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  1. Sonic had a rough transition to 3D. That’s how I’m supposed to start these 3D Sonic game reviews, right? I probably lost half of you with this silly joke, but addressing this felt like a good way to start this review, because: no, obviously Sonic did not have a “rough transition to 3D.” The franchise’s early 3D adventures were received well by critics and fans, were widely regarded as highlights of the Dreamcast’s library, and remain some of my personal favorites. That said, those games certainly did have issues, and while SEGA’s efforts at addressing them resulted in some great games (like Sonic Generations and Colors), this quality came at the expense of alternate playable characters and fully 3D levels. SEGA HARDlight’s Sonic Dream Team is the first Sonic game in 17 years to feature all of these elements, in a game that feels less like a reinvention than a culmination of all of the things that have generally worked for Sonic in the past. Does this mobile game succeed where many of Sonic’s past console efforts have failed? Well, yes. It does. Albeit with some caveats which we’ll get into later. First of all, I want to make one thing clear: Sonic Dream Team is fun. It scratches itches that a Sonic game hasn’t reached in decades. It has a spectacular flow thanks to smooth controls and levels built around prioritizing combining speed, platforming, and chaining actions together. This, in turn, makes the levels borderline addicting to replay and master. Dream Team also incorporates Sonic’s friends better than any 3D Sonic has… well, ever. Rather than building unique movesets, gameplay styles, and levels for each character, Dream Team instead draws on what the classics did: it made them 'Sonic with extra moves'. Tails, Cream, Rouge and Knuckles can all do the homing attack, they can all boost, and they can all use grind rails, and it feels great. Tails and Cream’s flight controls quite well, and mixing the homing attack with Tails and Cream’s flight feels especially nice, allowing for a chaining of the two moves during level traversal. Unfortunately, while Cream and Tails' flight works great, Knuckles and Rouge’s glide represents the one blemish in the way this game controls. The move got a pretty serious downgrade from Sonic Adventure 2, as they both begin losing altitude way too quickly and will drop like rocks after a few seconds. Thankfully, you can also home in on things out of a glide. I understand the need to balance their glide for Dream Team’s levels, but this seems like a bit of an overcorrection. The climbing, on the other hand, is the best it’s felt since SA2, though it is unfortunately limited to specific climbable panels. On the whole, this is the best these characters have felt in 3D in years, easily outclassing Sonic 2006 and Sonic Frontiers’ The Final Horizon DLC (Knuckles glide from the December patch aside). But, great movesets mean nothing if the game isn’t built for them, and this is another area where Dream Team surpasses its predecessors: each level provides unique paths and obstacles for each of the three character types, essentially taking another page out of the Classic Sonic book. Sonic and Amy get the most basic, platforming heavy paths, relying mostly on their homing attacks to get around. They do get to take special lightspeed dash ring paths, which effectively just acts as another thing to home-attack. Tails and Cream can utilize their flight to get around any of the levels, but their altitude is limited. Core to their level paths are special rings that refill their altitude meter, allowing them to fly higher and further to reach platforms out of reach of everyone else. Finally, Knuckles and Rouge’s unique paths mostly center around their ability to climb. Between the various branching paths and character-specific level mechanics, Dream Team provides more than enough reason to go through these levels multiple times as each character type. Which is good, because… Dream Team’s basic structure requires these levels to be replayed a lot. Dream Team’s structure isn’t so dissimilar from Super Mario Sunshine: each level has multiple missions. Each of these award a dream orb upon completion, before booting the player back to the level select menu. A certain number of dream orbs are required to unlock the next stage, meaning multiple missions need to be completed for the player to advance. Generally, each act starts with one mission, which unlocks a further four upon completion. There are five mission types, including: Get to the Goal: self explanatory. Collect the Dream Orb: a smaller platforming challenge within an act that adds platforms and obstacles, with a dream orb to grab at the end of it. Reach Each Checkpoint in the Time Limit: has you rushing you to reach pink rings, forcing you to take a specific path through a level Reach the Goal in the Time Limit: again, self-explanatory, though the location of the goal can be different from the first mission Collect Dream Orb Crystals: you need to collect 6 crystals in a single area, usually by completing little platforming challenges. These mission types can be character-type specific, cover only certain parts of a level, or otherwise require you to take a specific path. They're designed around two things: getting players to see everything a level has to offer, and making sure the player has mastered the level. Missions typically get progressively more difficult, with the checkpoint and timed missions benefiting from increased player familiarity with the level. The more you advance through the game, the more missions get unlocked. While Dream Team is, on the whole, a pretty easy game, it’s in these later missions (especially in the later levels) where the game’s challenge lies. The progression being centered around completing missions is also where I could see some players getting tired of the game: you need to replay these levels a lot. While you don't need to play every mission, you will need to play most, since the dream orb threshold to advance tends to be pretty high. You will ultimately need 70 percent of the game's dream orbs to beat it. If you aren’t the type who likes to revisit Sonic levels to explore other paths or get better times, you may find Dream Team will get increasingly repetitive. This is not an issue I’ve personally had, but I’m the sort of person who still plays levels in SA2 and Generations that I’ve played hundreds of times, purely for kicks and a better time. I do think the missions for each act are varied enough that they can mostly stave off that feeling of repetitiveness, especially since some require you to use certain characters or take certain paths you may not have otherwise seen. Personally, out of all the ways Sonic games have found to increase their length, this is among my favorites. In addition to missions, Dream Team also has two types of collectibles that can be found in each act's first mission: red star rings and blue coins. Each act has 5 red star rings to find, which gain you an additional dream orb, and 30 blue coins, which gets you trophies. These collectibles provide a fun little additional reason to replay the levels, especially since they are often placed on more difficult paths or in more out of the way places, even though the rewards for collecting them aren't especially great. So, Dream Team is a lot of fun, with varied levels that play great, a decent number of collectibles, and missions that are consistently fun. Sounds pretty great, maybe even too good to be true for a 3D Sonic mobile platformer announced a month before release. Any vigilant Sonic fan is waiting for the other shoe to drop here. Well, here it is: it’s a mobile Sonic 3D platformer. Yeah, I know, that didn’t explain anything, did it? Apologies for being a bit cheeky, let me explain: Sonic Dream Team is an inherently simple experience. While I think this can benefit Sonic game design in a lot of ways, and certainly has here, this inherent simplicity comes with some drawbacks. Starting on the small side, everything being super magnetic and sticky means that, unlike some other fully-3D Sonic games, like the Adventure titles, there generally isn’t any room for shortcuts. You can’t blast up the level geometry for level skip tricks, limiting your speed-running options. Personally, I’ve always preferred polish over stuff like this. Your moves are also limited: there is no spindash, or bounce attack, which inherently limits your traversal options. These aren’t moves I missed in the boost games, but I generally prefer to have them in my fully-3D Sonic platformers. However, a mobile game needs this magnetism, and this more limited moveset. It's required to ensure things play well on a cell phone with touch controls. So I can’t say I really fault Dream Team for any of this - but these are things people expecting a console experience should be aware of. Furthermore, if you’ve never cared for touch controls or otherwise don’t have experience with them, this is not the game to sell you on them. I tried out the touch controls for a few levels on my iPhone, and I’m never going back. If you’re playing this on a phone, get a controller solution! I personally got a PS5 controller phone mount. It was $13, and it works great. Dream Team’s big issue, and the main thing that will drag down its score, is that it has little in the way of level gimmicks. Great Sonic games live and die by their level design, but the best Sonic games have memorable level set-pieces and gimmicks that set each zone apart. This is something games like Sonic 3, Sonic Mania, and Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 all excel at, but Dream Team simply doesn’t measure up here. It's not completely devoid of them - Dream Factory Zone feature presses that move up, which you can leap off of with enough momentum, and Nightmare Zone can change its center of gravity to the walls and ceiling. But while these are fun twists, they aren’t transformative to the level design, like the best Sonic stage gimmicks are. Instead, Dream Team’s level design is mostly focused on being iterative of the core gimmicks and mechanics introduced in the first level. In fairness to Dream Team, these core gimmicks are extremely fun and good to iterate on, but in a game that already has you playing through the same levels and themes a lot, this is yet another way things aren’t distinguished from one another. As well designed as Dream Team’s levels are, the lack of really good gimmicks hold them back. I’ve talked a lot about the zones and missions because they make up the bulk of Dream Team’s gameplay, but there are bosses to fight! On the whole, these bosses are cute, but simple, with the first three each built to cater to a specific character type. I especially like the the blow up crab, Dr. Crabulous. In terms of gameplay though, only Dream Team’s latter two bosses left much of an impression on me. While they don't leave much of an impact, the bosses are harmless at worst. Finally, once you’ve played all the stages and missions and collected all the things that Dream Team has to offer, you still have one more reason to come back: Tails Challenges. These are weekly tasks that rotate every week, and are essentially variations of the game’s existing mission types. Completing these earns you XP and Points towards your score. XP gets you weekly rewards, which have so far just been character trophies, while Points go towards your overall score, which goes on the game’s global leaderboards. Can’t say this is a mode I’ll be using much. Visually, Dream Team is vibrant and colorful. The level themes make decent use of the game’s dream world setting, with locations ranging from a beach covered in rubber blow-up structures to a trippy nightmare forest. On Apple Arcade’s most advanced hardware (such as the latest iPhone Pro or an iPad Pro 2022 model), the colors really pop and the frame rate is as smooth as butter. Coming off of Sonic Frontiers and Sonic Forces’ more muted color schemes, the vibrancy of Dream Team’s levels are a breath of fresh air, and are much closer to how I prefer my Sonic games look. That being said, the visual experience won’t be the same for everyone. My experience on the Apple 4K 2022 model was a little mixed, with frame rate issues occasionally arising on the default graphics settings. Luckily, it’s possible to change both the overall graphics fidelity and the resolution. I found that either knocking the graphics down to medium, or the resolution down from 1.0 to 0.7, generally made for a more stable experience. The game fares far poorer on the least powerful compatible platforms. My experience on the Apple TV HD 2015 was rough, with the game itself sometimes just outright freezing for a few moments, especially at the start of a level. The frame rate could also be unsteady, and the resolution is set so low that it basically looks like a 3DS game unless your TV has a good built-in upscalers. My experience on my old iPhone 7 was only marginally better, with far fewer freezes and the framerate feeling a little more steady. Though this may be due to certain things being less noticeable on a small screen. Nevertheless, the game was still quite playable, even on these platforms. If a low-end Apple device is the only way you can experience this game, I still say try it. Just know that this isn’t the ideal way to play Dream Team. Music is generally one of those things I struggle to write about, unless I have a strong opinion. I do not have a strong opinion of Dream Team’s soundtrack. So I’ll just say this: I think it sounds nice. Michael van den Bos put out some solid stuff. The ambient versions of each zone’s music is definitely some of the most memorable music in here, and Tee Lopes’ track is the OST highlight. But on the whole, I don’t see myself listening to any of this outside of the game itself. Sonic Dream Team is the dream Sonic game I wanted back in 2007. After years of seeing Sonic games deteriorate, especially with Shadow and Sonic 2006, I became increasingly desperate for a back-to-basics game. Something that didn’t reinvent the wheel with new gimmicks, or include loads of different, inferior gameplay styles I didn’t like as much. I wanted something that was just 3D Sonic speed gameplay, polished to a shine and without anything glitchy or extraneous. I wanted something colorful, with a lighthearted plot written by that Ian Flynn guy who was writing all that great stuff for Archie. The boost games reduced my desire for such a game, but I guess it never really left, because that game now exists and I can’t put it down. But it’s no longer 2007. It’s 2023, and I have higher expectations for a 3D platformer these days. As a result, the lack of level gimmicks is undoubtedly a problem, and keeps Dream Team from standing with the very best Sonic has to offer. Even so, there is a lot for Sonic fans to enjoy here. Whether this game is worth buying an Apple device for is ultimately up to you and your finances. But if you already own an Apple device, and you don’t find the issues I highlighted to be dealbreakers, then I think it is absolutely worth getting an Apple Arcade sub for, at least for a month or two. So, for a final verdict and score, I think it’s worth framing this game in a couple different contexts. If this were a full priced console experience, I would rate Dream Team a 3.5/5 due to its lack of length and level design gimmicks. As a purely mobile experience? A 4.5/5, as this is without question one of my best mobile gaming experiences. But Dream Team is neither of these things. It’s part of a monthly $6 subscription service, can be played both on mobile and on the TV, with a controller or a touchscreen, and at this price point and with these platforms, I give Sonic Dream Team a 4 out of 5. Dream Team is great for what it is, a stellar addition to the Apple Arcade library, and a solid 3D Sonic game. It compromises shockingly little despite its mobile roots, and while there’s still room for improvement, I am quite content with it. Here’s hoping the people over at SEGA HARDlight get to do more Sonic games like this, ideally not as Apple Arcade exclusives.
  2. Sonic had a rough transition to 3D. That’s how I’m supposed to start these 3D Sonic game reviews, right? I probably lost half of you with this silly joke, but addressing this felt like a good way to start this review, because: no, obviously Sonic did not have a “rough transition to 3D.” The franchise’s early 3D adventures were received well by critics and fans, were widely regarded as highlights of the Dreamcast’s library, and remain some of my personal favorites. That said, those games certainly did have issues, and while SEGA’s efforts at addressing them resulted in some great games (like Sonic Generations and Colors), this quality came at the expense of alternate playable characters and fully 3D levels. SEGA HARDlight’s Sonic Dream Team is the first Sonic game in 17 years to feature all of these elements, in a game that feels less like a reinvention than a culmination of all of the things that have generally worked for Sonic in the past. Does this mobile game succeed where many of Sonic’s past console efforts have failed? Well, yes. It does. Albeit with some caveats which we’ll get into later. First of all, I want to make one thing clear: Sonic Dream Team is fun. It scratches itches that a Sonic game hasn’t reached in decades. It has a spectacular flow thanks to smooth controls and levels built around prioritizing combining speed, platforming, and chaining actions together. This, in turn, makes the levels borderline addicting to replay and master. Dream Team also incorporates Sonic’s friends better than any 3D Sonic has… well, ever. Rather than building unique movesets, gameplay styles, and levels for each character, Dream Team instead draws on what the classics did: it made them 'Sonic with extra moves'. Tails, Cream, Rouge and Knuckles can all do the homing attack, they can all boost, and they can all use grind rails, and it feels great. Tails and Cream’s flight controls quite well, and mixing the homing attack with Tails and Cream’s flight feels especially nice, allowing for a chaining of the two moves during level traversal. Unfortunately, while Cream and Tails' flight works great, Knuckles and Rouge’s glide represents the one blemish in the way this game controls. The move got a pretty serious downgrade from Sonic Adventure 2, as they both begin losing altitude way too quickly and will drop like rocks after a few seconds. Thankfully, you can also home in on things out of a glide. I understand the need to balance their glide for Dream Team’s levels, but this seems like a bit of an overcorrection. The climbing, on the other hand, is the best it’s felt since SA2, though it is unfortunately limited to specific climbable panels. On the whole, this is the best these characters have felt in 3D in years, easily outclassing Sonic 2006 and Sonic Frontiers’ The Final Horizon DLC (Knuckles glide from the December patch aside). But, great movesets mean nothing if the game isn’t built for them, and this is another area where Dream Team surpasses its predecessors: each level provides unique paths and obstacles for each of the three character types, essentially taking another page out of the Classic Sonic book. Sonic and Amy get the most basic, platforming heavy paths, relying mostly on their homing attacks to get around. They do get to take special lightspeed dash ring paths, which effectively just acts as another thing to home-attack. Tails and Cream can utilize their flight to get around any of the levels, but their altitude is limited. Core to their level paths are special rings that refill their altitude meter, allowing them to fly higher and further to reach platforms out of reach of everyone else. Finally, Knuckles and Rouge’s unique paths mostly center around their ability to climb. Between the various branching paths and character-specific level mechanics, Dream Team provides more than enough reason to go through these levels multiple times as each character type. Which is good, because… Dream Team’s basic structure requires these levels to be replayed a lot. Dream Team’s structure isn’t so dissimilar from Super Mario Sunshine: each level has multiple missions. Each of these award a dream orb upon completion, before booting the player back to the level select menu. A certain number of dream orbs are required to unlock the next stage, meaning multiple missions need to be completed for the player to advance. Generally, each act starts with one mission, which unlocks a further four upon completion. There are five mission types, including: Get to the Goal: self explanatory. Collect the Dream Orb: a smaller platforming challenge within an act that adds platforms and obstacles, with a dream orb to grab at the end of it. Reach Each Checkpoint in the Time Limit: has you rushing you to reach pink rings, forcing you to take a specific path through a level Reach the Goal in the Time Limit: again, self-explanatory, though the location of the goal can be different from the first mission Collect Dream Orb Crystals: you need to collect 6 crystals in a single area, usually by completing little platforming challenges. These mission types can be character-type specific, cover only certain parts of a level, or otherwise require you to take a specific path. They're designed around two things: getting players to see everything a level has to offer, and making sure the player has mastered the level. Missions typically get progressively more difficult, with the checkpoint and timed missions benefiting from increased player familiarity with the level. The more you advance through the game, the more missions get unlocked. While Dream Team is, on the whole, a pretty easy game, it’s in these later missions (especially in the later levels) where the game’s challenge lies. The progression being centered around completing missions is also where I could see some players getting tired of the game: you need to replay these levels a lot. While you don't need to play every mission, you will need to play most, since the dream orb threshold to advance tends to be pretty high. You will ultimately need 70 percent of the game's dream orbs to beat it. If you aren’t the type who likes to revisit Sonic levels to explore other paths or get better times, you may find Dream Team will get increasingly repetitive. This is not an issue I’ve personally had, but I’m the sort of person who still plays levels in SA2 and Generations that I’ve played hundreds of times, purely for kicks and a better time. I do think the missions for each act are varied enough that they can mostly stave off that feeling of repetitiveness, especially since some require you to use certain characters or take certain paths you may not have otherwise seen. Personally, out of all the ways Sonic games have found to increase their length, this is among my favorites. In addition to missions, Dream Team also has two types of collectibles that can be found in each act's first mission: red star rings and blue coins. Each act has 5 red star rings to find, which gain you an additional dream orb, and 30 blue coins, which gets you trophies. These collectibles provide a fun little additional reason to replay the levels, especially since they are often placed on more difficult paths or in more out of the way places, even though the rewards for collecting them aren't especially great. So, Dream Team is a lot of fun, with varied levels that play great, a decent number of collectibles, and missions that are consistently fun. Sounds pretty great, maybe even too good to be true for a 3D Sonic mobile platformer announced a month before release. Any vigilant Sonic fan is waiting for the other shoe to drop here. Well, here it is: it’s a mobile Sonic 3D platformer. Yeah, I know, that didn’t explain anything, did it? Apologies for being a bit cheeky, let me explain: Sonic Dream Team is an inherently simple experience. While I think this can benefit Sonic game design in a lot of ways, and certainly has here, this inherent simplicity comes with some drawbacks. Starting on the small side, everything being super magnetic and sticky means that, unlike some other fully-3D Sonic games, like the Adventure titles, there generally isn’t any room for shortcuts. You can’t blast up the level geometry for level skip tricks, limiting your speed-running options. Personally, I’ve always preferred polish over stuff like this. Your moves are also limited: there is no spindash, or bounce attack, which inherently limits your traversal options. These aren’t moves I missed in the boost games, but I generally prefer to have them in my fully-3D Sonic platformers. However, a mobile game needs this magnetism, and this more limited moveset. It's required to ensure things play well on a cell phone with touch controls. So I can’t say I really fault Dream Team for any of this - but these are things people expecting a console experience should be aware of. Furthermore, if you’ve never cared for touch controls or otherwise don’t have experience with them, this is not the game to sell you on them. I tried out the touch controls for a few levels on my iPhone, and I’m never going back. If you’re playing this on a phone, get a controller solution! I personally got a PS5 controller phone mount. It was $13, and it works great. Dream Team’s big issue, and the main thing that will drag down its score, is that it has little in the way of level gimmicks. Great Sonic games live and die by their level design, but the best Sonic games have memorable level set-pieces and gimmicks that set each zone apart. This is something games like Sonic 3, Sonic Mania, and Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 all excel at, but Dream Team simply doesn’t measure up here. It's not completely devoid of them - Dream Factory Zone feature presses that move up, which you can leap off of with enough momentum, and Nightmare Zone can change its center of gravity to the walls and ceiling. But while these are fun twists, they aren’t transformative to the level design, like the best Sonic stage gimmicks are. Instead, Dream Team’s level design is mostly focused on being iterative of the core gimmicks and mechanics introduced in the first level. In fairness to Dream Team, these core gimmicks are extremely fun and good to iterate on, but in a game that already has you playing through the same levels and themes a lot, this is yet another way things aren’t distinguished from one another. As well designed as Dream Team’s levels are, the lack of really good gimmicks hold them back. I’ve talked a lot about the zones and missions because they make up the bulk of Dream Team’s gameplay, but there are bosses to fight! On the whole, these bosses are cute, but simple, with the first three each built to cater to a specific character type. I especially like the the blow up crab, Dr. Crabulous. In terms of gameplay though, only Dream Team’s latter two bosses left much of an impression on me. While they don't leave much of an impact, the bosses are harmless at worst. Finally, once you’ve played all the stages and missions and collected all the things that Dream Team has to offer, you still have one more reason to come back: Tails Challenges. These are weekly tasks that rotate every week, and are essentially variations of the game’s