Sonic the Hedgehog

[Domstercool]

I loved the first two Sonic Adventure games, but when Heroes hit... Meh just didn't think much of Heroes. It wasn't really that good.

[SimonM7]

Yeah, Heroes was disappointing on so many levels too. Not only was it a twitch-fest, but it also felt off-puttingly shallow, story wise.

 

Sure, people are on about how we only need Sonic, alone, in a 2D space with checkerboard patterns everywhere, but we're sort of beyond that point, at least for fans that stuck with the whole "universe". After a fantastic story in Sonic Adventure 1, and a not too shabby one in 2, Heroes just felt down-slappingly saturday morning cartoon. Not even with Mecha Sonic as a final boss does it ever approach being the least bit exciting.

 

Shadow on the other hand - like I mentioned earlier - really does play a significant part in shining some light on the overall universe, so actually persevering with that game does in fact offer a kind of reward.

[Caris]

I still think this looks rather good.

[SimonM7]

Okay, or ALRIGHT! as Sonic would put it.

 

I've spent about three hours with Sonic The Hedgehog and I feel confident enough to write a few paragraphs of essentially what I'm thinking right now.

 

Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog were both honest attempts at good games from someone somewhere, and the only reason the relative crappyness of those didn't quite taint Sonic is that they weren't *really* Sonic games. Or if they were, you sort of let them slide conveniently into Luigi's Mansion style "spinoff" folders in the Sonic history cabinet.

 

Well this is it then. THE it. Sonic THE Hedgehog. There's no hiding now - no excuses.

 

Three hours in I'm hardly qualified to write a review, so I don't want you to take anything I say right now as a definite statement on whether the game is good or bad.

 

It starts off reasonably well, without explaining too much about why Sonic is in a Kingdom of whatever. From what I can tell this is just where he lives now, he doesn't seem transported to another world or anything as speculated pre-release by some. You're immediately dropped off in a "town stage" (think Sonic Adventure 1) and it's striking how incredibly bland the place looks. It's sort of like a Crazy Taxi 1 district without the people and the cars and the driving and the fun.

 

Anyway, you figure out you need the light dash thingy, and you need to buy it from a shop, so you accept a mission from one of the townsfolk to jump through some red rings, presumably as part of some basic movement training. Ka-ching, you got 100 rings for the mission and you're ready to acquire the dash to reach the first real action stage - the Emerald Coast lookalike.

 

The game plays exactly like the demo. Some people were pissed that you couldn't do the homing attack really fast in succession, and you can't here either. From what I understand there might be something you can do with the on screen gauge that fills up when you destroy enemies, or perhaps you can buy upgrades or summat. At this point I don't know, but don't expect that to be a "bug" that's fixed. It's simply how it plays, and I'm fine with it.

 

At one point in the stage, Sonic grabs on to the fin of a whale and tells Tails (say that fast!) to push a switch to close a gate, so that the whale doesn't take Sonic with him out to sea! Suddenly you control Tails briefly, and you get to direct him to said switch and take out some enemies along the way. This is a very small portion of the stage, but I'm really thrilled how they managed to use different characters without forcing them on you too much. Of course all the other extra characters apart from Silver and Shadow are presumably handled the same, and I think that's fantastic.

 

Speaking of Silver and Shadow; the episodes are separated. For those of you lying sleepless at night, worried you'll get the other two hedgehogs shoved down your throat during your personal Sonic time - you can stop that. The extra "campaigns" are there for you to pick once you've *unlocked* them, Sonic Adventure 1 style.

 

Oh and I haven't seen much of Silver yet, but he's REALLY cool.

 

Graphically the action stages look pretty great. I played a desert stage (carrying Elise actually, which doesn't look as awkward as you'd think) and the lighting looked absolutely fantastic. I don't say that in comparison to something like Gears - which I haven't played yet - I'm saying that in relation to how it looks. How Sonic looks, and what kind of signals my brain are recieving. It's warm, colourful, and you just want to fondle him - particularly in cutscenes. Her I mean. Obviously. Ahem. (She's like 16, so it's creepy anyway!)

