Hot takes

[MasterEn]

or some of those developers have been reduced to dust.. like Looking Glass Studios, Troika or have lost licenses to work on it officially. So yeah, some weird Eastern european with all the time in the world can fix the game.

I don't trust fans with rebalancing games. General fixes and crashes and widescreen hacks are appreciated but when they mess with the game's balance or logic they can fuck off.

yeah, it sucks when that happens. a few fans out there can modify a game and make it more balanced. this happens quite often in the pikmin modding space. pikmin 1² is a rebuild of pikmin 1 in the pikmin 2 engine; took 4 years to make and it is quite the nice upgrade. you get the ai upgrades of pikmin 2 and other quality of life upgrades too.
but pikmin modders like to put a lot of care into their stuff. hopefully other games can get the same kind of treat too one day.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

that is a bit unfair. game developers usually have a time limit on their games. they have to keep moving at a steady pace in order to have something to release and make some money so they can make more games. you need quite a bit of funds before you can take your time and be more through on polishing a game before release.
fan patches are made in someone's spare time and really don't have a time limit on them they are done when they are done. and i heard that some game engines charge companies money to make and release updates for their games. so there's that too. some games need patching but can't because of bullshit like that.

That IS a thing, but meh.

A lot of times the fixes somebody makes are small in scale, yet huge in how they improve the base games, either by disabling stuff that shouldn't have been there in the first place or by adding things that were missing.

I heard that the "Shifter" mod for Deus Ex started as a way for the laser sights to be activated automatically upon adding them to your weapons.

 

[moonbits]

yeah, it sucks when that happens. a few fans out there can modify a game and make it more balanced. this happens quite often in the pikmin modding space. pikmin 1² is a rebuild of pikmin 1 in the pikmin 2 engine; took 4 years to make and it is quite the nice upgrade. you get the ai upgrades of pikmin 2 and other quality of life upgrades too.
but pikmin modders like to put a lot of care into their stuff. hopefully other games can get the same kind of treat too one day.

That sounds like an entire rewrite/mod, not a simple patch but very impressive nonetheless.

Reminds me of Skyblivion, which certainly became irrelevant after the remaster dropped.

 

[MasterEn]

That IS a thing, but meh.

A lot of times the fixes somebody makes are small in scale, yet huge in how they improve the base games, either by disabling stuff that shouldn't have been there in the first place or adding things that were missing.

I heard that the "Shifter" mod for Deus Ex started as a way for the laser sights to be activated automatically upon adding them to your weapons.

yeah, that's what fan mods and hacks should be; little fixes to otherwise great games. i don't mind if someone want to go overboard and get creative with modding or hacking the game and do new stuff with something that already exists. pikmin 2 regrown does this and so does pikmin1². good improvements and changes to the existing games without over doing it. one or 2 tweaks to pikmin 1 would make it a perfect game. if it snowballs into something more, than that awesome as well.

Post automatically merged: Aug 23, 2025

That sounds like an entire rewrite/mod, not a simple patch but very impressive nonetheless.

Reminds me of Skyblivion, which certainly became irrelevant after the remaster dropped.

it probably is, but pikmin 2 could be considered that as well, despite being a sequel. it is as faithful of a rebuild as it can be, and includes a new story mode and a customizable randomizer as well.

 

[solnK!]

Sonic is actually good and the whole Internet hated it for no reason (specially during the 2010´s)

 

[MasterEn]

Sonic is actually good and the whole Internet hated it for no reason (specially during the 2010´s)

that was the era where nearly everyone hated everything that wasn't dark, grim and covered in grease.
sonic himself is a good character, he is just not being handled properly by the ip holders.

 

[Viviana Santos]

Sonic is actually good and the whole Internet hated it for no reason (specially during the 2010´s)

 

[KaiserMk7]

The sonic fanbase isn't that bad, and the content it creates is generally very enjoyable. I will not elaborate.

 

[God-Shattering Twink]

that was the era where nearly everyone hated everything that wasn't dark, grim and covered in grease.
sonic himself is a good character, he is just not being handled properly by the ip holders.

Almost all problems with modern sonic at least partially stem from an overcorrection from 06.