existing mission types. Completing these earns you XP and Points towards your score. XP gets you weekly rewards, which have so far just been character trophies, while Points go towards your overall score, which goes on the game’s global leaderboards. Can’t say this is a mode I’ll be using much. Visually, Dream Team is vibrant and colorful. The level themes make decent use of the game’s dream world setting, with locations ranging from a beach covered in rubber blow-up structures to a trippy nightmare forest. On Apple Arcade’s most advanced hardware (such as the latest iPhone Pro or an iPad Pro 2022 model), the colors really pop and the frame rate is as smooth as butter. Coming off of Sonic Frontiers and Sonic Forces’ more muted color schemes, the vibrancy of Dream Team’s levels are a breath of fresh air, and are much closer to how I prefer my Sonic games look. That being said, the visual experience won’t be the same for everyone. My experience on the Apple 4K 2022 model was a little mixed, with frame rate issues occasionally arising on the default graphics settings. Luckily, it’s possible to change both the overall graphics fidelity and the resolution. I found that either knocking the graphics down to medium, or the resolution down from 1.0 to 0.7, generally made for a more stable experience. The game fares far poorer on the least powerful compatible platforms. My experience on the Apple TV HD 2015 was rough, with the game itself sometimes just outright freezing for a few moments, especially at the start of a level. The frame rate could also be unsteady, and the resolution is set so low that it basically looks like a 3DS game unless your TV has a good built-in upscalers. My experience on my old iPhone 7 was only marginally better, with far fewer freezes and the framerate feeling a little more steady. Though this may be due to certain things being less noticeable on a small screen. Nevertheless, the game was still quite playable, even on these platforms. If a low-end Apple device is the only way you can experience this game, I still say try it. Just know that this isn’t the ideal way to play Dream Team. Music is generally one of those things I struggle to write about, unless I have a strong opinion. I do not have a strong opinion of Dream Team’s soundtrack. So I’ll just say this: I think it sounds nice. Michael van den Bos put out some solid stuff. The ambient versions of each zone’s music is definitely some of the most memorable music in here, and Tee Lopes’ track is the OST highlight. But on the whole, I don’t see myself listening to any of this outside of the game itself. Sonic Dream Team is the dream Sonic game I wanted back in 2007. After years of seeing Sonic games deteriorate, especially with Shadow and Sonic 2006, I became increasingly desperate for a back-to-basics game. Something that didn’t reinvent the wheel with new gimmicks, or include loads of different, inferior gameplay styles I didn’t like as much. I wanted something that was just 3D Sonic speed gameplay, polished to a shine and without anything glitchy or extraneous. I wanted something colorful, with a lighthearted plot written by that Ian Flynn guy who was writing all that great stuff for Archie. The boost games reduced my desire for such a game, but I guess it never really left, because that game now exists and I can’t put it down. But it’s no longer 2007. It’s 2023, and I have higher expectations for a 3D platformer these days. As a result, the lack of level gimmicks is undoubtedly a problem, and keeps Dream Team from standing with the very best Sonic has to offer. Even so, there is a lot for Sonic fans to enjoy here. Whether this game is worth buying an Apple device for is ultimately up to you and your finances. But if you already own an Apple device, and you don’t find the issues I highlighted to be dealbreakers, then I think it is absolutely worth getting an Apple Arcade sub for, at least for a month or two. So, for a final verdict and score, I think it’s worth framing this game in a couple different contexts. If this were a full priced console experience, I would rate Dream Team a 3.5/5 due to its lack of length and level design gimmicks. As a purely mobile experience? A 4.5/5, as this is without question one of my best mobile gaming experiences. But Dream Team is neither of these things. It’s part of a monthly $6 subscription service, can be played both on mobile and on the TV, with a controller or a touchscreen, and at this price point and with these platforms, I give Sonic Dream Team a 4 out of 5. Dream Team is great for what it is, a stellar addition to the Apple Arcade library, and a solid 3D Sonic game. It compromises shockingly little despite its mobile roots, and while there’s still room for improvement, I am quite content with it. Here’s hoping the people over at SEGA HARDlight get to do more Sonic games like this, ideally not as Apple Arcade exclusives. View full story
  3. Ho ho ho! Christmas is round the corner, isn't that exciting!? And what better way to get hype for the festive season than to spend each day painstakingly opening doors of a cardboard box and munching on delicious chocolate. Nah, who can be doing with that? Tasty treats, who needs 'em? Well, if you're looking for something a little more interesting to do, Numskull is hoping they have you covered with this official Sonic-themed build-a-figure Countdown Calendar. Now, this isn't exactly a new concept - Numskull launched one of these last year featuring Sonic the Hedgehog having fun on a snowboard - but the concept must have been really quite successful because the merch company is doing it again in 2023 with a statue focused on Sonic's trusty sidekick, Tails, instead. The character might be different, but the idea behind it is very much the same - inside the rather hefty 'calendar' box are 24 individual little boxes, each containing a small piece of a figure puzzle that you put together over the course of the holidays. Each piece is organised to that everything you unwrap connects to the existing work-in-progress statue, so you're not just sitting around for a whole day with a rogue piece with nothing to stick it to. That's all well and good, but it also means that, due to the logistics of the thing, you are going to have periods where you're unboxing nothing but boring-looking (out of context - it all looks rather good when put together) pillars or parts of a star-post. Things start to get exciting towards the end of the run, where you have bigger pieces to connect and it all feels a little more worthwhile. Having said that, when you do finish putting it all together you end up with a cool-looking figure that looks like this: The build quality of the finished article, in general, is pretty good! It was a little fiddle to put together at first, but thankfully there are helpful instructions on the back of each box to let you know exactly where each piece is supposed to go (which is useful because some of the objects double up and you want to make sure you're putting the right gem on top of the right pillar, for example). I did also have a little trouble with one particular part of the statue - the star post didn't seem to want to connect fully, and I'm not entirely sure if there's a means to 'click' or 'lock' it into place, or if it's meant to be sort of 'spongy' when connected to the post base. I've managed to wobble the star post pole off its base a couple times because of this, but I figure as long as I'm careful with it (what else am I going to do with a statue besides have it sit idly on a shelf?) it shouldn't be too much of an issue from hereon out. I might have just had a wonky sample in that case, but it's something to be aware of. Anyway, here's a little montage video of me setting it all up - you're obviously supposed to open one box a day, but for the purposes of this review I cheated, didn't I? Tails Countdown Character Building Montage.mp4 At the end of it all, it was a pretty painless experience, beyond the trouble with the star post. And I get to keep a cool mini-statue that really does look rather cool - I love the action pose of Tails here, and the base is quite inspired (even if it is Ice Cap again from last year - although I do like to pretend that it could be Robotnik Winter instead sometimes). I won't lie though, the asking price of £79.99 may be a little steep for those looking for an advent calendar, so you have to know exactly what you're getting here before putting your money down. Especially seeings as a similar Sonic character model was released last year at a much cheaper price point. BUT, considering that you get a pretty decent figure out of it - that you can stand on your shelf forever and ever - AND considering the price of some of the other hi-spec statues and figures out there, relatively speaking, I wouldn't say this is super outrageous. It all depends on whether your love for Miles Prower burns so brightly that you're willing to lovingly and masochistically build each part of him, bit by bit... day by day... I hope Tails isn't self-aware on the days he has to sit there without a head! If you're the kind of Tails fan that would get a kick out of a novel new way to obtain an otherwise-quite-rare statue of him, then you can't go far wrong than the Official Tails Countdown Calendar. You can purchase the Official Tails Countdown Calendar from SEGA Shop UK or Europe here [affiliate link]. View full story
  4. Ho ho ho! Christmas is round the corner, isn't that exciting!? And what better way to get hype for the festive season than to spend each day painstakingly opening doors of a cardboard box and munching on delicious chocolate. Nah, who can be doing with that? Tasty treats, who needs 'em? Well, if you're looking for something a little more interesting to do, Numskull is hoping they have you covered with this official Sonic-themed build-a-figure Countdown Calendar. Now, this isn't exactly a new concept - Numskull launched one of these last year featuring Sonic the Hedgehog having fun on a snowboard - but the concept must have been really quite successful because the merch company is doing it again in 2023 with a statue focused on Sonic's trusty sidekick, Tails, instead. The character might be different, but the idea behind it is very much the same - inside the rather hefty 'calendar' box are 24 individual little boxes, each containing a small piece of a figure puzzle that you put together over the course of the holidays. Each piece is organised to that everything you unwrap connects to the existing work-in-progress statue, so you're not just sitting around for a whole day with a rogue piece with nothing to stick it to. That's all well and good, but it also means that, due to the logistics of the thing, you are going to have periods where you're unboxing nothing but boring-looking (out of context - it all looks rather good when put together) pillars or parts of a star-post. Things start to get exciting towards the end of the run, where you have bigger pieces to connect and it all feels a little more worthwhile. Having said that, when you do finish putting it all together you end up with a cool-looking figure that looks like this: The build quality of the finished article, in general, is pretty good! It was a little fiddle to put together at first, but thankfully there are helpful instructions on the back of each box to let you know exactly where each piece is supposed to go (which is useful because some of the objects double up and you want to make sure you're putting the right gem on top of the right pillar, for example). I did also have a little trouble with one particular part of the statue - the star post didn't seem to want to connect fully, and I'm not entirely sure if there's a means to 'click' or 'lock' it into place, or if it's meant to be sort of 'spongy' when connected to the post base. I've managed to wobble the star post pole off its base a couple times because of this, but I figure as long as I'm careful with it (what else am I going to do with a statue besides have it sit idly on a shelf?) it shouldn't be too much of an issue from hereon out. I might have just had a wonky sample in that case, but it's something to be aware of. Anyway, here's a little montage video of me setting it all up - you're obviously supposed to open one box a day, but for the purposes of this review I cheated, didn't I? Tails Countdown Character Building Montage.mp4 At the end of it all, it was a pretty painless experience, beyond the trouble with the star post. And I get to keep a cool mini-statue that really does look rather cool - I love the action pose of Tails here, and the base is quite inspired (even if it is Ice Cap again from last year - although I do like to pretend that it could be Robotnik Winter instead sometimes). I won't lie though, the asking price of £79.99 may be a little steep for those looking for an advent calendar, so you have to know exactly what you're getting here before putting your money down. Especially seeings as a similar Sonic character model was released last year at a much cheaper price point. BUT, considering that you get a pretty decent figure out of it - that you can stand on your shelf forever and ever - AND considering the price of some of the other hi-spec statues and figures out there, relatively speaking, I wouldn't say this is super outrageous. It all depends on whether your love for Miles Prower burns so brightly that you're willing to lovingly and masochistically build each part of him, bit by bit... day by day... I hope Tails isn't self-aware on the days he has to sit there without a head! If you're the kind of Tails fan that would get a kick out of a novel new way to obtain an otherwise-quite-rare statue of him, then you can't go far wrong than the Official Tails Countdown Calendar. You can purchase the Official Tails Countdown Calendar from SEGA Shop UK or Europe here [affiliate link].
  5. Arzest might be an unfamiliar name to most Sonic the Hedgehog fans, but the developer certainly has experience with the blue blur. Led by original Sonic character designer Naoto Ohshima, the Japanese studio seemed like the perfect partner for Sonic Team to work with on a new classic Sonic adventure. Sonic Superstars aims to pick up the energy and goodwill generated by Evening Star's Sonic Mania and enhance it with new characters, stages and gameplay gimmicks. Have they succeeded? Old-School Cool Well, if the presentation is anything to go by, the answer is a resounding 'yes'! Taking one look at the character design and the overall setting, everything about this feels absolutely perfect. The cute animations, colourful environments, interesting stage gimmicks and wonderful characterisation - including of newcomer Trip and returning villain Fang the Hunter - all come together for a Sonic experience that just feels right. In terms of vibe alone, Superstars is 100% on point. Stages are designed with both speed and platforming in mind from the start - Arzest has really understood the brief here, with opening Zones gently offering easy-to-access dash pads and mid-air boosters while introducing players to core gameplay concepts that will return with a vengeance in the latter stages. By the time you finish Pinball Carnival, the gloves start to come off and the real fun begins, with various speed traps laid out and multiple routes through each Act. Players will be required to engage with the classic Sonic formula of accessing speed tracks by navigating platforming sections. The Zones do not feel like the one-track levels, with both character abilities and Emerald powers allowing you to explore the maps at your leisure to find the fastest route. The Emerald's Power Allows Me To Feel Emerald powers are new to Sonic Superstars, and add a little extra gameplay depth to the age-old hunt for the Chaos Emeralds. Special Stages for these gems, accessed via large gold rings hidden within a stage, are quite fun once you get used to the momentum of swinging Sonic and his friends around a strange fantasy zone, and can require some quick thinking and circular tactics to catch the speeding Emerald in its path. Collecting a Chaos Emerald unlocks a certain ability that can be used one time between star posts - one allows you to grow a vine upwards to access higher routes in a level, while another slows down time so you can avoid an enemy attack or crushing pillar. My favourite has to be the Avatar, that chucks a whole bunch of mimics at your foes - which can help you in a pinch on a boss fight but can also be confusing as it’s easy to lose yourself in the chaos. Some of these powers do seem a bit superfluous right now as I write this, but I imagine there will be cool advanced use cases for them all as I replay certain stages. The only real difficulty with these powers is the inability to quick-cancel - pressing L1 and R1 is said to drop your chosen power, but this only seems to be if you’ve equipped it and not yet activated it. Beyond Chaos Emeralds, there are plenty of bonus stages and collectibles to gather while on Sonic’s new journey. Giant blue rings take you on a Special Stage once more, but this time you play for Medals which can be used to spend on robot customisations in the Battle mode (more this later). Hitting a Star Post with enough rings opens a warp portal to a Bonus Stage that is reminiscent of the original Special Stages in Sonic 1 on the Mega Drive, again playing for Medals. There’s also strange-looking Fruit which you can get from end-level containers and hidden areas of a stage, which allows access to exclusive Acts in certain Zones that sees you collecting as many rings and Medals as possible in an auto-scroller. Teamwork Makes the Dream Work? There’s more than enough within the stages to distract and entertain, and from a gameplay perspective it all feels near-perfect to blast through too. Characters do feel a little too heavy to start, and the Spindash isn’t as powerful or get as much speed as I’d like, but once you get used to Sonic’s slower kickoff it feels fine. Overall, the physics are nigh-on exact to the classic 2D Mega Drive titles, if not at least Sonic Mania, with inertia and momentum all present and correct. After so many years since Evening Star’s 2D effort, playing a Sonic game like this feels like a joy. As you spend more time with the game, the only other noticeable thing that impacts the single-player experience is the camera positioning. It’s a little too close to your character (unless you’re playing in co-op) which can make speed runs and hard-mode playthroughs pretty difficult to navigate. It’s a bit of a shame in tense platforming moments in particular, as it dulls the thrill of exploration and the temptation of going at high speed in the later stages - you’re constantly fearful of what enemies may suddenly pop out at you with no time to react. The co-op experience is one of the key selling points of Sonic Superstars, and as long as you don’t take any of your gameplay here seriously, it can be a really fun time. Short bursts of multiplayer mayhem are best had with this mode, and unless you enjoy the chaos of losing everyone off-screen for most of the time (and that in itself can be quite funny), it’s best that all players are on the same page with what they want to get out of it. I was playing with a family member who casually enjoyed Sonic, and it was fun for me to take my time as Sonic during the platforming sections and allow the both of us to work through the challenges together (before they went off and left me behind afterwards - typical!). However, you do need to be patient with the camera in this mode, as it has trouble focusing on the right character at the right time. It’s not always clear whether the game will choose to focus on the player who is furthest forward, furthest upwards or on the correct track, but in any case you’ll find that the camera has a mind of its own in that instance. Overall, I found co-op to be pretty fun, but there are obvious design flaws here that mean that this is more a mode for casual players rather than four pals trying to seriously speed run stages at once. Mega Drive Madness The music is a bit of a mixed bag this time around. While there are some great individual tracks in here - Lagoon City, or Golden City Act 2 for example - many of them don’t seem to work well together to convey a cohesive theme for each Act. Speed Jungle, for instance, opens Act 1 with a fantastically flighty Tee Lopes melody to set the tone, but then you get to Act 2 and the less energetic theme there doesn’t appear to properly follow the leitmotifs set by the previous stage. Act Sonic’s BGM might as well be from a different game, let alone Zone. Heavy use of Mega Drive percussions throughout will sadly draw many comparisons to the soundtrack of Sonic the Hedgehog 4, but it’s really not all that bad. Some of the music, such as that found in Frozen Base, proves there’s still life in using the old 16-bit sound chip yet (and the Tails Act theme of that Zone is an absolute banger). But it doesn’t make Sonic Superstars feel as fresh as it could be. Whereas Lopes’ Sonic Mania soundtrack breathed new life into the sprite-based 2D experience, here it kind of feels like I’m listening to something from ten years ago. It doesn’t help that sadly, although Jun Senoue directed the music in this, he was unable to compose a lot of the music (beyond a few collabs with Lopes for Bridge Island Zone, which slaps), meaning that a large number of other composers filled in for him. While I have nothing really horrible to say about any of the composers’ individual works in Sonic Superstars, it does kind of contribute to a lack of unified vision for the soundtrack. I’d happily listen to the whole thing on Spotify, though. Cutscene Communication One of the few faults we found with Sonic Mania back in the day was in its story and how little was told between Zones - Sonic Superstars suffers from the same problem. While there are some cute cutscenes that help illustrate the dynamic between characters, or get Sonic from one stage to another, broadly-speaking there’s not a lot here that will help you understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Completing the main story reveals a new harder playthrough taken from a different perspective, but there’s little explanation as to why the character you play in this new mode is pursuing the same goal as Sonic. The transition from the story mode to the Super Sonic challenge that presents itself at the end is non-existent as well, meaning you’re going to have to understand the context of what you’re fighting through clues in promotional media such as the animated short. I get Sonic Team wanted to keep things simple to stay true to the classics, and I’m not suggesting that there needed to be any voice-acted Sonic Adventure-style expositions or anything, but some more in-game cutscenes would have really helped sell the story the whole way through. There isn’t really anything here as impactful as, say, the Hidden Palace post-fight sequence from Sonic & Knuckles. That doesn’t mean that the game lacks spectacle or atmosphere though. The final stages and boss fights are among the most engaging and challenging I’ve ever played in the 2D series (with the exception of the Super Sonic boss, which is pretty naff), and the difficulty curve in general is designed in such a satisfying way that simply reaching the latter stages of the game feels like an accomplishment. For anyone interested in actual platforming instead of just holding right, this will be a rewarding challenge for the seasoned 2D Sonic player. There are some fantastic set-pieces, gimmicks and Easter Eggs to be found here too, from the Harmony SEGA Magazine-inspired snake you ride along in Sand Sanctuary to a classic throwback in Frozen Base Zone Act 2 that will have SEGA fans grinning from ear to ear. There is a genuinely fun twist in the second act of the final zone that mixes things up in a very interesting way - even as you spend the stage wondering about the device Eggman uses to make it happen and why it’s not been a point of focus in the story until that very moment. For Great Honor and Justice! Another new feature introduced in Sonic Superstars is the online (or offline) Battle Mode, in which you spend Medals collected in the main game on customisations for a robot prototype (that makes several appearances during your story playthrough, which adds some neat continuity there), which is then sent to glorious battle against other robots. The gameplay here is hardly going to win any awards, to be honest with you - it kind of feels like a prototype of what the main experience of Superstars ended up being - but it works for its purpose, and the online battle rounds of 3 are short enough that you can get some fun out of it. Of the mini games I played, besides a standard race, I fought other robots for stars, tried to survive a barrage of cannon fire and shot opponents in the face with lasers. After completing an online battle you can earn Medals based on how well you performed (you can play offline, but you won’t earn Medals or increase your online rank - another first for the Sonic series). Coming in first will net you a huge chunk of coins, so this is likely the mode where you’ll get the majority of your currency to spend on weird robot heads, body parts and patterns to adorn. Bang For Your Buck? One surprising factor I found in Sonic Superstars was in its overall longevity. Overall it’s taken me some 10 or so hours to briefly see all that Superstars has to offer. That’s without really exploring the Battle Mode (I had a few online battles, quite fun), taking on the time attack mode in a serious way (each character has their own leaderboard for each act in the game, and of course you can rank your times online too) and fully completing the game in co-op. Even playing through the main story solo took a longer stretch of time than I was expecting for a classic Sonic game - some four or five hours or so (a lot of time spent trying to complete that final boss). While the game might be priced a little higher than I feel is necessary, when you factor in the above, plus the additional story modes that unlock as you play through, there’s a lot to come back to in this title. Much like Sonic Generations before it, the first-play experience is short for the amount of money you’re putting down here, but the overall quality of that experience - plus the replayability - adds a bit more value underneath the surface. Really, it all comes down to whether you feel the game is priced adequately enough for a 2D adventure - one that does happen to be rather good, but a 2D adventure nonetheless. Final Words While it doesn’t quite hit the highs of Sonic Mania, Sonic Superstars is a worthy successor in almost every way. It plays faithfully to the classic games, the new stages are wonderfully designed, the challenge is well-balanced outside of some of the bosses, and the presentation is simply perfect - this is the best that Sonic has looked in decades. It could stand to be around $10-15 cheaper, but there is a surprising amount of content here beyond the replay value of the main stages, and is well worth your time to explore. Arzest and Sonic Team have worked together to pull off an impressively entertaining adventure with Sonic Superstars, and I hope that - with a little refinement - there’s more to come from this partnership.