 

That's the action stages though. In the town (more sections open up as you go) things are gray, drab, choppy and boring. People look really weird, the draw distance on shadows and some objects is absolutely laughable, and the physics look stupid a great deal more than they look good. Walking into a bunch of apples (after breaking a barrel or something) usually kicks them right out into space. Weirdly - even though it looks absolutely blandtastic, the framerate has real trouble being steady. It's just a mess.

 

It would be easy to disregard of said blandness if the game didn't insist on having "missions" set in town, too. This makes it a REAL mystery why more effort wansn't poured into making it half appealing. Usually you walk up to someone and this someone says "argh, my cat's gone missing!" or something to that effect, and asked whether you want to accept you get to answer yes or no. You'll be answering no a lot. Not because the missions themselves are particularly difficult, but because the game needs to slap a loading screen onto your face twice - once for loading the guy explaining the "mission" in detail and one for the actual mission. It's just a damn hassle and no fun whatsoever.

 

Wrapping up this mess of a write-up, I'm not sure whether I like it or not yet. I'm just completely neutral, because for each thing that's awesome (the high speed bits of some stages are nuts! ) there's something about it that slaps you right on the testicles. Nothing game breaking - mind. This is certainly not a Shadow or Heroes level of badness by any stretch, and it could really come out on top after all is said and done - but it's enough to remain sceptical.

 

I'll return with more thoughts as they strike.

 

UPDATE #1

Okay, I've played about an hour more, and the action stages are really really fun. The combat was something I really enjoyed in the demo aswell, and here it's even more obvious that it's one of this game's main strengths. The music is cool, the bits where you get to control Tails aren't annoying (yes, that was a concern!), and the levels just look and feel really nice. I've decided I'll keep updating this post, so check back for more.

 

Update #2

I've had what can only be described as an epiphany.

 

Thankfully, the dreadful chore of the first bit of city is nowhere near something you'll have to endure on a regular basis (less and less it seems), and the action stages are truly fantastic. I've played a snow level that was deliciously open, and running through the snow with Sonic feels incredibly good. The action is fast and awesomely fluid, and right now it's like it finally makes sense. It's finally the game it IS. The framerate, unless you're in the middle of tons of explosions and physics bits flying, holds up really well, and it all sounds, plays and looks sooo nice. The realtime cutscenes are also starting to get eye-poppingly good. Brilliant stuff!

 

The story is also kicking into gear. Robotnik is different here than he's been for a while. More menacing and less goofy. Shadow and Rouge have just showed up, and their presence makes sense too, which was another concern of mine. Anyway. I'll keep playing and updating!

 

Update #3

I just tried out Shadow (being about 50% through Sonic's story alone and having played it more or less since I got it the game seems pretty big, too) and all I can say is that.. If there was any concern about the other characters being less fun to play I can just put those to rest right now. Playing Shadow feels even more like playing PS2 Shinobi (yes that's a good thing) than playing Sonic did.

 

Shadow basically stays afloat after a dash attack, and the more sequential attacks you do, the fancier his attacks get. He can also throw *daggers* (chaos control fancyness) to stun opponents before attacking them. I've only just sniffed a bit at his first level so I haven't driven any vehicles or anything, but he seems a blast to play aswell. I always thought his controls were wonky in Heroes and ShTH, but here he's not like that at all.

 

Update #4

I didn't want to start the Shadow episode without finishing Sonic, so I went back to playing the Sonic one again and I think I might be nearing the end of that. I met a guy in town called "Sonic Man" with a Sonic t-shirt and plastic spikes on his head and raced him. I feel more at ease with the missions now that I know for certain that 95% of them are entirely optional, and I think there might be some secrets in some of them that I'll be happy to approach once I'm done with the story.

 

The biggest thing I've come to grips with in this update is that there are some really significant upgrades to buy. The stuff that's *required* to buy is the usual bounce moves and stuff like that, but in addition there are all kinds of awesomeities. For instance, there's one powerup that you can purchase that lets you slow down time. Another gives you the ability to run really fast whenever you like. There are more, and it seems that all of these are enabled by pressing the d-pad to left or right and a tiny icon will change next to the gauge thingy. Pressing R will trigger whatever it is you have selected.