People find Sonic's friends annoying? Erase pretty much the entire supporting cast

06 is an unfinished mess? Ditch the Adventure formula that was the foundation of 3 amazing games and never use it again

The story is strange and confusing? Dumb down the plots and pretend the last 10 years of world-building didn't exist

06 doesn't control well? Reduce the series into a simple, stripped down series of hallways with almost nothing in the way of platforming

2010's SEGA essentially obeyed all the complaints from people who didn't enjoy the series to begin with, and we ended up with 15 years of Sonic games with zero style or substance

 

[MasterEn]

Almost all problems with modern sonic at least partially stem from an overcorrection from 06.

People find Sonic's friends annoying? Erase pretty much the entire supporting cast

06 is an unfinished mess? Ditch the Adventure formula that was the foundation of 3 amazing games and never use it again

The story is strange and confusing? Dumb down the plots and pretend the last 10 years of world-building didn't exist

06 doesn't control well? Reduce the series into a simple, stripped down series of hallways with almost nothing in the way of platforming

2010's SEGA essentially obeyed all the complaints from people who didn't enjoy the series to begin with, and we ended up with 15 years of Sonic games with zero style or substance

i thought about bringing that up, but i'm a bit tired of that subject.
it's a bit sad and ironic for that to happen because it's their own fucking fault for sonic 06 turning out like it did.

 

[Ikagura]

Fan-made patches for any given game are always better than anything the developers release for said games.

Some hacks can be bad or mess up a game's original balance though.

There are patches that objectively improves the game in every ways (like Sonic 3 Complete) while keeping the original feel (especially when you can switch to the original visuals or sprites/musics in several aspects instead of forcing every changes) but those usually require a lot of work, hours of dev, debug and playtesting and finally are also requiring some talent from said dev.

I love romhacks but I don't think it's systematically better and praising a romhack/mod for being a fan-made romhack/mod even if there are blatant flaws or that the original spirit of the game has been messed up.

Shotgun Mario 64 is a fun mod with a lot of efforts but I cannot recommend it for first timers since it's absolutely not an authentic experience of Super Mario 64.

It's basically my issue with things like Brutal Doom since id Software made a great balance and synergy between characters as well as having a good readability even with many demons or that one Cinematic mod for Half-Life² which is the clear example of doing too much it becomes bad.

that is a bit unfair. game developers usually have a time limit on their games. they have to keep moving at a steady pace in order to have something to release and make some money so they can make more games. you need quite a bit of funds before you can take your time and be more through on polishing a game before release.

fan patches are made in someone's spare time and really don't have a time limit on them they are done when they are done. and i heard that some game engines charge companies money to make and release updates for their games. so there's that too. some games need patching but can't because of bullshit like that.

This^

I find it impressive that someone in their garage is doing a mod for free for their favourite game and I respect them for that but remember that with modern modding tools, free time (depending of the schedule of that person) without any deadline means that they still have an advantage.

Comparing someone who programmed their game from scratch in an antiquated language and someone using a modern API over an already existing codebase is a bit unfair towards the original devs.

As fans we shouldn't throw shade towards people that had to come up with the original idea or else we could say that someone redrawing the paintings on a graphic tablet in 4K would objectively make them better.

 

[KaiserMk7]

Some hacks can be bad or mess up a game's original balance though.

There are patches that objectively improves the game in every ways (like Sonic 3 Complete) while keeping the original feel (especially when you can switch to the original visuals or sprites/musics in several aspects instead of forcing every changes) but those usually require a lot of work, hours of dev, debug and playtesting and finally are also requiring some talent from said dev.

I love romhacks but I don't think it's systematically better and praising a romhack/mod for being a fan-made romhack/mod even if there are blatant flaws or that the original spirit of the game has been messed up.

Shotgun Mario 64 is a fun mod with a lot of efforts but I cannot recommend it for first timers since it's absolutely not an authentic experience of Super Mario 64.

It's basically my issue with things like Brutal Doom since id Software made a great balance and synergy between characters as well as having a good readability even with many demons or that one Cinematic mod for Half-Life² which is the clear example of doing too much it becomes bad.

