Type: Game
Genre: Platform
Rating: E(10+)
Console: Xbox 360
If there's one fanbase that's been shattered into tiny pieces, it's the Sonic the Hedgehog fanbase. Now don't throw rocks at me when I say this, but I don't mind some of the new Sonic games so much. Sonic Adventure was decent, SA2 was excellent, the three Sonic Advance games got back to good old 2D platforming, Sonic Battle was fun, and even Shadow the Hedgehog had its good points.
That said, I have no intentions of touching Unleashed, Heroes, Riders, or the Storybook series (Secret Rings, Black Knight). Chronicles is iffy. The DS version of Colors was all right, but I don't know how I'd feel about playing the Wii version.
Now, way back at its announcement, I was pretty anxious to get my hands on the new Sonic the Hedgehog, because it looked pretty much like Sonic Adventure 3, and that was exciting. 6 years and a newly-acquired refurbished Xbox later, I got my chance. I'd heard a lot of bad, but it couldn't be all that horrible... right?
To put it simply, the game was very obviously rushed, from outright lies in the manual to infuriating problems in-game. A couple of stages (more on this later) required herculean feats of patience and stubbornness, the story had serious issues (more on THAT later), load times were horrendous and FREQUENT, and most frustratingly, it felt like it had the potential to be an excellent experience, but was screwed up the ass by deadlines and corporate meddling. I did see shining moments of brilliance- parts of some of the levels flowed like honey, and that's a really good feeling. Also, the redesign they gave to Dr. Robotnik (I hesitate to call him Eggman, even though it's his actual name that's
been phased back into canon, because I played the living crap out of
Sonic 2 and all of the original character names just kind of... stuck) was pretty friggin' sweet, and made him look like an actual threat instead of just a largely ineffective antagonist like he's been for the past several games.
Let me explain.
The game is divided into four stories- Sonic's, Shadow's, a new character, Silver's, and the Last Story, where everybody has to team up to avert disaster. Sonic's focus is on speed, Shadow's is on doing everything better than Sonic's (though there are vehicles, too), and Silver's is on platforming and puzzles.
In Sonic's story, Dr. Robotnik has kidnapped Princess Elise of Soleanna in a bid to control the Flames of Disaster so he can rule over time. Nevermind that they're called the Flames of Disaster, which should be a pretty clear indication that they are not to be messed with. REGARDLESS, Sonic goes on a quest to rescue Elise from the good doctor and encounters a number of obstacles along the way, such as a telekinetic hedgehog from the future trying to kill him and Robotnik running off with her while Sonic was too busy dealing with said hedgehog to make sure that wouldn't happen. Somewhere along the line, Sonic and Elise manage to fall in love... which was worth at least one headdesk. To make it worse, Sonic's plot has nothing to do with the rest of the game's story. I am dead serious here: Shadow and Silver have every last important plot point, and Sonic really only kinda helps finish things off in Last Story.
There are segments in his levels where the camera moves behind him and he starts running very, very fast, fast enough that anything he crashes into causes him to lose his rings. Besides controlling horribly, feeling thrown in for fake difficulty, and taking a lot of control out of the player's hands, these segments usually happen on narrow sections of track, so God forbid that you aren't aimed right at the next section of track when you inevitably have to jump over a gap, or he'll go flying off with no hope of recovery. These 'mach speed' sections quickly became the most hated part of the game for me, and little wonder, because playing them meant all I could do is keep failing over and over until I figured out what to press and when, so that Sonic might have a chance of making it to the end of the stage... just like a quick time event, except with more ways to screw up so that Sonic Dies.
Moving on to Shadow, his story is about how an encounter with an evil shadow copy of himself leads him to uncover the truth about the Solaris Project that Robotnik won't shut up about. The long and short of it is, 10 years ago, Soleanna's scientists and their king attempted to mess with forces they couldn't comprehend (always a fantastic idea) and ended up splitting their god into two distinctly evil entities, Iblis (the Flames of Disaster, Solaris' power) and Mephiles (A master manipulator, Solaris' mind). Along the way, he puts a boot to Silver's tail and shows him the truth, then proceeds to seal Mephiles away. Kinda. He gets back out.