  6. Arzest might be an unfamiliar name to most Sonic the Hedgehog fans, but the developer certainly has experience with the blue blur. Led by original Sonic character designer Naoto Ohshima, the Japanese studio seemed like the perfect partner for Sonic Team to work with on a new classic Sonic adventure. Sonic Superstars aims to pick up the energy and goodwill generated by Evening Star's Sonic Mania and enhance it with new characters, stages and gameplay gimmicks. Have they succeeded? Old-School Cool Well, if the presentation is anything to go by, the answer is a resounding 'yes'! Taking one look at the character design and the overall setting, everything about this feels absolutely perfect. The cute animations, colourful environments, interesting stage gimmicks and wonderful characterisation - including of newcomer Trip and returning villain Fang the Hunter - all come together for a Sonic experience that just feels right. In terms of vibe alone, Superstars is 100% on point. Stages are designed with both speed and platforming in mind from the start - Arzest has really understood the brief here, with opening Zones gently offering easy-to-access dash pads and mid-air boosters while introducing players to core gameplay concepts that will return with a vengeance in the latter stages. By the time you finish Pinball Carnival, the gloves start to come off and the real fun begins, with various speed traps laid out and multiple routes through each Act. Players will be required to engage with the classic Sonic formula of accessing speed tracks by navigating platforming sections. The Zones do not feel like the one-track levels, with both character abilities and Emerald powers allowing you to explore the maps at your leisure to find the fastest route. The Emerald's Power Allows Me To Feel Emerald powers are new to Sonic Superstars, and add a little extra gameplay depth to the age-old hunt for the Chaos Emeralds. Special Stages for these gems, accessed via large gold rings hidden within a stage, are quite fun once you get used to the momentum of swinging Sonic and his friends around a strange fantasy zone, and can require some quick thinking and circular tactics to catch the speeding Emerald in its path. Collecting a Chaos Emerald unlocks a certain ability that can be used one time between star posts - one allows you to grow a vine upwards to access higher routes in a level, while another slows down time so you can avoid an enemy attack or crushing pillar. My favourite has to be the Avatar, that chucks a whole bunch of mimics at your foes - which can help you in a pinch on a boss fight but can also be confusing as it’s easy to lose yourself in the chaos. Some of these powers do seem a bit superfluous right now as I write this, but I imagine there will be cool advanced use cases for them all as I replay certain stages. The only real difficulty with these powers is the inability to quick-cancel - pressing L1 and R1 is said to drop your chosen power, but this only seems to be if you’ve equipped it and not yet activated it. Beyond Chaos Emeralds, there are plenty of bonus stages and collectibles to gather while on Sonic’s new journey. Giant blue rings take you on a Special Stage once more, but this time you play for Medals which can be used to spend on robot customisations in the Battle mode (more this later). Hitting a Star Post with enough rings opens a warp portal to a Bonus Stage that is reminiscent of the original Special Stages in Sonic 1 on the Mega Drive, again playing for Medals. There’s also strange-looking Fruit which you can get from end-level containers and hidden areas of a stage, which allows access to exclusive Acts in certain Zones that sees you collecting as many rings and Medals as possible in an auto-scroller. Teamwork Makes the Dream Work? There’s more than enough within the stages to distract and entertain, and from a gameplay perspective it all feels near-perfect to blast through too. Characters do feel a little too heavy to start, and the Spindash isn’t as powerful or get as much speed as I’d like, but once you get used to Sonic’s slower kickoff it feels fine. Overall, the physics are nigh-on exact to the classic 2D Mega Drive titles, if not at least Sonic Mania, with inertia and momentum all present and correct. After so many years since Evening Star’s 2D effort, playing a Sonic game like this feels like a joy. As you spend more time with the game, the only other noticeable thing that impacts the single-player experience is the camera positioning. It’s a little too close to your character (unless you’re playing in co-op) which can make speed runs and hard-mode playthroughs pretty difficult to navigate. It’s a bit of a shame in tense platforming moments in particular, as it dulls the thrill of exploration and the temptation of going at high speed in the later stages - you’re constantly fearful of what enemies may suddenly pop out at you with no time to react. The co-op experience is one of the key selling points of Sonic Superstars, and as long as you don’t take any of your gameplay here seriously, it can be a really fun time. Short bursts of multiplayer mayhem are best had with this mode, and unless you enjoy the chaos of losing everyone off-screen for most of the time (and that in itself can be quite funny), it’s best that all players are on the same page with what they want to get out of it. I was playing with a family member who casually enjoyed Sonic, and it was fun for me to take my time as Sonic during the platforming sections and allow the both of us to work through the challenges together (before they went off and left me behind afterwards - typical!). However, you do need to be patient with the camera in this mode, as it has trouble focusing on the right character at the right time. It’s not always clear whether the game will choose to focus on the player who is furthest forward, furthest upwards or on the correct track, but in any case you’ll find that the camera has a mind of its own in that instance. Overall, I found co-op to be pretty fun, but there are obvious design flaws here that mean that this is more a mode for casual players rather than four pals trying to seriously speed run stages at once. Mega Drive Madness The music is a bit of a mixed bag this time around. While there are some great individual tracks in here - Lagoon City, or Golden City Act 2 for example - many of them don’t seem to work well together to convey a cohesive theme for each Act. Speed Jungle, for instance, opens Act 1 with a fantastically flighty Tee Lopes melody to set the tone, but then you get to Act 2 and the less energetic theme there doesn’t appear to properly follow the leitmotifs set by the previous stage. Act Sonic’s BGM might as well be from a different game, let alone Zone. Heavy use of Mega Drive percussions throughout will sadly draw many comparisons to the soundtrack of Sonic the Hedgehog 4, but it’s really not all that bad. Some of the music, such as that found in Frozen Base, proves there’s still life in using the old 16-bit sound chip yet (and the Tails Act theme of that Zone is an absolute banger). But it doesn’t make Sonic Superstars feel as fresh as it could be. Whereas Lopes’ Sonic Mania soundtrack breathed new life into the sprite-based 2D experience, here it kind of feels like I’m listening to something from ten years ago. It doesn’t help that sadly, although Jun Senoue directed the music in this, he was unable to compose a lot of the music (beyond a few collabs with Lopes for Bridge Island Zone, which slaps), meaning that a large number of other composers filled in for him. While I have nothing really horrible to say about any of the composers’ individual works in Sonic Superstars, it does kind of contribute to a lack of unified vision for the soundtrack. I’d happily listen to the whole thing on Spotify, though. Cutscene Communication One of the few faults we found with Sonic Mania back in the day was in its story and how little was told between Zones - Sonic Superstars suffers from the same problem. While there are some cute cutscenes that help illustrate the dynamic between characters, or get Sonic from one stage to another, broadly-speaking there’s not a lot here that will help you understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Completing the main story reveals a new harder playthrough taken from a different perspective, but there’s little explanation as to why the character you play in this new mode is pursuing the same goal as Sonic. The transition from the story mode to the Super Sonic challenge that presents itself at the end is non-existent as well, meaning you’re going to have to understand the context of what you’re fighting through clues in promotional media such as the animated short. I get Sonic Team wanted to keep things simple to stay true to the classics, and I’m not suggesting that there needed to be any voice-acted Sonic Adventure-style expositions or anything, but some more in-game cutscenes would have really helped sell the story the whole way through. There isn’t really anything here as impactful as, say, the Hidden Palace post-fight sequence from Sonic & Knuckles. That doesn’t mean that the game lacks spectacle or atmosphere though. The final stages and boss fights are among the most engaging and challenging I’ve ever played in the 2D series (with the exception of the Super Sonic boss, which is pretty naff), and the difficulty curve in general is designed in such a satisfying way that simply reaching the latter stages of the game feels like an accomplishment. For anyone interested in actual platforming instead of just holding right, this will be a rewarding challenge for the seasoned 2D Sonic player. There are some fantastic set-pieces, gimmicks and Easter Eggs to be found here too, from the Harmony SEGA Magazine-inspired snake you ride along in Sand Sanctuary to a classic throwback in Frozen Base Zone Act 2 that will have SEGA fans grinning from ear to ear. There is a genuinely fun twist in the second act of the final zone that mixes things up in a very interesting way - even as you spend the stage wondering about the device Eggman uses to make it happen and why it’s not been a point of focus in the story until that very moment. For Great Honor and Justice! Another new feature introduced in Sonic Superstars is the online (or offline) Battle Mode, in which you spend Medals collected in the main game on customisations for a robot prototype (that makes several appearances during your story playthrough, which adds some neat continuity there), which is then sent to glorious battle against other robots. The gameplay here is hardly going to win any awards, to be honest with you - it kind of feels like a prototype of what the main experience of Superstars ended up being - but it works for its purpose, and the online battle rounds of 3 are short enough that you can get some fun out of it. Of the mini games I played, besides a standard race, I fought other robots for stars, tried to survive a barrage of cannon fire and shot opponents in the face with lasers. After completing an online battle you can earn Medals based on how well you performed (you can play offline, but you won’t earn Medals or increase your online rank - another first for the Sonic series). Coming in first will net you a huge chunk of coins, so this is likely the mode where you’ll get the majority of your currency to spend on weird robot heads, body parts and patterns to adorn. Bang For Your Buck? One surprising factor I found in Sonic Superstars was in its overall longevity. Overall it’s taken me some 10 or so hours to briefly see all that Superstars has to offer. That’s without really exploring the Battle Mode (I had a few online battles, quite fun), taking on the time attack mode in a serious way (each character has their own leaderboard for each act in the game, and of course you can rank your times online too) and fully completing the game in co-op. Even playing through the main story solo took a longer stretch of time than I was expecting for a classic Sonic game - some four or five hours or so (a lot of time spent trying to complete that final boss). While the game might be priced a little higher than I feel is necessary, when you factor in the above, plus the additional story modes that unlock as you play through, there’s a lot to come back to in this title. Much like Sonic Generations before it, the first-play experience is short for the amount of money you’re putting down here, but the overall quality of that experience - plus the replayability - adds a bit more value underneath the surface. Really, it all comes down to whether you feel the game is priced adequately enough for a 2D adventure - one that does happen to be rather good, but a 2D adventure nonetheless. Final Words While it doesn’t quite hit the highs of Sonic Mania, Sonic Superstars is a worthy successor in almost every way. It plays faithfully to the classic games, the new stages are wonderfully designed, the challenge is well-balanced outside of some of the bosses, and the presentation is simply perfect - this is the best that Sonic has looked in decades. It could stand to be around $10-15 cheaper, but there is a surprising amount of content here beyond the replay value of the main stages, and is well worth your time to explore. Arzest and Sonic Team have worked together to pull off an impressively entertaining adventure with Sonic Superstars, and I hope that - with a little refinement - there’s more to come from this partnership. View full story
  7. How do you like your eggs? Fried? Scrambled? Poached? On Toast? None of that for our plucky new hero, Billy Hatcher - he likes his eggs hatched, with a big fat old monster inside them. Erm, right. Sonic Team's newest creation for several years, Billy Hatcher has all the charm of those chickens in the Legend of Zelda. Although, you don't want to stab him or anything. The shameful thing is that Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg has been shunned by many Sonic fans because of the way it looks. As I always say, you're only a Sonic fan if you're willing to at least try anything Sonic Team throws at you, and those 'fakers' out there are really missing out on something special here. Forget all those stupid conceptions about how 'naff' the game looks, or the cutesy graphics. Bet you any money the graphics in Yoshi's Island on the SNES didn't deter you from the absolute genius gameplay it contained. As Billy, you are transported into Morning Land, a world inhabited with nothing but chickens - a farmer's nightmare, I'll bet. Billy is called to this place because of his courage - evil crows have come to overthrow the Morning Land as their own and turn the land into an eternal night. So, strapped into a magical chicken-y outfit, Billy Hatcher sets out to save the world. The game plays a lot like a mix between Super Mario 64 and Super Monkey Ball. On your own, you can jump about and run some distance, but that's as far as your base ability goes. Wearing the chicken suit, you can grab hold of the many eggs in the stage, and roll it around to give you many more moves. Pressing the A button makes you jump higher than usual, while you can also perform a bounce jump, a dash with the R trigger, and many funky attack manoeuvres, including slamming into the ground and chucking the egg ahead of you to bump enemies on the bonce. The game plays very smoothly indeed, and controlling the egg is perfect as Billy. However, there are some camera problems when playing some of the harder levels, which can get annoying sometimes. There's also a weird bug where, upon jumping up to a ledge with your egg, at times your egg gets put up on the ledge, but you fall down to where you started. But other than that, the entire game is a sheer joy to play. Enemies pop up, and are pure 'Sonic Team' in design. You can perform combos with your egg - for example, if you hit one enemy with your egg, the enemy bounces around before going up in smoke. If that enemy hits others while flying, you can start a chain combo. When circles of baddies appear, you can hit one and knacker them all by way of domino effect. There are plenty of opportunities for combos (with animal taming, egg-attacking and egg hatching adding to your combo count), but it takes an advanced player to pull off so-called 'Rainbow' combos each time. This is the universal playing level of the game that Sonic Team has created in Billy Hatcher, and it's wonderful. You can feed the eggs using fruit laid about the course of the stage - and many larger enemies spew forth some fruit when you knock their blocks off too. There are different egg types you can collect, and different eggs react differently to certain fruit, so a 'favourite fruit' will fatten one particular egg as quick as you can click your fingers, whereas the same fruit won't make much of a difference on a different egg. When fully fattened, you can use your Chicken Call to hatch the egg you hold. Different eggs of different designs hold different things. You can get small animals, with a one-time passive power, which can be used with the Y Button. Chameleons, for example, make you invisible for a short time. You can also hatch items such as hats, and there are special animals that follow you about the stage. For those creatures, you can use the X Button to use their special power several times - and those powers are needed on occasion to proceed through the level. For example, you can use penguin dude Clippen to douse flames, and flying monkey boy Recky to electrify something. You can also find HUGE animals that you can ride around the level, such as a wicked Ninja-looking Shark, to help you cross water. Pressing the X button makes you hop off their backs, but the B button can make them use their specialised attacks for as long as you require them. The stages themselves are egg-cellently laid out, and make full use of the eggs you can find. There are roughly seven missions in each world, each one opening up a new section of the stage, making playthroughs all the more fun. The first mission of each world features the entire stage engulfed in night, with your task to rescue the Chicken Elders, who have been turned into golden eggs. Once you save them, it becomes morning once more. Upon completing each mission, you earn a Courage Emblem, which are the equivalent of Stars in Mario 64. You can also find Chick Coins in each stage - collecting as many of these as you can will enable you to play with special Sonic Team oriented animals, including Chao, NiGHTS, Knuckles and even Sonic himself. Other extras include Joy Carry games, in which you can link up a Game Boy Advance and download short games such as Puyo Pop, ChuChu Rocket! and NiGHTS Score Attack. As if that wasn't enough, Billy Hatcher also comes complete with a formidable multi-player mode. Unlike the Sonic games, which have all been below-par multiplayer experiences (save for Sonic 3's Head to Head), this game has real multiplayer potential. The fact that the lineup is exactly representative of the Super Monkey Ball character lineup just proves that Sonic Team had this with a multiplayer in mind: Billy is the all-rounder, Rolly is the nimble girl, Chick is the young'un (also a bit of a cheeky bleeder, watch out for him), and Bantam's the big fat git. You can play a simple deathmatch, where rolling eggs into each other's faces becomes ample entertainment - having your opponent run in terror as you unleash your animal's attack is sheer fun. You can also indulge in a timed battle option, and a 'Hatching' mode where you have to hatch the most eggs in the time limit (this is where you get hold of the BIG monsters - chasing someone on the back of a huge lion/kangaroo crossbreed is an experience unfound in any other game). The multiplayer mode complements the solo game very well. A game like this has some control issues, as explained before, and the general difficulty of the game later on will cause some impatience issues. But in general this game will be one of the lightest and freshest games in recent years. I have a bad feeling this game will be under-appreciated amongst fans, which is a crying shame because if any gamer should have learnt by now it's not to judge a game by face value. Rent Billy Hatcher, get addicted to it, then buy it. It's as simple as that. Soon you'll be singing that sickenly stupid (but DAMN good) theme tune like nobody else. Hey, I have the tune on my mobile phone, so. =) Worth a purchase, definitely. View full story
  8. How do you like your eggs? Fried? Scrambled? Poached? On Toast? None of that for our plucky new hero, Billy Hatcher - he likes his eggs hatched, with a big fat old monster inside them. Erm, right. Sonic Team's newest creation for several years, Billy Hatcher has all the charm of those chickens in the Legend of Zelda. Although, you don't want to stab him or anything. The shameful thing is that Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg has been shunned by many Sonic fans because of the way it looks. As I always say, you're only a Sonic fan if you're willing to at least try anything Sonic Team throws at you, and those 'fakers' out there are really missing out on something special here. Forget all those stupid conceptions about how 'naff' the game looks, or the cutesy graphics. Bet you any money the graphics in Yoshi's Island on the SNES didn't deter you from the absolute genius gameplay it contained. As Billy, you are transported into Morning Land, a world inhabited with nothing but chickens - a farmer's nightmare, I'll bet. Billy is called to this place because of his courage - evil crows have come to overthrow the Morning Land as their own and turn the land into an eternal night. So, strapped into a magical chicken-y outfit, Billy Hatcher sets out to save the world. The game plays a lot like a mix between Super Mario 64 and Super Monkey Ball. On your own, you can jump about and run some distance, but that's as far as your base ability goes. Wearing the chicken suit, you can grab hold of the many eggs in the stage, and roll it around to give you many more moves. Pressing the A button makes you jump higher than usual, while you can also perform a bounce jump, a dash with the R trigger, and many funky attack manoeuvres, including slamming into the ground and chucking the egg ahead of you to bump enemies on the bonce. The game plays very smoothly indeed, and controlling the egg is perfect as Billy. However, there are some camera problems when playing some of the harder levels, which can get annoying sometimes. There's also a weird bug where, upon jumping up to a ledge with your egg, at times your egg gets put up on the ledge, but you fall down to where you started. But other than that, the entire game is a sheer joy to play. Enemies pop up, and are pure 'Sonic Team' in design. You can perform combos with your egg - for example, if you hit one enemy with your egg, the enemy bounces around before going up in smoke. If that enemy hits others while flying, you can start a chain combo. When circles of baddies appear, you can hit one and knacker them all by way of domino effect. There are plenty of opportunities for combos (with animal taming, egg-attacking and egg hatching adding to your combo count), but it takes an advanced player to pull off so-called 'Rainbow' combos each time. This is the universal playing level of the game that Sonic Team has created in Billy Hatcher, and it's wonderful. You can feed the eggs using fruit laid about the course of the stage - and many larger enemies spew forth some fruit when you knock their blocks off too. There are different egg types you can collect, and different eggs react differently to certain fruit, so a 'favourite fruit' will fatten one particular egg as quick as you can click your fingers, whereas the same fruit won't make much of a difference on a different egg. When fully fattened, you can use your Chicken Call to hatch the egg you hold. Different eggs of different designs hold different things. You can get small animals, with a one-time passive power, which can be used with the Y Button. Chameleons, for example, make you invisible for a short time. You can also hatch items such as hats, and there are special animals that follow you about the stage. For those creatures, you can use the X Button to use their special power several times - and those powers are needed on occasion to proceed through the level. For example, you can use penguin dude Clippen to douse flames, and flying monkey boy Recky to electrify something. You can also find HUGE animals that you can ride around the level, such as a wicked Ninja-looking Shark, to help you cross water. Pressing the X button makes you hop off their backs, but the B button can make them use their specialised attacks for as long as you require them. The stages themselves are egg-cellently laid out, and make full use of the eggs you can find. There are roughly seven missions in each world, each one opening up a new section of the stage, making playthroughs all the more fun. The first mission of each world features the entire stage engulfed in night, with your task to rescue the Chicken Elders, who have been turned into golden eggs. Once you save them, it becomes morning once more. Upon completing each mission, you earn a Courage Emblem, which are the equivalent of Stars in Mario 64. You can also find Chick Coins in each stage - collecting as many of these as you can will enable you to play with special Sonic Team oriented animals, including Chao, NiGHTS, Knuckles and even Sonic himself. Other extras include Joy Carry games, in which you can link up a Game Boy Advance and download short games such as Puyo Pop, ChuChu Rocket! and NiGHTS Score Attack. As if that wasn't enough, Billy Hatcher also comes complete with a formidable multi-player mode. Unlike the Sonic games, which have all been below-par multiplayer experiences (save for Sonic 3's Head to Head), this game has real multiplayer potential. The fact that the lineup is exactly representative of the Super Monkey Ball character lineup just proves that Sonic Team had this with a multiplayer in mind: Billy is the all-rounder, Rolly is the nimble girl, Chick is the young'un (also a bit of a cheeky bleeder, watch out for him), and Bantam's the big fat git. You can play a simple deathmatch, where rolling eggs into each other's faces becomes ample entertainment - having your opponent run in terror as you unleash your animal's attack is sheer fun. You can also indulge in a timed battle option, and a 'Hatching' mode where you have to hatch the most eggs in the time limit (this is where you get hold of the BIG monsters - chasing someone on the back of a huge lion/kangaroo crossbreed is an experience unfound in any other game). The multiplayer mode complements the solo game very well. A game like this has some control issues, as explained before, and the general difficulty of the game later on will cause some impatience issues. But in general this game will be one of the lightest and freshest games in recent years. I have a bad feeling this game will be under-appreciated amongst fans, which is a crying shame because if any gamer should have learnt by now it's not to judge a game by face value. Rent Billy Hatcher, get addicted to it, then buy it. It's as simple as that. Soon you'll be singing that sickenly stupid (but DAMN good) theme tune like nobody else. Hey, I have the tune on my mobile phone, so. =) Worth a purchase, definitely.
