this is just hilarious to me because Omens Level design is LITERALLY everything the fanbase was begging Boost stages to be like and yet despite that it gets called awful because apparently now people don’t want challainging stages anymore and want more forces levels again.
I’m trying to hear you out on your point in an attempt to be objective, but I have one disagreement with you. People aren’t upset that they’re trying to profit off of the Sonic ip period. They’re saying that using the Sonic IP in a article game, an industry that SEGA clearly owns and has clearly stated you legally can’t profit off of this IP in article games specifically, and then when they’re called out, they try to change the name and pretend they aren’t the same people to try and get a pretty penny. If it wasn’t a article game, profiting off of it wouldn’t be a problem because Sonic isn’t a clothes line. He’s not a famous art piece, SEGA isn’t a comic book company even if Sonic is in comics. SEGA is a article game company, and stepping into their business using their IP is the issue. You should use people who profit off of Sonic in article games to make your point. That being said, if SEGA gave the okay, then none of that really matters. At that point it’s not really anyone’s business and it’s just the internet making everyone’s problems their problems for no reason. Also, this argument would mean that they are more than in their right to profit off of making a HTTYD article game, which people criticize them for doing despite the fact that Dreamworks makes movies, not article games.
I can also say that a lot of the bugs I experienced before were still a problem again this time trying it, but actually saw a new one too. Got somehow stuck inside of a gun bot. Homed into it had got hit in the Eggman fight and just clipped into it and got stuck. As a result I got killed by Eggman’s too far from Sonic attack. Yeah it’s still buggy. But I just put the game down just now. That Maria boss fight is bullsh*t hard. Half the time the spike balls literally spawned where I’m standing making me lose my rings. And since the invulnerability frames are so short, basically die immediately as a result. I died like 10 times to it just before the last hit before I just put it down and just said no. Might come back to it, but god that’s awful. Even worse that they gave an animation for them spawning (it’s the same effect as the black aliens in Shadow the Hedgehog, but it’s so short to be worthless and at character height where in Shadow they always spawned slower and about 5ft in the air.
Im mixed. I played Omens and didn’t have the best time, but I’ll rate the game and PURELY from a gameplay perspective. I do agree with some of your standpoints but I also disagree with some. Levels: I totally agree that the levels are a tad too long. (Especially the tails ones). Splitting them up would be a nice change. I think all of them were balanced with a few exceptions, and mostly of those exceptions were glitches. The levels look amazing, there is a lot of detail with every single one of them and I love all of them. All of the Sonic and Shadow levels are pretty good gameplay wise too. Although there were times where I was just kinda of waiting for stuff to happen. For example, with every tiny cutscene for the Moldy Jungle platforming section with Shadow. The bosses are ok at best for me. I don’t think they’re at the best, but they are not the worst. The Maria boss I hated the most. I don’t think throwing every single attack at once is a “good” design. Something new and different should’ve been done for that. Like that falling section with Egg Dragoon in Sonic Generations. It was a new attack that only happened once you hit the boss a certain amount of times, although it wasn’t really challenging, I still think the devs could’ve thought about something. Anything could’ve worked really, Maria was just holograms on drones, anything could’ve been done and it could be explanable. OK now time for the Tail’s levels!!! (yay.) I think they suck. Let me explain. The first one was nice, not that challenging so you can get familiar, visually appealling and cool.
The game’s still cheeks imo, but it’s an easily avoidable fangame, so it never really bugged me. It doesn’t surprise me that a troll orchestrated this entire operation either. This fanbase has toxic people in it, as well as gullible ones. That’s not going to change anytime soon, and to be fair the team could have honestly handled this trolling far better than they have by NOT feeding into the drama. Oh well, Sonic fanbase in a nutshell.
