Sonic Team has let their iconic blue mammal fall by the wayside in terms of quality over the last few years, pretty much for as long as games have gone into the third dimension. They’re hoping to rejuvenate the series with the simply titled Sonic the Hedgehog for the PS3 and Xbox 360, hoping that an increased emphasis on speed will bring the series back to its roots.
The playable build at E3 2006 shows that Sonic Team has been putting a lot of work into this game, more so than the latest game in the Hedgehog linage, Shadow the Hedgehog. However, not all that much has changed when comparing it to the original Sonic Adventure. In open areas Sonic speeds along narrow paths collecting rings and jumping chasms. It’s in these areas the game seems to shine, as it feels the most like the original Genesis games has felt since, well, the original Genesis games.
Unfortunately, when it comes to combat this game follows the same formula it did in all previous 3D Sonic titles. Jumping in the air will allow the player to press the button again and perform a homing attack. This attack will damage, and sometimes kill enemies and break boxes, but it sends the camera into a tizzy. Players can click in the Right stick to center the camera, which is a more than welcome addition missing from previous games, but it’s still extremely disorienting.
It’s harder to send Sonic off a ledge, as the game has sort of a resistance force along edges and cliffs, but if you miss a homing jump you can’t help but curse the crazy camera the whole way down; something we’ve been doing since the days of the Dreamcast, and it’s something that desperately needs to change.
Another problem this game has is with the inclusion of its second playable character, Silver the Hedgehog. No, I’m not making this up, there really is another hedgehog of questionable alignment, and he is named in an extremely obvious way. Silver, who is the same color as his name, is outfitted with psychic powers. Instead of speedy levels that take advantage of Sonic’s heritage, something the developers said they wanted to concentrate on, the game takes on a slower pace, and all of the old problems seem to rear their ugly heads when it does so.
Since Silver has a more combat-centric gameplay style, the gameplay slows down considerably. If combat was handled decently it wouldn’t be an issue, but it’s clunky and confusing. Holding R picks up items, and supposedly pressing X will hurl them towards enemies. Unfortunately it never seemed to work out that way.
Silver can also float for a short period of time, similar to Princess Peach in most Super Mario titles, but the camera switches angles sometimes in mid-air resulting in frustrating deaths since the controls don’t compensate for the shift in view. The Silver levels could play decently if the camera was spruced up and combat was tightened, but given this series’ history for fixing problems, I wouldn’t count on it.
Graphically it’s obvious that Sonic Team is working with a whole new bag of tricks; a definite step up from the dated Dreamcast engines they’ve been putting games out on for the last few years. Character models have a nice look to them with what seems to be a high level of polygons, and the lighting is simply superb. Fictional blue hedgehogs have never looked this good, and it’s good to see Sonic Team putting some effort forth for once.
While the level was laid out almost exactly the way a Sonic Adventure level would have been, the increased emphasis on speed in the Sonic levels and lack of combat made this game feel a lot smoother when compared to it’s forefathers. Unfortunately, things aren’t as stellar in the Silver levels; here’s hoping for the best. While it’s not offering a completely new experience and several details have been corrected, fans of the series should be pleased that at least some progress is occurring with Sonic the Hedgehog, even if a few things are staying the same.
