If absence makes the heart grow fonder, then dragging Sonic back through the time-stream is like sticking a steak through mine.
Sonic the Hedgehog 4 – Episode 1 is the first true Sonic game in over a decade. The last one being Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (and Knuckles) for the Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis for you Americans). More recently, Sonic Adventures has been released on XBLA, although it is not necessarily related to this review. This new game shows a return to the standard 2D style of Sonic games that we all know and love. Sonic the Hedgehog started life in 1991 on the Master System and Game Gear and spiralled quickly into video game legend along with Mario, his Nintendo counterpart. It was this early game that got me hooked on video games for life. I spent many hours in front of that TV screen, perfecting speed runs, defeating Dr. Robotnik (as he was affectionately known as back then), and just getting as much as I could out of a game that I cherished so much.
Sonic shows his age in the newest rev of the series - his bones creak with each movement, his lower back his given way, he's probably even operating on a few hip replacements. The very heart of Sonic, what we refer to as the 'flow,' has been ripped out and replaced by lesser elements of gaming. You'll get to the point where you don't even need to look at the screen to know that you're playing the game right, the distinctive sound of rings being collected will be enough to know that you are on the right track. And that's not a bad thing by any means, the main point of Sonic as a character is his speed. This meant that the levels had to be designed in such a way that they were nice to look at (as nice as they could be on an 8-bit machine, anyway), as well as being simple enough to be completed accurately at great speed. This was something that they got down to a fine art back in the early 90's. I'm talking about a time when you chose either Sonic OR Mario to follow, never could it have been both. Whoever you chose at that early age would stick with you for life, and it determined whether you grew up loving the Sega games or Nintendo's equivalent. I'm proud to say I was a Sega fanboy, and probably will continue in my outright worship of their brand for the rest of my life. When I heard that Sega was planning on releasing Sonic the Hedgehog 4 – Episode 1, a direct sequel to 1994's Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (and Knuckles), I was a little more than excited. I had to play it! Nevertheless, I had to wait just like everybody else. Alas, one day - one glorious day (I would have said sunny, but I live in England so we all know that I'd have been lying), Sonic 4 arrived. The reckoning had begun.
The graphics are ten times superior to the 90's predecessor, albeit still not necessarily worthy of bragging. It seems that a lesser portion of the development time was dedicated to the graphical power of the engine, simply because, in order to surpass the previous milestone, a Crysis Sonic wasn't necessary. I'm glad that's not what they created. It's true that graphics make the world go 'round nowadays; the games with better graphics generally have better sales, but the people that are excited about a new Sonic game are people that don't put too much emphasis on the graphical nature of a game. That's right, we come from a time when it visuals barely mattered: we were looking at a character made up of about 30 pixels at the most, so in most cases it COULDN'T matter. These limitations have long since been blown away, though. The Dimps/Sonic Team combo needed to spend time on making sure the fans got the Sonic gameplay they all remembered - no easy task when faced with emotions as towering as nostalgia.
Core gameplay has varied little over the years, and continues to accentuate speed over all else. You're tasked with collecting rings by travelling from left-to-right en route to the finish. Completing a few levels in sequence inevitably results in some sort of boss fight. Defeat the boss, rinse, repeat. The story is lacking in every sense of the word, and while a story wasn't something that I expected to be amazing when I was five years old and playing the original game, we're now living in a world where a game's success or failure is determined, at least in a small part, by its story. I expected something a little more than “collect these items because we said you need to.” Naturally, the story revolves around Sonic stopping Dr. Robotnik (I still refuse to call him Eggman, no matter how many of you complain about it) from collecting all the Chaos Emeralds by setting out to collect them first. Yes, it's a story, but it's the same story as every single Sonic game ever released. Some originality after over 20 years would be nice. Sonic the Hedgehog 4 – Episode 1 is no different from this classic style of gameplay, and it does well not to stray far from that line etched so many years ago. It was this line that Sonic fans have been searching for. It was hidden well under the many iterations of previous Sonic games such as the 3D era, the Sonic racing games and the Sonic and Mario crossover games, but it was there to find. And find it they did. The only trouble is that they found it about 10 years too late.
The gameplay here is exactly the same as those Sonic games we all grew up loving; I was loving the nostalgia for about the first 20 minutes before assuming that my gaming tastes had moved on... until I realized what was missing: flow. The “flow” I was talking about earlier had been replaced with a shoddy attempt at making stuff look pretty, and was irrevocably deteriorated by giving the player the option of alternate paths to follow. Multiple paths in a speed-based game derail any natural interpretation of which direction you are supposed to go. I found myself slightly confused as to which path I needed to take, occasionally stopping to check out my options. The forked paths break the stream of speed and dampen overall enjoyment. If it were 1996 again, I might have played Sonic the Hedgehog 4 – Episode 1 until the icons rubbed off of my controller. I would have played it morning, noon, and night - every chance I got. As it stands now, Sonic 4 is nothing more than a shadow cast by the gaming colossus that stood before each of us in those early days. The colossus deserves our utmost respect and gratitude for what it was and what it gave, but it needs to be left in the past. It doesn't belong in our world anymore, just as the Transformers will hold a dear place in my heart, so will Sonic. The Sonic of the 90's.