 

Running towards someone with mentioned power-up, sliding into them by holding and releasing X, then flicking over to the slo-mo thingy to finish up by bouncing on them in mid air feels really cool. I can imagine the combat just gets better and better the more you play around with the different upgrades.

 

Like I said earlier, you sometimes get to control Tails in mid-level. The same is true for some other characters aswell, and so far I've gotten to play Knuckles and Silver aswell during Sonic's story. Knuckles FINALLY has some decent fucking fighting to do, and it doesn't disappoint getting to beat the crap out of stuff. After two games of varying degrees of shit treasure hunting he's finally a proper part of clearing a stage.

 

I also got some hands on time with Silver through Sonic's story as mentioned. Silver is pretty cool because he doesn't just play like a watered down Psi-Ops/Second Sight game. His sections are also well paced even though he's obviously the slowest of the main hedgehogs. Oh and he can catch projectiles in mid air and send them back at enemies, lift cars, bend context sensitive bits of the environment and just generally feel like a really unique character right out of the box, unlike to some extent Shadow, who had some identity to acquire - gameplay wise - when he first appeared in SA2. Pretty much a Sonic palette swap back then if we're being honest.

 

Uuuum... Yeah, that's prolly it for now. Summing up, all three characters seem just about equal amounts of fun to play, and even when you're playing Tails and Knuckles, the focus is on action and proper progression. I'm warming more and more to this game really, and just about the only real problem I'm having now is that none of it has much in the way of personality. The levels are cool and everything, but they don't stick out, nor do they have any obvious characteristics like SA1 levels did. This plays better than SA1, that's like.. that's not even debatable.. But SA1 just oozed personality, whereas none of the 3D Sonics since have had that same memorable quality about them.

 

I'll prolly swing by with a few more updates tomorrow, and then I'll process all of this in my mushy, somewhat dazzled brain, and try to review it.

[KKOB]

why is it i dont like any sonic games.

 

apart from Sonic 2 on the mega drive i havent enjoyed any of them, admittedly Sonic Rush wasn't as dire as the other Sonics but still didnt make me do anything much. i have high hopes for the Wii game btu the 360 and PS3 one looks like the usual turd of a 3D Sonic game.

[Cubechris]

This shit should not be called Sonic The Hedgehog, tarnishing the originals name

[SimonM7]

This shit is easily the best Sonic since SA1, and gameplay wise it's vastly superior to even that. *writes update #2*

[Mr. Bananagrabber]

Someone who's played it: It's actually rather good.

Everyone else: lolol it suks am i cool now?

[Guest Jordan]

Looks like handing this over to Sega rather than letting Sonic Team do it payed off huh?

[That Guy]

Okay, or ALRIGHT! as Sonic would put it.

 

I've spent about three hours with Sonic The Hedgehog and I feel confident enough to write a few paragraphs of essentially what I'm thinking right now.

 

Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog were both honest attempts at good games from someone somewhere, and the only reason the relative crappyness of those didn't quite taint Sonic is that they weren't *really* Sonic games. Or if they were, you sort of let them slide conveniently into Luigi's Mansion style "spinoff" folders in the Sonic history cabinet.

 

Well this is it then. THE it. Sonic THE Hedgehog. There's no hiding now - no excuses.

 

Three hours in I'm hardly qualified to write a review, so I don't want you to take anything I say right now as a definite statement on whether the game is good or bad.

 

It starts off reasonably well, without explaining too much about why Sonic is in a Kingdom of whatever. From what I can tell this is just where he lives now, he doesn't seem transported to another world or anything as speculated pre-release by some. You're immediately dropped off in a "town stage" (think Sonic Adventure 1) and it's striking how incredibly bland the place looks. It's sort of like a Crazy Taxi 1 district without the people and the cars and the driving and the fun.