Even I know for a fact, Sega isn’t going to stop the developers of Sonic Omens from releasing the game, or issue a Cease & Desist. Unlike Nintendo, Sega will allow Sonic fan games to exist on the internet because they do it out of love for the franchise, and are aware the fans are what help keep Sonic alive. If it wasn’t for the fans, then the franchise would’ve died years ago. And if they did have a problem with projects like Omens, then they would’ve taken down several other fan projects in the past.
i had fun when i played sonic omens and even though it was difficult and frustrated me, the amount of satisfaction i got after beating a challenge was limitless, its the same reason games like doom eternal, prototype 1 and the dark souls series are some of my favorite games of all time!! or maybe i like torturing myself with hard games, idk XD
What i want to know is this: Why would the devs being the way they are have ANY impact on you playing their game? Should i remind you that some of you STILL play Blizzard games despite the fact that it’s a common knoweledge by now that Blizzard devs are not good people? If anything not playing the game out of spite for it’s devs is an NPC behavior. You can still dislike it after playing it, but don’t come up with BS lies regarding it’s quality just because you hate people who made it.
I think this situation is somewhat in the line of, “Seperate the art from the artist.” Personally, I’m not fond of the game, but I can see the quality. Let’s start with the pros (keep in mind that I haven’t played it, and have only seen others play it, leaving my pros and cons up to debate for you lot): – Visuals and music go hard. Out of any 3D fangames, I have seen many great visual styles, palletes, and designs. Omens is one of them. And the music is divine (so I’ve heard)! – Sonic and his animations (in cutscenes) look so fluid! Not even SEGA has made Sonic and other characters look less like moving mascot costumes. Squash and stretch is the way to go with Sonic, at least for me. – Controls and gimmicks seem cool and unique. Shadow has his abilities, and you can siphon them through with the D-pad (dope). – This is filler this is filler this is filler this is filler this is filler. This is filler this is filler. This is filler this is filler this is filler. Now for the cons (Some are nitpicks, and some are unanimous): – The story… it’s like pearing into a modern 06′. Minus the kissing. – You have to have laser precision in your homing attacks (you have to stare directly at the target), otherwise you are screwed. – The level design hops and skips between speed and platforming without warning. That means whenever you’re in the flow, you get knocked out of it, which can ruin the feel. And it makes things a bit harder. – If Forces suffered from too much automation, Omens suffers from too much manual control.
I think the biggest problem I have with a lot of sonic tubers is they are always making the community out to be this one big pool of people who complain all day and act like it isn’t warranted. Sonic omens is a buggy game period. Not because of whatever engine they use but because of the coding behind it, They have done some very sketch and questionable things surrounding the production of the game especially when it comes to monetizing. People are entitled to their own subjective opinion but when a game is clearly flawed how can you possible defend something that is such then blame the fanbase for getting frustrated? A lot of opinions I’ve seen felt justified and constructive and from the streams I’ve seen this game is outrageous. Yes it’s finished but this might as well be a test build like many other fan games out there. While I applaud the devs for finishing after reading the document they no longer deserve support. These fan games keep pushing the line until one day the ability to make sonic fan games will be taken away. There’s a line that clearly shouldn’t be crossed and we all know that so why defend a project like this instead of educating people on what that line is? There’s a thing called toxic positivity as well and most sonic tubers are that.
Personally, I like Sonic Omens, not just because of the graphics but also the gameplay, sure it’s hard at first but that’s what makes it fun, the replayability is what makes this game soo rewarding cuz once you master the stages you’ll be blasting through with sonic speed, my favorite level in the game is definitely chao paradise, its usually my No.1 stage for speed running, but i could agree that the tree stage is not the best. The story is not that bad really, at least to my opinion, I like that it has connections to Sonic X and that it takes place between unleashed and colors, the voice acting…its ok, Sonic sounds fine, Tails and Amy are passable, Knuckles only has one line, Shadows english russian accent is somehow pretty funny to me and kinda cool at the same time, Eggman and Maria are definitely not the best impressions. The animated cutscenes are not great but passable, but I wonder why out of all the characters sonic is the most animated. And thats all i have to say, if you don’t agree with my opinion of this game then thats ok, we all have different opinions, and I don’t really mind that whole Patreon controversy ever since the beginning so yeah.