I suspect they were specifically referring to "improvement" patches, but improvement is quite subjective.

 

[Ikagura]

I suspect they were specifically referring to "improvement" patches, but improvement is quite subjective.

Improvements that make the game smoother like Simon's Quest having better translations for the villagers is objectively better.

On the other hand I didn't like Super Mario Land DX' first version of the patch simply because they've changed the sprite of Mario which I personally found out of place in the game. I only wanted a colouring patch not changing the sprites. Thankfully the v2.0 reverted to let us select between the original and revamped one.

I like when romhacks have several patches so you can choose variants in case one feature sounds annoying or something you don't want in the game.

I'm a bit of a "semi-purist" when it comes to romhacks: I like when something gets improved while they think of the "original spirit" of a game. If something is too drastic I think I wouldn't be interested as much.

 

[KaiserMk7]

Improvements that make the game smoother like Simon's Quest having better translations for the villagers is objectively better.

On the other hand I didn't like Super Mario Land DX' first version of the patch simply because they've changed the sprite of Mario which I personally found out of place in the game. I only wanted a colouring patch not changing the sprites. Thankfully the v2.0 reverted to let us select between the original and revamped one.

I like when romhacks have several patches so you can choose variants in case one feature sounds annoying or something you don't want in the game.

I'm a bit of a "semi-purist" when it comes to romhacks: I like when something gets improved while they think of the "original spirit" of a game. If something is too drastic I think I wouldn't be interested as much.

Like how the Baten Kaitos Origins undub patcher lets you keep the English voice acting while still having the protagonist wake up chained to a cross after the climax instead of a featureless metal block.

 

[Ikagura]

The sonic fanbase isn't that bad, and the content it creates is generally very enjoyable. I will not elaborate.

I still blame OCs like ColdSteel and shameless recolors like Sonichu to give the fans a bad light.

Yes I know, kids have always been cringe, it has never been a generational thing but the access to the internet has increased the visibility whereas previous eras only had those in smaller circles.

Almost all problems with modern sonic at least partially stem from an over-correction from 06.

People find Sonic's friends annoying? Erase pretty much the entire supporting cast

06 is an unfinished mess? Ditch the Adventure formula that was the foundation of 3 amazing games and never use it again

The story is strange and confusing? Dumb down the plots and pretend the last 10 years of world-building didn't exist

06 doesn't control well? Reduce the series into a simple, stripped down series of hallways with almost nothing in the way of platforming

2010's SEGA essentially obeyed all the complaints from people who didn't enjoy the series to begin with, and we ended up with 15 years of Sonic games with zero style or substance

Doing a 180° for a franchise instead of fixing mistakes was not the best idea to get.

However: I'd still say that Sonic is fine with only one playable character with a solid formula, not delving too far in many (Sonic Unleashed and Forces with the alternative gameplay styles made people who wanted fast action with Sonic annoyed yet those weren't adventure styled games).

Yes, some characters were in fact "shitty friends" since they weren't that useful even in the story (Classic being shoehorned in Forces was already an issue because in the story he was mostly doing his stuff in his side until the very end of the game) and I don't think we needed fishing to make a game enticing.

The Adventure formula already showed signs of fatigue and monotony around Heroes (despite having the same gameplay for all 4 teams and a more classic way of progressing in the game) and Shadow didn't go well.

The Boost formula enhanced the feeling of speed the franchise was known for. Almost like a racing game.

Also for the story I'm sorry but this should always be an afterthought: Mario games are relatively simple in their narrative yet were enticing the player. Most would play RPGs if they wanted a deeper story.

 

[Burzuru]

deli cooked rotisserie chickens

 

[God-Shattering Twink]

I still blame OCs like ColdSteel and shameless recolors like Sonichu to give the fans a bad light.

Yes I know, kids have always been cringe, it has never been a generational thing but the access to the internet has increased the visibility whereas previous eras only had those in smaller circles.


Doing a 180° for a franchise instead of fixing mistakes was not the best idea to get.

However: I'd still say that Sonic is fine with only one playable character with a solid formula, not delving too far in many (Sonic Unleashed and Forces with the alternative gameplay styles made people who wanted fast action with Sonic annoyed yet those weren't adventure styled games).