 

Anyway, you figure out you need the light dash thingy, and you need to buy it from a shop, so you accept a mission from one of the townsfolk to jump through some red rings, presumably as part of some basic movement training. Ka-ching, you got 100 rings for the mission and you're ready to acquire the dash to reach the first real action stage - the Emerald Coast lookalike.

 

The game plays exactly like the demo. Some people were pissed that you couldn't do the homing attack really fast in succession, and you can't here either. From what I understand there might be something you can do with the on screen gauge that fills up when you destroy enemies, or perhaps you can buy upgrades or summat. At this point I don't know, but don't expect that to be a "bug" that's fixed. It's simply how it plays, and I'm fine with it.

 

At one point in the stage, Sonic grabs on to the fin of a whale and tells Tails (say that fast!) to push a switch to close a gate, so that the whale doesn't take Sonic with him out to sea! Suddenly you control Tails briefly, and you get to direct him to said switch and take out some enemies along the way. This is a very small portion of the stage, but I'm really thrilled how they managed to use different characters without forcing them on you too much. Of course all the other extra characters apart from Silver and Shadow are presumably handled the same, and I think that's fantastic.

 

Speaking of Silver and Shadow; the episodes are separated. For those of you lying sleepless at night, worried you'll get the other two hedgehogs shoved down your throat during your personal Sonic time - you can stop that. The extra "campaigns" are there for you to pick once you've *unlocked* them, Sonic Adventure 1 style.

 

Oh and I haven't seen much of Silver yet, but he's REALLY cool.

 

Graphically the action stages look pretty great. I played a desert stage (carrying Elise actually, which doesn't look as awkward as you'd think) and the lighting looked absolutely fantastic. I don't say that in comparison to something like Gears - which I haven't played yet - I'm saying that in relation to how it looks. How Sonic looks, and what kind of signals my brain are recieving. It's warm, colourful, and you just want to fondle him - particularly in cutscenes. Her I mean. Obviously. Ahem. (She's like 16, so it's creepy anyway!)

 

That's the action stages though. In the town (more sections open up as you go) things are gray, drab, choppy and boring. People look really weird, the draw distance on shadows and some objects is absolutely laughable, and the physics look stupid a great deal more than they look good. Walking into a bunch of apples (after breaking a barrel or something) usually kicks them right out into space. Weirdly - even though it looks absolutely blandtastic, the framerate has real trouble being steady. It's just a mess.

 

It would be easy to disregard of said blandness if the game didn't insist on having "missions" set in town, too. This makes it a REAL mystery why more effort wansn't poured into making it half appealing. Usually you walk up to someone and this someone says "argh, my cat's gone missing!" or something to that effect, and asked whether you want to accept you get to answer yes or no. You'll be answering no a lot. Not because the missions themselves are particularly difficult, but because the game needs to slap a loading screen onto your face twice - once for loading the guy explaining the "mission" in detail and one for the actual mission. It's just a damn hassle and no fun whatsoever.

 

Wrapping up this mess of a write-up, I'm not sure whether I like it or not yet. I'm just completely neutral, because for each thing that's awesome (the high speed bits of some stages are nuts! ) there's something about it that slaps you right on the testicles. Nothing game breaking - mind. This is certainly not a Shadow or Heroes level of badness by any stretch, and it could really come out on top after all is said and done - but it's enough to remain sceptical.

 

I'll return with more thoughts as they strike.

 

UPDATE #1

Okay, I've played about an hour more, and the action stages are really really fun. The combat was something I really enjoyed in the demo aswell, and here it's even more obvious that it's one of this game's main strengths. The music is cool, the bits where you get to control Tails aren't annoying (yes, that was a concern!), and the levels just look and feel really nice. I've decided I'll keep updating this post, so check back for more.

 

Update #2

I've had what can only be described as an epiphany.

