In light of my recent thread, I've come to the realization that many people feel that shorter games are not worth their money. They feel that the number of dollars spent should be roughly equal to the number of hours spent playing the game, or else they haven't gotten their money's worth. I've noticed a few other complaints about "modern" games as well, namely that many of them are first-person shooters with an extremely limited color palette, or are linear and just a succession of corridors that don't let you explore, or that they're too easy and don't challenge the player in any significant way.
Keeping all of these things in mind, I feel that I can now irrefutably prove that Sonic '06 is objectively better than Portal.
[small]It's no use, Portal![/small]
First - Genre:
People always lament the prevalence of first-person shooters these days. Well, Portal is a first-person shooter. You run around in first-person view, and shoot things. Portals instead of bullets, but functionally it's the same.
Sonic '06 is a rare gem, though. A speed-focused 3D platformer. We don't get many of those anymore, do we? Truly it's much more unique than Portal, then, since as Sonic we're not walking around at half the speed of a snail waving guns around in peoples' faces.
Second - Color Palette:
Portal is a game that most of us know by now. Love-child of Valve, spawner of memes, and based around puzzles, it's a media darling. But... it has somewhat of a limited color palette, wouldn't you say? I mean, all of that white and grey... sure, you have the occasional blue or orange because of the portals themselves, but you're moving through such bland environments.
Sonic '06, on the other hand, is a bright and vivid collection of the entire spectrum of colors. Everywhere you go, you see not only grey and white, but blues and greens and reds and yellows and oranges, violets and blacks and browns and aquamarine and pink. It's so colorful, and it really brings the game to life.
Third - Level Design:
Portal is a puzzle game, set in a long-abandoned test facility. As such, most of the stages are small, self-contained maps that are generally pretty closed-off. It doesn't allow for much exploration, and there's really only ever one distinct path for you to travel along, no matter how obtuse the portal puzzles might make it seem.
Sonic '06, however, has a semi-open hub world with many missions strewn about, and all of the individual levels are large, with wide open terrain that invites and encourages plenty of exploration. Sometimes you might even get lost and need to search out your own way of continuing the level further, and really, how often does that happen in other modern games?
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[small]All right, if I triangulate the hypotenuse of these three platforms... Princess, do you have a map?[/small]
Fourth - Challenge:
Portal is not a very complicated game. You find the wall you can shoot portals on, you shoot portals on it, and you travel through the portals. Progress! Consequently, it can be completed in a very short amount of time despite the sheer number of challenges present within the game. It's all so easy, right? And people hate easy games.
Sonic '06 is another story entirely. In fact, once you reach a level called "Crisis City", the difficulty bar skyrockets so quickly you'd think your grandmother just *****-slapped you from the afterlife. It's long, it's torturous, and it's challenging as all hell. And that's exactly what people want, right? More difficulty in their games! Well, Sonic '06 has it in spades! In fact, I'd wager that it's the most difficult game in the entire Sonic franchise!
Fifth - Depth:
As I've previously mentioned, Portal isn't terribly complex. You get a portal gun, and throughout the course of the game you use it to create portals that lead you to the next testing chamber. The most it mixes up the gameplay are during sections that you need to weigh down multiple switches, and even then it just usually consists of shooting a few portals to move cubes around and then back-tracking until you reach the door you've opened.
Sonic '06 throws you right in and expects you to figure out everything for yourself, and there's quite a fair amount for you to learn. Between all of the separate controls, the different objectives missions have, the game switching it up by swapping you out to a different character, who have unique move-sets all of their own, or throwing Sonic into what's colloquially known as "mach speed" sections where you're constantly moving forward at a fixed speed and need to navigate perilous terrain, Sonic '06 was a modern pioneer of "easy to learn, hard to master" controls that games like Dark Souls would later popularize. There's so much variety that really contributes toward keeping the game from getting stale, which is more than can be said for the Portal "I'm Gonna Hide That This Is A Linear Hallway By Making You Shoot Vertically" Gun.
[small]Now you're thinking with portals, son.[/small]
Sixth - Length:
Portal is an incredibly short game. So short, in fact, that you could complete almost half of it over the course of an average lunch break. I don't know about everyone else, but to me that sounds like a pretty poor amount of content for the money you're spending. Who wants to be able to be able to beat an entire game during the time it takes to watch an episode of House? Not me.
[small]It takes longer for me to diagnose 'not lupus' than it takes to complete Portal.[/small]
Fortunately, Sonic '06 is much longer. Not only do you get all of the content provided by Sonic's story from the start, there are also two extra playable characters with their own unique stories that unlock as you play through Sonic's. And the stages themselves aren't as short as the typical older Sonic games, either, where you could zoom through in two or three minutes. Oh no, these things are much more complicated than that, and a lot of them actually have multiple areas to go through before you actually reach the end too. Plus, then there's that overworld hub you get to explore, which also has its own missions. I mean, just look at the amount of content, and it's all for $15! What more could you ask for?
Seventh - Investment:
So, we've already covered how easy, simple, and short Portal is. Well, gee, but easy, simple, short games are pretty much poster-children for so-called "casual" gaming, aren't they? You don't need to put any significant amount of time or effort in to beat Portal, and pretty much everyone and their grandmother are able to beat it. You can just pick it up and play it without any problems, just like a mobile game!
Sonic '06 requires a much stronger resolve. You have to focus, you have to strain yourself to the limits of your gaming ability, and you have to tell yourself that you will beat it, no matter how much it kicks your ass around! And if you leave it for long enough, trying to go right back in will only end with the game kicking your ass even harder for being foolish enough to think your rusty playing would be good enough.