Omens>Forces>Lost World>Colors Ultimate>Boom I watched the whole article. The hate-bandwagon is real, and I can’t even understand the TRUE cause of the hatred. This is the highest quality 3D Sonic fangame to ever come out, and the Maria controversy (that involves 1 bad actor out of a team of developers and requires datamining to even see) doesn’t take away from the quality of the game itself. I implore anyone to find a FANGAME that at least comes close to the quality of Omens. To be fair, imo, the voice acting is ALL bad, the levels are too long (doing the Act1, Act2 thing would be perfect), the Tornado sections I could do without entirely tbh, the story is kinda cringe (but almost in a good way tbh lol), and the level design of a few of the levels is rough.
I don’t think urobouros is hard to say, but I keep thinking of Resident Evil 5 when I hear it. Just waiting for Wesker to come try and kill Chris again while he’s punching a boulder Edit: turns out it’s not spelled the same but you gotta agree it’s pronounced the same way Probs didn’t even spell the RE5 one correctly
I’m not going to complain about gameplay, because I have not played it, but from what I know, Sega and Sonic team don’t have animation or art as a top priority, they specialise in games. So if I were to lock a level behind a pay wall like the devs, that may or may not become a major Problem. Also they block most peoole sending criticism towards the game like LS Mark. And the stuff with Maria Robotnik is horrible of course. They also took music from a Cars 2 game. Of course I don’t know every single thing about this drama, and I’m not going to act like I’ve played it. However there are people who act like they play the game, when only seeing the gameplay and flashy/glowy graphics from non-commentary sonic-tubers. Also I don’t mind most of the Voice actors, Sonic, Eggman, and Tails are alright but Shadow’s VA sounds like he can’t really show that much emotion, I’m sure he might be good in other characters, but he doesn’t do a good Shadow.
This is undebatably the best complete boost-formula Sonic fangame, but it’s also the worst… that’s the state of this fangame’s placement overall. As much as I like breezing through, I think it’s pretty cool to have a challenging fangame FOR ONCE in this fandom, and the story got a good chuckle out of me, but I also liked the Metarex plotpoint… there was something worthwhile in there, no joke! I never really cared about the controversy, and I’m firm to believe the “bad girl” thing is just one person’s work (wouldn’t call it sexual since it originally was “haters gonna hate” as in Omens Haters I think), but I was kind of afraid about your stand on this topic because I legit like this website and wouldn’t want it to do poorly. One way another… I commend you for your work, my #1 source of Sonic news, you have yet to disappoint me. Surely I’m not alone when I say this.
3 big critisism when it comes to official Boost levels often are: automation, lack of challenge, too short Then you have Omens, which has pretty long lenght levels, even when mastered, requires skill, paying attention, and has little to no automation, referring to when you need to double jump to make it to platform or Homing Attack on springs you are supposed to be lunched to. Sonic fans demends things, Omens gives it to them, but still find a way to complain. Also gotta mention, I’m disappointed, that among all the “negatives” the fandom can found, I have seen NO ONE complain that in terms of level ideads, they literally just took Ori, for like a good 60%. Be it, the big Tree you have to climb that gets flooded at the end (even used the same music back when it was 2020), to the big Worm chase sequence, in the Desert ruin, with lore related marks on wall, to the final all purple with hints of red zone, with the big bad Owl. Even the opening with Tails carrying Sonic until they get caught up by a storm and GUN robots, is reminescent of Ku flying with Ori until storms hit in. But who am I kiding, the Sonic fanbase wouldn’t know about other games /j
While I don’t think modders and rom hack creators should be entitled to official funding of any sort, I do feel like donations should be acceptable. While passion is usually enough to push these talented people to completion, it’s a lot of work, and if it’s quality, it deserves some kind of compensation. While I feel their time would be better spent simply using an existing IP as inspiration instead, and making entirely new and fresh assets to develop a game as a love letter to other fans and the developers of the inspiration, I see nothing wrong with people supporting a modder financially via donations.
