Sonic The Hedgehog 2

Continuing with the blue speed freak, I'm taking a look back at Sonic 2 on the Megadrive (ergh... Genesis...)

Admittedly it's hard to be objectively focused on a single game when it's part of a series, that you know it's part of a series and that as the games continue, you realise there are bonuses and deficits that need to be addressed. But here goes for looking at Sonic The Hedgehog 2.

I could in theory just copy and paste most of what I wrote in my previous review as the plot seems to be largely unchanged. You're in control of the eponymous character as you jump, spin, roll, dash and generally do everything you can to get through the level quickly and avoid looking at most of it in the usual speed-thrill (allegedly) method possible then fight a boss on the 2nd level (except in that one zone) and trying to collect different secret gems and emeralds (only one of which is green) in order to stop the last boss from basically, bossing it up and being a shitbag.

And yes, you do most of this by running right.

There are differences from the first game, as one would hope, and I'll list them anyway.

First and foremost, the world’s most annoying contribution to cartoon characters and the furry fandom since Robin Hood in Disney's, Robin Hood. A fox creature with 2 tails that will follow and chase after sonic through the entire game (save for the last few levels). If you manage to out run him or get past various barriers that Tails doesn't, he'll catch up by flying back in and then continuing to run with you. Some find this fun, some make it more fun by plugging in a second controller and letting another player effectively control what is an indestructible character that doesn't affect Sonic upon dying as he just flies back in again. However there are downsides, in some attacks, you'll jump to hit a boss, Tails will jump as well. If you miss and Tails hits, the boss becomes invincible for the duration of the hit impact and if you try to hit again, you'll go through them and likely into something you didn't want to. Like the bottom of the screen.

So yes, sometimes more a hindrance than a help.

During the game you can collect various power ups and such a set of 10 rings, invincibility for a short time from enemies, spikes (thankfully this time) but still not being crushed or falling off the game screen at the bottom, speed shoes for fast running once again, extra lives (doubt you'll need them in THIS game) and the shield that lets you tank an extra hit before losing your rings and lives. There's nothing new here from the original game at this point, but more about that later.

As you progress through the levels you'll encounter a multitude of different enemies, of which there is a greater range and variation between enemies than found in the first game (and the very first enemy in the game usually can kill an unwary/impatient player as they'll likely have no rings). Due to the decreased number of standard level endings (i.e. 1 level then a boss level, instead of 2 levels then a boss level) the game allows for opportunities to win the chaos emeralds whenever the player passes a checkpoint with 50 or more rings. This opens a warp that takes the game entirely in a different direction.

Impressive for the time, the game becomes a sort of 3rd person runner down a pseudo-3D track/half-pipe. In which the player can run around the edges of the tube and try to collect rings as they travel down the track while avoiding bombs that make the player drop several rings (this includes tails as well). At each check point you have to collecting a pre-requisite number of rings to stay in the special stage until you get the chaos emerald, which IF you've collected enough rings for THAT, will be gained and won over.

This 2nd game takes the cake a little further by giving a bonus to players that collect all 7 emeralds (seriously, only one of them is actually emerald coloured, they're fucking GEMS! I'm blaming a translation error on this) then collects 50 coins and jumps, they turn into Super Sonic, which for all intents and purposes might as well have just escaped from a crossover between Sonic and Dragon Ball Z. He turns bigger, turns yellow and moves faster, jumps higher and is invincible to everything save for crushing and falling off the game. While in his Super form, he drains rings from his collection and upon hitting zero rings, transforms back to the usual blue form of being comparatively shit.

This does have downsides as there are a few traps in the game that if you land in them as Super Sonic, you'll have to wait until your rings run down before you can be spiked-pitted to death. NOT a good way to spend time when you're at 150+ rings and watching Mr Needlemouse (Did you look this up yet? I told you to last review) ebb his life away until the slow drawn out death march comes to a halt and the spikes end his prevented existence.

Which is a real fucker of a situation and mood killer to the point of just hitting reset and saying "Bollocks to this, I'm going outside... in the rain... and lightning... with a large metal rod" (do it kids!) To say it's an issue that likely wasn't accounted for is an understatement in parallel getting run over repeatedly and having some twat come up and ask "ooh are you ok?" when it's very clearly obvious that you are NOT.

There are however some improvements over the original. For instance the programmers made an adjustment to the mechanics of the game that means you need not worry about not being able to get up a ramp/slope because you now can use the famous spin-dash move which lets you stay stationary while building up potential energy by spinning on the spot and then unleashing that into a kinetic force propelling oneself forwards in the desired direction at higher speeds. It completely negates the issue in the first game with people unable to walk up small ramps to continue the game. It does however make it far more likely you'll fuck up along the way and get yourself killed, or run the risk of the game moving too slowly and you get stuck in a wall.

