So, I just got to play this:
I've been looking out for 360 pods running Sonic - besides my morbid curiosity, there genuinely is a little part of me forever 9 years old that still gets excited at Sonic games, and my tolerance for SEGAcrap is such that I was able to force myself to beat Shadow. I've been critical of the directions Sega have steered this game, but I still <i>wanted</i> to play it.
The demo unit was unoccupied when I walked in, having clearly been abandoned in town mode. I restarted a game as Sonic (since neither of the other two Zoo Crew Allstars had been unlocked) and skipped the opening cinematics, only to be dumped into... furry Shemue. Seriously, this game is so Dreamcast they decided to add a Shemue section to it. You slide around semi-controllably talking to bad Poser art-style people trying to find the first stage. Already I could see collison detection glitches, where Sonic would get stuck in the corners of objects. Note to game designers: the first section of your action game should always be instant access, don't make me fight to even get a first impression because that is the best possible way to make a bad impression. Finding Tails took about a minute. After about 30 more seconds of careering around like a drunken pinball, I was finally able to guide Sonic to a line of rings - no Light Dash to use them, however. I had to find some old Itallian dude and take his mission to test out his new shoe prototypes... which look exactly like the shoes I was wearing before. Here's how it went:
Old geezer: WILL YOU TEST MY SHOES?
>YES
(1 MINUTE OF LOADING)
OK, RUN THROUGH ALL THE RINGS AND I'LL KNOW THE SHOES WORK!
(1 MINUTE OF LOADING)
The actual gameplay was a kind of GTA mission for pre-schoolers: I had to jump through a series of hoops, then hit a spring and land while going through a vertical line of them. Thanks to the extreme control sensitivity, this last part took two attempts.
Cue more loading time and a ranking screen! Boy, this is fun!
I finally have my shoes! Now I can light dash, right? No, I have to go and find a very unobtrusive shop to buy the "Light Chip" for 100 rings. What utter ****ing bullshit. FINALLY, I get to light dash across to LEVEL ****ING ONE of the game. Level entrances aren't even intergrated into the map like Sonic Adventure 1: I had to find a "magic mirror of Soleanna", which is basically a spinning token of the level you want to play.
By now my face is like this: 0:<
Cue level 1. Straight away, I'm on an uncontrollable roller coaster section, still twiddling my thumbs. When I finally get into the level, it all looks very pleasant and SEGAy - the sound and graphics are this game's only saving graces. Level design is pretty bad - now that they've added multiple routes, telling the camera to keep pointing forward at all times just obstructs your progress through the game. Straight away some scripting ****s up and I'm lucky I don't lose a life as Sonic is flung onto a stone ring, where he refuses to move for 10 seconds while the physics unretard themselves. I lose my first life when more scripting goes wrong and I'm flung off a scripted loop-de-loop into the briny depths. I manage to keep moving along, and after a few retarded "press jump as soon as you land!" moments of scripting I'm flung onto the fin of a killer whale. Sonic tells Tails to do something, and Tails appears out of literally nowhere. I can only assume Sonic has enforced shira law and forces Tails to remain a mile behind him at all times.
Tails. Oh, Tails! This game castrated you. You used to be Sonic's buddy, matching his speed and moves. Now you trundle along at a slow pace and throw "fake ring bombs" at enemies. This game has ruined you more than Sonic Adventure 2 did. Tail's levels are slow, ponderous and devoid of fun. Pressing "X" makes him goof a ring bomb at an enemy. The camera then switches to an overhead-and-behind angle, <i>even though you are still engaged in live combat</i>. I got shot a lot because of this. Holding down X makes Tails "snipe" by engaging first-person mode - just like the attack in <i>Bubsy the Bobcat 3D!</i> Level design signposts are almost entirely absent - there's a lot of ****ing around to be done before you find out where to go next. This caused me to lose a life as the whale and Sonic move through a gate into the open sea, causing Sonic to drown. As they move through the gate, the model clips through the sides. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. After losing another life by drowning through no fault of my own (dying as Tails takes you back to playing as Sonic, such is the abysmal distribution of checkpoints) (hey, can't Tails swim?) I finally found a jump panel hidden behind some rocks and opened the gate. More loading, then on to the Mach Speed area!
"Mach Speed" is German for "this blue hedgehog is moving too quickly and erratically for me to control". Gameplay involves wrestling with the control stick and praying you'll hold on to at least one ring as Sonic blunders through trees and rocks. At one point I entered another "jump as soon as you land!" section, but because the camera was trailling behind me so badly, I couldn't see what I had to do - Sonic fell for four seconds before hitting the water and going through the dying script. What ****ing bullshit. Next, I hit a tree with no rings and the camera stopped while Sonic kept running into the distance despite having just died. Then I died again and it was game over - no option to continue, I was taken back to the very start of the game, where I'd have to get the stupid ****ing shoes all over again. **** that. I walked out.
SSUK is showing his beaten SEGA wife tendencies again - this is an appalling game, with only graphics, sound and misplaced nostalgia going for it. Controls are worse than Shadow, as is level design. Sonic slides like he's moving on ice, and there's little meaningful gameplay with lots of bullshit loading circa 1996. It's almost like a parody of a videogame, rushed out with complete contempt for the audience. Don't buy this and move on with your lives.