I’m not done with the article, I’ll probably edit this comment later, but I feel like I need to say this now. Even if you are debunking the claims, there are a lot of people who are legitimately worried and invested in these claims, and I feel like your usual goofy editing was inappropriate for the subject matter. I love your stuff, but I’m legitimately searching for answers, and the constant jokes keep throwing me off.
I haven’t played the game, so all I know about the level design is what other players say about it. Some say it’s good, many said it infuriated them. I can’t even speak for the voice acting, cus I couldn’t care enough to look up the cutscenes. Then there’s the behind-the-scenes stuff. What I find most awful wasn’t the whole Patreon thing, or them blocking people showing their more negative criticism, or even the whole Bad Girl Maria debacle. It was the fact that, when Omens’ VA for Eggmanplayed the game and was struggling on one of the bosses, the devs started to mock him, causing him to have a panic attack. That’s just malicious. Now, can we judge a game based on the artist? Not necessarily. But I really feel less like playing the game at all now.
I actually like Sonic Omens level design and control, I tried remaking a level with infinity engine without the improvements made from sonic omens. I can see the stuff that changed. The control is a good balance between platforming and boost. Sonic generations controls kinda weird (I am a sonic adventure uno person) also this topic is ded lol. But the level design is amazing and fits the controls of sonic and shadow
You keep throwing around the word objectively best 3d sonic fangame which is just what does that mean a finished product a game with story and good graphics it doesn’t necessarily mean anything nothing is objectively the best at least not in terms of book game movie or so on (also personally I find robo blast 2 to be the best 3d fangame)
I dont want to be annoying, but i have something to point out. I agree with some of the stuff mentioned here regarding the legal drama (tho the maria thing is still very not cool no mater the context), I have to say that the things said about the actual game were honest to god pedantic. At the start of the article you mentioned that you were going to be completely impartial and non biased, when in the next section, you proceed to literally bash other content creators for having a different opinion, if a game is good or bad is completely subjective, and if you do, its fine, but there is no need to be rude about it, if people didnt like it and you did, thats not anyones problem, there is no need to be so rude about something that at the end of the day, is your opinion; that is without mentioning how condecending you were throughout the entire article, using ADHD, an actual condition that actual people actually have, as a derrogatory word to point out and laugh multiple times, this is fine in a article that is for entertainment purposes, but when you are doing a essay about something as heated as this, i think more formality is apreciated. Also not mentioning how multiple times in the article you were putting down others, in a article that is supposed to be inpartial, because being impartial is not saying “you are a crybaby for not liking this game”. Next time you actually say you are going to be “objective” and “impartial” actually mean it.
bro most people dont have the MONEY to get a good enough pc. see the problem? my parents work 2 jobs at a time and with the state in bosnia its impossible to get something good when everything is double the price of what it was before because of inflation. and the pay stays the same, which was already too little for as hard of a job as live translation
Personally, I find the case of monetization of fan games and fan animations to be totally different. Sega is not a animation studio or a company that focuses on selling art, they are a article game company. Their bottom line isn’t going to be affected with a successful fan animation making a profit which can’t be said if a successful fan game were to do so. I get where you’re coming from but I feel like you’re missing the point. Personally, I don’t really give a shit if a fan game developer decided that they want to profit off their work, I’m just addressing why people say “well, this fan animation has a patron and no one is bothered by it” are blatantly misguided on why people are so upset.
Again about voice actors the thing about it is the thing if you question the American people what sonic show they were perusal most of them will say satam or underground, the most of Russian’s will say they were perusal sonic x so the most of the things were matched more to sonic x, not the older American sonic show’s like satam.
Haven’t finished the article but let me just say, Omens just feels like a regular sonic game to me. I been playing gens, unleashed with Omens and Omens is alright for a sonic game but the best? Dude the level designs while cool makes you get hit constantly with its unexpected placements. I like some of them hell that eagle robot boss is probably my favourite out of all of them so far. Look, NO SONIC GAME is the best, the only time a game is the best if it doesn’t have flaws and Omens has flaws.