  9. I get the impression that Sonic Frontiers director Morio Kishimoto is a good, honest bloke. He just wants to make people happy. The poor fella has been on a mission over the last year to not only expand the base game’s content three times over, but make that content free for fans as well. It’s a really noble thing to do, and Sonic Team should definitely get praise for the generous amount of effort and time they have put into this whole project. But sadly, for all the ambition and hard work that has clearly gone in here, the only people that I can see enjoying Final Horizon - a story-based expansion presented as an alternate ending - will be speed-runners and comic/lore enthusiasts. For almost everyone else, this finale will be mostly a confusing, frustrating and tedious mess. A Little Help From My Friends Things start off well enough. A massive warp ring appears within the open zone, and you have the option to enter it or go about your merry way playing through the base game. If you opt to have Sonic leap through it, you’re treated to a preamble involving a new plan to fight back mysterious foe, The End. A plan with odds for success so infinitesimally small that Sage never thought to bring it up before. Given what you’re about to go through, she probably should have kept it to herself, really. Sonic realises he can’t finish the fight alone, and so his pals Tails, Knuckles and Amy offer to lend a hand in hunting for the Chaos Emeralds dotted around Ouranos Island. From here, you periodically swap between characters as you work through various challenges to re-reveal the map - both from the familiar “red markers” and by reaching newly-introduced (and colour-coded) “Map Koco”. Gameplay here is pretty inoffensive (with some glaring exceptions which I’ll go into later). Just like playing Sonic Frontiers itself for the first time, there’s a lot to discover and distract yourself in the open zone, and you’re given the space to just go at your own pace. This kind of casual platforming action built into massive playgrounds was one of the best things about the game, so I was very happy to indulge in “more of the same” with some brand new playable characters - despite some of the open zone puzzles being a little bit irritating to complete. While it’s great to finally be able to play as Amy, Tails and Knuckles again, there are some finicky control issues with all three of them that turns things into a bit of a grind. Amy and Tails are generally fine, apart from some weird turning circles and unpredictable inertia. But there are techniques you can deploy to make things easier for yourself. Amy in particular has a very useful double-jump and glide ability that can allow her to cheese certain parts of an annoying puzzle. Tails can also unlock an insanely cool boost mod which has him enter the Cyclone Tornado from Sonic Adventure 2, and this doubles as a plane that can take you to high altitudes. I definitely used this to skip an entire chunk of mid-air challenges required to progress through the story, and I definitely had a massive grin on my face while doing it. Knuckles… is weird. I have no earthly idea how they managed to nerf the Master Emerald guardian so much in this. The first thing I did when I assumed control of him was try to glide towards a laser puzzle. I immediately died (and I immediately laughed) because for some inexplicable reason he has a second-long “priming” animation before he actually glides anywhere. When you’re being asked to engage in some pretty difficult platforming challenges, immediate character responsiveness is an absolute must, and this design decision instantly makes Knuckles a complete dump to play. Even crazier is that the red porcupine on the block with the buff chest can’t climb on any surface that’s not specifically cyber-coloured in red. That has caused some hilarity when falling towards the ocean and your only tactic is to keep gliding in vain against a nearby cliff, unable to latch on but still slowly descending towards your imminent doom. But it's just another gameplay choice that takes you out of the experience - not that the climbing is any good when you are able to grab on to something, as Knuckles constantly clips off of surfaces and spins out from walls at the most inconvenient moments. The third strike against Knuckles’ gameplay here is his sheer inability to fight any of the Guardians that loiter about the island. To be fair, all three characters here have this problem - you’ll never be strong enough to make a dent on most foes - but with Knuckles it’s especially outrageous given that his fighting proficiency is a defining character trait. Instead, combat with Amy, Tails or Knuckles is an utterly miserable experience and is best avoided. Trump Towers Despite the above frustrations, though, you can run through the open zone sections as the three ‘amigo’ characters and still get a fair amount of enjoyment from all the exploration. This all changes when you find the Chaos Emeralds and hand control over to Sonic, though. The game completely flips on a dime and presents a gauntlet of some of the most unnecessary and poorly-executed challenges this side of S-Ranking Crisis City. I should be absolutely clear at this point, that the problem with Sonic Frontiers: Final Horizon is not that it is ‘difficult’. There's nothing inherently wrong with an increased challenge. The problem is that the increased challenge has amplified all of the worst facets of Sonic Frontiers, bringing to the fore all of its control and gameplay flaws, while failing to inform you of the new twists and gimmicks that are key to success. Almost every activity is a total chore to accomplish. Take, for example, the series of high-rise towers that Sonic is tasked with climbing. On the face of it, these platforming puzzles are nicely designed to scale, with more bumpers and gimmicks thrown in the harder you choose to play. When the game isn't fighting your control, climbing these towers can offer moments of exhilaration and satisfaction the higher up you go. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, you are still just dealing with Sonic Frontiers' excessively janky physics and camera, all of which is present and incorrect - from the wonky inertia and the crooked jumps, to the unpredictable turning circles and lack of perspective that prevents you from landing your leaps correctly. As a result, these otherwise well-designed sections often become a source of intense frustration and unnecessary risk, as you constantly try to course-correct your trajectory mid-air using erratic double jumps and desperately-deployed boosts. Instead of being exhilarating, it's just anxiety-inducing - if you fall, you have to start all over again from the bottom. Checkpoints could have easily taken the edge off of this, but incredibly Sonic Team chose not to include these at any point during the expansion, even on Easy mode. Bringing down the difficulty to Easy removes a lot of the pressure, of course (and from what I understand there's no story penalty in doing so this time around). But it also swings things too much the other way during tower climbs, placing a large number of springs and boosters that cut entire sections of platforming action, if not the whole thing (and even then I've still fallen down due to glitches!). It’s a crying shame, because I love platforming puzzles and the towers would have undoubtedly been the best thing about the Final Horizon DLC for me… but all of the fun of the climb has been sucked out of it, thanks to both a challenge that is not balanced and a lower difficulty that amounts to an automated ride to the top. It’s sadly unsatisfying on both counts. Fighting Through Cyberspace The same balancing issues are prominent throughout the new combat challenges and Cyberspace stages as well. Already the two worst and forgettable parts of Sonic Frontiers, we really didn’t need any more focus on these - but here they are, back with a vengeance. And Sonic Team even had the stones to make all of the combat stuff mandatory, so there’s no way around it. Enemies are stronger, faster, cheaper. On higher difficulty modes, you are given no time to respond to telegraphed attacks, and you spend most of your time flying onto the ground spilling rings. The first combat challenge - unlocked when you eventually manage to scale one of the towers as Sonic - is especially brutal, with no chance of completing a Cyloop to break one enemy's defences without another one scuttling over and beating you senseless. It’s downright insufferable to play and you will be forgiven for wanting to just delete the game and forget about ever completing it. Perhaps the most criminal things here are the new “ultra-hard” Cyberspace stages. As I mentioned in my original review, Cyberspace was just dire - a series of monotonous late-stage ‘Boost Era’ challenges based on broken Sonic Forces-style mechanics, only made passable by being mercifully short and “easy” to complete. But this time, Sonic Team took both of those saving graces away, making these new action stages longer, less forgiving and more complex, with several collectibles and side-objectives distracting you while the stage throws incredibly tedious curveballs at you in the name of “difficulty”. All of which are Not Very Good Things. In just one of the Cyberspace stages I played, 4-B, I had a weird ghost-Tails racing against me, five moon coins littered about an early glitchy part of the level, three animals to rescue (which suddenly removes Sonic of his ability to perform any moves other than a single jump - that’s fun to discover when plummeting down a pit) AND five numbered gates to run through in order - all happening while having to survive a series of falling platform challenges that became more ridiculous as the stage went on; the dickhead camera insisting that I had no chance of seeing where I was jumping and where I was about to land. Talk about sensory overload! Oh, and if you die (and you will die), you have to do the entire thing all over again - no checkpoints. There are some thrills to be found in discovering shortcuts in these levels, if YouTube is any indication - with Sonic utilising Spin Dash, Boosts and various technical tricks to launch into the stratosphere and cut huge sections of track (indeed, it certainly seems like the real fun of Cyberspace lies in trying to play as little of it as possible!). But while it’s nice watching someone else do it, it’s a miserable experience when playing this yourself. There are no real environmental clues that inform or inspire you to break off the beaten path, besides the odd ramp that, if Spin Dashed, could lead you absolutely anywhere (or nowhere). The poor draw distance makes it difficult to spot any far-off platforms and plan a route (and I’m amazed that there is this amount of pop-in for stages that barely have any geometry in them in the first place). The art of finding a shortcut amounts to spotting a curious platform, spin-dashing off of it, yanking Sonic in a random direction and hoping you find something during your leap of faith. Linear action stages certainly have their place in the Sonic series, but not like this. Cyberspace stages have been built to be less about skilful jumps and thoughtful environmental puzzles, and more about keeping your vehicle on the race track and getting to the finish line as quickly as possible. The Sonic Adventure games, while not perfect, already managed to balance platform challenges with rewarding speed tracks incredibly well. It’s high time we got some of that level design philosophy back. Knowledge is Power Direction is a problem in Sonic Frontiers: Final Horizon. Whereas the base game assumed you knew nothing, bombarding you with hints on which button makes you jump, Final Horizon assumes you know everything - offering absolutely no guidance on the chaotic tornado of new gimmicks, key items or combat strategies that are suddenly thrown at you. New open zone collectibles like the Map Koco and Lookout Koco are not explained. I’m still not sure what the latter is for, despite having beaten the whole thing. You're not told that your skill levels as Amy, Tails and Knuckles start at 1, and that basic attacks need to be unlocked, which can lead to some messy early scenarios with impossibly-powered Guardians. Even the practically-free Cyloop ability needs to be specifically unlocked in the menu first to use it, which is just pointless busywork. Why is it not unlocked for you at the start? It's small things like this which build up player frustration (and eventually impatience) with the game's broader design choices. It's in combat where the lack of guidance becomes the most fatal issue. If you fail a combat trial one too many times, you are asked if you'd like to draw down the difficulty level. But this is no comfort to players who are struggling to understand exactly what they are doing wrong (or not doing right). Being politely called a dumbass when you're completely unaware of the existence of things like perfectly-timed parries - a concept that is only explained in vague terms during the final trial - is a little bit insulting. Similarly, the Titan Boss Rush trial relies on the use of skills and attack combos that you may never have engaged with on your main story playthrough. Using the Quick Cyloop during stun windows is required knowledge for this challenge, even on Easy mode, but it was something I never really thought about doing because I chose, when playing the main game, to largely ignore much of the combat. Even when I swotted up on the combat skills suite, I was not making good time. I should not have to research online to figure out how to do a boss battle on the simplest difficulty mode! If you’re stuck, like I was for a good couple of days, here's a tip: spamming the Stomp move is your friend. Once you fight through the insanely unbalanced Towers and Combat Trials as Sonic, you’re finally given the opportunity to take on the new endgame boss. And while it is quite the spectacle (and thankfully offers the right level of difficulty in general, in spite of some camera-hogging trees!), the lack of any clear targets, indicators or suggested strategy means that you’ll be spending more time than necessary wondering exactly what to do. And that is a heartbreakingly frustrating experience to have on such an important set-piece as this. In spite of this, I was able to enjoy Supreme/The End anyway because by that point, after all that I had been through, I suspected that some kind of obtuse nonsense was going to happen so I looked up a guide (and I’ll link it here in case you’re curious too). I don't usually spoil games for myself when playing for the first time, but the situation definitely called for it, and I can say now that I made the right choice. I don’t want to spoil anything here, but suffice to say that if I had not known the strategy going into that final fight, I might have actually thrown myself into a wall in sheer despair. Flashy Final Fight Although the new ending sequence is pretty cool and enjoyable to watch, generally speaking the storytelling and writing throughout the DLC is pretty clumsy this time around. Sonic’s characterisation is entirely off throughout (including some weird passive-aggressive energy towards the Koco leaders that - we’re now being told - he directly endangered with his actions in the main story), the scripting around the series of combat trials at the mid-point is not convincing and the dialogue in general is a bit of a dud. More disappointing is that this expansion does not appear to offer much in the way of meaningful plot development, or context to the main story mode. Tails, Amy and Knuckles aren’t given any real space to further explore the insecurities they were battling in the base game - it would have been interesting to have seen the results of these characters’ personal challenges integrate more into their otherwise-mundane Chaos Emerald hunt. The End has been stripped of seemingly all dialogue during the new final boss fight, which is a little bit of a buzzkill despite the rest of the boss battle being quite flashy. While I wouldn’t say the quiet mumbling in the original was better (or even good), I think conceptually The End’s gaslighting taunts did add an almost haunting tone, and bringing some of that over to Final Horizon would have helped stay in keeping with the overarching themes of ‘insecurity’ that underlined the rest of the game. We’re also none the wiser on some of the mysteries outlined in the original ending - did those glyphs ever get explained in a meaningful way? I’m wondering if there actually was an explanation and my brain just checked out, but it’s not a good sign that I don’t remember. Not for the game and certainly not for my memory - I need to get that looked at. Music Makes The People Come Together Once again, the music of Sonic Frontiers: Final Horizon has proved to be the DLC’s highest point. Mirroring the colossal effort that the rest of Sonic Team put in on this expansion, sound director Tomoya Ohtani has gone above and beyond with the soundtrack to Final Horizon, offering a full-blown record’s worth of new material to cover all of the content. And while it might all sound a bit experimental for a Sonic game, it definitely suits the mood - Amy’s melancholic “Maybe If...” setting the perfect tone right from the start. It’s a shame the Cyberspace stages are utterly avoidable, because the remixed tracks serve some serious beats. Ohtani-san gets better with each game he works on, and Final Horizon is another step up for the composer. I also have to thank Ohtani once again for the hard rock sounds of the Titan boss battles, without which I no doubt would have lost my mind on the fiftieth run-through of the Master King Koco Combat Trial. Summary Sadly, Sonic Frontiers: Final Horizon is an unbalanced and frustrating affair in the gameplay department, amplifying the very worst elements of the game's original release while offering little in reward. As a story, it bumbles along but it does offer a delightfully fantastic set-piece for the final boss. That payoff is almost not worth taking the tedious, unbalanced and frankly unfinished ride to get there, though. Your mileage, ultimately, may vary. Sonic Team deserves our thanks (and a good long rest) for serving the fans for so long after the original release of Sonic Frontiers. The effort and commitment made here, across all three DLC expansions, should be celebrated. It’s just a shame that with this ambitious finale, the studio couldn’t quite stick the landing. Die-hard speed runners, and those who masochistically enjoy Kaizo-style games, may find enjoyment here, but for anyone else I would recommend you watch the final boss and ending on YouTube. Think of it as an animated comic, and you'll get everything you need from it. View full story
  10. I get the impression that Sonic Frontiers director Morio Kishimoto is a good, honest bloke. He just wants to make people happy. The poor fella has been on a mission over the last year to not only expand the base game’s content three times over, but make that content free for fans as well. It’s a really noble thing to do, and Sonic Team should definitely get praise for the generous amount of effort and time they have put into this whole project. But sadly, for all the ambition and hard work that has clearly gone in here, the only people that I can see enjoying Final Horizon - a story-based expansion presented as an alternate ending - will be speed-runners and comic/lore enthusiasts. For almost everyone else, this finale will be mostly a confusing, frustrating and tedious mess. A Little Help From My Friends Things start off well enough. A massive warp ring appears within the open zone, and you have the option to enter it or go about your merry way playing through the base game. If you opt to have Sonic leap through it, you’re treated to a preamble involving a new plan to fight back mysterious foe, The End. A plan with odds for success so infinitesimally small that Sage never thought to bring it up before. Given what you’re about to go through, she probably should have kept it to herself, really. Sonic realises he can’t finish the fight alone, and so his pals Tails, Knuckles and Amy offer to lend a hand in hunting for the Chaos Emeralds dotted around Ouranos Island. From here, you periodically swap between characters as you work through various challenges to re-reveal the map - both from the familiar “red markers” and by reaching newly-introduced (and colour-coded) “Map Koco”. Gameplay here is pretty inoffensive (with some glaring exceptions which I’ll go into later). Just like playing Sonic Frontiers itself for the first time, there’s a lot to discover and distract yourself in the open zone, and you’re given the space to just go at your own pace. This kind of casual platforming action built into massive playgrounds was one of the best things about the game, so I was very happy to indulge in “more of the same” with some brand new playable characters - despite some of the open zone puzzles being a little bit irritating to complete. While it’s great to finally be able to play as Amy, Tails and Knuckles again, there are some finicky control issues with all three of them that turns things into a bit of a grind. Amy and Tails are generally fine, apart from some weird turning circles and unpredictable inertia. But there are techniques you can deploy to make things easier for yourself. Amy in particular has a very useful double-jump and glide ability that can allow her to cheese certain parts of an annoying puzzle. Tails can also unlock an insanely cool boost mod which has him enter the Cyclone Tornado from Sonic Adventure 2, and this doubles as a plane that can take you to high altitudes. I definitely used this to skip an entire chunk of mid-air challenges required to progress through the story, and I definitely had a massive grin on my face while doing it. Knuckles… is weird. I have no earthly idea how they managed to nerf the Master Emerald guardian so much in this. The first thing I did when I assumed control of him was try to glide towards a laser puzzle. I immediately died (and I immediately laughed) because for some inexplicable reason he has a second-long “priming” animation before he actually glides anywhere. When you’re being asked to engage in some pretty difficult platforming challenges, immediate character responsiveness is an absolute must, and this design decision instantly makes Knuckles a complete dump to play. Even crazier is that the red porcupine on the block with the buff chest can’t climb on any surface that’s not specifically cyber-coloured in red. That has caused some hilarity when falling towards the ocean and your only tactic is to keep gliding in vain against a nearby cliff, unable to latch on but still slowly descending towards your imminent doom. But it's just another gameplay choice that takes you out of the experience - not that the climbing is any good when you are able to grab on to something, as Knuckles constantly clips off of surfaces and spins out from walls at the most inconvenient moments. The third strike against Knuckles’ gameplay here is his sheer inability to fight any of the Guardians that loiter about the island. To be fair, all three characters here have this problem - you’ll never be strong enough to make a dent on most foes - but with Knuckles it’s especially outrageous given that his fighting proficiency is a defining character trait. Instead, combat with Amy, Tails or Knuckles is an utterly miserable experience and is best avoided. Trump Towers Despite the above frustrations, though, you can run through the open zone sections as the three ‘amigo’ characters and still get a fair amount of enjoyment from all the exploration. This all changes when you find the Chaos Emeralds and hand control over to Sonic, though. The game completely flips on a dime and presents a gauntlet of some of the most unnecessary and poorly-executed challenges this side of S-Ranking Crisis City. I should be absolutely clear at this point, that the problem with Sonic Frontiers: Final Horizon is not that it is ‘difficult’. There's nothing inherently wrong with an increased challenge. The problem is that the increased challenge has amplified all of the worst facets of Sonic Frontiers, bringing to the fore all of its control and gameplay flaws, while failing to inform you of the new twists and gimmicks that are key to success. Almost every activity is a total chore to accomplish. Take, for example, the series of high-rise towers that Sonic is tasked with climbing. On the face of it, these platforming puzzles are nicely designed to scale, with more bumpers and gimmicks thrown in the harder you choose to play. When the game isn't fighting your control, climbing these towers can offer moments of exhilaration and satisfaction the higher up you go. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, you are still just dealing with Sonic Frontiers' excessively janky physics and camera, all of which is present and incorrect - from the wonky inertia and the crooked jumps, to the unpredictable turning circles and lack of perspective that prevents you from landing your leaps correctly. As a result, these otherwise well-designed sections often become a source of intense frustration and unnecessary risk, as you constantly try to course-correct your trajectory mid-air using erratic double jumps and desperately-deployed boosts. Instead of being exhilarating, it's just anxiety-inducing - if you fall, you have to start all over again from the bottom. Checkpoints could have easily taken the edge off of this, but incredibly Sonic Team chose not to include these at any point during the expansion, even on Easy mode. Bringing down the difficulty to Easy removes a lot of the pressure, of course (and from what I understand there's no story penalty in doing so this time around). But it also swings things too much the other way during tower climbs, placing a large number of springs and boosters that cut entire sections of platforming action, if not the whole thing (and even then I've still fallen down due to glitches!). It’s a crying shame, because I love platforming puzzles and the towers would have undoubtedly been the best thing about the Final Horizon DLC for me… but all of the fun of the climb has been sucked out of it, thanks to both a challenge that is not balanced and a lower difficulty that amounts to an automated ride to the top. It’s sadly unsatisfying on both counts. Fighting Through Cyberspace The same balancing issues are prominent throughout the new combat challenges and Cyberspace stages as well. Already the two worst and forgettable parts of Sonic Frontiers, we really didn’t need any more focus on these - but here they are, back with a vengeance. And Sonic Team even had the stones to make all of the combat stuff mandatory, so there’s no way around it. Enemies are stronger, faster, cheaper. On higher difficulty modes, you are given no time to respond to telegraphed attacks, and you spend most of your time flying onto the ground spilling rings. The first combat challenge - unlocked when you eventually manage to scale one of the towers as Sonic - is especially brutal, with no chance of completing a Cyloop to break one enemy's defences without another one scuttling over and beating you senseless. It’s downright insufferable to play and you will be forgiven for wanting to just delete the game and forget about ever completing it. Perhaps the most criminal things here are the new “ultra-hard” Cyberspace stages. As I mentioned in my original review, Cyberspace was just dire - a series of monotonous late-stage ‘Boost Era’ challenges based on broken Sonic Forces-style mechanics, only made passable by being mercifully short and “easy” to complete. But this time, Sonic Team took both of those saving graces away, making these new action stages longer, less forgiving and more complex, with several collectibles and side-objectives distracting you while the stage throws incredibly tedious curveballs at you in the name of “difficulty”. All of which are Not Very Good Things. In just one of the Cyberspace stages I played, 4-B, I had a weird ghost-Tails racing against me, five moon coins littered about an early glitchy part of the level, three animals to rescue (which suddenly removes Sonic of his ability to perform any moves other than a single jump - that’s fun to discover when plummeting down a pit) AND five numbered gates to run through in order - all happening while having to survive a series of falling platform challenges that became more ridiculous as the stage went on; the dickhead camera insisting that I had no chance of seeing where I was jumping and where I was about to land. Talk about sensory overload! Oh, and if you die (and you will die), you have to do the entire thing all over again - no checkpoints. There are some thrills to be found in discovering shortcuts in these levels, if YouTube is any indication - with Sonic utilising Spin Dash, Boosts and various technical tricks to launch into the stratosphere and cut huge sections of track (indeed, it certainly seems like the real fun of Cyberspace lies in trying to play as little of it as possible!). But while it’s nice watching someone else do it, it’s a miserable experience when playing this yourself. There are no real environmental clues that inform or inspire you to break off the beaten path, besides the odd ramp that, if Spin Dashed, could lead you absolutely anywhere (or nowhere). The poor draw distance makes it difficult to spot any far-off platforms and plan a route (and I’m amazed that there is this amount of pop-in for stages that barely have any geometry in them in the first place). The art of finding a shortcut amounts to spotting a curious platform, spin-dashing off of it, yanking Sonic in a random direction and hoping you find something during your leap of faith. Linear action stages certainly have their place in the Sonic series, but not like this. Cyberspace stages have been built to be less about skilful jumps and thoughtful environmental puzzles, and more about keeping your vehicle on the race track and getting to the finish line as quickly as possible. The Sonic Adventure games, while not perfect, already managed to balance platform challenges with rewarding speed tracks incredibly well. It’s high time we got some of that level design philosophy back. Knowledge is Power Direction is a problem in Sonic Frontiers: Final Horizon. Whereas the base game assumed you knew nothing, bombarding you with hints on which button makes you jump, Final Horizon assumes you know everything - offering absolutely no guidance on the chaotic tornado of new gimmicks, key items or combat strategies that are suddenly thrown at you. New open zone collectibles like the Map Koco and Lookout Koco are not explained. I’m still not sure what the latter is for, despite having beaten the whole thing. You're not told that your skill levels as Amy, Tails and Knuckles start at 1, and that basic attacks need to be unlocked, which can lead to some messy early scenarios with impossibly-powered Guardians. Even the practically-free Cyloop ability needs to be specifically unlocked in the menu first to use it, which is just pointless busywork. Why is it not unlocked for you at the start? It's small things like this which build up player frustration (and eventually impatience) with the game's broader design choices. It's in combat where the lack of guidance becomes the most fatal issue. If you fail a combat trial one too many times, you are asked if you'd like to draw down the difficulty level. But this is no comfort to players who are struggling to understand exactly what they are doing wrong (or not doing right). Being politely called a dumbass when you're completely unaware of the existence of things like perfectly-timed parries - a concept that is only explained in vague terms during the final trial - is a little bit insulting. Similarly, the Titan Boss Rush trial relies on the use of skills and attack combos that you may never have engaged with on your main story playthrough. Using the Quick Cyloop during stun windows is required knowledge for this challenge, even on Easy mode, but it was something I never really thought about doing because I chose, when playing the main game, to largely ignore much of the combat. Even when I swotted up on the combat skills suite, I was not making good time. I should not have to research online to figure out how to do a boss battle on the simplest difficulty mode! If you’re stuck, like I was for a good couple of days, here's a tip: spamming the Stomp move is your friend. Once you fight through the insanely unbalanced Towers and Combat Trials as Sonic, you’re finally given the opportunity to take on the new endgame boss. And while it is quite the spectacle (and thankfully offers the right level of difficulty in general, in spite of some camera-hogging trees!), the lack of any clear targets, indicators or suggested strategy means that you’ll be spending more time than necessary wondering exactly what to do. And that is a heartbreakingly frustrating experience to have on such an important set-piece as this. In spite of this, I was able to enjoy Supreme/The End anyway because by that point, after all that I had been through, I suspected that some kind of obtuse nonsense was going to happen so I looked up a guide (and I’ll link it here in case you’re curious too). I don't usually spoil games for myself when playing for the first time, but the situation definitely called for it, and I can say now that I made the right choice. I don’t want to spoil anything here, but suffice to say that if I had not known the strategy going into that final fight, I might have actually thrown myself into a wall in sheer despair. Flashy Final Fight Although the new ending sequence is pretty cool and enjoyable to watch, generally speaking the storytelling and writing throughout the DLC is pretty clumsy this time around. Sonic’s characterisation is entirely off throughout (including some weird passive-aggressive energy towards the Koco leaders that - we’re now being told - he directly endangered with his actions in the main story), the scripting around the series of combat trials at the mid-point is not convincing and the dialogue in general is a bit of a dud. More disappointing is that this expansion does not appear to offer much in the way of meaningful plot development, or context to the main story mode. Tails, Amy and Knuckles aren’t given any real space to further explore the insecurities they were battling in the base game - it would have been interesting to have seen the results of these characters’ personal challenges integrate more into their otherwise-mundane Chaos Emerald hunt. The End has been stripped of seemingly all dialogue during the new final boss fight, which is a little bit of a buzzkill despite the rest of the boss battle being quite flashy. While I wouldn’t say the quiet mumbling in the original was better (or even good), I think conceptually The End’s gaslighting taunts did add an almost haunting tone, and bringing some of that over to Final Horizon would have helped stay in keeping with the overarching themes of ‘insecurity’ that underlined the rest of the game. We’re also none the wiser on some of the mysteries outlined in the original ending - did those glyphs ever get explained in a meaningful way? I’m wondering if there actually was an explanation and my brain just checked out, but it’s not a good sign that I don’t remember. Not for the game and certainly not for my memory - I need to get that looked at. Music Makes The People Come Together Once again, the music of Sonic Frontiers: Final Horizon has proved to be the DLC’s highest point. Mirroring the colossal effort that the rest of Sonic Team put in on this expansion, sound director Tomoya Ohtani has gone above and beyond with the soundtrack to Final Horizon, offering a full-blown record’s worth of new material to cover all of the content. And while it might all sound a bit experimental for a Sonic game, it definitely suits the mood - Amy’s melancholic “Maybe If...” setting the perfect tone right from the start. It’s a shame the Cyberspace stages are utterly avoidable, because the remixed tracks serve some serious beats. Ohtani-san gets better with each game he works on, and Final Horizon is another step up for the composer. I also have to thank Ohtani once again for the hard rock sounds of the Titan boss battles, without which I no doubt would have lost my mind on the fiftieth run-through of the Master King Koco Combat Trial. Summary Sadly, Sonic Frontiers: Final Horizon is an unbalanced and frustrating affair in the gameplay department, amplifying the very worst elements of the game's original release while offering little in reward. As a story, it bumbles along but it does offer a delightfully fantastic set-piece for the final boss. That payoff is almost not worth taking the tedious, unbalanced and frankly unfinished ride to get there, though. Your mileage, ultimately, may vary. Sonic Team deserves our thanks (and a good long rest) for serving the fans for so long after the original release of Sonic Frontiers. The effort and commitment made here, across all three DLC expansions, should be celebrated. It’s just a shame that with this ambitious finale, the studio couldn’t quite stick the landing. Die-hard speed runners, and those who masochistically enjoy Kaizo-style games, may find enjoyment here, but for anyone else I would recommend you watch the final boss and ending on YouTube. Think of it as an animated comic, and you'll get everything you need from it.