I said it before, but Shadow basically does everything better than Sonic. The levels lack any of Sonic's fun-sucking mach speed segments, he can finish enemies in one pop with midair kicks and punches instead of having to repeatedly homing attack them, he can throw a paralyzing bolt of energy, and his story is actually relevant to the overall plot.
Shadow gets vehicle segments in trade for mach speed, which is really okay by me. Along the way he can drive an armed hovercraft, an armed glider, and an armed buggy, but the buggy's usually optional, the glider moves at a controllable pace, and the hovercraft segments are smooth sailing as long as one takes it slow and focuses more on finding where they have to go than killing every enemy to cross their path.
Silver's story focuses on how he's an utter freaking tool who was tricked by Mephiles into believing that Sonic caused the Flames of Disaster to destroy his world, because Iblis was sealed inside Elise and the only way to set it free is to make her cry.
....yes, seriously.
The world should have been destroyed long before Robotnik and Sonic showed up in Soleanna, because Elise was only a child when her father died, and I dare any one of you to tell me that a little girl who lost her beloved father won't shed at least a few tears at his passing.
Shadow puts a boot in his tail, drags him to the past to show him that, and then Silver returns to the part of the doomed future he's from to defeat Iblis and seal it away, despite it being a much better idea to return to the point shortly after Iblis reappeared and sealing it before it could destroy the planet, because in this game time portals always seem to lead exactly where you need them to.
Despite his atrocious voice (I don't even blame the VA for this, he was miscast) and the complete idiocy of the character, Silver isn't too bad. I'd said before that his focus is on platforming and puzzles, which is true, but Silver is a ridiculously powerful telekinetic, able to lift platforms out of a lake like it was child's play. This is the focus of his ridiculously fun combat, which revolves around grabbing items with his mind and then throwing them at high velocity toward his enemies. This includes barrels, chairs, rocks, and enemies' own bullets. Eventually I abandoned barrels, chairs, and rocks entirely just for the perverted glee I got from stopping missiles in mid air a la Neo and then using those same missiles to asplode the face of any enemy who dared oppose me.
All things considered, I'm generally a very nice scorer, because I usually focus on the positives. But even though I had fun with Silver's combat, and I consider Shadow's story to be the best reason for playing the game, in the end it's just not that good. Two rights do not excuse 15 wrongs. Sega should have known better than to rush it out the door completely unfinished- did anybody even do any serious playtesting? What we wanted was a complete game, what we got was a beta, and that's inexcusable.
Score: 4/10, and only that high because of its merits.
Pass/Fail: Fail.
Genre: Platform
Rating: E(10+)
Console: Xbox 360
If there's one fanbase that's been shattered into tiny pieces, it's the Sonic the Hedgehog fanbase. Now don't throw rocks at me when I say this, but I don't mind some of the new Sonic games so much. Sonic Adventure was decent, SA2 was excellent, the three Sonic Advance games got back to good old 2D platforming, Sonic Battle was fun, and even Shadow the Hedgehog had its good points.
That said, I have no intentions of touching Unleashed, Heroes, Riders, or the Storybook series (Secret Rings, Black Knight). Chronicles is iffy. The DS version of Colors was all right, but I don't know how I'd feel about playing the Wii version.
Now, way back at its announcement, I was pretty anxious to get my hands on the new Sonic the Hedgehog, because it looked pretty much like Sonic Adventure 3, and that was exciting. 6 years and a newly-acquired refurbished Xbox later, I got my chance. I'd heard a lot of bad, but it couldn't be all that horrible... right?
 |
| Well... let's just say that even the Fastest Thing Alive has 'off' days. |
Let me explain.
The game is divided into four stories- Sonic's, Shadow's, a new character, Silver's, and the Last Story, where everybody has to team up to avert disaster. Sonic's focus is on speed, Shadow's is on doing everything better than Sonic's (though there are vehicles, too), and Silver's is on platforming and puzzles.
