First and foremost, there will be “spoilers” in this review. And by that, I mean I will be discussing some of the boss fights. There is no plot for this game, so obviously I won’t be spoiling any of that.
Sonic the Hedgehog has always been one of my favorite video game characters. My brother and I played through Sonic 1, 2, 3, and 4 (Sonic & Knuckles) a billion times. The games that followed Sonic & Knuckles were pretty atrocious. Does anyone remember Sonic 3D? Yah, it didn’t work then just like it doesn’t work now. Sonic Adventure was a decent title, but it started bringing in all those alternate characters no one gives a shit about.
With this brief history, you can imagine how excited I was to hear Team Sonic returning to their side-scrolling roots and pretending like everything after Sonic & Knuckles didn’t exist. And to be fair, it is just that. Sonic running and kicking the shit out of Robotnik’s goons. The visuals are pretty and all of the acts are throw backs to previous Sonic games. This kinda brings me in for all of my cons.
The controls for this game are sluggish. It takes a good amount of time pushing in either direction to get Sonic to open it up and run. And even after hitting some of the boosts, you aren’t really going that fast. One of my favorite parts of Sonic 3 was running so fast that you passed the camera and it took a few seconds for the screen to find you. The sluggish controls also are a pain in some of the platforming found in the final 3 acts.
In one particular sequence you have to jump onto a series of platforms that are smashing into spikes on one half, and open space on the other. Seems simple enough. But due to the fact that you can’t just bump the analog in a direction to nudge Sonic over, its very difficult. You have to get a running start just to move a few feet.
In a lot of ways, this game feels more like Sonic 1.5 rather than Sonic 4. All of the cool power ups from Sonic 3 and 4 are gone. No more lightning, flame or bubble shield. Just a regular green shield. Your buddies Tails and Knuckles are nowhere to be found. The special stages are just like the stages in Sonic 1. Over all this game just feels like they “updated” the graphics and ported it to Xbox LIVE.
One new feature has been added. The homing attack. But it’s hardly new, and its difficult to implement. Especially in the boss fights. After doing a homing attack you bounce in the air for a few second recovery. Which isn’t a real hinderance until the final fight with Eggman (I’ll get to that in a second). I was also surprised to see how many extra lives were scattered about the game. By the final boss fight I had 20 something lives. Turns out I’d need most of those.
There are 4 regions that you have to get through on this game. There is the classic level, casino world, water labyrinth and Robotnik’s factory. Each region has a boss fight, and they’re all pretty cake. Mostly regurgitations of games past. All of them I easily beat without dying. After defeating Robotnik in his factory, naturally you go up to space with him for a rehash of the Sonic 2 final fight. “>Does this look familiar?
This was by far the most frustrating portion of the game. Up until this point, you could take down the fat guy with 4 hits. Now its to be expected this one will take a little longer… but geez. The first phase involves bouncing off his chest a billion times while avoiding his flying fists and when he slams on the ground. After that, he starts to short circuit and you can no longer bounce off him without going through a few complicated steps. Anyhow… after a lot of trial and error and more error the game throws its biggest cheap shot at you yet.
Robotnik is now beeping and all that jazz cause he’s going to do. His homing attack is all outta wack, so you aren’t sure where he’s going to land. He slams into the ground with his fist making it shake. And then it falls beneath you and you die. WTF. A little more trial and error to find out you have all of 2 seconds to get up and hit him one last time to stop the ground from falling out from beneath you.
After all this trouble I’m looking forward to a sweet ending. Sure, the game has been very plot thin compared to the previous two Sonic games. A huge disappointment by the way. But maybe just maybe he’ll do one of those (previously) cutting edge jumps to towards the screen and make some kick-ass pose. Nope. He runs to the left (the left?!) past a bunch of critters and rings (I know nerds, you’re supposed to try and get all these for that not-so-alternate ending) and stops. Strikes a pose. Game over.
That is unless you want to go through all those grueling special stages and find all the secrets for a lack-luster alternate ending. Sonic 4 was disappointing for me. Especially for 1200 points. For that kinda cash you should just download Sonic 1, 2, 3 or the real 4 to get your nostalgia kick. And that’s really what this game makes me want to do. It’s nice to see Sonic Team going back to it’s roots, but I think they went a little too far.