I decided to trudge into a game I bought but haven’t played… I wanted something that felt very indie… so I went with Bastion.
But as it turned out it wasn’t as indie as it looked as it was published by Warner Brothers Studios… which means Warner Brothers officially owns all of the characters in this game… interesting.
The Brief: The Indie Craze
Somewhere after the release of the PS2 and the release of the Xbox the caliber of games severely decreased. Studios started focusing on creating lush and amazing graphics and moved away from inventing new gameplay to inventing new polygons.
It’s only in recent years that they have moved back to creating good games with new gameplay elements. It was an entire era where people like Peter Molyneux and Richard Garriot could go on a tirade about how bad video games were… and be right. Today these guys just sound like douchebags.
But during this odd era you saw endless numbers of sequels were shying people away from gaming… that is the hardcores.
As people with disposable income were jumping into MMORPGs with their subscription fees the large casual base was stuck with very crappy games.
The result was the beginning of development for indie games. When Xbox 360 introduced their indie arcade this allowed room for many indie developers to grow.
Xbox Indie Arcade was notorious for producing crap. But then there was a sudden rise in amazing platformer games. People were jumping into these games like crazy.
Whereas a standard game cost $60 and lasted about 10 hours, these cost about $15 and lasted 2 hours. The first of these was LIMBO a game about a child who is trying to survive limbo so that he could go to heaven.
The result of its success was endless retro feeling indie games. Studios were coming out of nowhere, tones of one and two-man teams. These studios were independent and had been working on these games for quite some time.
This indie trend largely died a little after the launch of Minecraft. The indie games coming out around Minecraft are largely the end of independent studios plopping up and creating games and supplanted by people putting games on Kickstarter in hopes of getting groundswell of support for their game.
Synopsis
Bastion follows the story of a boy who wakes up in a world in which no one is alive. It is narrated by Logan Cunningham who sounds like a badass old Texan (he’s actually a black man).
As the character does things Cunningham constantly narrates exactly what he is doing as he is doing it. It’s a design element in which after smashing so much with one weapon he will talk about that weapon.
As you go through the game you start finding and rescuing new characters. They go to a place called the bastion… as in the last bastion of humanity.
The goal is to get “cores” to this place in order to power it up so that humanity can survive.
As the hero goes around society he finds places are in very poor condition and finds very few survivors.
Instead he finds various gangs of monsters have inhabited the world.
To beat these monsters he has a variety of weapons. The game features two weapon’s slots with the choice of up to 12 different weapons. There is also a special attack slot that allows for a very powerful weapon with a consumable based attack.
Each weapon can be upgraded based on picking up items and a special currency. The special attack can also be selected from a group of items you pick up.
There is also an odd difficulty scaler. As you go through the game you can make enemies more powerful in exchange for more experience and more money. Money of course once again is used for upgrading things.
Experience is used for unlocking brews. These alcoholic concoctions don’t really do anything actively. Instead it is just a way of showing off passive stat increases or special attack bonuses.
I tried taking some screenshots of the game, but all of them ended up like this:
Just such an odd thing to happen.
The game is worth about 5 hours of gameplay if and only if you complete all of the challenges as well.
The side challenges are used to unlock rewards but represent some relatively hard things to do. I actually skipped these myself and knocked an hour off of the game, they simply did not interest me.
I think the problem to me is that the difficulty scaler ends up being kind of useless. If you increase the difficulty early on the later part of the game becomes jokably easy… unless you keep the scaler on.
If you don’t put the difficulty scaler on at all anywhere in the game it is still jokably easy.
I don’t mind difficulty being hard for being a challenge… but this game presents it in terms of earning rewards.
It’s not a large enough flaw to hate the game however. It is very well designed and at $15 regular price, being on sale is well worth buying.
I’d recommend this game full heartedly to anyone that is looking to burn a few hours.
When I was installing my new video card I forgot to install the drivers. Dumbly I deleted Steam and re-installed it thinking there was a problem… when in reality it was my drivers. So I was stuck dumbly re-installing all my games. I needed something to play for a day. I looked at my 8-Bit titles and found one called “Jamestown.”