Yes, some characters were in fact "shitty friends" since they weren't that useful even in the story (Classic being shoehorned in Forces was already an issue because in the story he was mostly doing his stuff in his side until the very end of the game) and I don't think we needed fishing to make a game enticing.

The Adventure formula already showed signs of fatigue and monotony around Heroes (despite having the same gameplay for all 4 teams and a more classic way of progressing in the game) and Shadow didn't go well.

The Boost formula enhanced the feeling of speed the franchise was known for. Almost like a racing game.

Also for the story I'm sorry but this should always be an afterthought: Mario games are relatively simple in their narrative yet were enticing the player. Most would play RPGs if they wanted a deeper story.

I can agree that a more focused approach on one playstyle is probably the way to go, but the Boost formula was an incredibly mediocre solution. The Boost quadrilogy are some of the most boring, uninteresting platformers I've ever played, and doesn't really translate any of the appeal of the previous entries to me. Adventure was a huge shake up at the time, but I feel like it shares a lot of the appeal of the Classic games and translates it quite well into 3D. I can't say the same for the Boost games, for either gameplay style. The Boost games feel like a different franchise entirely, and not a particularly fun one.

I'd also argue that the supporting cast, playable or not, is a huge part of Sonic's identity as a series. Without them, games like Colors and Unleashed feel incredibly sterile. I'm not saying that every game as to have a Big the Cat or Chaotix campaign; I just think that ignoring the large cast of characters the series as accrued over the years makes the worlds of these games feel empty and small.

As for story, I would agree for many similar series, but Sonic has a pretty strong precedent for having a consistent and connected world with lore and a wide cast of characters; most fans seem to agree that the long history and rich universe of Sonic is part of the appeal. Sonic games have been worldbuilding and storytelling since 3&K, and while I wouldn't call any Sonic narrative a masterpiece, games like Colors, Generations, and Lost World have incredibly boring scenarios paired with some really embarrassing writing (Forces gets points for trying, but that game's narrative is a joke). I'm glad that Frontiers and Shadow Gens are starting to undo the trend of previous entries by acknowledging past events and trying to repair the damage caused by stories written by people who don't even like Sonic. doesn't fix the gameplay though lol

 

[moonbits]

Sonic is actually good and the whole Internet hated it for no reason (specially during the 2010´s)

I will not let anyone try to pull a revisionist mental gymnastic when THIS piece of shit exists.

 

[thetwaz]

that is a bit unfair. game developers usually have a time limit on their games. they have to keep moving at a steady pace in order to have something to release and make some money so they can make more games. you need quite a bit of funds before you can take your time and be more through on polishing a game before release.
fan patches are made in someone's spare time and really don't have a time limit on them they are done when they are done. and i heard that some game engines charge companies money to make and release updates for their games. so there's that too. some games need patching but can't because of bullshit like that.

I would also add, fan patches and sourceports can be amazing, but are usually benefitting off the back of anywhere up to a decade's worth (sometimes even longer) of developers work on core gameplay compatibility and stability that developer patches usually focus on.

Developers have to focus on the boring stuff, and essentially keep their core product as per scope, depending on how they are funded for it by their publisher.

 

[Ikagura]

View attachment 103397

I will not let anyone try to pull a revisionist mental gymnastic when THIS piece of shit exists.

Please avoid using the term "revisionist" for video games, that's for more serious subjects. Also there's no "revisionism mental gymnastic" about their message...

Furthermore one bad game doesn't retroactively makes every other good stuff null either. It's almost like beating a dead horse or pretending that the entire series is no longer worth playing just for that...

It'd be like saying that Bomberman has never been good because of Act:Zero or that Mario shouldn't matter because Mario is Missing is a thing... That would sound silly to tell that.

I would also add, fan patches and sourceports can be amazing, but are usually benefitting off the back of anywhere up to a decade's worth (sometimes even longer) of developers work on core gameplay compatibility and stability that developer patches usually focus on.

Speaking of Sourceport (for Doom I assume) I am legitimately annoyed when people are using GZDoom to showcase how "this can be done in Doom!" when things like Decorate and Zscript weren't even possible in the original engine nor Boom-related sourceports.