But it's not all improvements; the bosses are risibly easy to the point of being virtually no challenge at all, save for the fight against robot/metal sonic and then the very last fight. But those with a keen eye for pattern recognition would kill the first final boss in about 10 seconds and the second boss in about 45 seconds. This game is a LOT easier than the original game with people back in the day posting times of around 2 hours to beat it having just bought the game.

The levels are a lot more open and complicated than the original game with more routes being accessible and the potential for getting all of the chaos emeralds far more quickly than in the original game. The added incentive helps in that you actually get rewarded for it in the gameplay let alone just the ending though the extra will NOT help you in the final level as it takes so long to progress there that you'll start the fight with no rings at all and in truth you're betting off fighting the boss without going Super just so that you have more rings in the final level, until you die and start over with SFA (Sweet Fuck All for the unsure).

The game doesn't stop there though, for those that wondered if the inclusion of Tails was just a one-trick pony, they're right, he is. But at the same time he's also part of the new multiplayer part of the game. A split screen (for the most part) race through several zones where players can hit various power ups and be rewarded with the usual prizes or the bonus ones exclusive to multiplayer that lets you swap positions or just cause you to be hurt. While racing to get to the end and then being assessed on how well you did with regards to time, rings, boxes, etc.

The largest issue with the split-screen is that it's hard to see what the hell is going on and usually is the cause for making wrong moves. However there is the bonus stage that can be used as a contest with both players running down the route of the half-pipe/tunnel trying to get in front so they can get the rings while avoiding bombs. It can make for a fast paced and frantic session of gaming but usually is just annoying more than anything else with players playing a very aggressive game of leap frog and in doing so, collect nothing at all.

As a game it's a vast improvement upon the original and as a stand-alone game, would have made for a far greater and better impression and impact on the gaming world if this had been the first game and the first game had been entirely dismissed. As it stands, it's a vast improvement and worth playing through to see the more recognisable and humble origins of Speedy-McBlueRat.

Sonic The Hedgehog

Sonic.

It's a name nowadays that conjures up mixed feelings and emotions, all depending upon how old someone is and how well versed they are with the long series of games this little blue mammal. If you take a look at the more recent games, some will say that there's been relative success in capturing the fun back into the games with titles such as Sonic Unleashed and Sonic 4, though this is a point of contention amongst the extremely jaded and divided fan-base.

With which, I entirely sympathise. A series they've grown to love over the decades is being systematically fucked up beyond all recognition (yes, FUBAR'd) by rushed deadlines, cut corners and lack of decent quality control and testing which is being acted upon in post-development. Seems a lot of games have that little issue, they're tested and found to have faults but nobody is rectifying this stuff as it's the bottom dollar the company bigwigs are really interested in. But I'm not going down that particular route today.

I could go on about whether or not the Sonic games for Dreamcast and GameCube were any good or not, I may even review them at a later date. But for now we're going back to the Megadrive (...Genesis) and looking at the first outing by our 23 year old cerulean spiked one. (and let's get the giggles out of the system now before I start to mention Blast Processing... who the hell came up with that one needs to be given an award for having the balls to make that up then shot for being a prick)

Mr Needlemouse (look it up), lives in a wonderfully designed and colourful world where naturally growing and occurring loops, spins and corkscrews are common everyday happen place events. In this saccharine world however, is a royally fat-fuck asshat called Dr Robotnik (No, not Eggman, we don't talk about that in this game and that term wasn't coined for many a year) who was formerly Dr Ivo Kintobor and in some instances of back-story, helped Sonic to develop his speed and blueness through experimentation of a friendly sort. See kids, animal testing can be a positive thing! (This reviewer does not condone animal testing of any kind, except testing how many government politicians it takes to slake a carnivorous animal of its bloodlust)

The mean old naughty bad-man, Dr Robotnik, decided it would be a good idea to turn all the cute little animals in the land into robots. He also decided he'd take the Chaos Emeralds (of which just ONE is actually emerald coloured, must be some genetic testing by-product thing) so he can do more naughty things. Cue our cobalt coloured hero deciding that after many MANY robots have been made, that this cannot be allowed to continue and our journey begins in the first level where we, as players, basically run right. There may be some jumping and rolling at times, the occasional boss every 3rd stage of a level and a few bonus levels if you're great at collecting coins... I mean rings.

That's the game in a shell of nuts.