You know, I don’t think I even paid for this game. At a normal price of $9.99 free was hard to turn down… in fact I couldn’t. This game was forced on me. On sale it generally goes for $2.
So let’s pretend this review is based around a $2 purchase.
The Brief: The Shooter
Today when you think of a shooter you think of a first person 3d shooter. It is weird to think that shooters at one time were divided into “top down” and “side scrolling.”
These days you might not even consider anything a shooter but a first person shooter. You don’t even mention that it’s “3d” these days.
But it is important to have some standards and identify shooter classifications.
Shooters come in two formats, 2D and 3D.
2D shooters are divided into side scrolling shooters and top down shooters.
Side scrolling shooters are those in which the screen moves from left to right and you aim at enemies while moving through platforms.
I shoot you with pine cones!
A top down shooter can come in many formats.
Any-direction shooters often involve moving around a map or a zone with fluidic control of which direction you are shooting.
Up facing top down shooters are those in which you can only go up and must hit targets while you are being forced in an upward direction. Jamestown is one of these.
The other type of top down shooter is one in which you are forced to go from left to right and much like the up facing top down shooter you must kill enemies.
When you get into 3d shooters there are two types.
The first type is the first person shooter in which the perspective is from the vision of a person.
The second type is third person shooter in which you can see who you are supposed to be but you are still in a 3-dimensional world.
Good, now we can move on.
Synopsis
The year is 1614 and it is the famous Battle of Jamestown. The British colonial powers are being invaded by the Spanish on all flanks and the British must reinforce their colonies to defend them.
You travel to the peaceful new world…. on Mars. War breaks out at Jamestown, Mars and you are forced into a (space) ship to do battle with the evil Martians and Spaniards who are assaulting Mars.
Through out the game there are visions of British and Spanish soldiers doing battle below you, all the while you are dealing with those pesky Martians.
The game has six levels total. These range in difficulty from Normal to Impossible.
The game has an odd progression style. Basically after beating the first three levels you have to do a higher level difficulty to unlock the next. After unlocking that one you have to finish all available missions on another harder difficulty. After defeating that one… same thing for next. As you progress you begin to lose difficulty ratings and you’re stuck with only the hardest modes possible.
OH GOD!!
The game is co-op which is a plus. There is no network connection… which is a negative. On PC you can have one person using a gamer pad (or 4) and one person using a keyboard and mouse. However being a loser who is used to network connections, I did not invite anyone over to play.
Before a level you can choose which ship you want to use. There are eight ships total, you start off with two. Each ship is unlocked by purchasing it with money, which is rewarded at the end of each mission.
Money can also be used to purchase an alternative story line and challenge modes.
Challenge modes offer moderate replay value. One challenge I ran into was “Survive 15 Seconds.” Well that doesn’t sound so hard… I thought. 2 seconds later… I’m dead.
Each ship comes with two weapons, the main firing weapon and a secondary feature. Having different ships is a welcome shift in this particular genre. Each ship has its strengths and weaknesses… which works really well with friends…. I wish I had friends.
A third option is to gain a super power, everyone gets the same one. After collecting so many coins you can use them to create a small weak shield and all of your abilities get increased damage… sounds like something useful for a boss. There is also an achievement for not using this at all.
Strengths
Addictive
Ship Selection
I found this game really hard to put down. I really felt like playing every single level and trying with every single ship just to see if I can hit up a high score. It is most definitely a casual game designed to jump in at any time.
I really enjoyed this ship with the giant red ball
The ship selection is a welcome twist to a familiar formula. In most of these games they are made super hard and you get your weapons as you are playing. In this one you get your weapons pre-emptively and you can play around with different styles per level. It also helps in team play with different people having different firing mechanisms, one guy can be a boss killer, one guy can have spread shot, and another can pad damage and get high points (like a boss).
Weaknesses
Poor XBLA Port
Forced Replay
I found throughout the game there were a lot of atrocious graphical errors. Sometimes I didn’t have a ship. Sometimes the boss was just a giant white thing. It kind of reminded me that this game was originally released on the Xbox Live Arcade and was not really a PC game.
This just doesn’t seem like an acceptable boss….