 

Thankfully, the dreadful chore of the first bit of city is nowhere near something you'll have to endure on a regular basis (less and less it seems), and the action stages are truly fantastic. I've played a snow level that was deliciously open, and running through the snow with Sonic feels incredibly good. The action is fast and awesomely fluid, and right now it's like it finally makes sense. It's finally the game it IS. The framerate, unless you're in the middle of tons of explosions and physics bits flying, holds up really well, and it all sounds, plays and looks sooo nice. The realtime cutscenes are also starting to get eye-poppingly good. Brilliant stuff!

 

The story is also kicking into gear. Robotnik is different here than he's been for a while. More menacing and less goofy. Shadow and Rouge have just showed up, and their presence makes sense too, which was another concern of mine. Anyway. I'll keep playing and updating!

 

Great write up, thanks for that. I'm starting to look forward to it a little more now. I did love SA1 at the time (only Sonic bits) so this sounds like it could be pretty good.

 

Hows the camera holding up? What about the usual pit falls where you move the stick slightly and you go flying off to your doom? That still happen?

[SimonM7]

It happens way less, because controls are smoother now and less twitchy. It sort of changes the controls slightly depending on what you do, and it takes some getting used to but it's ultimately a better playing game for it. When you're going in halfpipes and stuff really fast it changes so that you just go left and right by pressing left and right, instead of having you turn and shoot off into space.

 

I just tried out Shadow (being about 50% through Sonic's story alone and having played it more or less since I got it it seems pretty big too) and all I can say is that.. If there was any concern about the other characters being less fun to play I can just put those to rest right now. Playing Shadow feels even more like playing PS2 Shinobi (yes that's a good thing) than playing Sonic did.

 

Shadow basically stays afloat after a dash attack, and the more sequential attacks you do, the fancier his attacks get. He can also throw *daggers* (chaos control fancyness) to stun opponents before attacking them. I've only just sniffed a bit at his first level so I haven't driven any vehicles or anything, but he seems a blast to play aswell. I always thought his controls were wonky in Heroes and ShTH, but here he's not like that at all.

 

About the camera, the demo gives you a fair impression. In fact, the demo gives you a fair impression of everything except the general quality of levels, which is way higher in the actual game. I thought the camera was great in the demo and I think it still works great. Oh and it controls faster on the right stick now, different from the demo's surprisingly slow response. You'll still want to just center it when you're in the middle of fighting baddies, and wanna see what's in front of you, though.

 

edit: (I'll just add some of this to Update #3 to be consistent)

[Hero-of-Time]

All I need to know is whether the homing attack still sends you flying off the edges of maps?

 

By the way, nice write up!

[Hellfire]

It's still not Sonic the way I rememeber it, but I'm happy that it doesn't suck that much.

[The3rdChildren]

What? A 3D Sonic game that doesn't suck? Impossible!

[SimonM7]

To play Sonic the way you remember it you can just play the Sonic you remember. Why make the same game over and over?

 

Anyway, time for my fourth and today's final update. My eyes are totally sore and I think they might just be coming out of their sockets.

 

Thanks for the kind comments, by the way.

[CoolFunkMan]

To play Sonic the way you remember it you can just play the Sonic you remember. Why make the same game over and over?

 

Anyway, time for my fourth and today's final update. My eyes are totally sore and I think they might just be coming out of their sockets.

 

Thanks for the kind comments, by the way.

 

You've just hit the nail on the head there. That's the exact reason why I think people should stop bashing the 3D games just because they aren't as good as the 2D ones. Granted, there's flaws... but they still have some appeal. Although I'm really not a huge fan of Sonic Heroes. That game was truly dire.

 

Cheers for the write-ups too. This sounds like a great Sonic game! I really can't wait to get my hands on it.

[Hero-of-Time]

http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3155296

 

Dont know if that review has been posted but it aint looking good.

[SimonM7]

It makes me physically ill to read comments like "Sonic Heroes is the best 3D Sonic" and "get rid of the goofy characters and keep Knuckles and Tails" when this is clearly the best playing 3D sonic by far, and a lot of it is thanks to the mechanics that Shadow and Silver enable.