There's a lot to be said in the game for the fast flowing pace of the main character gradually building up speed, pressing down to roll and then sending our azure ball of spikes racing through ramps, loop-de-loops and soaring sky high on springs and bouncing things. The game belts along at an almost breathtaking pace that eventually becomes a test of "how fast can the game scroll through its own levels" rather than actually playing the game. Occasionally you may have to WALK somewhere back and forth and in some of the levels there's a considerably slower pace being forced upon the player with the whole "jumping onto platforms and being slowly, SLOWLY, moved across lava safely". Although, with this being the first game, there's some leeway in arguing that the designers may not have been sure as to what kind of game they were producing at this point.

Because this is the first game, there's no spin-dash move. That wonderfully typical, nay, ESSENTIAL technique in the second game onwards that allows you to build up speed while being motionless before racing off going from 0-60mph before you can say internal-organ-rupturing. So when you're faced with a ramp leading upwards and you're not going fast enough to clear it, you'll have to run back and try again with more momentum built up so that you can clear the ramp. It becomes a rather annoying point when you especially lack the speed and jumping height to simply hop over the ramp and instead start bouncing back and forth like a bus full of kids after all the passengers were given energy drinks for breakfast.

You still get the pre-requisite power-ups though. A shield to help you tank a hit of damage, any and every ring you pick up will allow you to take a hit of damage and drop all the rings, so having one ring at any time will save you from death unless that death is being crushed, landing on spikes and bouncing onto MORE spikes (mercy invincibility does NOT work on spikes) or falling off the bottom of the level, will kill you outright. Speedy shoes for moving EVEN faster and seeing even less of the level while you race through it quicker than Jessie Owen doing a victory lap through Berlin. Other power ups include extra lives and more rings as well as the invincibility effect that negates spikes but not being crushed or falling off the game.

Getting to the end of a level with more than 50 rings gives you the opportunity (unless there's a boss) to jump up into the giant ring, which will magically take you to a bonus round. Where you get the opportunity to navigate as a jumping ball through a constantly rotating maze with psychedelic backgrounds and hopefully attain either enough rings to achieve a continue, or get the Chaos Emerald hidden within the core of the level, before being dropped out by hitting a "goal" icon. Getting all of them nets you the lovely "good ending" where you make the science fat man cry and your character does something mildly impressive; walking left for a bit by himself.

Each level in the game usually has multiple ways of getting through the level, taking higher or lower routes depending upon how quickly you can leap up to various heights and land on outcrops rather than not, each route having its own share of tricks and traps to navigate while fighting off various enemies (there's usually 2-3 types of enemy per level) and the bosses which have a small level of ingenuity behind them not seen until the 3rd game and cross over with Sonic/Knuckles cart. Hit the boss 8 times to win, and then free all the collected furry friends from the large metal ball.

Variety between levels is diverse, but with this comes a lack of cohesion. One level has you running through the lush green (and mathematically formulaic) setting of the Green Hill zone, before turning up to lava and underground purples of Marble Hill with no real indication of whether it's simply a few steps away or there's been a long travel from one to the other filled with multiple hardships and angst on the part of our main character overcoming his doubt and self-loathing to see his way through towards taking up the responsibility of defending the land in which he inhabits.

No, you just turn up.

I've deliberately ignored one aspect of this game until now. Take the game as it is, bright, colourful, full of fluid motion and fast game play (when you get a decent run up) and then go a little further into the wonderful land of Labyrinth Zone. And already I can hear some people reading this and groaning in the dawning realisation of where I'm going with this. It's a simple enough set of levels where you'll face off against a few enemies which pose little threat but then the big threat is the water. Sonic can drown here and you'll get a few light warnings to escape. When there's about 15 seconds to go you'll be treated to some of the most harrowing, terrifying and rather upsetting music akin to a sped up and high-octane version of Jaws, before the music stops and Sonic just drowns. Complete with count-down timer, which all induces high panic levels and lack of co-ordination until you get yourself to an air bubble, or jump back out of the water.

Allow me to reintroduce you to your own nightmares http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yw5jkAHgME with thanks to YouTube for hosting.

Now that I've ripped apart enough of people's childhood memories or introduced some people to a few new ones, I'll take my leave by departing with this little snippet. The game is not great, it never was. It served a purpose as a launch pad of mediocrity against poor competition and won many over with its speed and sacrificed actual game play mechanics to do it, repeated in later instalments with less control and more autonomy from the game. Given this game is missing some of the much needed improvements implemented in Sonic 2 and Sonic 3, there's little to be said for this one save that it served a purpose, started something reasonably impressive but failed to deliver even back in the day. If you've never played it before, don't. If you have, go back and see just how far we've come by comparing it to Sonic 3 and/or Sonic and Knuckles and be thankful that someone decided to make the changes the first game needed.