Sonic Machines

== Introduction ==
Sonic Machines is a 3D semi-open world next-gen Sonic game released on the PS5 and PS4, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One, Ninendo Switch, Windows 10 (via the Microsoft Store) and PC (Steam and Epic Games Store) in June 23, 2022 (Sonic's Anniversary Day) to celebrate Eggman's 36th anniversary and the prior Sonic 35th Anniversary. Because of that, the writers made a story and Eggman is a huge character in it, while still not being the main character, the story of the game focused on Eggman's backstory. All info will be explained in detail later.
== Story ==
The story begins with Sonic relaxing in a beach with Tails as they see a really small army of 3 total robots trying to attack them. Sonic easily kills these robots as they're weak Eggpawns (you don't even control Sonic in the scene). Then after defeating them, Sonic questions how Eggman got all of these robots and how he became an evil genius in the first place. Concerned about what he was thinking, Sonic bursts out in the Forest to find the nearest Eggman base because Eggman was in it to ask questions and hope for answers. He reached Eggman's base and then Eggman saw him while he's trying to tell him, Sonic quickly tells him the question and then... Eggman rejects to answer, the only thing he can say is that Gerald Robotnik was sending him to Earth to protect him from Maria's disease, and after explaining it to Sonic, he stopped answering. Something felt wrong, Sonic felt like Eggman was ashamed of his past, and didn't want to tell it. Sonic quickly runs to all of the huge embassies and bases Eggman's Empire has around the world because in each huge embassy or base, there is a big Eggman creation that can speak, or act their emotions in expression only or sign languages. Sonic arrives to the beach city of Imami (inspired by Miami) where Sonic would go around the place which strangely has a lot of enemies, the beach of the enemies however don't appear in the shops and places near them but instead around them, except for one empty dance club which has nothing but robots, Sonic defeats those and finds a secret door that leads to a secret Eggman base, Sonic goes around to defeat the robots of the base until he finds the room of the first big Eggman creation that can speak, Metal Sonic 1.0. Metal Sonic tells him about how some of the robots around him were made, Tails easily catches the information on his tablet and saves them. The 2nd place is in a big tribal mountain called "Kishasmar" which Mangolian (obvious Mongolia inspiration) humans talking about how they'll defeat "the base of modernity" and bring back "tradition" to expand their culture, However, Sonic does not accept and tells them how technology could make for a better purpose, but however, they didn't listen but ignored Sonic since he was going to the Eggman base located in the mountains. Sonic rushes in and begins to defeat Robots one by one, and enters the boss room again where he finds Metal Sonic 3.0 (a new version of metal sonic) who tells him why Eggman made the robots, he needed something "modern" to help his empire rise instead of using soliders, most people in his town were really wholesome and didn't recognize Eggman's empire when he declared it's independence, so he made his own humans in the form of robots, metal sonic 3.0 however transforms into Metallix and hits Sonic, but then Sonic defeats him and gets 3 chaos emeralds out of it. The third base was located somewhere in the deserts where only african and arabic tribes exist. However, unlike the mongolian tribe, they support modernity and machines, but they think the base far away has gotten it a little bit too far, then suddenly a lot of robots start attacking them and flooding the desert with dangerous spikes and pits, and the worst thing, a sandstorm was also coming so Sonic needed to be quick about entering the Eggman base. Sonic also defeats the robots in the Eggman base and reaches the boss room of none other than Shadow. Shadow, knowing what Maria told him about Eggman is that Sonic didn't remember he was called "Ivo Robotnik" and then Sonic remembered the name, Ivo Robotnik really liked looking at earth everytime, and he really enjoyed a lot of TV Shows and movies, he wanted to make a tech company to produce movies, animations and video games. But because Maria had a disease, they had to evacuate Ivo Robotnik to earth and he'd sit with his mother, Mia Robotnik. And then Shadow gives 2 chaos emeralds to Sonic if he defeats him in a fightning match. Sonic wins and gets the 2 chaos emeralds, then, the last base which is located underwater was the biggest of them all, but however, the sea levels were very deep so Sonic was very scared to even try to enter the base, but then he saw robots and other things he should destroy, so he entered the underwater base, defeated all it's robots, and found the first boss room in the massive