Fan Game Reviews: ShenSonic

A five year project, the original Shenmue on Sega Dreamcast created an entirely new genre for itself (quite boastingly, we might add) - FREE (or Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment if you will). As a game, it was truly quite stunning - just like a movie, but the perfect game for it also.

It's not surprising then, that SimSonic was equally inspired by the gallivanting of Ryo Hazuki - and made a Fan Game from it, adding a special Sonic spice to it. You are Sonic Hezuki. Your father was killed by a man named Robo-Di asking for a mirror, and now you want revenge on this guy. What is very nice is that most of the guff has been cut out - and the action left in. Many points are skipped or shortened down to make the game less tedious.

And the functions you have at the control of Sonic is not limited either. You can interact with many objects and people, with a clock timing your activities during the day. You also have access to a menu screen, in which you can listen to bought music tapes, view your gumball collection and use any items you have bought from the shop.

Oh yes, pretty much every aspect of Shenmue has been converted to 2D for this game - and all the more for it. You can buy food, drinks and all sorts of crazy items down at Tomato Mart still, those gumballs are back with a vengeance, and the YOU Arcade is still in business. Some of the mini-games that you can play at the Arcade have been tweaked - the Snake style game is now passable in playability, and the Tails and Knuckles game is better than in the demos released.

However, most of these still feel like they've been tacked on - a little more care into these games would have made them the perfect time passer. As it goes though, you'll only be playing them to get high scores or times onto the Official ShenSonic Website. Even the fighting's still there - although this aspect is quite disappointing, considering that your character moves so slow, there are no combos and it's hard to determine how much longer you gotta keep pummelling the bad guys before they falter.

In our preview of ShenSonic Demo 2, we talked about the possibility of having the ability to skip text throughout the game. This has been adhered to in some respects - you can skip most text thrown at you by pressing the 'Return' key. What we now wonder is: why is the text skip button so ludicrously away from the left Shift and Control keys? And you still can't skip some of the text - including the important scenes, which is understandable, but still a bit of a drag.

We also mentioned the possibility of a Notebook, in order to remember where you're supposed to be going. Unfortunately, there's no sign of one in the now-complete game - players can get along alright without it, but it'll hurt most in the end when they come back to the game the next day.

Overall, this is a tidy adventure that shadows Shenmue in almost every respect - you'll love all the bits you loved in it from Shenmue, and you'll also hate all the bits you hated from Shenmue. For the most part, this is a very enjoyable game with only a few errors in development to prevent it from being top-notch.

Sonic Fan Game Club Score: 8/10