  11. I thought Sonic Origins Plus was going to be a total dud, but boy was I wrong! Amy Rose is a fantastic addition to the classic roster, and her hammer rush move is just super cool. Knuckles is also in Sonic CD - where have you been all this time, buddy? Sort yourself out. The Game Gear games are some of the greatest Sonic games known to mankind, and if you disagree I'll eat your face. 10/10
  12. You might be having one of those weeks. Stressful time at work. Kids running you ragged. Getting dogpiled on social media. At times like these, you want to find time in the evening to just kick your feet back, relax and take a nice soothing bath. Well, lucky for Sonic fans, there is (or maybe, was) a product just for the discerning blue blur fanatic. Introducing the Sonic the Hedgehog Bath Ball, a licensed tub-time product made by SK Japan. These little things have been around for a while, but after having something of a tiring week myself I remembered that I had purchased a couple of them during a previous visit to Japan... in 2018. So, after five years in storage - surviving a whole global pandemic - I decided to try them out. Eep. So first, a little preamble. I remember buying a whole bag of these on a trip to a Super Potato (I think it was in Osaka, maybe), most of them went to my friends post-holiday (and I assume have since used them and are not about to do something bizarre and weird like I am). They were ¥500 each (which was about £3 at the time), so probably not the greatest value for money... but we'll see! On the back of the pack it explains that each bath ball actually contains a Sonic the Hedgehog 3cm figure - a choice of either Sonic, Tails, Amy, Knuckles or Shadow. Wonder which ones we'll get! Bearing in mind these are five-year-old items... I wasn't exactly sure what I was getting myself into here. Would the balls be all mouldy and crap? Will a flood of beetles scurry out when the ball fizzles out, like an episode of X-Files or something? My hesitation was only further amplified when I opened the packet and saw what was inside - an otherwise nice-looking blue ball that clearly had been ravaged by the stains of time. Each ball comes with a sticker that helpfully tells you not to eat the thing. That's good advice mate, thanks very much. Here comes the test - I chucked both of the Bath Balls into my already-filled tub. I'll be honest, I was half-expecting the balls to give off some immediate fizzle and flair - and maybe they would have if I'd have used them five years ago - but they plopped into the water without so much as a whimper. Six minutes in and I was starting to get impatient (maybe this is the real Sonic-like experience you get from this?). I had only seen a little bit of blue fizz and one blue Ball start to shrink like a Sonic testicle. "This is crap," I thought, ignoring the fact that these are half-decade old products. I wanted a show, dammit, and I was going to get one. After eight minutes, I decided to just grab the balls with a firm grip of my hand (oo-er) and squeeze them real tight. They seemed to get the message. My balls were oozing blue Sonic juice all over the bath in no time at all. The end result was slightly satisfactory - but not without a little bit of elbow grease - a heart-warming blue glow of Sonic-blue water. As I briefly considered the volume of ancient chemicals I was about to absorb with my body, my attention turned to the two floating bags remaining in the bath. It turns out the actual blue material was contained inside the bag, and when the bag is punctured, it slowly releases the blue colouring into the water. Clever. And kinda pretty. But not really a bath bomb as I was expecting. I later learned that I should have taken the plastic bag/wrapping off of the damn balls before I put them in the bath! That may well explain why their effect was quite pissy - however, given their age, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. The fact that I forgot such an obvious detail is pretty hilarious though. Determined not to let 1,825-day-old products get the best of my desired bathtime experience, I opted to add some bubble bath of my own (because I like bubbles). Meanwhile, I removed the leftover figure bags (which unsatisfyingly had the look and texture of a used condom) and put them to one side while I had a little soak. The Good News: I Didn't Die. I think while my overall experience of the resulting blue-water Bath Ball left a lot to be desired, it's admirable that I was able to make the most of the product without risking my skin turning blue or my face falling off (I mean, as of around two hours after getting out of the bath - there's still time). I probably should not have expected too much from an object that had been sitting in my attic storage in a foil bag for 43,800 hours. So, your mileage may vary. Augment your five-year-old Bath Ball experience with some additional bath essentials, is my recommendation. With a successful (and surviving) bath out of the way, it was time to check out the figures that came with my Balls. You can probably guess which characters I've got right here just from the photo above, but as this whole thing was packaged like a 'blind bag' (as most Japanese products/toys are), a part of me hoped that there was a secret "sixth" character to collect beyond the five mentioned before. Could the yellow toy inside be a super-lucky Super Sonic? No, it was just Tails. And I also nabbed myself a Knuckles. A strong result, although a Sonic or Shadow would have been nice. Maybe if I ever find some more of these in the future, so I can wait another five years to use those. The toys themselves are incredibly well-made for what they are - and obviously water-resistant and durable. They have a kind of rubber-like texture to them, and they are designed like the cute little Chibi Sonic artwork that you used to find on SEGA Japan's LINE service stickers (remember those? Remember when LINE was a thing in the UK and US for like, ten minutes?). Although on closer inspection, it seems like Tails' tails have an unfortunate effect of making it look like he has a very full bum. Obviously a symptom of having to manufacture these little figures without any separating/moving parts, but if I was scoring this I'd... well no actually I'm not going to even finish that sentence. You decide if this is worth adding or subtracting points to a hypothetical review score, I'm not going to go there. So that was that. A five-year adventure, which began in Japan and finally concluded in some guy's bathtub in the UK. Reporting on this age-old merch product for you all gives me so much joy (mostly due to the fact that I haven't experienced any negative side-effects to using something that clearly should have an expiry date), and I hope you too enjoyed the extra mile we go to at the Sonic Stadium to give you the scoop on the things Sonic fans truly care about. Like Balls. NB: Obviously, please do not try this at home. I tried it in my home, but I'm stupid. We do not recommend you use any skincare or bathtime products like this after a certain amount of time (or its detailed expiry date). We know you're not thick and wouldn't do it anyway, but we wanted to just mention it right here to cover ourselves. OK bye.
  13. You might be having one of those weeks. Stressful time at work. Kids running you ragged. Getting dogpiled on social media. At times like these, you want to find time in the evening to just kick your feet back, relax and take a nice soothing bath. Well, lucky for Sonic fans, there is (or maybe, was) a product just for the discerning blue blur fanatic. Introducing the Sonic the Hedgehog Bath Ball, a licensed tub-time product made by SK Japan. These little things have been around for a while, but after having something of a tiring week myself I remembered that I had purchased a couple of them during a previous visit to Japan... in 2018. So, after five years in storage - surviving a whole global pandemic - I decided to try them out. Eep. So first, a little preamble. I remember buying a whole bag of these on a trip to a Super Potato (I think it was in Osaka, maybe), most of them went to my friends post-holiday (and I assume have since used them and are not about to do something bizarre and weird like I am). They were ¥500 each (which was about £3 at the time), so probably not the greatest value for money... but we'll see! On the back of the pack it explains that each bath ball actually contains a Sonic the Hedgehog 3cm figure - a choice of either Sonic, Tails, Amy, Knuckles or Shadow. Wonder which ones we'll get! Bearing in mind these are five-year-old items... I wasn't exactly sure what I was getting myself into here. Would the balls be all mouldy and crap? Will a flood of beetles scurry out when the ball fizzles out, like an episode of X-Files or something? My hesitation was only further amplified when I opened the packet and saw what was inside - an otherwise nice-looking blue ball that clearly had been ravaged by the stains of time. Each ball comes with a sticker that helpfully tells you not to eat the thing. That's good advice mate, thanks very much. Here comes the test - I chucked both of the Bath Balls into my already-filled tub. I'll be honest, I was half-expecting the balls to give off some immediate fizzle and flair - and maybe they would have if I'd have used them five years ago - but they plopped into the water without so much as a whimper. Six minutes in and I was starting to get impatient (maybe this is the real Sonic-like experience you get from this?). I had only seen a little bit of blue fizz and one blue Ball start to shrink like a Sonic testicle. "This is crap," I thought, ignoring the fact that these are half-decade old products. I wanted a show, dammit, and I was going to get one. After eight minutes, I decided to just grab the balls with a firm grip of my hand (oo-er) and squeeze them real tight. They seemed to get the message. My balls were oozing blue Sonic juice all over the bath in no time at all. The end result was slightly satisfactory - but not without a little bit of elbow grease - a heart-warming blue glow of Sonic-blue water. As I briefly considered the volume of ancient chemicals I was about to absorb with my body, my attention turned to the two floating bags remaining in the bath. It turns out the actual blue material was contained inside the bag, and when the bag is punctured, it slowly releases the blue colouring into the water. Clever. And kinda pretty. But not really a bath bomb as I was expecting. I later learned that I should have taken the plastic bag/wrapping off of the damn balls before I put them in the bath! That may well explain why their effect was quite pissy - however, given their age, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. The fact that I forgot such an obvious detail is pretty hilarious though. Determined not to let 1,825-day-old products get the best of my desired bathtime experience, I opted to add some bubble bath of my own (because I like bubbles). Meanwhile, I removed the leftover figure bags (which unsatisfyingly had the look and texture of a used condom) and put them to one side while I had a little soak. The Good News: I Didn't Die. I think while my overall experience of the resulting blue-water Bath Ball left a lot to be desired, it's admirable that I was able to make the most of the product without risking my skin turning blue or my face falling off (I mean, as of around two hours after getting out of the bath - there's still time). I probably should not have expected too much from an object that had been sitting in my attic storage in a foil bag for 43,800 hours. So, your mileage may vary. Augment your five-year-old Bath Ball experience with some additional bath essentials, is my recommendation. With a successful (and surviving) bath out of the way, it was time to check out the figures that came with my Balls. You can probably guess which characters I've got right here just from the photo above, but as this whole thing was packaged like a 'blind bag' (as most Japanese products/toys are), a part of me hoped that there was a secret "sixth" character to collect beyond the five mentioned before. Could the yellow toy inside be a super-lucky Super Sonic? No, it was just Tails. And I also nabbed myself a Knuckles. A strong result, although a Sonic or Shadow would have been nice. Maybe if I ever find some more of these in the future, so I can wait another five years to use those. The toys themselves are incredibly well-made for what they are - and obviously water-resistant and durable. They have a kind of rubber-like texture to them, and they are designed like the cute little Chibi Sonic artwork that you used to find on SEGA Japan's LINE service stickers (remember those? Remember when LINE was a thing in the UK and US for like, ten minutes?). Although on closer inspection, it seems like Tails' tails have an unfortunate effect of making it look like he has a very full bum. Obviously a symptom of having to manufacture these little figures without any separating/moving parts, but if I was scoring this I'd... well no actually I'm not going to even finish that sentence. You decide if this is worth adding or subtracting points to a hypothetical review score, I'm not going to go there. So that was that. A five-year adventure, which began in Japan and finally concluded in some guy's bathtub in the UK. Reporting on this age-old merch product for you all gives me so much joy (mostly due to the fact that I haven't experienced any negative side-effects to using something that clearly should have an expiry date), and I hope you too enjoyed the extra mile we go to at the Sonic Stadium to give you the scoop on the things Sonic fans truly care about. Like Balls. NB: Obviously, please do not try this at home. I tried it in my home, but I'm stupid. We do not recommend you use any skincare or bathtime products like this after a certain amount of time (or its detailed expiry date). We know you're not thick and wouldn't do it anyway, but we wanted to just mention it right here to cover ourselves. OK bye. View full story
  14. You'd be forgiven for wondering if the success of the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie was a total fluke. After all, were it not for intense community feedback (and eventually the artistic talents of Tyson Hesse), the blue blur's big-screen debut would have surely flopped. But with a car crash swiftly avoided, and the fanbase on-side as a result, it would have been easy for Paramount to rest on its laurels and phone it in for the sequel. Especially with the introduction of rival Knuckles the Echidna to automatically guarantee fan support. Thankfully, there is no need to worry about such a cynical follow-up, as Sonic the Hedgehog 2 not only goes out of its way to respect the fans' time by focusing the majority of its action on the characters they care most about, but it does so with a jam-packed story that is much improved over, and builds upon, the prequel. This is a rare movie that is both an excellent video-game adaptation and a sequel that's better than its predecessor. Picking up right where the first movie left us, Sonic 2 sees a maniacal Doctor Robotnik/Eggman (played by Jim Carrey) escape his Mushroom Planet prison and find his way back to Earth in order to exact revenge on Sonic and conquer the world. Along the way, he attracts the attention of Knuckles (Idris Elba), the last of the Echidna tribe who has his own motivations for finding and defeating Sonic. The two form an alliance to track the hedgehog down and obtain the Master Emerald, a powerful gem that Knuckles believes is his by ancestral birthright. Meanwhile, Sonic (Ben Schwartz) is settling in to life on Earth by attempting to solve crimes and rescue citizens. You know, like a hero does. However, 'Blue Justice' (as he calls himself) comes at a cost as he leaves waves of destruction in his well-intentioned wake. As he gets to grips with understanding the burden of his power, Sonic's abilities and judgment is tested after a confrontation with Eggman and Knuckles that kick-start a series of chaotic events. Along the way the blue blur meets Tails (Colleen O'Shaughnessey), a technically-minded and crafty two-tailed fox who travels to Earth to help after learning about both Sonic's heroism and Eggman's incoming threat via the means of inter-dimensional surveillance and news reports (maybe he's been reading the Sonic Stadium!). Fans will be happy to hear that the majority of the movie focuses on the adventures of Sonic and Tails, as well as their interactions against Knuckles and Eggman. As far as the characterisation goes, it's absolutely top notch. The animation on Sonic, Tails and Knuckles is consistently excellent, with the character designs themselves a massive improvement over the already-impressive Sonic and Tails models found in the first movie. Ben Schwartz's performance of Sonic the Hedgehog is absolutely without peer, and it's easy to come to the conclusion that he is the definitive voice of the blue blur for this and the next generation to come. He delivers a fantastically adolescent energy to Sonic that really drives home the character development that takes place throughout the film; from his fun-loving antics to his dramatic face-offs against Knuckles, you feel connected to this character and his journey. Similarly, O'Shaughnessey delivers her best Tails yet in Sonic 2, and the movie really offers the space to connect the character to the audience. In several scenes we get to understand Tails' motivations for finding Sonic and wanting to help, and this ties in really nicely with some sweet moments which help underline the growing friendship between the two heroes. Fans of Tails and Colleen will be incredibly happy with how he is written here. The big question mark was the casting of Idris Elba as Knuckles, and while his performance took some getting used to in the trailers, while watching the movie it is difficult to imagine anyone else voicing the character. As the last of a proud tribe, Elba's booming voice brings a gravitas to Knuckles that both amplifies the drama during action scenes, yet adds a layer of depth to his more comedic lines. By the end of the movie, it is obvious to see why Paramount decided that it wanted to green-light a TV series focusing on the echidna. Jim Carrey, as always, is a delight to see as Dr. Robotnik, and with Sonic 2 introducing more of a 'mad scientist' energy to the character that more closely resembles the games, this offers a number of opportunities for the comedian to really throw himself into the role. Anyone thinking that he might somehow be more reserved in the sequel will be pleasantly disappointed, as the movie is filled with some outrageous physical comedy (including a surprising soundtrack choice that would put a smile on any 90s heavy metal fan's face). While Robotnik was the obvious front-and-centre bad guy in the first Sonic movie, in Sonic 2 he shares the spotlight with Knuckles for most of the runtime. And while it is a little disappointing to see Carrey reduced to a mere cheerleader in some scenes - mostly where Sonic and Knuckles are butting heads - this is balanced out in the climactic third act when Robotnik's evil scheme comes to fruition and his actions as a major villain are given a lot more focus. The most interesting thing when watching Sonic 2 is discovering that, despite the huge attention that Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Eggman are rightly given, the filmmakers managed to find plenty of room for the human characters to have meaningful involvement in the movie. Tom (James Marsden) and Maddie (Tina Sumpter) Wachowski spend their time in a b-plot that involves the wedding of Maddie's sister Rachel (Natasha Rothwell), which is inevitably disrupted by Sonic's world-saving antics. Rather than be a forgettable side-story that distracts from the Sonic/Knuckles action, the Hawaii-based wedding ends up becoming surprisingly pivotal to the main plot with Tom and Maddie given plenty of room to contribute to Sonic's adventure. And it's rather well written too, with Sumpter and Rothwell in particular being handed some great comedic action to work with. If you enjoyed Rachel's loud-mouthed antics in the first Sonic movie, you're going to really love her character in the sequel. In fact, what's really impressive with the scriptwriting here is that every major side-character has at least one or two scenes where they can really make their mark on the movie. Agent Stone (Lee Majdoub) is a fan-favourite who returns as a coffee-shop proprietor who longs for the day Dr. Robotnik returns to Earth, and ends up helping the mad scientist in many ways throughout the story. Even Deputy Sheriff Wade (Adam Pally) gets some substantial screentime. Rather than feel too bloated or concentrated, the many different appearances and scenes featuring all of these characters is really quite satisfying. It helps that the first Sonic movie spent a fair amount of time introducing all of these characters (which ironically made 2020's Sonic the Hedgehog feel a little... slow in places) so when we are re-introduced to them in Sonic 2 there is little exposition needed to explain their place. That's not to say that there isn't some storytelling turbulence in the movie. While a lot of the sequel's key concepts and characters needed little explaining (owing to the groundwork laid in the first film, particularly in the intro featuring Longclaw) and this has broadly kept the storytelling and pacing lean and swift, there are some areas which stand out. Some clunkiness in scenes where the filmmakers clearly realised that additional exposition was necessary for audiences to understand what was going on. These moments feel a little tacked-on (and might even open the door to a plothole question or two for the cynically-minded) but with so many different story threads going on in Sonic 2 it's difficult to think of other ways in which the producers could have handled this. Other scenes may seem to older audiences to serve as nothing more than filler to pad out the movie. A scene where Sonic and Tails take refuge in a dangerous mountaintop 'saloon' devolves into a largely comical sequence that adult viewers might find a little superfluous. But these do serve an important purpose - to help break up the intense action for younger viewers, as without them Sonic 2 does run the risk of becoming a relentless hold-your-breath action-packed experience, which might be a little draining to watch. With these minor issues aside, it's amazing that with so much going on, the movie isn't a complete mess. That's to the credit of the writers and the producers, who have made sure that every scene and character thread ties together to complete the bigger picture. It is absolutely a movie where the action has been cranked up to '11' - the stakes for Sonic (and Earth in general) haven't just doubled, they've arguably tripled. Especially towards the end, where Eggman's menace results in a deadly final obstacle for the blue blur. But for as much action is crammed into those two hours of runtime, there's as much heart. You can tell this is a sequel made with love and affection for the series, and that the first film was not just a flash in the pan. There are franchise references all throughout the movie, ranging from game locations to classic Sonic poses, scenes from past Sonic games to memes and even comic book characters. This care and attention to detail extends to the character development of Sonic, Tails and Knuckles and the relationships between the three of them that evolve throughout the course of the film. If the first Sonic the Hedgehog was a classic 'fish out of water' story about the blue blur's identity and figuring out who he is, this sequel is very much a tale about Sonic understanding his power and the responsibility that comes with it. Alongside that are themes of heroism, loneliness, friendship and dealing with the past. Admittedly, it's really not hard to recognise these themes, as the movie kind of beats you round the head with them at multiple points (including a rowboat scene in the opening act where Tom is trying to lecture Sonic on the merits of self-control). But amidst all the tense and chaotic action between Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Eggman, you can definitely feel that the blue blur goes on a rewarding journey of self-discovery as events unfold. As a Sonic fan, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has everything you could ask for. It's an action-packed experience that puts the focus squarely on the mainline characters that you care about, with spot-on characterisations that draw you in to the constant rivalry between Sonic and Knuckles (and the friendship between Sonic and Tails), and a satisfying final act that will give you goosebumps to the very end (with some well-timed chuckles and game references in-between). Despite some narrative wobbles, it does the characters justice, it does the Sonic universe justice, and it does the franchise justice. Blue Justice, you might say.
