Returning to Form
Sonic the Hedgehog. One of gaming's most enduring icons, but not for lack of trying. The past ten years have not been kind to the blue blur. The Dreamcast was canned, attempts to branch out in terms of gameplay from Sonic Heroes to Shadow the Hedgehog produced heavily mixed results, and then it hit its all-time low with Sonic the Hedgehog. But the series has slowly been on the rise again, and on his twentieth anniversary Sonic has a game that can finally satisfy his broken fanbase.
The game's gimmick is that both classic Sonic gameplay that old-school fans loved and the moderngameplay that debuted in Sonic Unleashed and Colors are present. It's justified with a time-travel plot that manages to goose Sonic fans both old and new, acknowledging many of the main games with a stage and even paying homage to some of Sonic's less popular outings, whether shunned by its own company or shunned by fans.
The old school Sonic feels more like the Sonic older fans remembered than recent efforts to do so, and the refinements made to modern Sonic's stages from Colors and Unleashed help make a game that's actually fun to play. The game makes a compelling case for the validity of modern Sonic, with its fast frame rate and level design reminiscent of the multiple paths of his yesteryears. It's a few tweaks short of being perfect, but it's more that could be said for him even five years ago.
Where the game really shines is its reimaginings of classic and modern stages to fit both Sonics. Stages that fans expected to show up are present, including Green Hill Zone, Chemical Plant Zone, and City Escape. But while those stages are a blast it's also astounding to see stages like Crisis City from Sonic 2006 actually be executed on properly and become a blast.
The game tries to make itself longer by adding challenges to each stage, where the depth of its fanservice becomes clear. Songs from games all over the franchise show up, classic powerups make their triumphant return, and Sonic's many, many, many and often annoying friends make their only contribution to gameplay. The challenges range from actually kind of fun to a chore, and your mileage will definitely vary.
This is the kind of love letter that fans of a franchise should expect on this kind of anniversary. But to see this love letter actually become a game that could return the franchise to greatness during the next console generation is perhaps the greatest present Sonic fans could get. And that's a gift that Sonic fans have needed for years- a good Sonic game.