Well, That’s what you get for creating a game on SEGA’s level of quality; people will start to trash and criticize you the same way they trash SEGA. I do love this game, there is quality and variety here. My biggest problem is indeed the level design. The Sonic Adventurey design of the levels aren’t bad at all, but it doesn’t cooperate well with the intense Infinity Engine. The game encourages boosting, but you’re also likely to just fly off the nearest edge with 1 wrong push of the analog stick. And that unholy tree level. I should probably finish the article before commenting but damn, im gonna need to buy popcorn for that first, pronto. I currently assume people only hate on Omens because the developer did the absolute forbidden, and asked to be paid to make this game, which could’ve potentially screwed over the entire Sonic fangame community had the affair been too successful. Selling anything else is fine, but NOT fangames. It’s SEGA’s core job to make the Sonic games over anything else, so to steal that spotlight is where a problem *might* rise, especially if SEGA gets into some financial situation where they suddenly need to targeting any competitors the way Rockstar and Nintendo do, i dunno. Shout out to Techno Cinema and John R1se, the music in this game genuinely enhances the experience. Just go listen to “Waterfall Chase” or “The Paradise” on their websites, and you’ll quickly see what I mean. The quality is insane…
Yeaaa, what I don’t like the most is how I couldn’t map my controls and that tree stage. Haven’t played the latest one, so fingers crossed on that. I’m surprised you didn’t mention Vector’s VA. I think that was the worst one for me lol I do have difficulties with Shadow’s ability management, but then again, I had to play with keyboard and mouse
Thanks for the article clarifying the situation with Sonic Omens! Answering your question to why “the general fanbase” hates Chris Thorndyke, it’s more for how he was used in the show than himself. Granted, his personality is the kind that would “make or break” for many Sonic fans, similar a few other main cast Sonic characters like Silver, Big, or Amy. But unlike how those characters where, if given in the right hands to be better utilized like Ian Flynn or other fan-created projects, Chris has more problems that just his personality alone rubbing some people the wrong way. Here’s why: 1) He tended to get WAY more screentime than any character that wasn’t Sonic, especially in Season 1 and many parts of Season 2. Any even if some fans don’t like how bloated the Sonic cast might be, I’m pretty sure most Sonic fans came to see the likes of Tails, Amy, Knuckles, and Shadow…NOT Chris. Granted, sometimes that was necessary, like when Sonic first came to the human world, and during the SA2 adaptation it made more sense to put Chris in “Amy’s role” talking to Shadow, so as to have a “human anchor” that Shadow could connect to Maria. And occasionally he had a funny line or situation, like in the Sonic Battle tournament. But otherwise, he was excessively thrust into the plot. 2) Until Season 3, in most instances he didn’t really provide any “usefulness” the way the Sonic cast could (except for in SA2 arc). So he was more often “dead weight” and a commentator, which speaking as a Yugioh anime fan, the “peanut gallery” isn’t exactly a place a character wants to be.
The Patreon hipocrisy is something I’ve been bringing up since DAY ONE. There are hundreds of artists all over Twitter who create Patreons to monetize exclusive pieces of art, or sell Sonic-related merchandise for PROFIT. (TheChaosSpirit and ChibiJenHen are two I can think off the top of my mind) Keep spitting facts, TheSonicShow! You’re bringing ALL the receipts into light! 👏
I have watched though the entire article and I have yet to hear a constructive description why game has good level design. Only vague statements calling it fun. The controversy you can think whatever about, but I want to hear exactly the exact reasons why you think it’s, in your own words, Objectively good level design.
