Downloadable content doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but when it’s bad it is truly bad. Usually with DLC there are additional characters and stories that you can buy, and maybe some cosmetics to give your hero a new look. If you pre-order Batman: Arkham City, you will be able to unlock Catwoman, jump from one building to another, and play her missions and story. Same with Goro in Mortal Kombat X, and Shao Khan in Mortal Kombat 11.
But the way Sonic Origins laid out its DLC seems like a money-making mess. The collection contains four different games, Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic CD, Sonic The Hedgehog 2, Sonic The Hedgehog 3, and Knuckles. All of these are playable, and the bundle also comes with missions that you can play outside of the games themselves. Each game in the set has its own list of tasks to complete.
The biggest problem is that it’s locked as part of the Premium Fun Pack DLC. These missions do not contain any story, nor do they affect the main games in any way. It’s just extra things to do on the side like Riddler’s Batmobile race tracks in Arkham Knight. Stripping these tasks out of the Standard Edition is unremarkable and unnecessary.
These are just tasks like hitting a target while dodging the dangers of falling and blowing up 20 balloons within 90 seconds. This is it! There is no reason for this downloadable content to exist other than to squeeze more money from people. Only full copies of the physical and digital copies were needed. If Sega wanted to save money, they might be able to make the game digital only, and then perhaps later add remastered Sonic games, like Sonic 3D Blast, to the package at a reasonable price.
You played these challenging missions (the privilege to get a review code for the digital deluxe edition). The missions work just as well as the mini mini-games, but they’re hardly worth the DLC. Not only that, but if you just buy the Standard Edition, you won’t get 10 additional mailbox backgrounds, see character animations in the menus, or have full camera control on the different islands in the game that act as the hub for each title.
You can move from one island to another but you will not be able to move completely around it. All these essential features missing from the Standard Edition are inexcusable. Just when you thought DLC couldn’t get any worse than Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion’s Horse Armor, or the 1989 version of the Batmobile unable to use it in the main Arkham Knight campaign, Sega brings this up.
Sonic Origins is a great game – I said a lot in my review. It’s everything Sonic fans from Sega and Sonic Team can and should want as it goes back to the basics of what made the franchise great while giving it an upgrade in visuals. It’s sad to know that it was so easy to add these missions and features to the main game.
The video game industry is big business, and the bottom line of companies’ importance dictates a lot of decisions. One of the things that games like Destiny add to new expansions, it’s another thing for a company like Sega to think “Hmmm, what if we removed those 11 challenging missions and the ability to fully use the camera in the main menu, and then switched that over to paid DLC?”
Sega has removed animations, borders, missions, and camera functions from a game rather than giving lifelong fans and newcomers to the series a full experience to earn their support. It was a bad move, and while the Sonic Origins group deserves its success, I’d suggest staying away from “add-ons” to send a message to Sega.
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