The feature I most hated about the game was how you were forced to replay older missions on harder difficulties in order to finish the game. Honestly, I was happy just trying to finish the game on Normal first and then going back over and doing it on the hardest difficulty. But no the game made me slowly progress my way up doing every single mission five times.
Concluding Thoughts
If you have to choose between an XBLA game and the PC one, choose XBLA. At the discount price of $2 it’s hard to be hard on this game. It has many shortcomings and will represent a solid three hours of play from you. Some of this is forced on you due to unlocking levels.
Honestly I wouldn’t buy it alone though. If it’s offered as part of a bundle of sorts it might be more worthwhile, but it’s honestly not even worth your time.
Some three years ago a game called LIMBO came out. LIMBO was so good that it started a rush in the industry to really pump out more and more indie games. LIMBO was made by 10 people total with a budget of under $200,000 and has since paid its weight in gold. The game regular sells at $10 and on sale goes for $5. So I’ll be looking over the game and at the end of this review I will give my buyer recommendation.
The Brief: What is Limbo?
In an attempt to bring the old world to the new world medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas coined the term “the underworld.”
Thomas Aquinas is the guy who comes up with all of those ridiculous questions like how many angels can stand on the tip of a pin?
Any people were really worried about the afterlife and worried that there were so many people who they felt did not deserve to go to the underworld and yet were going there.
Thomas Aquinas had an answer to this. You see the underworld is divided into four principle parts.
The first and most popular is Hell of the Damned (yes he invented hell). This is where the fallen lord Satan resides.
The other three parts of the underworld include Purgatory, Limbo of the Patriach and Limbo of the Infant.
Purgatory is this place where a person isn’t really that bad but committed a few minor sins. By minor I mean little things like white lies. If you confess these sins you can avoid purgatory but a lot of people despite living good lives go to purgatory as a sort of Heaven prep school.
Get paranoid because everything is a trap
So a lot of people liked this concept but they asked “what about the people before Jesus?” These people were stuck in the Limbo of the Patriach until Jesus was born and “set them free.” An alternative purpose of this Limbo of the Patriach is a place where non-Christians go and if they do not accept their sins and do not train as Christians they are stuck here for half of an eternity learning to become Christian. This interpretation was the first to be rejected.
A final part of the underworld Aquinas invents is the Limbo of the Infant. A lot of people were asking “what about unbaptized babies?” Well if a person is too young and is quite innocent they go to the Limbo of the infant. Here they are raised as Christians and constantly tested until they are ready for heaven.
This was the standard interpretation of the afterlife by the Christian faith until the early 1900s when Pope John-Paul 2 destroyed all non-Hell underworlds and kept a black and white interpretation that there is simply heaven and hell. Of course he also made it much easier for people to get into heaven.
Many faiths still believe in this break down of religion including the Mormons, Quakers, and most American protestant faiths.
Synopsis
So you are a child who has died in your previous life and are now in purgatory.
The game is a 2D side scroller that forces you to have precision control. If you do not hit every jump perfectly, you die. Death is probably one of the better parts of this game. Although it is cruel there is also something kind of cool about seeing a boy get impaled by a spear, chewed up by a spider, get smashed by a stomper, get caught in two cogs, drown, or get electrocuted.
The controls for the game are very simple but if you do not have a gamepad, don’t play. There are two buttons, drag and jump. You need these in order to solve the various puzzles you will encounter. The game features many dynamic elements that have interaction between static and non-static objects. You will many times have to even use physics to solve puzzles such as movement.
The game is very punishing if you do not have absolute perfection. If you are an inch off a jump or miss a timing by a split second… you die.
That’s alright because the game has a large number of checkpoints that happen every 10-15 seconds worth of play. The game is split into roughly 20 chapters as well so you can quickly go back and forth between favorite parts of the game.
Strengths
Cool Concept
Challenging Gameplay
Easy to Learn
When you look around you see a world that is aesthetically pleasing. Behind your little dude are some of the traps you just past, sometimes they are crushing other boys and other times they are just moving. There are tones of elements that make you go “what is that” as you explore this afterlife. The framework of the game is excellent and very fun. There are other games that have tried this theme, but none that have done it this well.