  15. You'd be forgiven for wondering if the success of the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie was a total fluke. After all, were it not for intense community feedback (and eventually the artistic talents of Tyson Hesse), the blue blur's big-screen debut would have surely flopped. But with a car crash swiftly avoided, and the fanbase on-side as a result, it would have been easy for Paramount to rest on its laurels and phone it in for the sequel. Especially with the introduction of rival Knuckles the Echidna to automatically guarantee fan support. Thankfully, there is no need to worry about such a cynical follow-up, as Sonic the Hedgehog 2 not only goes out of its way to respect the fans' time by focusing the majority of its action on the characters they care most about, but it does so with a jam-packed story that is much improved over, and builds upon, the prequel. This is a rare movie that is both an excellent video-game adaptation and a sequel that's better than its predecessor. Picking up right where the first movie left us, Sonic 2 sees a maniacal Doctor Robotnik/Eggman (played by Jim Carrey) escape his Mushroom Planet prison and find his way back to Earth in order to exact revenge on Sonic and conquer the world. Along the way, he attracts the attention of Knuckles (Idris Elba), the last of the Echidna tribe who has his own motivations for finding and defeating Sonic. The two form an alliance to track the hedgehog down and obtain the Master Emerald, a powerful gem that Knuckles believes is his by ancestral birthright. Meanwhile, Sonic (Ben Schwartz) is settling in to life on Earth by attempting to solve crimes and rescue citizens. You know, like a hero does. However, 'Blue Justice' (as he calls himself) comes at a cost as he leaves waves of destruction in his well-intentioned wake. As he gets to grips with understanding the burden of his power, Sonic's abilities and judgment is tested after a confrontation with Eggman and Knuckles that kick-start a series of chaotic events. Along the way the blue blur meets Tails (Colleen O'Shaughnessey), a technically-minded and crafty two-tailed fox who travels to Earth to help after learning about both Sonic's heroism and Eggman's incoming threat via the means of inter-dimensional surveillance and news reports (maybe he's been reading the Sonic Stadium!). Fans will be happy to hear that the majority of the movie focuses on the adventures of Sonic and Tails, as well as their interactions against Knuckles and Eggman. As far as the characterisation goes, it's absolutely top notch. The animation on Sonic, Tails and Knuckles is consistently excellent, with the character designs themselves a massive improvement over the already-impressive Sonic and Tails models found in the first movie. Ben Schwartz's performance of Sonic the Hedgehog is absolutely without peer, and it's easy to come to the conclusion that he is the definitive voice of the blue blur for this and the next generation to come. He delivers a fantastically adolescent energy to Sonic that really drives home the character development that takes place throughout the film; from his fun-loving antics to his dramatic face-offs against Knuckles, you feel connected to this character and his journey. Similarly, O'Shaughnessey delivers her best Tails yet in Sonic 2, and the movie really offers the space to connect the character to the audience. In several scenes we get to understand Tails' motivations for finding Sonic and wanting to help, and this ties in really nicely with some sweet moments which help underline the growing friendship between the two heroes. Fans of Tails and Colleen will be incredibly happy with how he is written here. The big question mark was the casting of Idris Elba as Knuckles, and while his performance took some getting used to in the trailers, while watching the movie it is difficult to imagine anyone else voicing the character. As the last of a proud tribe, Elba's booming voice brings a gravitas to Knuckles that both amplifies the drama during action scenes, yet adds a layer of depth to his more comedic lines. By the end of the movie, it is obvious to see why Paramount decided that it wanted to green-light a TV series focusing on the echidna. Jim Carrey, as always, is a delight to see as Dr. Robotnik, and with Sonic 2 introducing more of a 'mad scientist' energy to the character that more closely resembles the games, this offers a number of opportunities for the comedian to really throw himself into the role. Anyone thinking that he might somehow be more reserved in the sequel will be pleasantly disappointed, as the movie is filled with some outrageous physical comedy (including a surprising soundtrack choice that would put a smile on any 90s heavy metal fan's face). While Robotnik was the obvious front-and-centre bad guy in the first Sonic movie, in Sonic 2 he shares the spotlight with Knuckles for most of the runtime. And while it is a little disappointing to see Carrey reduced to a mere cheerleader in some scenes - mostly where Sonic and Knuckles are butting heads - this is balanced out in the climactic third act when Robotnik's evil scheme comes to fruition and his actions as a major villain are given a lot more focus. The most interesting thing when watching Sonic 2 is discovering that, despite the huge attention that Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Eggman are rightly given, the filmmakers managed to find plenty of room for the human characters to have meaningful involvement in the movie. Tom (James Marsden) and Maddie (Tina Sumpter) Wachowski spend their time in a b-plot that involves the wedding of Maddie's sister Rachel (Natasha Rothwell), which is inevitably disrupted by Sonic's world-saving antics. Rather than be a forgettable side-story that distracts from the Sonic/Knuckles action, the Hawaii-based wedding ends up becoming surprisingly pivotal to the main plot with Tom and Maddie given plenty of room to contribute to Sonic's adventure. And it's rather well written too, with Sumpter and Rothwell in particular being handed some great comedic action to work with. If you enjoyed Rachel's loud-mouthed antics in the first Sonic movie, you're going to really love her character in the sequel. In fact, what's really impressive with the scriptwriting here is that every major side-character has at least one or two scenes where they can really make their mark on the movie. Agent Stone (Lee Majdoub) is a fan-favourite who returns as a coffee-shop proprietor who longs for the day Dr. Robotnik returns to Earth, and ends up helping the mad scientist in many ways throughout the story. Even Deputy Sheriff Wade (Adam Pally) gets some substantial screentime. Rather than feel too bloated or concentrated, the many different appearances and scenes featuring all of these characters is really quite satisfying. It helps that the first Sonic movie spent a fair amount of time introducing all of these characters (which ironically made 2020's Sonic the Hedgehog feel a little... slow in places) so when we are re-introduced to them in Sonic 2 there is little exposition needed to explain their place. That's not to say that there isn't some storytelling turbulence in the movie. While a lot of the sequel's key concepts and characters needed little explaining (owing to the groundwork laid in the first film, particularly in the intro featuring Longclaw) and this has broadly kept the storytelling and pacing lean and swift, there are some areas which stand out. Some clunkiness in scenes where the filmmakers clearly realised that additional exposition was necessary for audiences to understand what was going on. These moments feel a little tacked-on (and might even open the door to a plothole question or two for the cynically-minded) but with so many different story threads going on in Sonic 2 it's difficult to think of other ways in which the producers could have handled this. Other scenes may seem to older audiences to serve as nothing more than filler to pad out the movie. A scene where Sonic and Tails take refuge in a dangerous mountaintop 'saloon' devolves into a largely comical sequence that adult viewers might find a little superfluous. But these do serve an important purpose - to help break up the intense action for younger viewers, as without them Sonic 2 does run the risk of becoming a relentless hold-your-breath action-packed experience, which might be a little draining to watch. With these minor issues aside, it's amazing that with so much going on, the movie isn't a complete mess. That's to the credit of the writers and the producers, who have made sure that every scene and character thread ties together to complete the bigger picture. It is absolutely a movie where the action has been cranked up to '11' - the stakes for Sonic (and Earth in general) haven't just doubled, they've arguably tripled. Especially towards the end, where Eggman's menace results in a deadly final obstacle for the blue blur. But for as much action is crammed into those two hours of runtime, there's as much heart. You can tell this is a sequel made with love and affection for the series, and that the first film was not just a flash in the pan. There are franchise references all throughout the movie, ranging from game locations to classic Sonic poses, scenes from past Sonic games to memes and even comic book characters. This care and attention to detail extends to the character development of Sonic, Tails and Knuckles and the relationships between the three of them that evolve throughout the course of the film. If the first Sonic the Hedgehog was a classic 'fish out of water' story about the blue blur's identity and figuring out who he is, this sequel is very much a tale about Sonic understanding his power and the responsibility that comes with it. Alongside that are themes of heroism, loneliness, friendship and dealing with the past. Admittedly, it's really not hard to recognise these themes, as the movie kind of beats you round the head with them at multiple points (including a rowboat scene in the opening act where Tom is trying to lecture Sonic on the merits of self-control). But amidst all the tense and chaotic action between Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Eggman, you can definitely feel that the blue blur goes on a rewarding journey of self-discovery as events unfold. As a Sonic fan, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has everything you could ask for. It's an action-packed experience that puts the focus squarely on the mainline characters that you care about, with spot-on characterisations that draw you in to the constant rivalry between Sonic and Knuckles (and the friendship between Sonic and Tails), and a satisfying final act that will give you goosebumps to the very end (with some well-timed chuckles and game references in-between). Despite some narrative wobbles, it does the characters justice, it does the Sonic universe justice, and it does the franchise justice. Blue Justice, you might say. View full story
  16. Sonic has been running for 31 years now, and yet of all of his adventures to date the original Mega Drive games still remain fan favourites. It’s no wonder that most of these timeless classics have been re-released in countless compilations over the years, but Sonic Origins stands out by daring to do something a little different this time around. From the moment you first boot up the collection, it’s clear that the developers have great respect for the source material. An excellent intro animation runs you through the key events of the main games in this compilation – Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic CD, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles – with stunning personality and eye-watering colour that instantly takes your mind back to the good old ‘Blue Sky SEGA’ days. The presentation throughout the rest of Sonic Origins is equally impressive. Main menus are decorated with the island worlds in which each game is set (and if you have the Digital Deluxe edition, you can zoom in on those islands and watch Sonic, Tails and Eggman dance about), UI elements are directly inspired by the colourful shapes and designs of the Japanese Mega Drive box art, and the new animated cutscenes that bookend each title are bursting with character and personality. The fact that even the main menu theme happens to be a remix of Sonic Jam’s ‘Sonic World’ speaks volumes to the standard that SEGA is looking to achieve with this compilation. It’s inclusion is no coincidence; Sonic Jam on SEGA Saturn is still seen as the gold standard in the eyes of many fans, with every compilation release since (such as Sonic Mega Collection) offering either poorly-emulated versions of the 16-bit classics, a pitiful amount of archive content or bonus features, dull uninteresting presentation, or a combination of all three. No, poor emulations these games are not. With Sonic Origins, SEGA finally delivers fans what they’ve been wanting for around ten years now – the pixel-perfect releases of Sonic CD, Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 as remastered by Sonic Mania developers Christian Whitehead and Stealth (Headcannon), previously locked to iOS and Android hardware, on dedicated home consoles and PC. As a result, these are not simple ports of the 16-bit originals, let alone emulated ROMs – the games in this collection (in particular Sonic CD, which is reportedly notoriously difficult to emulate) have effectively all been remade from the ground up using Whitehead and Stealth’s proprietary ‘Retro Engine’. The result is an insanely authentic Sonic gameplay experience, coupled with the ability to include enhancements such as widescreen resolutions, new animations and additional features like the Spin Dash in Sonic 1 (or the Drop Dash in all games) – all at an enhanced framerate. On a PlayStation 4 these Mega Drive titles feel simply wonderful to play – being able to rush through Emerald Hill Zone and Spring Yard Zone on a big TV, with all the bells and whistles of the Retro Engine, is a complete joy – but you’ll feel the buttery-smooth gameplay the most when playing on a PS5 with a 4K screen. The framerate and animations feel so fluid, it can kind of screw with your Mega Drive-era muscle memory in the special stages. While it is incredibly nice to be able to finally (officially) play the Retro Engine versions of Sonic 1, CD and 2 on a home console or PC, the jewel in Sonic Origin’s crown for many fans will be the inclusion of Sonic 3 & Knuckles – a couple of games that have not had a formal re-release on any platform for over a decade. Headcannon was commissioned to come back and help remaster these two games for Sonic Origins, and the studio’s hard work really shines here. Not only does Sonic 3 & Knuckles finally get the Retro Engine treatment – widescreen, smooth gameplay, pixel-perfect physics – but there have also been a few quality of life tweaks to the game, such as brand new music for the Super/Hyper transformations and brand new character animations for certain stage gimmicks. Press Up or Down on that cursed barrel in Carnival Night Zone, for example, and this time you get a unique animation to communicate the action to the player. Using the spinning tops in Marble Garden and reaching the tall corridors will show the character spinning on the spot whilst running, too. Extra touches during cutscenes and additional audio/sound effect cues (they even fixed the Chaos Emerald collection jingle at the end of a special stage) really hammer home the level of care and attention that has been spent on almost every element of this game. About the only curiosity you might find is the lack of three Zone themes whilst playing through the back end of Sonic 3. Carnival Night, Ice Cap and Launch Base do not contain the BGMs you remember in the 1990s – unfortunately due to rights issues, SEGA has had to replace these tracks with ‘new’ ones. Well, not really new – it’s actually the Beta music for each level, finished and mastered by series sound director Jun Senoue. While Senoue-san has done a fantastic job with these alternative tracks, your first run-through with these Sonic 3 stages will mess with your nostalgia just a little bit. The new music does take some getting used to, even if you have already familiarised yourself with the Sonic 3 ‘November 1993’ Beta leak from a few years ago. These finished works have a softer sound than those work-in-progress tunes, and even feel a little out of place against the rest of the SEGA Sound Team soundtrack on first listen; less boisterous than HydroCity Zone, not quite as melodic as Angel Island. But on repeat plays, they have their own special charm and you’ll grow to really enjoy their place, against the backdrop and action of their respective stages. These tracks have the production quality and sound of a late-generation Mega Drive title, feeling akin to something out of Ristar in places. Beyond these obvious differences, just being able to play Sonic 3 & Knuckles again on modern hardware, in widescreen and at full speed in the Retro Engine, is almost worth the asking price of Sonic Origins alone. This is the greatest game in the entire Sonic the Hedgehog series, and being able to play this masterpiece once again after a ten-year hiatus is just the best feeling. Whether you’re playing Sonic 3&K or Sonic CD, each game is remastered regardless of whether you play in Anniversary Mode or Classic Mode. In Anniversary Mode – ultimately the mode you’ll play the most – you play your chosen game in widescreen and without a lives system. Collecting 100 rings or 1-ups will instead earn you ‘coins’ which you can spend in the Museum mode. You can also spend coins retrying special stages if you happen to fail them in this mode, which is a very welcome feature. The Classic Mode for each game simply reduces the field of view to the original 4:3 aspect ratio and has you playing with lives (with no coins to earn). Otherwise, you experience the same enhancements and features as in Anniversary Mode. So you won’t be playing the untouched, original version of the game, but instead will play using the enhancements of the Retro Engine – including the new music for the three Sonic 3 zones. Playing Anniversary Mode with Coins replacing Lives doesn’t feel like any kind of handicap at all – not when the seasoned Sonic player can beat any of these games using just one life. Instead what this does is make you go out of your way to collect rings and 1-Ups as you build up your Coin collection. In this modern gaming landscape, where lives aren’t really relevant anymore, having this system in place actually feels quite natural. Outside of the games themselves, SEGA has included several other modes of play in Sonic Origins. A 1P Story Mode tasks the player with running through every single stage across all of the games – Sonic 1 first, then CD, then 2 and finally Sonic 3&K – without a break, with the aforementioned beautiful animated cutscenes tying everything seamlessly together. It might seem a bit pointless, but I had loads of fun doing a Sonic Marathon, myself. A Mission mode is also included, and this is quite an inspired mode – if a little brief. With this, you have to accomplish a number of short challenges across the five games (Sonic 1, CD, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles), with ranks being handed out depending on how skilful (or fast) you were in accomplishing the mission. They all take place within remixed versions of classic stages, and will challenge you on not only Sonic’s skills but Tails and Knuckles’ too. They’re extremely fun to tackle, and although they’re quite short some of them are really quite taxing and will take more than a few tries to get right. If you get the Digital Deluxe edition, you also unlock several Extreme challenges which go absolutely bananas, like trying to complete a stage in Sonic CD with everything sped up. Playing through Missions and Story Mode can also earn you Coins, and these are spent in the special Museum section. Now, every Sonic compilation game since Jam has gotten this side of things terribly, terribly wrong. Not only by offering meagre and weak excuses for ‘archive’ content but also, at times, focusing entirely on the US audience with Archie comic scans (you totally want to read comics on your TV, right?). Sonic Origins goes above and beyond in the bonus content department. Split into three categories – Sound, Illustrations and Movies – there is a metric tonne of material to view and unlock in this game. The entire soundtrack to all the games can be played here (with the ability to create and run playlists of your favourite tracks), with remixes of stage themes across titles like Sonic Generations and Sonic Forces available to unlock. Not only can you unlock the classic Sonic Screensaver and other artworks found on Sonic Jam, but you can also view manual and box arts for every game – in any region. There are some really nice curios here too, such as a 1994 European Sonic Art Style Guide and graph paper scans of boss concepts from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and even storyboards and animatics for the animations in not only Sonic Origins, but Sonic Mania Adventures too. You can also unlock the entirety of the Sonic 30th Anniversary Symphony using your coins so you can enjoy it on the big telly whenever you like. As far as bonus material goes that covers the entire 30 years of Sonic, it’s a real treat. And the bonus features don’t stop in the Museum. Even the games have a lot of extra content. Every game has its own setting (you can switch the Sonic CD soundtrack in the game’s settings via the main menu), the level select codes all work as expected (and you can use this to activate Sonic 3 elemental shields in Sonic 1 this way) and you can play as Tails and Knuckles in most of the games (although not as Knuckles in CD, for some reason). Heck, you can even change the regional box art that features alongside the games in the main menu (thank you, European box art!). Every game also has a Mirror Mode that can be unlocked and attempted once completed, which adds significant challenge with such a small modification. There’s even a brand new selection of Blue Spheres stages to enjoy, under the New Blue Spheres section. Here, the levels are much harder and introduce two new sphere colours – green, which need to be run over to reveal blue spheres, and purple ones that warp you from place to place. Overall, it’s hard to overstate just how great a job SEGA and Headcannon have done with this collection. Sure, you could argue that most of these games should have been made available on modern consoles by now, but on the face of it… for your money you’re effectively getting the best ever versions of the five best Sonic games ever made, along with a presentation that absolutely nails the look and feel of the franchise while offering a boatload of worthwhile extras. For around £35-40, there’s no better bang for your buck really. Sonic Origins not only gives us a fantastic remastering of some treasured classic titles, but also offers a stark reminder of just how iconic Sonic the Hedgehog is – when presented in this very specific, ‘Classic Sonic’ format. Everything about how Sonic and friends are presented here feels absolutely perfect, and it’s really the direction that Sonic Team and SEGA should be taking the franchise from this point onward. Sonic Origins will re-fire your love for the 16-bit games, and make you want a new Sonic game made in this style at the same time. It’s an essential purchase for any Sonic fan. Buy it, with money. View full story
