It's Sonic's 20th birthday. All his friends have all gathered for a party. Everyone's there. Knuckles is acting all tough and cool, Amy is simpering and presenting herself, and Cream - oh god, who cares what Cream's doing? Just kill it. All of a sudden, a purple time demon rips through the world imprisoning everyone in a white dimension. For a moment, you think: yes! They've done it! They've killed them all! No such luck. You've got to rescue them.
It opens with three missions from the olden classic era - Green Hill first, naturally, and onto Sonic 2's Chemical Plant, and the Sky Sanctuary from Sonic & Knuckles. After which, Eggman pops up, to reprises his role as the guy who says "Nyah, I'm going to kill you, Sonic! No what, what's that? Help me, Sonic!"
After a punch-up with another familiar face, we rocket into the current generation, with levels from the reboot and Unleashed. It's all absolutely top-grade in terms of fan service, with each level playable as, and completely different for, either Sonic. New Sonic brings his third dimension to old levels. Old Sonic, however, isn't quite as dogmatic about the 2D thing as Sonic 4 was. It's still 2D in as much as you're confined to a plane, but the camera zips around like a wasp on Lucozade. The problem is, the level of fuss and detail causes performance to suffer.
What's the whole point of Sonic the Hedgehog? What's his raison d'etre, his modus operandum, what's that thing he always does? He goes fast. He is the spiny mammal whose raw speed forced you to learn the levels, because reacting to threats as they appeared was frequently out of the question.
So if any game requires smooth movement to prevent the nagging feeling that you're being gipped, it's Sonic. The 2D version of Green Hill Zone is actually one of the worst levels to play - the regularly placed vegetation coupled with the jerky scrolling makes a kind of uncomfortable hypnotic effect that's most like trying to focus on a helicopter's blades.
In other 2D levels, this isn't so much of a problem - and it's not a problem at all in the 3D sections, where the movement comes from every angle and you've got more assists in the form of the lock-on cursor. And that single complaint aside, there are some brilliant ideas here.
Finishing a level will give you points, and points can be spent on upgrades. Sonic Chronicles isn't part of this collection, so don't expect full RPG powers. The upgrades mainly involve little tweaks, like making dropped rings hang around longer, a free shield, or faster turning. The most expensive upgrade is a Mega Drive controller, that you can use on the console above Green Hill Zone to play the 1991 Sonic game. You can spend some more points on infinite continues. Go on, you might finish it, at last.
23 comments so far...
comabob on 31 Oct '11 said:
"is was its known for..."
"detail in the caused the technical performance..."
Check your grammar OXM
Ill be renting this - i like 2d sonic and enjoyed both levels of the demo. Much better than that Werehog Rubbish...
Decent_Jam on 31 Oct '11 said:
It is ALL about Chemical Plant from Sonic 2, possibly my most replayed level of anything ever.
The music is so brilliant that I'm fairly sure it's my ringtone! Difficult to know as phones don't tend to ring these days...
But sounds like a decent enough product, not enough for me to want to relive the glory days though, picked up many of the different adventures on the way through and after Sonic Adventure 2 Battle I was spent.
SidTheSloth on 31 Oct '11 said:
I'll raise your chemical plant with a marble zone...
...music that is! Chemical plant was a better zone to play i'll grant you
For a ringtone, try the music from balrogs stage of the mega drive/snes Street Fighter 2, pure awesome
I have a brother who'll love this game and whilst i have a soft spot for sonic, i hate the 3d games so if the good bit (the 2d) is flawed then bargain bin is the only time i'll give this a go.
KernowDevil23 on 31 Oct '11 said:
Sorry guys but Green Hill Zone is the best ever, purely because it's the first level of the first game I ever played (apart from some crappy C64/Atari 2600 games) which started my love affair with gaming.
Decent_Jam on 31 Oct '11 said:
Shall we give you some time alone?
SidTheSloth on 31 Oct '11 said:
I would still argue too that completing sonic 1 with all emeralds is the hardest of all the (main) sonic games. I know on the 360 you get the save thing but without it, man alive!!
I had a master system before mega drive and the music was different unfortunately or else i may have shared your nostalgia!
OXM ETboy on 31 Oct '11 said:
I used to think that heaven was the Aquatic Ruins Zone, simply because it came after the Chemical Plant Zone. The blasted Chemical Plant Zone. Where the hedgehog of innocence meets the steaming purple ocean of reality. And the treacherous reversible platforms of fate.
Alaric14 on 31 Oct '11 said:
YES! I thought I was the only grammar Nazi in the room! Now let's do yours!
"I[']ll be renting this - [I] like 2[D] [S]onic and enjoyed both levels of the demo. Much better than that Werehog [r]ubbish..."
Sorry...Can't help myself.
On a related topic, I'm going to ignore the story on this one (all that ever screwed up Sonic games was SEGA's pathetic attempts to draw out some form of narrative...as well as a bad camera) and instead focus on the shiny new zone layouts. Personal favourite zone: Mushroom Hill. So much bounciness, so much twistiness, so many loops. At speed if you blur your eyes it's like an acid trip. Far out, dude.
comabob on 31 Oct '11 said:
Point taken but im not some one who gets paid for writing am i?