The fact that you are controlling a boy very much adds to the golden effect of the game. You feel sympathy for this poor boy who is forced to endure this and are inherently sad when he dies.
Watch out it's a mind slug
The gameplay is challenging which is good for the side scoller community which demands harder games. The difference is that this game is not frustratingly challenging. Although you will get upset when you die the checkpoints are done so well that you will just feel like you can crush through this easily.
As a final strength I will say the game is easy to learn. The game has a way of slowly introducing you to more and more elements until eventually you don’t even realize that’s an element, you just do it standard. You will start to realize over time that if you are spiraling down a hill you should be prepared to time a perfect jump.
Weaknesses
Low Bang for Your Buck
Too Short
No Story
The game is about 1 hour worth of gameplay total. It took me about 1.5 hours to finish the game. One hour worth of gameplay at $5 on sale and $10 full price makes it on sale the price of a full price movie and full price makes it the same value as bringing a girl out on a date to the movies. That’s a pretty terrible deal for a game.
Side scrollers are generally shorter but they have a lot of things to do that give them replay value like high scores, collectibles or non-linear levels. This game has none of it. It has one hour of 100%ing the game gameplay. If it had less linear gameplay you could play it multiple times. If it has levels and you could somehow get a high score you could compete with other people. If it had collectibles to unlock bonus features you might be tempted to run through and try and get all of the colelctibles.
Sitting under a ponder trap
But it has none of that, which makes it a very terrible value.
On top of that the game has no story. This is the mystique of the game and I get that. But some parts of the game just begged for a story. Early on in the game you run into a pack of kids who are trying to kill you. Why are they trying to kill you exactly? You start off at limbo and immediately decide to push forward. Why? Why does it matter that you continue on. It’s limbo, why not just continue dying for all eternity. Even the ending (which I will not spoil) is kind of odd and leaves a lot of eye brows up.
Concluding Thoughts
I know I’m going to get a lot of flack for this… but I just can’t recommend this game. It is just too damned short. As much as you may enjoy this game it will be a short experience. It is like going on a roller coaster at a theme park. Once the roller coaster stops you feel empty again… because it is over.
You might want to play the game because it is a cultural phenomena that was well received. But if you are looking to occupy your time with a game, this one just isn’t it. You can complete it in a single sitting (which I did) or stretch it over 2 minute play sessions.
There is just no way to really stretch it out. At the current pricing there are hundreds of games that will be just as fun but will give you far more play value.
When people bought Portal which had a similar price point single value it was not a question that it was worthwhile purchasing. This is because Portal was packaged in the Orange Box with a lot of other great games. When Steam put Portal on at $9.99 that was after the Orange Box and after people stated they wanted Portal specifically…. that and Portal gives you four hours of gameplay.
In the end there is no way to justify Limbo as a purchase. It just does not give you enough bang for your buck.
I should start off by saying, no I am not trolling you. No I am not just saying this to piss people off. I am saying right off of the bat as a clear opinion, Terraria sucks. Looking through Metacritic I see a lot of liars. Gamepro give this a 100%. Really? 100%? This game is the 100% experience for you? You feel that after playing this game you will not need to play another game for a year?
The only honest person to review this game is a user named Pandarve who gave this game a 0% and stated:
“Terraria allows you to do a lot of things but at the end of your gaming session, you’ll realize you have been doing absolutely nothing at all.…”
Honest and fluent, unlike the rest of these jackels who don’t want to be caught giving a game a bad review. IGN gave it a 90, PC Powerplay gave it a 90, Gamespot gave it a 90, Gametrailers gave it an 85… and got flack for it.
The problem is the game has way too many fans for people to be able to give unbiased opinions of the game.
So let’s get this thing started. This is a terrible game, this is what it needs to fix it.
Problem #1: Identity Crisis
The developers (bless their hearts) referred to this game as a 2D Minecraft. So every bloody website out there decided to call this game a 2D Minecraft.
This game is not Minecraft. It is nothing like Minecraft. It is more like a 2D Skyrim. How come people couldn’t call this game “A 2D Skyrim.” I’ll tell you why, because the developers saw how big Minecraft was doing as an indie game and wanted to cash in on their success by calling this a 2D Minecraft.