  17. Sonic has been running for 31 years now, and yet of all of his adventures to date the original Mega Drive games still remain fan favourites. It’s no wonder that most of these timeless classics have been re-released in countless compilations over the years, but Sonic Origins stands out by daring to do something a little different this time around. From the moment you first boot up the collection, it’s clear that the developers have great respect for the source material. An excellent intro animation runs you through the key events of the main games in this compilation – Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic CD, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles – with stunning personality and eye-watering colour that instantly takes your mind back to the good old ‘Blue Sky SEGA’ days. The presentation throughout the rest of Sonic Origins is equally impressive. Main menus are decorated with the island worlds in which each game is set (and if you have the Digital Deluxe edition, you can zoom in on those islands and watch Sonic, Tails and Eggman dance about), UI elements are directly inspired by the colourful shapes and designs of the Japanese Mega Drive box art, and the new animated cutscenes that bookend each title are bursting with character and personality. The fact that even the main menu theme happens to be a remix of Sonic Jam’s ‘Sonic World’ speaks volumes to the standard that SEGA is looking to achieve with this compilation. It’s inclusion is no coincidence; Sonic Jam on SEGA Saturn is still seen as the gold standard in the eyes of many fans, with every compilation release since (such as Sonic Mega Collection) offering either poorly-emulated versions of the 16-bit classics, a pitiful amount of archive content or bonus features, dull uninteresting presentation, or a combination of all three. No, poor emulations these games are not. With Sonic Origins, SEGA finally delivers fans what they’ve been wanting for around ten years now – the pixel-perfect releases of Sonic CD, Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 as remastered by Sonic Mania developers Christian Whitehead and Stealth (Headcannon), previously locked to iOS and Android hardware, on dedicated home consoles and PC. As a result, these are not simple ports of the 16-bit originals, let alone emulated ROMs – the games in this collection (in particular Sonic CD, which is reportedly notoriously difficult to emulate) have effectively all been remade from the ground up using Whitehead and Stealth’s proprietary ‘Retro Engine’. The result is an insanely authentic Sonic gameplay experience, coupled with the ability to include enhancements such as widescreen resolutions, new animations and additional features like the Spin Dash in Sonic 1 (or the Drop Dash in all games) – all at an enhanced framerate. On a PlayStation 4 these Mega Drive titles feel simply wonderful to play – being able to rush through Emerald Hill Zone and Spring Yard Zone on a big TV, with all the bells and whistles of the Retro Engine, is a complete joy – but you’ll feel the buttery-smooth gameplay the most when playing on a PS5 with a 4K screen. The framerate and animations feel so fluid, it can kind of screw with your Mega Drive-era muscle memory in the special stages. While it is incredibly nice to be able to finally (officially) play the Retro Engine versions of Sonic 1, CD and 2 on a home console or PC, the jewel in Sonic Origin’s crown for many fans will be the inclusion of Sonic 3 & Knuckles – a couple of games that have not had a formal re-release on any platform for over a decade. Headcannon was commissioned to come back and help remaster these two games for Sonic Origins, and the studio’s hard work really shines here. Not only does Sonic 3 & Knuckles finally get the Retro Engine treatment – widescreen, smooth gameplay, pixel-perfect physics – but there have also been a few quality of life tweaks to the game, such as brand new music for the Super/Hyper transformations and brand new character animations for certain stage gimmicks. Press Up or Down on that cursed barrel in Carnival Night Zone, for example, and this time you get a unique animation to communicate the action to the player. Using the spinning tops in Marble Garden and reaching the tall corridors will show the character spinning on the spot whilst running, too. Extra touches during cutscenes and additional audio/sound effect cues (they even fixed the Chaos Emerald collection jingle at the end of a special stage) really hammer home the level of care and attention that has been spent on almost every element of this game. About the only curiosity you might find is the lack of three Zone themes whilst playing through the back end of Sonic 3. Carnival Night, Ice Cap and Launch Base do not contain the BGMs you remember in the 1990s – unfortunately due to rights issues, SEGA has had to replace these tracks with ‘new’ ones. Well, not really new – it’s actually the Beta music for each level, finished and mastered by series sound director Jun Senoue. While Senoue-san has done a fantastic job with these alternative tracks, your first run-through with these Sonic 3 stages will mess with your nostalgia just a little bit. The new music does take some getting used to, even if you have already familiarised yourself with the Sonic 3 ‘November 1993’ Beta leak from a few years ago. These finished works have a softer sound than those work-in-progress tunes, and even feel a little out of place against the rest of the SEGA Sound Team soundtrack on first listen; less boisterous than HydroCity Zone, not quite as melodic as Angel Island. But on repeat plays, they have their own special charm and you’ll grow to really enjoy their place, against the backdrop and action of their respective stages. These tracks have the production quality and sound of a late-generation Mega Drive title, feeling akin to something out of Ristar in places. Beyond these obvious differences, just being able to play Sonic 3 & Knuckles again on modern hardware, in widescreen and at full speed in the Retro Engine, is almost worth the asking price of Sonic Origins alone. This is the greatest game in the entire Sonic the Hedgehog series, and being able to play this masterpiece once again after a ten-year hiatus is just the best feeling. Whether you’re playing Sonic 3&K or Sonic CD, each game is remastered regardless of whether you play in Anniversary Mode or Classic Mode. In Anniversary Mode – ultimately the mode you’ll play the most – you play your chosen game in widescreen and without a lives system. Collecting 100 rings or 1-ups will instead earn you ‘coins’ which you can spend in the Museum mode. You can also spend coins retrying special stages if you happen to fail them in this mode, which is a very welcome feature. The Classic Mode for each game simply reduces the field of view to the original 4:3 aspect ratio and has you playing with lives (with no coins to earn). Otherwise, you experience the same enhancements and features as in Anniversary Mode. So you won’t be playing the untouched, original version of the game, but instead will play using the enhancements of the Retro Engine – including the new music for the three Sonic 3 zones. Playing Anniversary Mode with Coins replacing Lives doesn’t feel like any kind of handicap at all – not when the seasoned Sonic player can beat any of these games using just one life. Instead what this does is make you go out of your way to collect rings and 1-Ups as you build up your Coin collection. In this modern gaming landscape, where lives aren’t really relevant anymore, having this system in place actually feels quite natural. Outside of the games themselves, SEGA has included several other modes of play in Sonic Origins. A 1P Story Mode tasks the player with running through every single stage across all of the games – Sonic 1 first, then CD, then 2 and finally Sonic 3&K – without a break, with the aforementioned beautiful animated cutscenes tying everything seamlessly together. It might seem a bit pointless, but I had loads of fun doing a Sonic Marathon, myself. A Mission mode is also included, and this is quite an inspired mode – if a little brief. With this, you have to accomplish a number of short challenges across the five games (Sonic 1, CD, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles), with ranks being handed out depending on how skilful (or fast) you were in accomplishing the mission. They all take place within remixed versions of classic stages, and will challenge you on not only Sonic’s skills but Tails and Knuckles’ too. They’re extremely fun to tackle, and although they’re quite short some of them are really quite taxing and will take more than a few tries to get right. If you get the Digital Deluxe edition, you also unlock several Extreme challenges which go absolutely bananas, like trying to complete a stage in Sonic CD with everything sped up. Playing through Missions and Story Mode can also earn you Coins, and these are spent in the special Museum section. Now, every Sonic compilation game since Jam has gotten this side of things terribly, terribly wrong. Not only by offering meagre and weak excuses for ‘archive’ content but also, at times, focusing entirely on the US audience with Archie comic scans (you totally want to read comics on your TV, right?). Sonic Origins goes above and beyond in the bonus content department. Split into three categories – Sound, Illustrations and Movies – there is a metric tonne of material to view and unlock in this game. The entire soundtrack to all the games can be played here (with the ability to create and run playlists of your favourite tracks), with remixes of stage themes across titles like Sonic Generations and Sonic Forces available to unlock. Not only can you unlock the classic Sonic Screensaver and other artworks found on Sonic Jam, but you can also view manual and box arts for every game – in any region. There are some really nice curios here too, such as a 1994 European Sonic Art Style Guide and graph paper scans of boss concepts from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and even storyboards and animatics for the animations in not only Sonic Origins, but Sonic Mania Adventures too. You can also unlock the entirety of the Sonic 30th Anniversary Symphony using your coins so you can enjoy it on the big telly whenever you like. As far as bonus material goes that covers the entire 30 years of Sonic, it’s a real treat. And the bonus features don’t stop in the Museum. Even the games have a lot of extra content. Every game has its own setting (you can switch the Sonic CD soundtrack in the game’s settings via the main menu), the level select codes all work as expected (and you can use this to activate Sonic 3 elemental shields in Sonic 1 this way) and you can play as Tails and Knuckles in most of the games (although not as Knuckles in CD, for some reason). Heck, you can even change the regional box art that features alongside the games in the main menu (thank you, European box art!). Every game also has a Mirror Mode that can be unlocked and attempted once completed, which adds significant challenge with such a small modification. There’s even a brand new selection of Blue Spheres stages to enjoy, under the New Blue Spheres section. Here, the levels are much harder and introduce two new sphere colours – green, which need to be run over to reveal blue spheres, and purple ones that warp you from place to place. Overall, it’s hard to overstate just how great a job SEGA and Headcannon have done with this collection. Sure, you could argue that most of these games should have been made available on modern consoles by now, but on the face of it… for your money you’re effectively getting the best ever versions of the five best Sonic games ever made, along with a presentation that absolutely nails the look and feel of the franchise while offering a boatload of worthwhile extras. For around £35-40, there’s no better bang for your buck really. Sonic Origins not only gives us a fantastic remastering of some treasured classic titles, but also offers a stark reminder of just how iconic Sonic the Hedgehog is – when presented in this very specific, ‘Classic Sonic’ format. Everything about how Sonic and friends are presented here feels absolutely perfect, and it’s really the direction that Sonic Team and SEGA should be taking the franchise from this point onward. Sonic Origins will re-fire your love for the 16-bit games, and make you want a new Sonic game made in this style at the same time. It’s an essential purchase for any Sonic fan. Buy it, with money.
  18. I’m not a keyboard hobbyist. My day-to-day workhorse is a straightforward wireless Logitech board that I use until it stops working. So when keyboard maker Higround provided us with a sample of their Sonic the Hedgehog line of USB wired keyboards and accessories, I was curious (and a bit skeptical) of what using a higher end keyboard would be like. For me, the shift hasn’t revolutionized how I think about keyboards, nor will it supplant my current keyboard for daily use, but Higround’s design is undeniably quite functional and a beautiful, compact art object. I’m a sucker for seeing physically printed pixel art, and the keycaps on this board are absolutely gorgeous. The design assembles a Green Hill scene complete with a loop, rings, Badniks, and Sonic himself in vibrant colors across the whole board. Certain features are aligned with certain keys, such as Motobug hanging out on Enter, an extra life on Equals, and Sonic appropriately on the S key. The graphics are slightly skewed on the sides of each individual keycap to account for perspective: when you observe from top-down, the scene maintains the detailed Green Hill look despite needing to wrap around a bunch of slanted buttons. Higround’s keyboards tout a wide range of LED colors and effects, and the lights reflect nicely off of the metal frame, particularly in low-light rooms. There are 19 different built-in LED patterns and animations, from simple color pulsing to back-and-forth chasing to animations that react to your keystrokes. I imagine this is meaningful to those who like coordinating their lighted RAM with their rainbow cooling fans, but my utilitarian black box of a PC case and I found the keyboard lights a bit too distracting. I was tempted to turn them off, but instead settled on a much more subdued option to give only the depressed keys a soft cyan glow. The scale of the keyboard has been the toughest adaptation. It isn’t to say that Higround’s keys or frame are smaller than keyboard standards, but it is a “65%” keyboard, meaning that it’s a focused, compact device with enough keys for basic use and gaming but lacking most productivity keys: no function row, no media buttons, and no number pad. While typing this article on the device itself, my pinky repeatedly attempted to find an End key that does not exist. The function row and media keys have been moved to FN key combos. These extra functions aren’t displayed on the keycaps themselves, so you’ll need to keep an included reference card handy to remind yourself that FN + L is Volume Up and FN + Backspace is Insert. The card also promises macro recording, key binding, and LED setting via Higround’s Windows application, but I have not tested the software. While the travel height of the keys put me off at first, I’ve gotten comfortable with the distance and impact of the keyboard’s included linear Speed Silver switches. On paper, they seem comparable to Cherry MX Reds; however, the board does allow for switch hot-swapping. If you prefer more click to your buttons, the kit comes with an extraction tool to let you put in whatever switches you want without soldering. I didn’t have any free switches handy, but for the sake of testing, removing and reinserting the existing switches is a fairly painless process. While the Green Hill keyboard is the main attraction here, Higround also provided a matching desk mat and a “jelly bag” featuring Sonic and Chao. The massive 3’ x 1.5’ desk pad shares the keyboard’s Green Hill design and even lines up perfectly to meld into one continuous scene, but you’ll need a hearty desk to fit its footprint. The transparent, vinyl “Jelly Bag” I’m a little less sure what to make of. The thick vinyl sheets make carrying it uncomfortable, and the single-stitch seams have me concerned that it will fall apart over time. At the very least, the keyboard does fit in the bag, so if you want to carry the Sonic keyboard in a Sonic bag for some reason, you can. Unfortunately, I do have two rather significant caveats on the items that those in the market for Sonic collectables should be aware of: First, at time of writing, almost all of Higround’s Sonic keyboards and accessories are sold out. The only designs remaining at time of writing are a keyboard and desk pad with a dichromatic Sonic and Shadow design. Higround offers a place on their website to sign up for future updates and restocks, but at this time, their website does not list their restock plans and expectations for this line. Second, the keyboard is $145, and the deskpad is an additional $50. To those who already build their own custom keyboards, this is actually a pretty good price. But if you’re new to the hobby or are viewing this as a Sonic collector, the cost of custom keyboards might give you a bit of sticker shock. To be completely honest, even after this experience, I’m still much more likely to grab something vaguely ergonomic from Logitech or Microsoft for under $100 than invest in a custom board. Caveats aside, I still remain impressed by Higround’s design. I can’t understate how much I love how it looks both on its own and paired with the desk mat. It’s satisfying to use, and offers plenty of customization options. If you’re a Sonic collector, it would make for a great secondary or travel keyboard, and if you’re looking for an entrypoint into keyboard building as a hobby, this seems like a solid entry model to play with.
  19. Jason Berry

    TSS REVIEW: Spark The Electric Jester 3

    With SAGE in full swing, it’s nice to be able to play an original work from a developer of several Sonic fan games who has gone on to succeed with their own creation. Felipe Daneluz is well known in the Sonic community for his fan game “Sonic Before The Sequel” among others. But his gaming career really took off with 2017’s “Spark the Electric Jester”. Much like Sabrina DiDuro’s “Freedom Planet”, the game was heavily inspired by the 16-bit era of Sonic the Hedgehog. A second, 3D sequel came shortly after that was itself heavily inspired by the Sonic Adventure series. Now comes “Spark the Electric Jester 3”. Does the game do enough to separate itself from its Sonic-inspired roots? Errr… Yes and No. That is to say, it’s less “copy and paste” and more “anything you can do, I can do better.” Spark 3 starts out surprisingly not with our main character running at full speed, but behind the wheels of a speedy race car while flying robots are chasing you. It’s a nice way for the game to differentiate itself from other Sonic games before Spark jumps out of his vehicle and speeds away on foot. From here on out, most of the other levels start to feel familiar to Sonic fans while the game slowly introduces new mechanics through tutorial levels reminiscent of the Sonic Simulator levels from Sonic Colors that are both fun and somewhat required to progress as every level gives you a medal to collect. These medals are necessary to reach further levels, but not at the frustrating extent of something like Sonic Unleashed. Plus, I highly recommend them, as the skills you learn in those levels will be needed later on. Most of Spark’s moves will be familiar to Sonic veterans but done slightly differently and in many ways, improved. Spark’s homing attack on weaker enemies is on a separate button from his jump Similar to how it is in Sonic Unleashed, but here, it makes a ton of sense as you have several attack options. The game identifies which enemies are weak and which are strong which allows you to help vary your attacks. There is also no boost, but a slight dash to help you move forward. Just remember to hold down that dash button when wall-running or doing parkour “Lost World” style. If there's one thing that can be said about this game, even though it borrows a lot of moves from the Sonic series, in many respects, they are done better. Jumping and sliding down rails is done with ease as the physics helps magnetically keep you on the rails. You can even duck to slide down faster or hold dash to help keep up your speed when the rails go up higher. Switching between rails doesn’t feel as good, but it still works well. Spark also has an array of close combat moves that help differentiate himself from the hedgehog. You can attack a variety of robots with rapid attacks and combos while parrying their moves as well. Starting off with a well-timed parry will often open the enemy to a full-on assault by the yellow speedster. These are mostly done in boss battles that have their own levels and help break up the high-speed action. That said, they’re not nearly as fun as the main meat of the game. Outside of its combat and MegaMan X-like environments, what really sets Spark 3 apart are its vehicles. Some levels let you drive a high-speed car while others might see you inside a large helicopter with turrets and missile launchers. These parts of the game are few and far between but offer a nice change of pace from all of the running and jumping. While Spark 3’s environments and vehicles do well to separate itself from Sonic, it still doesn’t do enough to really branch out. Some levels feel too familiar to Sonic’s 3D roots. This is especially true of Area 2: Drynion Desert/Lost Riviera. A level where you are grinding on rails and dodging trains way up high in the air with canyons in the background. If this sounds familiar it’s because this level is very similar to Rail Canyon from Sonic Heroes. Imitation is flattery, but this is way too close to the original in my opinion. That said, it actually plays better than Rail Canyon once again thanks to the improved controls. The soundtrack is really solid. With Paul Bethers returning along with Lellani Wilson and Teodor Dumitrache as composers. The music for the most part rocks with compositions that fit each environment. However, like the game itself, it does seem heavily inspired by the Sonic Adventure series. Also, it does borrow some tunes and sound effects from Spark 2. That said, it’s nice to not have to listen to constant vocals from the main character for a change. Just little chirps and bleeps. While Spark the Electric Jester 3 still hasn’t fully separated itself from its Sonic-inspired roots, the controls, and gameplay overshadow any familiarity with the Sonic series as it adds many improvements. I never felt like Spark was out of my control. Something I can’t always say about Sonic in 3D. If you need something to play while waiting for Sonic Frontiers or just need to satisfy that action-platform itch, I’d highly recommend Spark the Electric Jester 3.
  20. Sonic Prime’s road to release has been excessively weird for me to experience as a Sonic Stadium writer, with an exceptionally strange advertising campaign. Yet I never for a moment thought that this show would make me watch its first episode inside a semi-official Sonic game built within a game making app. But it did, so I might as well talk about it! And my verdict on that episode? It’s good! The first episode, titled “Shattered,” sets up a character-driven adventure, that’s full of extremely well-animated action and is easily the most game-accurate version of the blue blur’s world ever put to screen. The writing, which is handled by Man of Action Studios, has plenty of heart, and while the humor isn’t usually laugh out loud funny, it’s also never painful. There’s solid drama and character moments to be had here, giving even non-Sonic fans something to get invested in. Ultimately, Sonic Prime reminds me of some of MoA’s better shows, more along the lines of Ben 10: Alien Force then Ultimate Spider-man. What I find most interesting about the episode is that it pretty explicitly sets up an arc for Sonic. Here, Sonic is arrogant and cocky, and clearly takes his friends for granted. In essence, Sonic has notable character flaws now! I’m sure some Sonic fans will take issue with this change, especially given that this is supposed to be canon to the games, but if Sonic Prime is going to work as a story focused on drama and character, it needs a way for its main character to develop! Prime gives this version of Sonic a way to positively grow and change as a person, without changing him so fundamentally that he doesn’t feel like Sonic anymore. And really, he does still feel like Sonic. Plenty of media in both the west and Japan has portrayed Sonic with a cocky attitude, but even now he is still incredibly confident in his abilities. Prime Sonic also still loves his friends and adventure, and has a great time kicking Eggman’s butt. Prime Sonic is still Sonic, just maybe…a little less mature. Or maybe he’s grown overconfident after years of effortlessly besting Eggman. I don’t know, my personal head canon doesn’t have much issue linking Sonic Prime with the existing games & comics canon. This doesn’t feel like whole new version of Sonic, but more like a version of game/IDW Sonic who is in a different place in his life. Aside from Sonic himself, Tails is the clear focus of Shattered, and he is great. In fact, this is probably my favorite version of Tails ever put to screen. Prime Tails feels absolutely dead-on to his game counterpart, a fine mix of brother-in-arms and boy genius sidekick. Once we get to the dystopian universe, Tails’ counterpart “Nine” takes center stage, giving us a look at a tragic version of the character who didn’t have Sonic around to help him growing up. The juxtaposition between Tails and Nine is interesting to see, and the revelation of what happened to Nine without Sonic, and Sonic’s reaction to it, is truly heartbreaking. Tails and Sonic’s brotherly bond is the heart of this episode, and if this is how Sonic Prime will be treating Sonic’s interactions with his other friends, we are in for some truly great stuff once the full show launches tomorrow. We don’t see much of Sonic’s other friends and enemies, but they also seem to be pretty accurate to their game counterparts, though Knuckles’ guardianship of the Master Emerald is left ambiguous. The show treats Knuckles just like Sonic’s other friends: a protector of Green Hill. Hopefully, his lore won’t be ignored once the show turns its focus to him. Dr. Eggman’s great, and anyone who was disappointed by how much more subdued he was in Frontiers will love how consistently over-the-top he is in Prime. Shattered’s got peak mad scientist Eggman, complete with his usual “messing with powers he does not understand” schtick. And “The Council” of Eggmen we get in the dystopian universe, while not especially interesting as foils to Eggman, is at least fun. Amy and Rouge are also solid, though aside from the superb performances from their voice actors, we don’t get much. Speaking of voice acting, this may very well be the most consistent cast we’ve ever gotten in a Sonic property since at least the days of Sonic SatAM. Devin Mack is an excellent Sonic, practically a middle ground between Roger Craig Smith and Ben Schwarz. He’s got great emotive range, which is key to some of the best moments in this show. Really, in terms of the quality of their performances, this goes for just about everybody. Ashleigh Ball’s Tails and Shannon Chan-Kent’s Amy Rose are both great, and Kazumi Evan’s Rouge may very well be the best the character has ever sounded. Vincent Tong’s Knuckles is solid, though his voice does sound a little…too deep, though I suspect I’ll get used to it as the show goes on. Top all this off with Brian Drummond’s wonderfully bombastic performance, and Sonic Prime truly feels like it has an all-star cast. Finally…we have the animation. Wildbrain has bragged about using Sonic Prime to refine their CG animation to movie quality and…yeah, I can tell. Even through Roblox’s weird compression and color issues, this show looks great. It is a genuine shame I had to experience it for the first time this way, because a Sonic show has never looked this good before. The models are gorgeous, and the sheer fluidity of the movement of everything in this is simply superb. The body language, the expressions, the action, it all animates so beautifully in a way that we rarely see in CG animation made for TV. While it is possible that the other episodes won’t look this good, Shattered leaves a heck of a first impression. So, I’ve had a lot of positive things to say about Sonic Prime’s first episode so far…but I do have some issues. In addition to the humor not always landing, the story makes one very odd choice: it chooses to center everything around Green Hill. Sonic doesn’t protect the world, he protects Green Hill. Eggman isn’t seeking to conquer the world, but transform Green Hill into a technological dystopia. Sonic opens the show talking about how great Green Hill is. When Sonic is transported to the dystopian universe, he realizes this by recognizing multiple Green Hill locations. Green Hill is pretty clearly the primary location where all these characters operate, which is strange considering even in the first game Sonic traveled across an entire island of locations, of which Green Hill was just one. It seems pretty clear that Sonic Prime is trying to simplify aspects of the lore to ease in non-Sonic fans, much like the first Sonic movie did. Even so, obsessing over Green Hill as the location simply feels like an odd choice. It seems the show is trying to utilize Sonic’s emotional investment in the location to more effectively invest viewers, but that simply doesn’t seem necessary when Sonic’s friends being changed and transported into a dystopia is enough on its own. Ultimately though, this one complaint of mine isn’t likely to ruin the show, especially given that we will still be seeing loads of different locations, pirate universe included. Honestly, it’s genuinely nice seeing Green Hill in a Sonic cartoon for the first time, and even though the lore feels simplified, this still manages to feel like an adventure straight out of the games, which is something I’ve never been able to say about a Sonic show before! On the whole, Sonic Prime has left a very good first impression on me. I’ve watched every Sonic show to ever release since I was a kid in the 90s, but I’ve only ever enjoyed two of them: Sonic SatAM & Sonic Boom. Sonic Prime not only seems set to join that shortlist, it at least feels like it has the potential to be at the top of it. I eagerly await the first batch of episodes! Sonic Prime’s first 8 episodes will release tomorrow, on December 15. We will have a proper review of all 8 episodes at a later date.