Well I can definitely say the optimization is pretty poor. Even with my overclocked 9900K it was barely scraping 60fps. And it’s a CPU limitation where lowering the graphics from 4K even down to 1080p didn’t really help nor did changing most settings. The game is just poorly optimized for older hardware more than a year old. I say it’s likely the reason you didn’t notice any dips was more the method you used to check the frame rate whether it be your monitor or software. If the game was in bordered windowed mode it would count the frame rate of your screen and not the game. Yeah just downloaded the newest version and it’s even worse than I remember. There’s a ton of shader compilation stuttering and some effects literally drop the frame rate down to 20fps. The transparent flooring on Eggman’s train is very repeatable as are smashing open doors. And again, I’m running an overclocked 9900K and a 3090. This is about the same quality of performance as I get on Unleashed through RPCS3. Yeah both will shoot over 100fps for brief times of simple graphics, but for the majority of the time it’s barely scraping 60 or more like just over 50fps, with massive dips to 20fps.
Dunno if it has to be with them being Russian, I hope it’s not. It surely is because of Pateron – then it blew out when the Patreon argument started to crumble and poeple were more free to praise Omen as the best fangame by far, possibly better than actual Sonic games. And since both claims ARE true (minus the dub, let’s get real Omens is arguably better than Colors) haters lost sight of anything rational in order to keep spreading the hate. When in reality, if Sonic Team developed Omens as it is right now and released it instead of other recent games… Fans would’ve been drolling in extasy. I’m honestly grateful Oroboros Team made this fantastic game. I hope they know they should be proud of their work.
This article was pretty helpful. I was looking through the whole situation on Twitter and I was so confused why this game, that looked so good and was giving me Sonic X season 3 vibes, getting so much hate even on YouTube (since you can’t search up the game without so many hateful articles). The article thankfully gives context to the Maria thing (which just makes me question who the fuck is undressing Maria) Honestly, the hate is unnecessary and makes me hate Sonic community.
Took a nap between starting and finishing this one. Don’t agree with everything here, personally I do feel like the level design and bosses have some cheap shots. But the fan base is easily being very two faced with this one. Either judge Omens AND Team Season equally, or admit you’re biased and aren’t judging the game fairly. Thanks for this one Raccoon man. Keep fightin the good fight.
At first I was on the hate train for Omens because of the whole Patreon thing Then I just forgot about it for two whole years Then I found out so much through this article And as the years between now and two years ago passed, I realized I would probably have ended up resorting to crowd funding in order to get the personal talent and external support that I would need in order to get a fan project that I have been working on the concepts of for a while now off of the ground (It’s currently all written down somewhere on my computer and backed up online) Of course I wouldn’t be putting anything behind any paywalls of course, and I get Omens dev did that at first, and that’s exactly why I hated them then, but now they’ve stopped so I don’t see a reason to be really against them anymore So all in all I think I’ve learned alot from this article, but the most important thing I learned of all from it was a way to take something that had once been in bad light to me, and look at it in a way that changes my perspective on things for the better And I am now much more willing to give Omens a try than I was two years ago, thanks to this amazing article 😀
I’ve skipped ahead to the important stuff as I do not have the time and patience for your hour rant. So my take away; the Patreon stuff? Yeah, it’s such a grey area that I don’t even care for it and honestly, is there even proof that SEGA approved the Patreon outside of the dev’s words? Because I highly doubt that they did, but I digress. Secondly, I do agree with the Maria thing. One person’s action shouldn’t just magically make the other devs shitty in comparison. However, there’s a very high possibility that most of the members were aware of it and let it slide and kept it on the model. Think of that what you will. The Cars 2 thing. There actually are similarities, but like… even so, It’s a fan game. Who cares? As for the game itself, it’s far from perfect and it DEFINITELY isn’t as polished as you’re making it out to be. The story is… digestible at best, the voice acting is very try hard, the visuals and models (which some, if not most of the assets aren’t even theirs to begin with, but whatever) are stunning, the levels post 2020 aren’t even that good tbh. It’s mostly just straight lines with insta-death traps and such, the plain levels are a bitch to traverse through, stopping just to activate switches with Shadow is honestly such a pace breaker, and the bosses are unnecessarily hard. Like I get what they were going for in the difficulty department, but that alone turn people off of the game which is funny as the Eggman VA raged and got made fun of by the devs because of it.