base. The place where he finds Mia Robotnik who is grown up to be an old 60 year old woman and is trapped ever since, she tells him how Eggman lived on earth. Eggman wasn't always bald but his hair was half-bald, because of that when he began elementary school people started bullying him in class for his appearance, also she said that she accidentally punched him without knowing he was bullied, she tried to apologize for Ivo Robotnik but he refused, and he started growing a little bit of a mustache. His friends began also bullied him for his little mustache thing calling him "Half-Bald Nosehair Guy" (sounds familiar doesn't it?) the situation even got worse when he was at highschool, people bullied him way more in highschool to the point where the teacher started bullying him, the principal also didn't even care, his mother called the principal to take action, but he always said it's not the right time, so she cancelled all of Ivo Robotnik's progress in school and lost most of her money because of it. Eggman, being very poor at this moment started thinking that he'd get a duplication machine and a human robot to make him look like Maria as if she was still there. The human robot was only intended for good, and because he was 15 years old at the time, his mother left him alone finding other places for her to work in, and to get Gerald Robotnik's money, while the 10K dollars goes to Eggman, so Eggman buys everything he needs for 10K dollars, a duplication machine and a human robot, however, he realizes that he has an idea, he wants to take over the school and claim it as "pointless" so he makes the robots evil to attack only the school students and burn the school, he also had another idea, he makes a lot of duplications of the robots to take over the entire town and to kidnap his mother and put her inside their old house. Eggman then declares the independence of the Eggman Empire however a lot of people in the town didn't recognize the empire. then, he realizes that Metal Sonic 3.0 lied to him and that Eggman may have lied to him, Mia Robotnik, gives the last chaos emerald to Sonic, and he heads out to the second floor, expecting Infinite out of all villians, but then he finds Eggman who was waiting for him and knew Sonic would get his story. Eggman would then set most of his cancelled but still working machines free, and he transformed the death egg robot to a mega form of it, which is taller than an average house and thicker than an average house. Sonic then realizes he has the 7 chaos emeralds but not enough rings to go on and defeat eggman, so Sonic tells Tails to hide the Chaos Emeralds in a safer area and for Sonic to take on Eggman normally. However, Eggman crushes Sonic in the walls and a big crushing on the floor which falls on Mia Robotnik, making her diseappear out of the world, Tails then appears out of nowhere and gives the 7 chaos emeralds to Sonic and 100 rings which is enough for him to transform into Super Sonic, he also gives Tails his super transformation and the duo fights the machines and the Mega Death Egg Robot. Sonic then kills him and falls onto the ground of the room of the disappeared Mia Robotnik, he tries to find her, but he fails to and he goes on a rocket to get out of the ocean and fall onto the ground to conclude the story.
== Gameplay ==
Sonic Machines chose the fan-favorite adventure style of gameplay instead of the traditional boost used the previous mainline sonic game Sonic Forces. The adventure gameplay style in Sonic Adventure can make you discover alternate paths or alternate ways to finish the level, so Sonic Team chose that with a near-open world twist, they made sonic have loads of abilities ranging from the spindash (or what the fans call "the spamdash" from SA1) to the homing attack (with no target thing) to the bounce in SA2 to the somersault and slide and to the boost mode which is similar to that of Sonic Advance 2's, you can press Y to also gain loads of momentum on slopes without spindashing and without boosting, but if you hold Y when sonic is running on everything that's not flat, he will enter the boost mode mentioned earlier, however, only Tails is the other playable character and is only playable in the trial mode and in the super sonic boss fight. You can play as Tails in the Sonic levels and Tails can of course fly, spinkick and use his translator pad to program the robots on his good side, and also he can enter boost mode however instead of pressing Y, you have to have enough momentum to enter the mode which is the exact same in Sonic Advance 2. Eggman is also playable but in his mech form, it's still only in the trial mode, but Eggman has completely different levels from Sonic and Tails, the levels are completely linear and are shooting levels similar to SA1, that means you can hover, shoot, jump, and enter boost mode by running always and then Eggman's mech would have wheels to prepell it faster. 
