Is Balan Wonderworld worse than Sonic 06?

[nded]

I laughed many a time playing the Balan Wonderland demo so I already have a more positive impression of it than Sonic 06.

 

[Kewlmyc]

At the end of the day, Balan is a working video game (for the most part).

Sonic 06 is worse that any early access game I've played. It's actively not finished.

Also, no poll is criminal.

 

[Naner]

You're definitely not wrong though, in the sense that both games are clearly not what the developers fully intended, and there were corners cut in order to meet specific release dates. In a world where both '06 and Sunshine are allowed an extra year or two of development time, both would probably be considered decent to great games, even if Sunshine was always destined to be better.

That said, I always find it puzzling how often people talk about '06 like it's some sort of glitch fear. I've played through all the stories at least 3 times (on the less polished PS3 version), and I've never seen any glitches. I wonder how many people who talk about it in that way have actually played through it, or are simply parroting what they've heard.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I encountered some hilarious glitches but not really game breaking ones. Sonic 06 is bad because the controls, physics and level design are all fucked, but you can certainly play it from start to finish.

 

[SirNinja]

Sonic '06 was a late-alpha/early-beta build of a game which needed at least another year in the oven, but was carelessly kicked out the door just so it could be part of the franchise's 15th anniversary. It's an absolute mess of a game, with bizarre handling, extremely frequent and long load screens (often just for one line of dialogue!), and of course a mountain of bugs, and collision errors, and hairpin-turn controls, and brazenly stupid design decisions. Don't get me started on the story, either.

Balan, despite everything else about it, does at least seem to be more or less the game its developers wanted to make. It's more outright boring than outright broken.

 

[jman2050]

This is a tough question to tackle with because Balan is by far more technically sound and it actually works as it should. There's just nothing there. It's a 3D platformer in the sense that you can run and you can jump (sometimes anyway...) in a 3D space but it's one of the most barebones implementation of that game design paradigm, more akin to some shovelware licensed game from the PS1/PS2 era. Just zero imagination.

In a sense I appreciate Sonic 06 for having a creative design philosophy, especially compared to the nothing in Balan's Wonderworld, but on the other hand it's just so insanely broken and unfinished with controls that barely do what they're supposed to do that I can't in good conscious recommend it even over Balan's blandness. It's a great time to have as far as unintentional hilarity goes, but a good game that does not make.

 

[Laughing Banana]

does Balan make out with a human?

Click to shrink...

Which answer would make it better or worse than Sonic 2006?

 

[Griffith]

There's a difference between a bad game and a bad broken game.

Which one you prefer is up to you... some strange people have managed to find some joy in the corniness mess of a bug-fest that is Sonic 06 but I have yet to see anyone finding any sense of joy in Balan Wonderworld. Balan reminds me of those obscure 3D platformer/action games that came out during the N64 era that are rarely talked about and yet somehow I think Balan will remembered even less than those.

It will be remembered as a footnote in Yuji Naka's wikipedia page.

 

[Menchin]

Sonic 06 is dreadful and broken and unfinished.

Balan Wonderworld is just dreadful.

Balan Wonderworld wins the shiny turd award in this matchup.

 

[MrPanic]

I'd almost argue the opposite. At least Sonic 06 is so broken you'll probably ragequit the game before you get too invested in it, Balan might actually trick you into playing the entire turd. Definitely makes Balan feel more malicious, especially since Balan is purposely designed to be this awful while 06 was more of a result of incompetence.

In any case, I don't really feel there's any merit to actually comparing two games that both clearly live in the "Do not play" tier. And if anything, I'd probably argue Sonic '06 might be more worthwhile to dredge through the garbage to get to some of the cool bits over the persistent awfulness that Balan offers.