So anyway, I've finally decided to sit down with the 8 unopened Sonic games I've had sitting on my shelf for the past 3 years, scrape off the mildew, and bring myself up-to-date in the affairs of the corporate mascot who, 15 years ago, I (very unwisely) chose as my childhood hero. I took a quick run through Sonic Rush first, which is the only one I'd heard anyone speak of in anything even close to a complimentary tone, and while it ain't no rebirth, it is one of the more successful attempts of recent years. It's mainly a twitch game - very fast and Naganuma's upbeat score helps to keep the pace rolling, but the odor of Dimps still lingers in the nooks and crannies, such as in the abundance of pit deaths (some downright unfair) and comparatively bare level maps. The Special Stages, amazingly enough, are a treat - playable, functional, fair, and fun, four traits I'd given up trying to associate with the series. I actually got all 7 Emeralds, which I don't think I was planning to do. Also, I must admit that I'm rather fond of Blaze, if only for Nao Takamori's sultry voice. Unfortunately, I find it impossible to project my impure fantasies onto a cartoon cat.
MOVING RIGHT ALONG. Shadow the Hedgehog is, of course, abysmal, though not really for the reasons I was expecting. I somehow got the impression that it was just a generic Sonic game with bad level design and a glaring absence of aesthetic sense. I got two out of three, but it turns out that it isn't really a Sonic game at all - infact it's not much of a game at all, the structure is so loose that you're never quite sure what you're meant to be doing. When you do finish a stage, it's usually by accident. On the bright side, Senoue did a good job with the score and I derive a (shameful) satisfication from finally, 6 years after the fact, learning the truth behind the ARK fiasco. GUN's motives now make more sense than they ever really did in Sonic Adventure 2, but at the same time, the organization has kind of lost its mystique. It's a bit of a letdown to think that they've been the good guys all along.
Sonic Riders is the most roundly average of the recent crop in terms of quality - there is a steep learning curve and frustration factor is stratospheric, but if you can muster the zeal to sit around and play each stage 48 times in a row to eventually, by miraculous alignment of the stars, run 3 perfect laps, you might just be compelled to muscle your way through story mode. Course design is solid and there's a definite "just one more try" appeal, but I finally gave up in frustration trying to clear Wave's mission mode. (Speed can't drop below 140? Fuck off.) I like the Babylon Garden legend, but the bird rogues are entirely forgettable. Jet looks more like a parrot than a hawk...
I was vigorously appalled by the half-stage demo for Sonic '06, but only after sitting down with the game proper can I appreciate what a monumental trainwreck it really turned out to be. And the tragedy is that it didn't have to. Had someone shown me the design doc, like, maybe 3 or 4 months into development, I would likely have wet myself with glee. Nakamura's Sonic is mellow and smart, a welcome change from Iizuka's sugar-rush rockstar schtick, and closer, I think, to the original series aesthetic. Structurally, the game is most similar to Sonic Adventure 1, which was, for my money, the last "proper" Sonic before the series veered off on another tangent. Tragically (it just had to happen), the game is incomplete. Like, grotesquely so. Not just a general Adventure1-ish lack of polish, I mean this is very obviously half a game. Stages vary wildly in appearance - some, such as White Acropolis and Tropical Jungle, are highly generic with none of the visual uniqueness you expect of a Sonic game. Others, such as the forest adventure field, are barely Dreamcast quality. Niggling flaws such as load times and slowdown have no business in a game with this kind of budget - how can there even be slowdown on my cutting edge, $600, like, million-bit console? These machines are powerful enough to melt icecaps, you would have to make a concerted effort to program slowdown like this game has. The real final blow, however, is the shoddy control (or lack thereof). It actually feels slower than the Adventure games - like you're constantly fighting an invisible force pushing against your sprint - but steering is nonetheless more agonizingly rigid and hopelessly inaccurate than it ever has been. There are new peculiarities that make absolutely no sense (such as the loss of speed after each jump). Silver's game is a joke and a half (I may never play billiards again) and with the exception of Blaze, all the amigo characters are slow and crippled. I'm not even going to get started on the ill-conceived and incompetently executed "high speed" sequences.
So yeah, it's buggy, clumsy, and very blatantly rushed beyond the point of all good sense. Like walking into a beautiful house and discovering the inside walls haven't even been plastered. The game needed at least another year. As usual, however, the score is fantastic - epic even, and a welcome change from Senoue's guitar-heavy butt rock. Also, Eggman's new look rocks my universe.
I can't be bothered to think of a good closing paragraph, so here's a screenshot from some old MSX porno game:
ｷﾀ━━━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━━━ !!!!!