Controls (PS4/PS5)
 	1st Ability (X) 	2nd Ability (Square)	3rd Ability (Circle)	4th Ability (Triangle)
Sonic 	Jump / Homing Attack	Roll 	Spindash (Spamdash
by fans)	Lightspeed Dash /
Boost Mode
Tails 	Jump / Fly 	Roll 	Spinkick 	Translator Pad
Eggman	Jump / Hover 	Nothing 	Shoot 	Nothing
== Development ==
Sonic Machines started development around December 2018 after the restructuring of Sonic Team, that meant SEGA had a good 4.4 years to develop the new Sonic game, and was planned to be a boost title. In the beginning of 2019, SEGA saw the huge number of fans beginning to appreciate the Adventure games and their stories, so SEGA wanted to make a dark-toned Sonic story but with a twist, it would be revolved around a huge character in the Sonic media, someone they've never explained his backstory in more detail, someone that is fun, goofy, light-hearted, and evil, meancing and dangerous. So, they chose Eggman to have his backstory explained, except they didn't want to make a spin-off revolving around the character since they were not sure what gameplay style is the ideal one for Eggman's character that would satisfy most people. And SEGA also saw the number of Unleashed fans growing a lot, so they also bringed back the writer of Sonic Unleashed. After the writers began writing the story, SEGA started production of the gameplay of the game. And again, the influence of people appreciating the Adventure games growing affected the gameplay for Sonic Machines as well, however Sonic Team wanted to do something unique with the gameplay, to make it more open, and even more open than SA1 was, but however, not fully open-world but somewhat close to it, taking inspiration from a few Sonic fangames like Green Hill Paradise Act 2. That was done to avoid the mistake of making bad linear levels like what they saw in Sonic Forces. SEGA also decided to bring in Moon Studios because of the success of their Ori franchise, to port the game to Windows 10 via the Microsoft Store, and to tweak the visuals a little bit to fix what's wrong with them. Hardlight also helped in making the PC port of the game on Steam and the Epic Games Store, and they tweaked some of the level design to make it more open but not fully open-world. The game was then announced in May 2021 in the "Sonic Central" presentation after Sonic Team finished a huge chunk of the game in more than 2 years. And the development of the single-player mode ended in December 2021, so SEGA made a demo of the game for a sneak-peek of what the game is gonna play like. And then in June 2022, the entire game was finished, but SEGA released it 2 days after it was finished.
== Release ==
Like stated earlier, the game got announced in the Sonic Central presentation at the very end, being announced alongside Sonic Colors Ultimate and Sonic Adventure Remake, but the teaser they showed at the end was very vague and didn't make much sense, so SEGA noticed these angry people saying "this is gonna turn out like Forces again" so they announced that they're revealing gameplay very soon at E3, where it got the chance to happen. Even after E3, the game's reception was still mixed with some people saying the gameplay looked boring since they saw Sonic "only killing enemies in a boring open space". But after E3, SEGA also revealed a story trailer that made Adventure fans and Dark age fans excited about Sonic's future game. Then later in December 2021, SEGA finally released the demo which got instant critical acclaim. A playthrough of the entire game without the cutscenes was also uploaded on the official Sonic YouTube channel in January 2022, which made people very excited about the next Sonic game because of it's open areas and fun gameplay. Then, 2 days after the entire game in June 2022, the game was released to the public.
=== Reviews ===
Reviews of the game were really positive getting from a 7/10 to a 9/10, it's safe to say the game was very successful, IGN gave it a 7.5/10 (which the fans thought it was better than that), Gamespot gave it an 8/10, Metacritic gave it a 95, calling it a "must have" for the Nintendo Switch. Sonic fans were really enjoying the game too, some Sonic fans said that it was actually something they didn't expect Sonic Team to execute well. SEGA was so proud of the positive reviews of the game, that they relied on the styles Sonic Machines gave for future entries.
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Category:Video Games