Sonic The Hedgehog 4

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I use a set of polyhedral DnD dice to determine which game I’m going to play next. I guess today they just knew.

It’s baaaaaad. It’s bad. Sonic somehow manages to have both far too much momentum and also absolutely no momentum at all. Press the direction button right and Sonic will blast off at the speed of nothing, taking about three years to accelerate to his full speed, and then with a single jump his horizontal movement will be immediately reduced to zero and he’ll uselessly fly straight up and then land completely stationary. It’s horrendous, and completely baffling how they managed to suck all the sense of speed out of a game series about going fast.

The worst culprit is the homing attack, ported over from the Adventure games, which (true to form) only works half of the time- and when it does, you again lose all speed you might have developed, popping directly upwards into the air. You can chain these attacks together to work your way through a series of enemies, but the same thing happens each time, and there’s about a second’s-worth of recovery time before you can input the next one. It doesn’t sound like a huge deal, but these vacuums of pace and intensity in a game like this feel expansive and bring the entire sense of rush and reaction to a halt.

Fin or Bin:

They had the sheer audacity to split this title into two games, despite looking and playing like a fairly-competent fanmade game from 2005. Part 1′s going in the Bin, and I don’t see much value keeping Part 2 on my backlog either. Two-fer!

(Steam)

Sonic And SEGA All-Stars Racing

This is the Steam version, since apparently no two releases are quite alike. This is also the first game in the series, and not the sequel Sonic etc Racing Transformed, which I actually consider to be the best of the mascot racers (even including the one which immediately springs to mind).

So, it’s Mario Kart but SEGA, right? More or less. I’m petty sure I’ve done this game a disservice by playing the utterly fantastic sequel first, because it feels very light in content in comparison and it all feels a little cheaply put together. It’s still a fine game, but compared to its successor, ‘fine’ doesn’t cut it. Transformed is packed to the rafters with fandom nods and extra content, while this one’s very barebones.

Fin or Bin:

I was tempted to finish the Missions mode, which gives you little extra challenges to complete besides racing… but then half of those turned out just to be races anyway, and that got dull fast. Much the same way you probably won’t go back to play Mario Kart Wii once you have Mario Kart 8, do yourself a favour and grab the exemplary Sonic Racing Transformed, and Bin this one.