I had a few problems with omens. 1. The check point system doesn’t rest when you die. 2. In the jungle boss fight when moving to second arena Shadow just dies by touching a tiny puddle. 3.Shadow should have a little hud where you can see where your chaos abilities. 4. D-pad for the Tornado doesn’t feel good.
I keep seeing a story repeated that the devs teased their Eggman voice actor on stream as he had a breakdown from playing the game, but like, I’ve NEVER seen any evidence or even a clip of this happening. I’m not saying it definitively didn’t happen, but no one’s provided evidence for it and everyone just keeps parroting this point.
There’s a lot in this article that I disagree with but you aren’t some omnipotent being who’s always right so that’s fine. I was truly hoping that this article would convince me but it’s just not. I still love you Jaiden and I’m still gonna keep supporting your website despite this though because I still think you are a very positive person and an amazing source of news for Sonic stuff. If I could push past the whole Scott Cawthon drama and support Scott then I will do the same for you.
Not relevant info alert About the vc’s i think the most of them are ru talking guys as long as i know, the man who was voicing eggman was Sumochkin, he were streaming with the uroboros team, it was as long as i can remember more than a year ago. The voice acting were more in a rush, the shadow voice actor said it also he said the voices were recorded right before the release.
I agree with everything except the voice acting, Sonic to me sounded almost spot on like Jason Griffith, Shadow on the other hand.. I’m sorry but throughout the entire game the only time he sounded remotely accurate was whenever he shouted his attacks. Everyone else was alright here and there but could’ve been better for sure
I’ve agreed with every point up until the Maria thing, I get that it makes some people feel weirded out, being a huge Sonic fan and having that long attachment to the franchise yeah I get it 100%. But where you miss me, is when you say x y z person should be condemned for a TEXTURE. A albeit a weird texture, but a TEXTURE. Let that sink in for a moment, A TEXTURE. Like I said, I understand being like woah, but to even CONSIDER THAT AT ALL in you evaluation of Omens as a GAME (which is what matters here don’t attempt to say otherwise) it’s just childish and sounds like another being an SJW for fictional character moment. Things like this downplay the severity of real world child exploitation and abuse, even if that’s never anyone’s intention, they need to realize that’s what it does. Once again, it is WEIRD, but to condemn a person or an entire team or even attempt to imply some underlying issue, when it’s 99% likely it’s just a joke (as MANY OTHER games have done with textures before). Idk man, just weird to me. Also don’t know if this counts but uh yeah Sonic Robo Blast 2 is an AMAZING 3D Game
What I’m seeing is ALOT of people using the ‘Sonic IP is a articleGAME so profiting off art is okay’ argument to defend the double standard. When the Sonic IP is more than just a game. It encompasses all Sonic Content. Whats with this pick and choose our own legalities. Sega holds the copyright how they respond/not respond is on them. Not yall.
Personally, I think that people profiting over unofficial sonic items is a big no no, but sega produces article games and those games are their focus when it comes to money. Art in the first place, could never be as profitable as article games which is why sega doesn’t care if someone makes a couple hundred off of art compared to the millions in games. But if someone else was making games and making money off of it, it could be more off a problem because of how much they could make off of it. Overall, no unofficial sonic merch should be profitable due to copyright, but with sonic, idk what is allowed or not.
Hi, I’m a random nobody who wants to make a Sonic fan game, but doesn’t know the first thing about 3D modeling, animation, or article game development. My problem is that I’m more of a man of ideas, with not many outlets of getting those ideas out there. I’ve been thinking about this idea for what I think is two years now, and I really wish that one day I get to make it a reality… Again, no one special, if you’re reading this, just ignore everything I said… 😅
The internet never ceases to amaze me. I have never been so utterly INFURIATED in my entire life. How could people just sh*t on this game without properly reviewing the evidence? Critical thinking, people! Use it! And yes, the VA is awful. But that doesn’t make or break a game alone. And that’s especially true for Omens.