OXM ETboy on 31 Oct '11 said:
There's actually a pretty funny story behind those two typos in particular. Log and I had the article open at the same time, and he saved his changes after I'd saved mine, thus cancelling out my edits. Pretty funny story. It isn't really, is it. Fine. (sigh)
Thanks for the heads-up.
comabob on 31 Oct '11 said:
I laughed till i stopped mate.
OXM JamSponge on 1 Nov '11 said:
Chemical plant music is pure dead brilliant. Any love for the Starlight Zone music? I think I mainly adored the sound of it purely because it felt like a chilled-out escape from the evil Labyrinth Zone...
Decent_Jam on 1 Nov '11 said:
I'm very tempted to cover it with my band as a gig intro tune...
pauloselhombre on 1 Nov '11 said:
Sorry to be a bit of a negative Nancy here, but as someone who has been playing videogames since before the original Sonic the Hedgehog was released, I'm getting fairly tired of hearing about how "Sonic is all about speed". No, anyone who has played the first 3 Sonic games will know that actually, Sonic's gameplay didn't catch up to its own fiction speed-wise until Sonic 3, and even then it was only really possible (to the average gamer anyway) to reach those top speeds very occasionally. The original Sonic game was primarily focused on exploration, with levels that rewarded you for balancing speed and accuracy rather than trying to blaze through as fast as possible. It's this skewed and inaccurate perception that Sonic games should be about speed that leads to Sega thinking that 'Hold right until you reach the end of the level' is the holy grail of level design. Heck, the original Super Mario Bros had the potential to be faster paced than any of the 2D Sonic games ever were.
SidTheSloth on 3 Nov '11 said:
Git.
You MADE me google it!! The shame
However i'm happy to report though i stand by my earlier comment, marble zone wins, but only when it gets to the 'good bit':
The starlight music sounds like elevator music remixed - or the sort of theme they'd have to accompany a Bayonetta boss fight!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXukwNQG ... re=related
Let it get to 30 seconds then sit back and remember the fun you had repeatedly hitting those sodding slower than a pensioner pink caterpillars...!! Aaaargh!
And Ed, i share your opinion of the chemical plant zone, nightmare, but suggesting the aquatic ruins is heaven makes you an evil evil man - i hated it equally. Stupid hedgehog dancing around trying to catch bubbles that the AI idiot Tails somehow steals first!!
Alaric14 on 5 Nov '11 said:
Okay, so I've played this more or less to the end, barring the last boss fight because for some reason Super Sonic is retarded, and it's the most convincing 3D incarnation of Sonic I've ever seen. At least until about two thirds of the way through the game when all the latest game levels come back to haunt us, along with death drops and awkward dash moves.
Strangely, the voices of the main characters aren't annoying me. Is it because most of the 'tag-alongs' have the good sense to shut the f**k up and keep their opinions to written text?
omallystwin on 29 Nov '11 said:
Hi everyone.
just have to say that I love this game as it takes me back to the first game I ever played...Sonic the Hedgehog, it was show and tell at school and my rich japanese friend Tat wa lay brought in his sega mega drive!...i went home and begged my mum for a sega mega drive for months...it got to christmas and i go to open my big present which mum has been dropping hints about it being a games machine! I rip of the paper and its a ....Spectrum zx...with no games...
CunningSmile on 30 Nov '11 said:
I feel your pain. I dropped hints about a Mega Drive too and ended up with a Master System. At least she got the right company.
And welcome
omallystwin on 30 Nov '11 said:
So is there going to be DLC for generations? because that would be awesome!
SidTheSloth on 30 Nov '11 said:
It's funny, i got a master system for christmas and had no real idea what the heck it was. I'd had a C64 but never really got on with it, far too busy playing football to wait for tapes to load (or not as was more often the case!). Loved sonic on it so much and was devastated when i realised the sequel didn't have tails - that's when the mega drive badgering began!
Just got this through the post today for the very reasonable price of £20 brand new, gotta love the internet...!
(waits for some git to say game/gamestation are selling it for £15)
CunningSmile on 1 Dec '11 said:
In all fairness I had no idea what a mega drive or a master system were either, nor the differences between them. All I knew was my mates had a mega drive so that's what I wanted.
CPT Random 82 on 1 Dec '11 said:
This...
I had a ZX spectrum and Sonic was the first proper game i ever played on my brick of a game gear. Green hills was brilliant as an introduction to a long future of gaming.
SidTheSloth on 1 Dec '11 said:
Ah, dont call the game gear a brick - it was legendary!! Although the battery requirements were insane and im sure when recharging the lights were a little dimmer!!
I always thought the master system/game gear green hills zone was awesome (they were the same) until i went to one of those 'childrens world?' stores where they had a snes/f-zero & mega drive/sonic demo. Unfortunately the mega drive version >>>> master system/game gear version - the 8-bit version didn't have the 'green hills' music either as i recall...?