Room over room being impossible in Doom was for optimisation and how the map was being calculated. In MyHouse.wad it wasn't natively done within Doom itself but rather GZDoom with a .pk3.

Same with "it can run Doom" when said device is merely an output from a computer who's actually running Doom.

Developers have to focus on the boring stuff, and essentially keep their core product as per scope, depending on how they are funded for it by their publisher.

Yes, people forget that sometimes publishers say "no" to some ideas.

Many independent dev can get lost in adding too many features to their game.

 

[God-Shattering Twink]

View attachment 103397

I will not let anyone try to pull a revisionist mental gymnastic when THIS piece of shit exists.

I don't think anyone here has any intention of trying to claim this game was good, haha. You could make an argument that it could've been great, and there are some interesting ideas, but nothing's gonna change the fact that it was a sub-functional disaster. At the end of the day, it's just one bad entry in a long-running series. I suppose you could group it with Shadow 05, but calling the entire series bad because it produced a bad game or two is a little silly, especially when we're talking about it's perception in the 2010s.

 

[Ikagura]

I don't think anyone here has any intention of trying to claim this game was good, haha. You could make an argument that it could've been great, and there are some interesting ideas, but nothing's gonna change the fact that it was a sub-functional disaster.

Sonic P-06 is at least decent for most people around. In fact this is the only way people should experience it (unless they really, really want to have the "authentic" feeling but I don't really think this would be worth it).

No, on the other hand I wouldn't use that game to claim that the original was good, it's like saying Simon's Quest is the best NES Castlevania just because there's a patch fixing the game's flaws.

At the end of the day, it's just one bad entry in a long-running series. I suppose you could group it with Shadow 05, but calling the entire series bad because it produced a bad game or two is a little silly, especially when we're talking about it's perception in the 2010s.

I would say at least 3 really bad games (Boom included even if it's not canonical I'll still add to the series) and Lost World + Forces while not being good are nowhere near as tedious as Shadow nor 2006, just extremely bland games that tried to be too safe (and the opposite of the spectrum of those two).

As said above it'd be like taking Mario is Missing (yes, even if it's not developed by Nintendo EAD), Bomberman Act:Zero and even Metroid Other M then claim all of these franchises aren't good and anybody actually claiming they are would just be doing "revisionist mental gymnastic" which is a bit too easy to deflect any counterargument...

 

[God-Shattering Twink]

Sonic P-06 is at least decent for most people around. In fact this is the only way people should experience it (unless they really, really want to have the "authentic" feeling but I don't really think this would be worth it).

No, on the other hand I wouldn't use that game to claim that the original was good, it's like saying Simon's Quest is the best NES Castlevania just because there's a patch fixing the game's flaws.

I would say at least 3 really bad games (Boom included even if it's not canonical I'll still add to the series) and Lost World + Forces while not being good are nowhere near as tedious as Shadow nor 2006, just extremely bland games that tried to be too safe (and the opposite of the spectrum of those two).

As said above it'd be like taking Mario is Missing (yes, even if it's not developed by Nintendo EAD), Bomberman Act:Zero and even Metroid Other M then claim all of these franchises aren't good and anybody actually claiming they are would just be doing "revisionist mental gymnastic" which is a bit too easy to deflect any counterargument...

As an Adventure fan, P06 is frustratingly good, it really makes me wish the original 06 wasn't a such a trainwreck. However I will always encourage people to play the most faithful versions of games with popular patches/fixes, just to get an idea of why they're so infamous. Recently i've seen a large uptick in people calling 06 "misunderstood" after playing P06, because they don't have the context of how awful the original game was.

 

[KaiserMk7]

No, on the other hand I wouldn't use that game to claim that the original was good, it's like saying Simon's Quest is the best NES Castlevania just because there's a patch fixing the game's flaws.

Which Simon's Quest fan remake is the best though?

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Sheesh you guys write too much , on waffle comment about fan patches yea they are cool but the thing is they aren't "official" that will always be an obstacle because you can't get these cool stuff when you first install the game you have to look for it.