Wow! This really changed my opinion on S-Omens. I don’t usually pay attention to much of the fangames. So, you can imagine me perusal a article of how bad the game and its crew are, just accept them as that, and move on. But, when I heard our raccoon boi was going to make a article on this whole thing, I thought: “Okay I’ll watch it, it’s not as if I don’t watch every single one of his articles now anyway.” I found it hard to pay attention to, but I made it through the whole article, And I’m very surprised how much the Omens crew are being yelled at by a bunch of cruel people. I can’t agree with the picks for voice actors: not that I have anything personal for them. But, I have major respect for you, Racoon, acting in defense of these people, when you know you’re going to get screamed at by a bunch of people who hadn’t even listened more than a few minutes into the article.
Dude, Jaden, I usually don’t comment on matters like this mess, but I’ve got to say, you were outstanding and hilarious in the way you delivered your opinion. Unfortunately, I’m kinda busy playing a really lengthy game, but I definitely want to give Sonic Omens a honest shot! It is by far the best Sonic Fan Game ever made! Awesome article man!
When I first saw this game I thought it looked really good and silently commanded them for the effort put into making it look grandiose. I was then astonished to see the typhoon of hate it got when the full thing dropped. I haven’t played it or seen (most of) the story, but I feel like if I did I would have a pretty great time with it, it looks like a super high quality product. Also, glad you’re getting a little better. Hope your boost meter refills soon!
i liked sonic omens, and i support most of your points, But Why do you keep Emphasizing that you “really HATE Bringing down one game for the sake of another game” when, that’s what you’ve been doing the whole time ? Sonic GT and Project hero were great, They don’t compare to Omens in terms of Length and effort Yes, BUT it literally helps no one when you keep saying shit like “project hero is just a FLAT DESIGN it doesn’t even HAVE ANY CUTSCENES” and then be like “i would NEVER bring one game down for another :)”
The whole Maria thing seems like the texture guy made that texture specifically to troll the people who were insane enough to go looking for it because he knew the twitter brigade was looking desperately to find shit to point to to bag on this project. I mean the whole “haters gonna hate” texture kinda confirms this and he got the exact reaction he was looking for. I doubt it would even be in the game if people weren’t shitting their diapers over the game in the first place. Like you said, I’d say it says more about the guy who data mined it than the guy who made it.
My opinion on Omens is kinda neutral at this point. The game is fine (can be frustratingly hard tho) and the visuals were cool. The Maria situation really could be fixed, along with the devs’ mindset for finishing the game (which iirc was pure spite and confidence that they did what Sonic Team/SEGA couldn’t) I don’t mean to sound like some snarky bastard here, but what kinda bugged me in this article is the partial favoritism in terms of Omens VS Project Hero/GT just because Project Hero wasn’t (and still isn’t) a full game. GT is a full game, but it doesn’t have the amount of content that Omens does. My view on that is: Just because a game has more content or is more complete than the other game doesn’t make it undeniably better than said game. Other than that, this was a good article. Lots of points (which people overlooked before) that made sense.
Sega / Sonic Team aren’t companies that focus on art, they focus on article games so if someone was making money off of unofficial Sonic art they wouldn’t care but if they make money from a article game (what Sega/Sonic Team’s main focus is) they might go the Nimtendo route and get rid off all Sonic fan games
I don’t care what anybody says. I love this game. It’s funny how politics are influencing the way people look at FAN made games. This is one of the most polished 3D games out there..and I’m glad this game exists. I just wish people would judge the game for I don’t know…the actual game instead of bashing the people who made it
So, separate from the controversy itself, if you make a article trying to sway people’s minds from one point of view to another, you REALLY shouldn’t characterize them with whiny, high pitched, intentionally annoying voices. It will turn many people away from whatever points you’re trying to make, because you decided to mock them.
Jaden I love you, but I’m gonna have to disagree with this article. Granted the cutscenes and original level environments we’re appealing, there’s entirely too many things to complain about for this fangame to be good, at best. What the devs did was irrefutable and there’s no way of rekindling their reputation especially the things that has been said.