Sonic Lost World was the last Sonic game I did not own on PC, and a friend had a leftover key from the Humble Sonic Bundle he sent my way.

I played and finished this game on the Wii U back when that came out, and I've touched it here and there to capture video for my Youtube channel, but this is the first time I've really sat down and replayed it for serious since then. And every time I go back to this game I think it gets more and more baffling as to who this was made for. Like even among bad Sonic games, Sonic Lost World feels like it was made by, and for, space aliens.

Why does this game have a scoring system? Previous Sonic games would rate your performance based on your score, but this just gives you points for nothing. It has multiple systems centered around score, including a combo mechanic that awards you bonus points and even entire levels centered around amassing huge scores, but none of it matters or does anything. Eventually with the DLC they added a mechanic where finishing a DLC level would make it disappear until you scored another 10,000 points (after which the level would respawn), but that's a bizarre way to patch up that game design hole.

Why does this game automatically hide its HUD? For a lot of your time playing Sonic Lost World, you aren't allowed to see how many rings you're holding, how much time is left on the clock for a given level, or any other kind of important information without letting the game sit idle for a bit so the HUD can reappear. Despite this, the one HUD element that doesn't get hidden is a giant, stupid suitcase icon where you keep equippable items. Even if the suitcase is empty, it's always there, constantly visible in the bottom right of the screen. The game literally only shows you the least useful information at any given time.

Why does this game even pretend to show you a "map" of the level you're currently playing? You can see it on the pause screen, and it's mostly just a squiggly line that only vaguely suggests how far in to the level you are, but it is worthless in every context of the word.

Why does Sonic have two completely different, yet very similar jump buttons? Both jumps do different things, but it's not easy to figure that out at first, because visually they look nearly identical. And then Sonic gets a third, completely different (and significantly worse!) type of jump when skating on ice. Why does Sonic have two different types of rolling, where one is actively worse and can cancel out of the other? Shouldn't simple and obvious control problems like this have been solved pre-alpha? Sonic games always seem to have control problems, but never _this_ bad. Not even the notorious Sonic 06 was this weird.

And then there's new problems specific to this PC port.

There’s no d-pad support when you use a controller. In the Wii U game, you could use the d-pad to warp around the world map quickly, but they removed that for the PC port for whatever reason. You have to travel one space at a time to get anywhere. There’s no more d-pad controls in levels, either.

You can rebind your keyboard keys, but not your controller buttons. This would actually be useful for someone who also played this on the Wii U, as the PC port does something strange with its button layout. Essentially, Nintendo always puts the A button on the rightmost face button, and the B button on the bottom. Xbox switches those two buttons, so that the A button is on the bottom and the B button is on the right. Sonic Lost World is determined to make you push the A button to jump no matter which version you're playing, so you're technically pressing different buttons on the PC versus the Wii U. It's a dumb change made dumber by letting you change your keyboard binds, but not change anything about your controller.

The game contains its own internal resolution scaler, so it should be a snap to play the game in 4K and get amazing looking super sampling… except it has no anti-aliasing options and scaled resolutions don’t get filtered, so the game looks identical regardless of whether you play it at 4x resolution or 1x. I even tried to force AA in the Nvidia control panel and I can’t get it to work.

Then there’s the achievements. The Wii U had no achievement system, so you’d think they would make up new achievements for the PC port. Instead, they co-opted another feature. Earlier I mentioned a suitcase – you can store items in it and take them in to levels, like a combination of the inventory from Super Mario Bros. 3 and the item box in Super Mario World. On the Wii U, you’d get items from other users sharing them on the Miiverse, but you’d also get them for taking missions from Omochao.

Omochao missions are all super basic busy work things like “Do a wall run for ten meters!” “Use the homing attack three times!” “Collect XYZ number of rings!” And this is where all of the achievements on the PC come from.

…Except they still function like Omochao missions. Meaning you still have to find Omochao on the map, talk to him, and activate the missions. You can only have three active missions at a time, you don’t get to pick which missions you want to do, and once you finish a mission, you have to find Omochao again to get more (he moves around to a random square on the map). If you can’t clear a mission, you also can’t abandon it, either, so it’ll be stuck as an active mission forever clogging up your mission list until you can complete it.

There are no other ways to get achievements. You can finish Sonic Lost World on the PC and never get a single achievement, even though they’re all incredibly shallow, brainless tasks.

And I just… don’t know, man. I have played nearly every Sonic game ever made, and Sonic Lost World feels like the abyss is finally staring back at me. There are worse Sonic games, but as of yet none are more confusingly made.

