Hands On: Sonic 4 Episode 1

Sonic fans will know what I mean when I say the phrase ‘the Sonic cycle.’ For those who don’t – it goes as follows;

  • New Sonic announced – looks good.  Anticipation rises.
  • Screenshots emerge and look fantastic.
  • SEGA introduces new ‘friends’ for Sonic.  The world does a collective facepalm.
  • Poor reviews scores come in.  Everyone rants.

Sonic 4 is different though.  To progress the franchise, SEGA has looked back to see what made it so great in the first place.  The demo I played consisted of four levels, of which I played only two thanks to the queue of people and only one machine running the game.

‘Splash Hill Zone’ is an old school Sonic fans’ dream.  Gone are the unnecessary additions of previous titles – there are no Werehogs, pointless friends or needless gimmicks; it’s just pure platforming.  In fact, the only carry over I saw was the homing attack – where Sonic locks on to an enemy/object.  Occasionally this did interrupt the flow of the level, but not to the point where I got annoyed.

The visuals are superb – both surprisingly new, yet completely recognisable.  Everything is bright, colourful and pin sharp – and those people complaining about Sonic’s running animation, or the fact his eyes aren’t the correct colour should really just chill out – it’s all good.

The second level I played was a good old boss fight against Eggman.  You know the drill here right?  He appears in his flying contraption with attached wrecking ball; you dodge it easily and ‘hey presto’, three strikes and he’s outta there!  Well, the fat git has learnt some new moves!  Not only is he quicker than before, but he also has a spin attack that took me completely by surprise.

Overall I came away a happy man.  I’ve been waiting ages for Sonic to return to form, and now it’s happened.  Cast aside all caution – it seems the Sonic cycle will be broken.

19 Comments

  1. Great to know :D

  2. Where’s Cream?? :[

  3. Looks like I will be getting this one on release. Any news on the price yet for psn?

Comments are now closed for this post.