
Sonic is back, and in 2D form!
Sonic the Hedgehog is the flagship franchise of Sega and has been since the early 90's. In the past 20 years of sonic gaming, we have seen the little blue speed demon obtain sidekicks, transform into his golden charged up form:
Super Sonic, traversed into the 3D realm, race,
fight in boxing rings, race on speed boards, go into outer space,
cross into different games, transform into other beastly versions of himself, perform at the
OLYMPICS and miserably fail at half of it all. I am a sure fan of Sonic..but if programmers make him race in any contraption besides using his own feet, they cheat him and they cheat the franchise, and they knew that. Therefore, Sonic 4 was created to take it all back to the original roots of the game, which is to kill robots, gather emeralds, speed through crazy loops and blow up
Robotnik.
The game play brought back so many years of memories from the first and second Sonic games. It was simple, to the point, and flat out awesome. The game has returned to the 2D field with some 3D improvements making it visually striking. The special levels had returned to it's spinning and twisting annoyingness, which I was willing to put my pisssed off feelings aside for the sake of nostalgia. Sonic moved rather slow and it takes some time to gather some speed, but with such add ons like the dash jump, it helps to get things moving along quickly. Levels are not long at all, in comparison to some of the 3D sonic games which takes up to about 10-15 minutes to beat. The final bosses of each level are homages to the first sonic game with some crazy modifications. Here are some vids to show what I am talking about.
Sonic 1 game play
Sonic 4 game play
Sonic 1 Boss Battle
Sonic 4 Boss Battle
Note that this is not a remake of Sonic 1. I feel that this was just a way to anchor fans back in and get them ready for episode 2, which has an undetermined release date. Sonic 4 has it's flaws and most fans (like myself) wish that there was more offered in game play that made it even more worth the 1600 microsoft points we spent (roughly $20). But it does the job of causing nostalgia and makes for very fun game play. I hope that the second episode make a bigger impression than the first one did.