In Sonic's story, Dr. Robotnik has kidnapped Princess Elise of Soleanna in a bid to control the Flames of Disaster so he can rule over time. Nevermind that they're called the Flames of Disaster, which should be a pretty clear indication that they are not to be messed with. REGARDLESS, Sonic goes on a quest to rescue Elise from the good doctor and encounters a number of obstacles along the way, such as a telekinetic hedgehog from the future trying to kill him and Robotnik running off with her while Sonic was too busy dealing with said hedgehog to make sure that wouldn't happen. Somewhere along the line, Sonic and Elise manage to fall in love... which was worth at least one headdesk. To make it worse, Sonic's plot has nothing to do with the rest of the game's story. I am dead serious here: Shadow and Silver have every last important plot point, and Sonic really only kinda helps finish things off in Last Story.
There are segments in his levels where the camera moves behind him and he starts running very, very fast, fast enough that anything he crashes into causes him to lose his rings. Besides controlling horribly, feeling thrown in for fake difficulty, and taking a lot of control out of the player's hands, these segments usually happen on narrow sections of track, so God forbid that you aren't aimed right at the next section of track when you inevitably have to jump over a gap, or he'll go flying off with no hope of recovery. These 'mach speed' sections quickly became the most hated part of the game for me, and little wonder, because playing them meant all I could do is keep failing over and over until I figured out what to press and when, so that Sonic might have a chance of making it to the end of the stage... just like a quick time event, except with more ways to screw up so that Sonic Dies.
Moving on to Shadow, his story is about how an encounter with an evil shadow copy of himself leads him to uncover the truth about the Solaris Project that Robotnik won't shut up about. The long and short of it is, 10 years ago, Soleanna's scientists and their king attempted to mess with forces they couldn't comprehend (always a fantastic idea) and ended up splitting their god into two distinctly evil entities, Iblis (the Flames of Disaster, Solaris' power) and Mephiles (A master manipulator, Solaris' mind). Along the way, he puts a boot to Silver's tail and shows him the truth, then proceeds to seal Mephiles away. Kinda. He gets back out.
I said it before, but Shadow basically does everything better than Sonic. The levels lack any of Sonic's fun-sucking mach speed segments, he can finish enemies in one pop with midair kicks and punches instead of having to repeatedly homing attack them, he can throw a paralyzing bolt of energy, and his story is actually relevant to the overall plot.
Shadow gets vehicle segments in trade for mach speed, which is really okay by me. Along the way he can drive an armed hovercraft, an armed glider, and an armed buggy, but the buggy's usually optional, the glider moves at a controllable pace, and the hovercraft segments are smooth sailing as long as one takes it slow and focuses more on finding where they have to go than killing every enemy to cross their path.
Silver's story focuses on how he's an utter freaking tool who was tricked by Mephiles into believing that Sonic caused the Flames of Disaster to destroy his world, because Iblis was sealed inside Elise and the only way to set it free is to make her cry.
....yes, seriously.
The world should have been destroyed long before Robotnik and Sonic showed up in Soleanna, because Elise was only a child when her father died, and I dare any one of you to tell me that a little girl who lost her beloved father won't shed at least a few tears at his passing.
Shadow puts a boot in his tail, drags him to the past to show him that, and then Silver returns to the part of the doomed future he's from to defeat Iblis and seal it away, despite it being a much better idea to return to the point shortly after Iblis reappeared and sealing it before it could destroy the planet, because in this game time portals always seem to lead exactly where you need them to.
Despite his atrocious voice (I don't even blame the VA for this, he was miscast) and the complete idiocy of the character, Silver isn't too bad. I'd said before that his focus is on platforming and puzzles, which is true, but Silver is a ridiculously powerful telekinetic, able to lift platforms out of a lake like it was child's play. This is the focus of his ridiculously fun combat, which revolves around grabbing items with his mind and then throwing them at high velocity toward his enemies. This includes barrels, chairs, rocks, and enemies' own bullets. Eventually I abandoned barrels, chairs, and rocks entirely just for the perverted glee I got from stopping missiles in mid air a la Neo and then using those same missiles to asplode the face of any enemy who dared oppose me.
All things considered, I'm generally a very nice scorer, because I usually focus on the positives. But even though I had fun with Silver's combat, and I consider Shadow's story to be the best reason for playing the game, in the end it's just not that good. Two rights do not excuse 15 wrongs. Sega should have known better than to rush it out the door completely unfinished- did anybody even do any serious playtesting? What we wanted was a complete game, what we got was a beta, and that's inexcusable.
Score: 4/10, and only that high because of its merits.
Pass/Fail: Fail.
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