If I were to honestly say what I’ve been thinking about Sonic 4 after watching all the trailers leading up to E3, being completely honest with myself, I’d say that this game is a lost cause. It’s an earnest attempt on Sega’s part to win back older fans of the series, but ultimately it’s a fool’s errand. So today when I finally got a chance to sit down with the game and play Act 1 – 1 in its entirety all my assumptions were verified. As soon as I got control over Sonic and moved him a couple feet forward I could already feel this was going to be an awkward experience. Let me explain.
Sonic goes from a strange, brisk walk to running at full speed, however, all while this is happening I never felt once as if I was running as fast as I could. That sense of speed that made Sonic the Hedgehog 2 the nostalgia bait I love so much was not here. And as the level continued I could only watch as my hopes were continually crushed even further. The whole stage, nearly from beginning to end, was nothing but bouncing from spring to spring, without any concern for changing direction or even dodging enemies. Sure, there were some enemies I remember from the original couple of games, but when they just sit there and aren’t much of a danger to you they feel almost unnecessary. Especially, when most of them are placed in position to only be used for the homing attack rather than to slow you down or give you a challenge, which is what their purpose was in the original Sonic tetralogy. And speaking about the homing attack, it works exactly the way it did in the Adventure series, but just like in those games if you miss the target que by a fraction of a second you’ll do a weirdo spin and fall down defenselessly.
From what I saw of other people playing the playable chapters two and three of Act 1 they were pretty much the same, with the only variations being in the background’s look and the music. Oh, and on a side note, when I hit 50 rings and I passed by a checkpoint I couldn’t jump into a special zone, which was a let down. Overall, what I played in the demo today felt much like when Sonic finishes a level – rather than speeding pass by the spinning sign and then running off the stage as the scores tally up, Sonic runs right into the edge of the screen as if hitting a brick wall. Yeah… so much for being the fasting thing alive, right?
