I got a chance to look at both of the new Sonic games at SEGA’s booth this year. Now’s your chance to find out whether or not Sonic the Hedgehog 4′s the real deal, and if Sonic Colors is just another cash-grab using the Sonic name.
Sonic Colors (Wii)
I’ve developed a sort of formula for the most recent Sonic games, and it has been pretty accurate. Take the number of years it’s been since Sonic 3, multiply that by the number of friends Sonic now has in his posse, and that sure give you a number that show how exponentially worse the newest game will be than the last.
Scientifically speaking, I’m sure the formula could use some tweaking, but that tweaking might not be necessary at all; Sonic Colors might just take that formula and prove it entirely wrong. I was not expecting much going into this demo. Like many others I had been burned by Sonic Underground and, despite promising videos, was convinced this was just step one in the Sonic Cycle.
The E3 demo for Colors was pretty short, and the most succinct way to sum it up is to say it’s like Sonic Unleashed without the hub bits or the brawler bits. That is to say it’s just you running. Running really, really fast. It is definitely the best since of speed I’ve felt from any of the 3D Sonic games, even more so than the Adventure games. Running takes place in both a 3D and 2D plane that changes dynamically depending on your location in the stage, and changes pretty frequently.
One really cool addition are the power-ups, facilitated by your new, blissfully silent color blob friends. In the demo I played, the view switched to 2D and Sonic was turned into a drill, burrowing though the ground to collect rings and access secret tunnels. There were many tunnels available to jump into, so one has to assume there will be branching levels. Of course, that’s nothing new to a Sonic game these days, but it’s still nice to see.
Like I said earlier, the demo was pretty short. It definitely wasn’t long enough for me to be able to come here and tell you that this is the 3D Sonic game we’ve all been hoping for. But if the rest of the game plays as well as the Tropical Resort stage, and if SEGA’s able to avoid hub worlds and ill advised combat sections, it very well could be a really fun game.
Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 (Wii)
This was one of the games I was most excited to see. Full disclosure here: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 could very well be my favorite game of all time, so these could be the opinions of someone who just refuses to let go of the past. Being the gigantic ex-Sonic fan that I am, I’ve been following this game pretty closely, and found myself thinking it may just be the game to make me love the series again.
Not quite. There were a few different levels available in the demo, and they were your standard Sonic fare. There was plenty of running and jumping, and the levels flowed pretty well. Going back to 2D levels was a decision I was very much in favor of, and it seems to have paid off here. Everything you expect a Sonic game to have is in here; speed shoes, boingers, loops, and more.
It also looks very nice. The stages are colorful, the character model is crisp, and the blur that trails behind Sonic just looks cool. The running animation looks nice, which is good since running is almost all you do in a Sonic game. One other major part of a Sonic game is the jumping, and this is the part I’m not so big a fan of.
The animation while in ball form looks less than stellar, and the overall physics while airborne feel really floaty. It’s much closer to the Little Big Planet side of physics than it is to any of the previous three numbered installments in the Sonic franchise. I also noticed that, unless I was trying to do it incorrectly, there was no way to maintain your ball form in the air after hitting a spring. You could do so for a split second, but then you would revert back to normal, flying toward an enemy and being totally unable to do anything at all.
I know it sounds like I’m really down on the game, and to a degree I am, but that because it’s close to being the Sonic that I know and love, so much so that these minor differences really stand out sharply to me. That said, the demo was a window into an excellent game. It was fast, fluid, and the platforming felt better than any previous Sonic game, with the exception of 2.
