Written by: Alex

 

 

 

 

2D Sonic has finally made his way back to the home console the game fans have been crying for. Developer Sega is pitching this HD Sonic title as the true squeal to the original Megadrive games.

 

Rejuvenating the series with pre-rendered 3D models everything looks familiar long-term fans, but now with a glossy toy like sheen. But with the 2D Sonics so long out of the public eye, and those who do remember the hedgehog in his iteration now in their thirties, you have to ask if the spiny hero is still relevent in todays market.

 

 

I would hazard a bet that if you are interested in Sonic 4 you already know the plot. Dr Robotnik has returned and is out for revenge. In his quest to destroy Sonic and dominate the world the bad Dr has decided to once again capture Sonic's woodland animal friends and turn them in to strange robotic contraptions to help him. So once again Sonic is off to rescue his friends and defeat Robotnik.

 

 

Hitting many of the keynotes of the original games Sonic 4 Episode 1 is the first chapter in this new adventure but it feels more like a ‘best of’ compilation than a new experience. Four classic environments return (albeit under different names) with music and sound that captures the mood of the old games perfectly along with controls that feel instantly comfortable to players familiar with the series. Thus as I began the game everything felt comfortable and I was able to blast through the first few levels without issue before grinding to a halt in the second world, just as I did in all the original titles.

 

 

Of course nostalgia is a fragile thing and Sonic's reliance on it is as much to its detriment as it is to its credit. Going through the levels the constant issues I ran into began to bleach the pink out of my rose tinted glasses. I remembered the frustration that used to accompany water stages or the constant stop start of the Labyrinth Zone (robbing the game of the speed that was so vital to my enjoyment of the game) and of course the frequent unseen (read near unavoidable) deaths from spikes, bottomless holes and enemies. I wanted to blame Sonic 4 for these problems, and there may be more of them present in this game, but casting my mind back I realised that, while at the time the speed and branching paths made the game something special, by the modern rubric of fast reaction based platforming (such as Canabalt) that much of the series design was fundamentally flawed, or at least fundamentally contradicted to the platforming I enjoy.

 

Memorising the ideal path was the most telling of the dated nature of Sonic 4's design. When Sonic reaches full speed within the game it becomes near impossible to react in time to obstacles making multiple attempt necessary to move through any stage at full, enjoyable, speed. It was always this way but presented in this new instalment, after sixteen years of gaming innovation, it seems antiquated.

 

 

Some people enjoy this mechanic, the time trial nature of the game, but these days personally I don’t have the time or inclination to play a game that requires I constantly die, memories and retry to gain the most enjoyment from it.