By making this sweeping proposition people who purchase this game are expecting the ability to create 2D designs. 2D designs is something that is in demand. While 3D designs will appeal to people who want to build model airplanes, a 2D model will appeal to the inner artist in you.
This game does not give you this option.
Instead you are forced to mine and gather resources so you can fight evil… kind of like SKYRIM.
But the problem here folks.
The problem here ladies.
The problem here gentleman.
The problem here zombies who show up at night.
The problem is that we already have a 3D Skyrim and there is no demand for a 2D one. If people wanted to play a 2D Skyrim they would play games made in the 1990s for free as abandonware.
They don’t want to market this game as a 2D side scroller because there are too many indie developers making 2d side scrollers.
It is really awkward and it is definitely not what it promises to be.
Problem #2: Weak Controls
In most 2D side scrollers you pick up your joypad and the experience is pleasant because you are using familiar side scrolling controls. The skill involved comes from how you perform jumps. They all fit well in the confines of a gaming controller. This game almost indefinitely requires a mouse and a keyboard. These make for some hella awkward controls.
So you aim with your mouse and you move with your keys. Kind of like oh I don’t know, Skyrim. This is fine in a 3d frontier because it is coming from a first person perspective. Even 3rd person shooters will actually aim from a first person perspective. I know it is unique and I’m supposed to respect it, but I can’t. It doesn’t making aiming hard it just makes it obnoxious.
As well you have to click to attack. This is a pretty poorly thought mechanic because I have to SPAM click to kill things. If it was just hold click that wouldn’t be so bad. But then if you had to hold your click moving the mouse to aim would be awkward. This is because you are aiming at a 360 degree of angles as opposed to 70 degrees in a shooter or 90 degrees in an RPG.
Just because something is ‘innovative’ does not inherently mean it is good.
I’m guessing some people are playing this game because it is different. These people are probably tired of the same games that come out every year. Do not get caught into this kind of life style or you will find yourself playing terrible games like this forever.
Problem #3: NOWHERE
For randomly generated worlds they feel remarkably the same. I played two separate instances of a world and I had the exact same zombies and eyeballs coming after me. If they were different wouldn’t you just have different night time enemies? Or maybe even oh I don’t know, make night time an option in the game.
For a world to be randomly generated you get three options, small, medium sized, and large. Who is going to choose small? For that matter who is going to choose medium? It is clear that everyone will chose large… so why have an option like this? They might as well just get rid of randomly small and medium worlds and make one that is introductory to the game. You know… AN INTRODUCTION like EVERY OTHER GAME HAS.
So when you enter the world you immediately find out there is nothing to do. There is some dude walking around who tells you a very brief and uninformative thing “OH YOU CAN BUILD STUFF.” Well thank you….
It’s kind of like an old Nintendo game, Dick Tracy. If you know what to do, the game plays pretty easily. But no one is going to tell you what to do (except Nintendo Power) so you have to figure it out on your own.
This game is designed for exploration and if you are willing to put in hundreds of hours of time to figuring stuff out, that’s fine. It’s just not a fun experience. Instead of being fun it ends up being a grind, kind of like an MMO.
The game needs somewhere to go. It needs a main adventure that introduces you to parts of the game. Instead you are simply lost without a direction to go. You can dig, you can craft, and you can kill monsters. How fun….
Why don’t I just play an MMO and just do no quests? It’s the same thing… except in 3D.
Problem #4: The Community
It may not entirely be the fault of the devs. They did describe it as a “2D Minecraft” but that is as far as it went. It was the community that hyped up this crappy game and made its expectations so high. It is after all a $10 game. But having said that I would expect something out of it comparable to other $10 games available in the Steam library.
I’m not talking about all the crap at the bottom of the barrel I’m talking about the good stuff. Serious Sam 2, $10. Shank 2, $10. LIMBO $10. Vice City $10. Counter-Strike $10.
This game does not have nearly the value of any of these games. It feels like the developers made a game and just didn’t complete it. Then they gave it to the community and the community told everyone to buy it. And I’m not talking about just anyone, I’m talking about YouTube, gaming websites, retailers, and bloggers. EVERYONE was recommending this game.