Sonic Lost World was the last Sonic game I did not own on PC, and a friend had a leftover key from the Humble Sonic Bundle he sent my way. I played and finished this game on the Wii U back when that came out, and I've touched it here and there to capture video for my Youtube channel, but this is the first time I've really sat down and replayed it for serious since then. And every time I go back to this game I think it gets more and more baffling as to who this was made for. Like even among bad Sonic games, Sonic Lost World feels like it was made by, and for, space aliens. Why does this game have a scoring system? Previous Sonic games would rate your performance based on your score, but this just gives you points for nothing. It has multiple systems centered around score, including a combo mechanic that awards you bonus points and even entire levels centered around amassing huge scores, but none of it matters or does anything. Eventually with the DLC they added a mechanic where finishing a DLC level would make it disappear until you scored another 10,000 points (after which the level would respawn), but that's a bizarre way to patch up that game design hole. Why does this game automatically hide its HUD? For a lot of your time playing Sonic Lost World, you aren't allowed to see how many rings you're holding, how much time is left on the clock for a given level, or any other kind of important information without letting the game sit idle for a bit so the HUD can reappear. Despite this, the one HUD element that doesn't get hidden is a giant, stupid suitcase icon where you keep equippable items. Even if the suitcase is empty, it's always there, constantly visible in the bottom right of the screen. The game literally only shows you the least useful information at any given time. Why does this game even pretend to show you a "map" of the level you're currently playing? You can see it on the pause screen, and it's mostly just a squiggly line that only vaguely suggests how far in to the level you are, but it is worthless in every context of the word. Why does Sonic have two completely different, yet very similar jump buttons? Both jumps do different things, but it's not easy to figure that out at first, because visually they look nearly identical. And then Sonic gets a third, completely different (and significantly worse!) type of jump when skating on ice. Why does Sonic have two different types of rolling, where one is actively worse and can cancel out of the other? Shouldn't simple and obvious control problems like this have been solved pre-alpha? Sonic games always seem to have control problems, but never _this_ bad. Not even the notorious Sonic 06 was this weird. And then there's new problems specific to this PC port. There’s no d-pad support when you use a controller. In the Wii U game, you could use the d-pad to warp around the world map quickly, but they removed that for the PC port for whatever reason. You have to travel one space at a time to get anywhere. There’s no more d-pad controls in levels, either. You can rebind your keyboard keys, but not your controller buttons. This would actually be useful for someone who also played this on the Wii U, as the PC port does something strange with its button layout. Essentially, Nintendo always puts the A button on the rightmost face button, and the B button on the bottom. Xbox switches those two buttons, so that the A button is on the bottom and the B button is on the right. Sonic Lost World is determined to make you push the A button to jump no matter which version you're playing, so you're technically pressing different buttons on the PC versus the Wii U. It's a dumb change made dumber by letting you change your keyboard binds, but not change anything about your controller. The game contains its own internal resolution scaler, so it should be a snap to play the game in 4K and get amazing looking super sampling… except it has no anti-aliasing options and scaled resolutions don’t get filtered, so the game looks identical regardless of whether you play it at 4x resolution or 1x. I even tried to force AA in the Nvidia control panel and I can’t get it to work. Then there’s the achievements. The Wii U had no achievement system, so you’d think they would make up new achievements for the PC port. Instead, they co-opted another feature. Earlier I mentioned a suitcase – you can store items in it and take them in to levels, like a combination of the inventory from Super Mario Bros. 3 and the item box in Super Mario World. On the Wii U, you’d get items from other users sharing them on the Miiverse, but you’d also get them for taking missions from Omochao. Omochao missions are all super basic busy work things like “Do a wall run for ten meters!” “Use the homing attack three times!” “Collect XYZ number of rings!” And this is where all of the achievements on the PC come from. …Except they still function like Omochao missions. Meaning you still have to find Omochao on the map, talk to him, and activate the missions. You can only have three active missions at a time, you don’t get to pick which missions you want to do, and once you finish a mission, you have to find Omochao again to get more (he moves around to a random square on the map). If you can’t clear a mission, you also can’t abandon it, either, so it’ll be stuck as an active mission forever clogging up your mission list until you can complete it. There are no other ways to get achievements. You can finish Sonic Lost World on the PC and never get a single achievement, even though they’re all incredibly shallow, brainless tasks. And I just… don’t know, man. I have played nearly every Sonic game ever made, and Sonic Lost World feels like the abyss is finally staring back at me. There are worse Sonic games, but as of yet none are more confusingly made.