[small]Get used to this screen - You'll be seeing it a lot.[/small]
Keeping all of these things in mind, I feel that I can now irrefutably prove that Sonic '06 is objectively better than Portal.
[small]It's no use, Portal![/small]
First - Genre:
People always lament the prevalence of first-person shooters these days. Well, Portal is a first-person shooter. You run around in first-person view, and shoot things. Portals instead of bullets, but functionally it's the same.
Sonic '06 is a rare gem, though. A speed-focused 3D platformer. We don't get many of those anymore, do we? Truly it's much more unique than Portal, then, since as Sonic we're not walking around at half the speed of a snail waving guns around in peoples' faces.
Second - Color Palette:
Portal is a game that most of us know by now. Love-child of Valve, spawner of memes, and based around puzzles, it's a media darling. But... it has somewhat of a limited color palette, wouldn't you say? I mean, all of that white and grey... sure, you have the occasional blue or orange because of the portals themselves, but you're moving through such bland environments.
Sonic '06, on the other hand, is a bright and vivid collection of the entire spectrum of colors. Everywhere you go, you see not only grey and white, but blues and greens and reds and yellows and oranges, violets and blacks and browns and aquamarine and pink. It's so colorful, and it really brings the game to life.
Third - Level Design:
Portal is a puzzle game, set in a long-abandoned test facility. As such, most of the stages are small, self-contained maps that are generally pretty closed-off. It doesn't allow for much exploration, and there's really only ever one distinct path for you to travel along, no matter how obtuse the portal puzzles might make it seem.
Sonic '06, however, has a semi-open hub world with many missions strewn about, and all of the individual levels are large, with wide open terrain that invites and encourages plenty of exploration. Sometimes you might even get lost and need to search out your own way of continuing the level further, and really, how often does that happen in other modern games?
[small]All right, if I triangulate the hypotenuse of these three platforms... Princess, do you have a map?[/small]
Fourth - Challenge:
Portal is not a very complicated game. You find the wall you can shoot portals on, you shoot portals on it, and you travel through the portals. Progress! Consequently, it can be completed in a very short amount of time despite the sheer number of challenges present within the game. It's all so easy, right? And people hate easy games.
Sonic '06 is another story entirely. In fact, once you reach a level called "Crisis City", the difficulty bar skyrockets so quickly you'd think your grandmother just *****-slapped you from the afterlife. It's long, it's torturous, and it's challenging as all hell. And that's exactly what people want, right? More difficulty in their games! Well, Sonic '06 has it in spades! In fact, I'd wager that it's the most difficult game in the entire Sonic franchise!
Fifth - Depth:
As I've previously mentioned, Portal isn't terribly complex. You get a portal gun, and throughout the course of the game you use it to create portals that lead you to the next testing chamber. The most it mixes up the gameplay are during sections that you need to weigh down multiple switches, and even then it just usually consists of shooting a few portals to move cubes around and then back-tracking until you reach the door you've opened.
Sonic '06 throws you right in and expects you to figure out everything for yourself, and there's quite a fair amount for you to learn. Between all of the separate controls, the different objectives missions have, the game switching it up by swapping you out to a different character, who have unique move-sets all of their own, or throwing Sonic into what's colloquially known as "mach speed" sections where you're constantly moving forward at a fixed speed and need to navigate perilous terrain, Sonic '06 was a modern pioneer of "easy to learn, hard to master" controls that games like Dark Souls would later popularize. There's so much variety that really contributes toward keeping the game from getting stale, which is more than can be said for the Portal "I'm Gonna Hide That This Is A Linear Hallway By Making You Shoot Vertically" Gun.
[small]Now you're thinking with portals, son.[/small]
Sixth - Length:
Portal is an incredibly short game. So short, in fact, that you could complete almost half of it over the course of an average lunch break. I don't know about everyone else, but to me that sounds like a pretty poor amount of content for the money you're spending. Who wants to be able to be able to beat an entire game during the time it takes to watch an episode of House? Not me.
[small]It takes longer for me to diagnose 'not lupus' than it takes to complete Portal.[/small]
Fortunately, Sonic '06 is much longer. Not only do you get all of the content provided by Sonic's story from the start, there are also two extra playable characters with their own unique stories that unlock as you play through Sonic's. And the stages themselves aren't as short as the typical older Sonic games, either, where you could zoom through in two or three minutes. Oh no, these things are much more complicated than that, and a lot of them actually have multiple areas to go through before you actually reach the end too. Plus, then there's that overworld hub you get to explore, which also has its own missions. I mean, just look at the amount of content, and it's all for $15! What more could you ask for?
Seventh - Investment:
So, we've already covered how easy, simple, and short Portal is. Well, gee, but easy, simple, short games are pretty much poster-children for so-called "casual" gaming, aren't they? You don't need to put any significant amount of time or effort in to beat Portal, and pretty much everyone and their grandmother are able to beat it. You can just pick it up and play it without any problems, just like a mobile game!
Sonic '06 requires a much stronger resolve. You have to focus, you have to strain yourself to the limits of your gaming ability, and you have to tell yourself that you will beat it, no matter how much it kicks your ass around! And if you leave it for long enough, trying to go right back in will only end with the game kicking your ass even harder for being foolish enough to think your rusty playing would be good enough.
[small]Get used to this screen - You'll be seeing it a lot.[/small]