 

I'm prolly gonna get round to writing a review later today. I can say this though, as far as production values and overall feel to it, Sonic Adventure 1 is still the most complete Sonic game to me, with a charming and endearing universe. It has a charismatic set of extra characters like Chaos and Tikal, too, and it just never has you doubting that it was a labour of love. Even though the story here kicks off proper when you play Silver (and perhaps Shadow too) with cutscenes that actually carry some emotional weight and a more coherent plot, it just takes too long to get there. There's like a vacuum between starting the game and actually getting into stuff that grabs you. That's worsened by throwaway characters (apart from the main cast) and a world that feels empty and synthetic. The whole kingdom thing is just so pointless, and it just never connects at all.

 

Anyway, review soon, will explain all then.

[Tailzo]

Wow, SimonM7 makes the game sound really good, while 1UP makes it sound like trash. Who is right here? Or is it a matter of taste? I enjoyed the demo, so I guess I should belive SimonM7 before believing 1up?

[Chuck]

Gears of War!!!!! Cant play it until after work though:(

[Tailzo]

Gears of War!!!!! Cant play it until after work though:(

 

Huh?

 

Anyway, I look forward to the Sonic review.

[SimonM7]

Well Tailzo, the GAME is easily the best playing 3D Sonic game, and my issues aren't really with how the game plays at all. The pitfalls 1up speak of is something that gets on the tits of everyone prone to have pitfalls get on their tits, and that means any Sonic game, 2d or otherwise. EG gave Rush a right ripping for its insta-death mentality, and that game is utterly brilliant, apart from maybe some presentation rigidness.

 

If you're just concerned with how the action plays, there's nothing to worry about here. Unless of course you found the nature of the SA games abominable at the concept stage.

 

Load times, inconsistent graphics, crappy human characters (including Elise, bleh), way too big city maps with nothing to fill them with, and a lack of anything approaching the casino stage and stuff like that in terms of charm is the bigger deal breaker for me, personally. I agree with a lot of the points 1up raise, but I feel that the core action makes up for it more than they do, apparently. 5.5 seems harsh too I think, although don't expect any dizzying heights from my score either.

 

Edit: Ah, I read your post a bit up. If you liked the demo and you're okay with some narrative/town stage weaknesses, at least initially, you'll enjoy the game. Enjoying the combat saves the whole game, no matter how many load screens they try to beat you to death with.

[Tailzo]

^ I enjoyed Sonic Adventure 1 a lot, I actually played it for months, and I can't count how many times I finished it. I didn't like SA2 as much as SA1, althought the Sonic / Shadow levels were really nice, and towards the end, the Sonic / Shadow levels were totally awesome. I remember being sad about seeing Tails in a mecha. I disliked the 5 minutes I played Sonic Heroes, and I didn't like Shadow the Hedgehog at all.

 

...I guess that tells something about how I like 3D Sonic games. I don't care about crappy humans, I didn't care about them in SA1. But I loved all the nice details in SA1, like the chao gardens (brilliant!) the story behind knuckles and the mind of a eggman robot (E-102y Gamma). I know we will not see any chao garden in this one, and I've heard the side missions are kinda boring, but if the action stages are good, I'm happy.

 

Oh, and if I die in a game, I usually don't whine about it, I try to get better. I didn't have any problem with random dying in SA1, and very few issues with SA2. So if this game isn't worse in that sense, it's ok. The Sonic demo on 360 was easy as soon as I got used to Sonic turning so quickly, and it didn't take too long.

[SimonM7]

Yeah, the action stages are good fun here, but the things you mention about the details are what bothers me the most about this game. It simply disregards of all of that. Chao gardens, NiGHTS pinball table cameo, things that really made SA1 memorable just don't have an equivalent here at all. Even the names of the stages and the stages themselves used to be really distinct, and in this game they lack real personality even though they're very playable.

 

However, I loved the Knuckles story in SA1 too, with the Tikal bits and sort of.. making the story deeper like that, and you get a similar thing playing as Silver here. Definitely stick around for Silver and Shadow episodes, that's where the real cutscene-y goodness is.

[dabookerman]

Edge 3/10

 

Jordan am cry.