Sonic's back! I wish i could say it was with a Vengeance...
Robotnik (I’m going to call him that until the day i die) is back stealing animals and Sonic is back to stop him. There’s no plot, there’s no voice work, there are no annoying sidekicks, this is pure unadulterated Sonic fun… mostly.
Developed by Dimps, this latest Sonic game harkens back to the simple 2D Side-Scrolling platformers of the original 3.5 Sonic games. Every level is a throwback to levels from those previous games, with only one exception.
There’s a Green Hill type Zone, a Casino type, a water type, a machinery type, it’s all been done before. The only level that adds anything new is the Lost Labyrinth Zone that contains one Act that involves lighting torches and blowing things up, and it’s a neat idea that’s a lot of fun.
The Boss Battles with Robotnik (seriously, Fuck Eggman) are direct rip-offs of the original boss battles as well. They’re all really easy too, up until the final battle that made me want to kill myself a few times.
Actually, the whole game is quite easy up until that last Boss Battle. I’m world renowned for being really bad at playing those original Sonic games, yet when i reached that final Boss battle i had 25 lives, which is unheard of for me. I actually found myself getting lives very quickly, and there are so many life boxes laying around the levels that i never felt like i was in trouble of a game over.
Dimps have changed Sonics movement and controls for the worst here too. In those original games sonic has a great sense of speed and he always got up to his top speed relatively quickly, but in this game it seems like he’s gotten so old that he really just can’t be bothered to accelerate like he used to. When he is in top speed he moves great, but once you hit a wall his movement becomes so sluggish that i felt like maybe my analog stick was broken.
The homing attack is both the best and worst addition to this 2D Sonic game. There are moments where it is a lot of fun to hit a string of enemies in a row, but these are few and far between. The Homing attack can actually get in the way when you’re not fighting enemies though, there are times when you will jump off a ledge and you’ll be heading towards a spring pad on a wall, but the homing attack doesn’t appear on the pad, which means you can’t home in on it, which results in you falling to your doom.
There are other times where you may jump off a ledge and accidentally hit the homing attack (cause it’s the same button as “jump”") and you’ll miss your landing and once again run into a reason to die.
The game looks great though, and sonic is very purposefully missing shades of blue to make him look like a 16 bit sprite, even though he’s a polygonal model. The pre-rendered background are nice to look at and are a lot more realistic looking than the older games, which adds a great sense of depth.
My final issue with the game is that it is incredibly short, and it costs $20. It took me 50 minutes to an hour to finish the game from start to finish. This is the first episode of a proposed trilogy, but that just means that all up you’ll be paying $60 for the “full” game. This isn’t sounding like a good deal to me, unless they change the controls and motion for the other two parts and make them much longer.
I know i sound pretty harsh in this review, but that’s only because i really wanted this game to be better. As it is, it’s a fun nostalgic experience that provides a great throwback to those classic Sonic games, but the sluggish motion and controls are a real let down. The game costs $20 for an hour of play, but it does allow you to go back to each Act and try to do a speed run, which then goes onto the online leaderboards.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If you love those old Sonic games and you love to play through levels multiple times to try and get a better time, than i recommend you pick up Sonic 4: Episode 1. If you have fallen off the Sonic train over the last few years, and you’re only a little curious about this game then i’d skip it.