  21. The Sonic Stadium is at San Diego Comic Con 2023, and although we've already covered our awesome LEGO Booth Tour, one of the first things we actually did was visit the tasty new Sonic Speed Cafe that's popped up on 910 J Street. Our SDCC Man on the Ground @Jason Berry was invited to the restaurant's Grand Opening on July 19th, where the first 50 visitors would get themselves some free Sonic merch and the blue blur was even at the venue to meet and greet with eager fans. 2023-speedcafe-sonic.mp4 Although it took a while for the long line to file into the cafe, there was plenty of fun and entertainment on hand while we were waiting. And not just in the form of Sonic's appearance (which you can see in the clip above) - fellow fans also got in on the action, some coming in awesome cosplay like this fellow who arrived in full Infinite garb. We just hope he doesn't run into any Shadow cosplayers during his time at SDCC. 2023-speedcafe-inside.mp4 Once inside, you can get the full Sonic experience - blue lighting, checkerboard walls, Green Hill Zone themes and character boards to take your photo with. We've taken some video and photos which you can see above. It's a very family-friendly affair, with lots of seating and plenty of activities and attractions to gawp at while you're munching on your food. 2023-speedcafe-review.mp4 Speaking of the food, Jason tried a selection from the main menu and found the quality to be pretty good. The Sonic Chili Dog in particular he noted was 100% Beef hot dog, which gives a particular depth to the flavour. He also tried the Knuckles Sandwich and enjoyed the slightly spicy sauce that came with it - no doubt part of the "punch" that Knuckles' signature dish offers. Beyond eats, the Sonic Speed Cafe offered a range of merchandise to purchase and games to play. Jason found a console area with Sonic Origins on the go, along with a series of t-shirts and hoodies that attendees could get - with one particular shirt being exclusive to a certain food set meal. 2023-speedcafe-interview.mp4 Finally, Jason managed to have a quick chat with Kevin from Secret Sauce Society, the restauranteurs that worked with SEGA America on this collaboration. It's clear from Kevin's answers that he's a big Sonic nerd, just like us, and we can see that passion shine through in the decor and the detailed menu offering as well. And yes, Jason got a photo taken with Sonic. Don't they look cute together? So, that was the Sonic Speed Cafe pop-up restaurant. Jason's verdict is a solid Thumbs Up - if you're in the San Diego area between now and August 20 you should swing by and try a 'dog or a sandwich or two. And if you go, do let us know about your experience and what you thought of it in the comments below!
  22. The Sonic Stadium is at San Diego Comic Con 2023, and although we've already covered our awesome LEGO Booth Tour, one of the first things we actually did was visit the tasty new Sonic Speed Cafe that's popped up on 910 J Street. Our SDCC Man on the Ground @Jason Berry was invited to the restaurant's Grand Opening on July 19th, where the first 50 visitors would get themselves some free Sonic merch and the blue blur was even at the venue to meet and greet with eager fans. 2023-speedcafe-sonic.mp4 Although it took a while for the long line to file into the cafe, there was plenty of fun and entertainment on hand while we were waiting. And not just in the form of Sonic's appearance (which you can see in the clip above) - fellow fans also got in on the action, some coming in awesome cosplay like this fellow who arrived in full Infinite garb. We just hope he doesn't run into any Shadow cosplayers during his time at SDCC. 2023-speedcafe-inside.mp4 Once inside, you can get the full Sonic experience - blue lighting, checkerboard walls, Green Hill Zone themes and character boards to take your photo with. We've taken some video and photos which you can see above. It's a very family-friendly affair, with lots of seating and plenty of activities and attractions to gawp at while you're munching on your food. 2023-speedcafe-review.mp4 Speaking of the food, Jason tried a selection from the main menu and found the quality to be pretty good. The Sonic Chili Dog in particular he noted was 100% Beef hot dog, which gives a particular depth to the flavour. He also tried the Knuckles Sandwich and enjoyed the slightly spicy sauce that came with it - no doubt part of the "punch" that Knuckles' signature dish offers. Beyond eats, the Sonic Speed Cafe offered a range of merchandise to purchase and games to play. Jason found a console area with Sonic Origins on the go, along with a series of t-shirts and hoodies that attendees could get - with one particular shirt being exclusive to a certain food set meal. 2023-speedcafe-interview.mp4 Finally, Jason managed to have a quick chat with Kevin from Secret Sauce Society, the restauranteurs that worked with SEGA America on this collaboration. It's clear from Kevin's answers that he's a big Sonic nerd, just like us, and we can see that passion shine through in the decor and the detailed menu offering as well. And yes, Jason got a photo taken with Sonic. Don't they look cute together? So, that was the Sonic Speed Cafe pop-up restaurant. Jason's verdict is a solid Thumbs Up - if you're in the San Diego area between now and August 20 you should swing by and try a 'dog or a sandwich or two. And if you go, do let us know about your experience and what you thought of it in the comments below! View full story
  23. Sonic Prime Season 2’s debut episode is almost everything I was hoping it would be…up until the final moments. Shadow, who was only scantly featured in the show’s first 8 episode batch, features in a big way here, and he’s the best he’s been in any official media in literal years. The episode begins right where the previous season left off, with Sonic encountering Shadow after being blasted out of the pirate world. This begins an extended exposition sequence as Sonic learns about the void between shatterspaces, Shadow’s predicament, and most importantly: the fate of Green Hill and how it can be restored. Shadow is a true highlight through all this. His characterization has been…controversial amongst some fans over the last several years, and while I find it all overblown, it’s still hard for me to disagree. SEGA has long seemed content to leave Shadow as a flat, cardboard caricature of a character, one who likes no one, needs nothing, and is one-hundred-percent pure-uncut grade-A angst. It’s subtle, but Prime’s Shadow is emotive and motivated in ways he hasn’t really been allowed to be since the Archie Sonic days. This is largely thanks to a combination of Ian Hanlin’s stellar voice work, the effectively animated acting, and the solid script. This gives Shadow’s characterization some depth, making him feel less like Angsty McAngsterson and more like Sonic’s more serious, scolding older brother. Shadow’s clearly angry over Sonic’s careless actions, distraught over what’s happened to Green Hill and its denizens, and genuinely appears to care about what’s going on. One big issue i’ve long had with Shadow over the last 15 years is that it’s never really been clear to me what motivates him to do good. Was it duty to GUN? An obligation to Maria? Since it hasn’t really felt like he actually cares about anyone, why fight Eggman? In Sonic Prime, the answer seems to be that Shadow genuinely does care about people, even if he remains pretty standoffish about it. Like I said: it’s subtle, but it’s definitely evident here, and that makes a world of difference when it comes to Shadow as a character. Hopefully this is a sign that SEGA is loosening its grip on Shadow, but even if it isn’t, I’m just glad Prime got to do this with him. Shadow’s scolding of Sonic eventually leads to fisticuffs between him and the blue blur, and that’s when we get to the episode’s other highlight: the action. The action sequences of Prime were a highlight in the initial 8 episodes, but the fight between Sonic and Shadow is truly something special. This is the sort of Sonic action I’ve been waiting decades for. Sonic and Shadow’s fight is fast and exciting, full of dynamic camera angles, superb choreography, and the sort combat you could only hope to get from a properly animated Sonic versus Shadow fight. This, more than anything else, really makes me hope Sonic Prime can exist beyond its initial season, and maybe explore other story arcs and corners of Sonic’s world. Just imagine the possibilities if they were able to bring characters like Surge into this show! Unfortunately, by the end of the episode, it’s clear this isn’t about to become a Sonic and Shadow adventure. Shadow is still locked out of the shatterspaces, thus also locking him out of most of the plot. I admit, I hoped Shadow would join the show’s main cast with this episode, since an adventure focused around Sonic and Shadow having to work together simply sounds fun. Alas, that is not to be, at least not for now. Maybe in the final batch of the show’s 24 episodes? Nevertheless, Sonic Prime’s second batch of episodes looks to be expanding on the shatterverse crossovers that started happening at the end of season 1. I am definitely looking forward to seeing the various versions of each character interact. Sonic Prime’s second season is set to debut July 13.
  24. Sonic Prime Season 2’s debut episode is almost everything I was hoping it would be…up until the final moments. Shadow, who was only scantly featured in the show’s first 8 episode batch, features in a big way here, and he’s the best he’s been in any official media in literal years. The episode begins right where the previous season left off, with Sonic encountering Shadow after being blasted out of the pirate world. This begins an extended exposition sequence as Sonic learns about the void between shatterspaces, Shadow’s predicament, and most importantly: the fate of Green Hill and how it can be restored. Shadow is a true highlight through all this. His characterization has been…controversial amongst some fans over the last several years, and while I find it all overblown, it’s still hard for me to disagree. SEGA has long seemed content to leave Shadow as a flat, cardboard caricature of a character, one who likes no one, needs nothing, and is one-hundred-percent pure-uncut grade-A angst. It’s subtle, but Prime’s Shadow is emotive and motivated in ways he hasn’t really been allowed to be since the Archie Sonic days. This is largely thanks to a combination of Ian Hanlin’s stellar voice work, the effectively animated acting, and the solid script. This gives Shadow’s characterization some depth, making him feel less like Angsty McAngsterson and more like Sonic’s more serious, scolding older brother. Shadow’s clearly angry over Sonic’s careless actions, distraught over what’s happened to Green Hill and its denizens, and genuinely appears to care about what’s going on. One big issue i’ve long had with Shadow over the last 15 years is that it’s never really been clear to me what motivates him to do good. Was it duty to GUN? An obligation to Maria? Since it hasn’t really felt like he actually cares about anyone, why fight Eggman? In Sonic Prime, the answer seems to be that Shadow genuinely does care about people, even if he remains pretty standoffish about it. Like I said: it’s subtle, but it’s definitely evident here, and that makes a world of difference when it comes to Shadow as a character. Hopefully this is a sign that SEGA is loosening its grip on Shadow, but even if it isn’t, I’m just glad Prime got to do this with him. Shadow’s scolding of Sonic eventually leads to fisticuffs between him and the blue blur, and that’s when we get to the episode’s other highlight: the action. The action sequences of Prime were a highlight in the initial 8 episodes, but the fight between Sonic and Shadow is truly something special. This is the sort of Sonic action I’ve been waiting decades for. Sonic and Shadow’s fight is fast and exciting, full of dynamic camera angles, superb choreography, and the sort combat you could only hope to get from a properly animated Sonic versus Shadow fight. This, more than anything else, really makes me hope Sonic Prime can exist beyond its initial season, and maybe explore other story arcs and corners of Sonic’s world. Just imagine the possibilities if they were able to bring characters like Surge into this show! Unfortunately, by the end of the episode, it’s clear this isn’t about to become a Sonic and Shadow adventure. Shadow is still locked out of the shatterspaces, thus also locking him out of most of the plot. I admit, I hoped Shadow would join the show’s main cast with this episode, since an adventure focused around Sonic and Shadow having to work together simply sounds fun. Alas, that is not to be, at least not for now. Maybe in the final batch of the show’s 24 episodes? Nevertheless, Sonic Prime’s second batch of episodes looks to be expanding on the shatterverse crossovers that started happening at the end of season 1. I am definitely looking forward to seeing the various versions of each character interact. Sonic Prime’s second season is set to debut July 13. View full story
  25. We already know how big of a deal it is that Sonic Origins exists. We raved about it in our review, after all. Finally getting a Sonic 3 & Knuckles re-release after a decade in legal limbo (and a full-on Headcannon remaster at that)? Experiencing the Taxman and Stealth remasters of Sonic 1, 2 and CD on home console and PC? Some minor bugs aside, the overall quality and sheer importance of this release made it instantly worth buying by default. But now, a year later, SEGA is offering an expansion in the form of Sonic Origins Plus. Will it similarly be worth your money? All signs point to ‘yes’ - with some caveats. First of all, the headline feature to this add-on pack - Amy Rose is now, for the first time in a classic 2D Sonic adventure, available as a playable character. And in terms of importance at least, that is a very big deal (the Sonic gang has been a sausage fest for way too long) - it’s great to see the Rosy Rascal front and centre of the Plus imagery, right down to the revised Island Tour mode where you can see her posing for the camera. In terms of how she plays, it’s exactly as you’d expect. Amy runs, jumps and spins just like Sonic, only with a couple of extra unique skills. By pressing the jump button whilst in the air (double-jumping), you can deploy the famous Piko Piko Hammer which can expand your hitbox reach when trying to tag some mid-air badniks (and sometimes even give you some protection). It was exceptionally useful when tackling the Metropolis Zone boss (and the second-phase Sky Sanctuary boss). If you keep the jump button held after this, you can make Amy perform a Drop Dash-style move called the Hammer Rush. This makes Amy move forward with a burst of speed, mashing her hammer on the ground as she goes. Any badniks or destructible objects that get in her way are toast. Unfortunately it doesn’t quite get you around really steep curves or loop-de-loops, but it’s still satisfying to perform. You’ll no doubt be wondering if Amy can turn Super in Sonic 2 and 3K. Well, as you probably would have guessed, yes she can! After collecting seven Chaos Emeralds, you can transform into a glowy, faster, more athletic Super Amy as long as you have 50 Rings. In Sonic 2 and Sonic 3, her super powers are pretty straightforward - but if you collect the Super Emeralds in the Sonic & Knuckles half of the game, you get to unlock… …Super Amy again. Yep, no Hyper Amy. Which is a bit of a disappointment. But, you do get a sort of ‘Hyper’ power - pressing the Super button while transformed (after getting the Chaos and Super Emeralds) allows you to chuck hammers at your enemies. To be honest, you’ll be going so fast (and be so invincible) that the effect of this new hammer throw ability is close to zero, but the visual chaos you bring to the screen is fun either way. And that’s Amy Rose. A “Pink Sonic” - and that’s totally okay! Those of you who are weirdly hoping for some crazy new control gimmick should keep things in check; we’re talking about adding new characters to a 16-bit series whose gameplay design focuses around a single action button. You were obviously not getting a Sonic Advance-style manual control of the Piko Piko Hammer, and nor should you have wanted it anyway - Amy’s momentum-destroying control scheme in Sonic’s debut GBA game absolutely ruins an otherwise excellent platforming experience. The other additions that come with Sonic Origins Plus include the addition of Knuckles as a playable character in Sonic CD (probably because SEGA forgot to add him or something), and an archive of 8-bit Sonic the Hedgehog Game Gear games that can be played at any time via the Mission menu. Everything from the main platform games to the more esoteric spinoff games like Sonic Labyrinth and Sonic Drift 2. All of the Game Gear games are emulated - they are not remastered in the same way that the 16-bit Mega Drive titles have been. Because of this, all of the titles will run exactly as you’d remember a physical Game Gear would - warts and all. We won’t go into every GG game in this review (you can read our individual reviews for each game to see what we think about those). Generally speaking the GG games all feel fine to play, despite some new sound issues (there appears to be a weird echoing from time to time) as well as the usual framerate and screen size awkwardness that comes from authentically emulating SEGA’s 8-bit handheld. It’s hard to complain about the value of 12 extra games being added to your collection, but it’s also a bit heart-breaking to see constant stuttering in the otherwise masterful Sonic 1 GG immediately after completing a buttery-smooth run-through of Sonic CD. It seems like some level of bug-fixing has been accomplished here as well, although I can’t exactly tell you what those tweaks are for sure with the exception of one example. In the base Origins game, attempting to Drop Dash in one direction, then quickly trying to Drop Dash in the opposite direction was not possible while playing Sonic 1. This so-called “roll-locking” has been fixed in my experience with Origins Plus, which is a welcome change. But besides other possible bug fixes, in terms of new content, “that’s it” (for some of you). Personally, for a $10 upgrade, having playable Amy in all four games, Knuckles in Sonic CD, the Game Gear games, a bunch of bug fixes and a nice unlockable birthday image is pretty good value for money. Of course, your own mileage may vary, depending on whether you feel like much of this should have been included in the base game already. For me, it’s not so much the quantity of additional content that slightly irks - it’s the quality. Generally speaking, the Plus content is quite serviceable. But there are just a few little niggles here and there that, while not a huge deal in and of themselves, kind of take the shine off of the whole package when taken altogether. The most obvious drawback is the curious omission of the Master System versions of the 8-bit Sonic the Hedgehog titles in the new collection. Not having the benefit of the larger-screen versions of Sonic 1, 2, Chaos, Spinball and Mean Bean Machine to play (not to mention experiencing the difference in gameplay and presentation in some of these titles compared to their Game Gear counterparts) is a real drag, especially on large screens. Even just putting in a little work to “hack” in a Master System-style ‘widescreen’ view for each game (as Tectoy did in Brazil for Sonic Blast, in fact - there is a Master System port of that game only made available in that country) would have been a welcome option. As it is though, playing on PS5 on a big monitor with such a small gameplay window can be an intensely claustrophobic experience. I can see the GG games being more fun to play on the Nintendo Switch in handheld mode where this may be less of an issue. There are some presentation quirks when playing as Amy too. The odd graphical issue, her Hammer Rush not going up steep curves/loops, the lack of an official ‘Hyper’ Amy in Sonic 3 & Knuckles (which I suspect is an attempt to avoid putting too much work into her sprite set), that the sprite looks too similar across all four games (if there are any differences in sprite art style between Sonic 1, 2, CD and 3K, it’s really not that noticeable)... Individually, these things are insignificant. Put together, it feels like a feature that hasn’t quite been polished to perfection yet. It also feels like there isn’t enough documentation or guidance around the new Amy and Knuckles playables modes and abilities. This might sound like an odd gripe, when the Plus package comes complete with a new digital manual (accessible from the title screen) which is a whopping 66 pages long - but I found out about Not-Hyper Amy’s Hammer Throw move by complete accident, and I have struggled to identify any of the marketed significant new routes in Sonic CD made specifically for Knuckles (I might have stumbled upon some by accident, but I wouldn’t have known it). Which, you know, if there actually aren’t any new routes in CD, that’s a slight disappointment in and of itself. But back to the point… There’s a dialog box for almost every other action you perform in the main menu - even the act of opening a game (I’m surprised there isn’t one for blowing your own nose) - so it would have been nice to have had some kind of intro or something when first selecting Knuckles in CD, or Amy in Sonic 3 & Knuckles that offers this information. Or perhaps in the Options section there could have been a Tutorial box outlining some hints on where to go in CD as Knuckles. The reward for accomplishing all of the (admittedly incredibly easy) new challenges in the ‘Surprise’ mode is (besides the gorgeous artwork you reveal) pretty underwhelming as well (not to spoil it for anyone, but… well, I feel like if you’re reading this, then your reaction to it will likely be “I already know this”). It would have been pretty neat - and not a huge additional lift at all - to have added new content to the Museum collection or have the Surprise unlock an exclusive set of Plus-locked Gallery images. We could have had some of the Sonic Jam media in high-res! Man of the Year in HD! But alas. Mind you, these are all minor gripes in the context of an expansion pack that costs a mere $9.99. Sonic Origins Plus is worth getting for the new Amy Rose playable character as-is, and the Game Gear games are the icing on the cake for die-hard fans who have been itching to have a modern way to play the handheld classics since Sonic Adventure DX. And for those who haven’t bought into Origins yet, the price of the physical Plus pack is about the same as the base game digitally - and when you factor in our five-star review of the original release, this makes buying Plus a no-brainer. Second Opinion Sonic Origins is undoubtedly the most comprehensive and polished classic compilation to date. From remastered classics to mirror modes, the game is absolutely jam-packed with extras, artwork, videos, and extras, this is a phenomenal title to discover or re-live the heritage of Sonic the Hedgehog. Following in the footsteps of Sonic Mania, Origins is now receiving the “Plus” treatment, which sees a further embellished version alongside a physical release. Classic fans will undoubtedly be delighted to see Amy join the roster, not in just sprite form, but armed with a host of unique attacks and abilities that breathe a new way to play into old classics. Equally, Game Gear and Master System fans can be content at finally having a definitive location for those rare and unusual titles, even if only to play five minutes of Tails Sky Patrol before going back to playing something good. Disappointingly, it seems that the additional content is also a download for the physical edition, which will inevitably put a future expiration date on much of the bonus features. Moreso, audiophiles will be equally baffled and frustrated by the altered soundtracks and odd stereo effects, that will often detract from the otherwise great job that has been accomplished here. Flaws aside, Sonic Origins Plus once supplies fans with a sympathetic and lovingly crafted product, with just about every permutation of experience you could want from the archetypal Mega Drive titles. With a release in which SEGA could have easily created a bad future, they once again emerge smelling of roses. Second Opinion written by @T-Bird
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