Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1

Oh Sonic 4, how dost thee suck? Let me count the ways.

First off, you should know that Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 costs $15, only has 12 levels, and can be beaten to completion in about an hour. If they’re planning on releasing enough episodes to make a “full” game, so to speak, that means that if you want the whole experience, you’ll probably be paying at least $60. Now, I’m not one to equate length with value (especially with platforming games), but this seems to me to be a pretty big rip-off. Especially considering the game that you’ll be shelling out $60 for.

There’s a pretty famous internet gaming meme that outlines “The Sonic Cycle.” First, a new Sonic game gets released. Remembering how much fun the first three or four Sonic games were, you start to get excited. Screenshots and videos come out introducing some new design quirk, or a new partner for Sonic to team up with, and you start to get worried. The game comes out, and it’s complete crap. Then the cycle starts all over again.

Sonic 4 was supposed to be the remedy to all of this. Back to basics, no nonsense platforming in the classic vein. Now, I’m no Sonic fanboy – the only games I’ve spent any time with are the first two, and I find the whole furry culture surrounding the game really weird. Those first two games are brilliant, though, in that they take the Mario formula – that is, a virtual obstacle course – and do something interesting with it. Those early Sonic games were as much about high-speed platforming as they were about rapid fire decision making and finding your own path through the game’s sometimes labyrinthine level design.

Sonic 4 is a mere facsimile of this. Essentially, what you’re spending $15 on is Sonic 2, minus Tails and with absolutely broken controls and physics. No longer are you careening through levels with wild abandon – playing as Sonic now feels like driving a 1940s Ford pick-up truck through a sea of pudding. He is seriously so slow now that it takes a full five seconds to get up to a full run. Not only that, but let go of a button, and he’ll stop completely dead.

This wouldn’t be so frustrating if the level design rewarding a more measured approach to exploration, but this isn’t the case. You’re still required to run through as fast as you possibly can, and unless there are speed boosters nearby, you’re going to be plodding through this game like you’re the unfortunate Werehog from Sonic Unleashed.

The four worlds in this game are all straight rip-offs from Sonic 2 (and Sonic 1, to a lesser extent). You’ve got your requisite Sonic “rolling green hill” zone, your Casino Zone rip-off, your underwater labyrinth level, and your Chemical Plant facsimile. Unlike New Super Mario Bros. Wii, another 2D nostalgia throwback, these levels seem less like homage and more like carbon copying, as there’s not a single new or inventive idea to be found within them.

OK, that’s a lie – there are new ideas, but most of them are terrible. Sonic’s homing attack makes enemy encounters even easier than before (although this game is especially bad for placing unkillable enemies in places where you’re totally undefended, making for many cheap kills), and the idea of having Sonic pop out of his protective ball whenever he gets launched into the air is certainly… interesting. But where the bad really shines is in specific level design decisions. If you’ve started making a list of things that shouldn’t be in a 2D Sonic game in your head, I bet you they’re in this game. I’m talking about: inane puzzle solving, entire minutes of being flung from one speed booster to the next, underwater escape sequences (where you move even slower, if that’s possible), and most infuriatingly of all, instances of precise platforming over bottomless pits where you will die again and again and again, all because of the shoddy controls.

Holy crap is this game bad. Bad ideas, bad execution, a complete lack of identity (seriously, I know that Sonic was a poster boy for animals with baditude – see Punky Skunk, for example – but I’d almost prefer that to him having no personality whatsoever in this game), boring or infuriating levels, and terrible controls. Let the Sonic cycle begin anew.

Note: this review was originally written for The Carillon, the University of Regina's student newspaper.