In the end the reason why this game just might be too terrible is because the gaming community made this game out to be more than it is. One person stated this game is worth $40-60 so $10 is a steal. No it’s not. It is a game BARELY worth $10 because it is barely a game.
If you find yourself wondering if you should buy this game, don’t. Go and buy Minecraft instead for $20.
I’ve been playing at this game since launch and finally I have finished the game with all side-levels done. So I can now officially give a valid opinion on the game.
Coincidentally it went on sale this week from Steam.
So before I start a little story.
When I was a kid I had a Nintendo. It was cool. But by the time I got a Nintendo, the Sega Genesis was already out. A few years later I would get the Super Nintendo… but the Sega was always cooler.
The cool factor came from one character, Sonic the Hedgehog. I never played many Sonic games.. as a matter of fact I have played one other than this and this is largely because Sonic was always Sega exclusive. Until now…
History of Sonic
Nintendo broke through the mold and created the first successful console with its hero at the front, Mario. The Mario branding gave Nintendo the power to sell millions of Nintendo consoles and in turn sell other games. The Mario franchise is by far the best selling franchise in entertainment with over 100 titles to his name.
Other console developers were having issues. Atari consoles were still around but the company that makes them was bankrupt. Other console developers made games that were Atari compatible so with the Atari crash went the crash of these systems.
Nintendo started a push to create unique mediums. Nintendo placed a Nintendo power chip in all of their games that would allow the cartridge to play on their console.
Sega, wanting to get into the console market would not be able to make a cheaper Nintendo and sell it. Instead they would have to create their own branding and their own games. Since Sega first pushed into the console market there has been a ‘race’ between console developers. In the mid 90s it is PSX and Nintendo 64. In the 2000s it is PS2 and Xbox. In recent years it is between the Wii and the Xbox 360.
Sega started a line of gaming feuds, and it did so with the SEGA GENESIS!
The Genesis, also known as the Sega Master System or The Mega Drive was slightly more powerful that Nintendo’s Entertainment System and would be more powerful that Nintendo’s Super Nintendo they would release to try and compete with.
But Sega was missing something.
A hero.
Sega wanted a Mario, a side scrolling adventure featuring a hero that would sell their systems. Bonuses were given for the best design. What was selected was a hedgehog who after development would get the name “Sonic” as in faster than light.
On debut Sonic would be faster than Mario, would take more skill than Mario and would be cooler than Mario. While Mario was this humble plumber, Sonic would have attitude. If you didn’t pause the game Sonic would actually just jump off the screen and the game would turn off.
Sonic is so popular that an animated character walks the Walk of Fame in Hollywood.
The Sonic franchise would continue at pace with the Mario franchise. When Mario Brothers 3 is released in the US it is met with Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
It is argued that Sonic the Hedgehog would be the only thing to sell any Sega consoles. Sega had a large number of flop consoles they tried to release on the market to compete with the Playstation and the Nintendo 64. The first attempt was the Sega CD attachment for the Genesis which came with Sonic CD. Available for CD was Sonic and Knuckles and Hedgehog 3.
When the Dreamcast was released it came with Labryinth. But also they would put out Sonic R, and Sonic Adventures.
The Dreamcast was a last straw for the Genesis console market… they could not compete. With Xbox coming out with a sleek green and black box they knew they had no place in this market. From here on out Sonic games would be developed for Nintendo systems releasing hit after hit after hit.
It’s not to say that Sonic has not had some abuse. There are tones of Sonic puzzle games, strategy games, racing games, and party games that just… suck.
Sonic would not have a single good game during this period. Every single game released for Nintendo was pure crap. People kept buying these games being left disappointed time after time.
People had lost faith in Sonic Team, a specialized division of Sega created after Sonic the Hedgehog’s first release to make only Sonic franchise games.
Sonic Generations was a huge project as Sega announced it would be available for Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo 3DS and Windows. It was initially announced as an “Anniversary” edition of Sonic Adventures but eventually the development moved around to make a far improved game.
Synopsis
This game offers two different games modes aptly called “Act 1″ and “Act 2.”
Act 1 is the traditional mode from the 80s. You play in a side scroller format. If you want to run fast you have to charge up your run and then go, just like in the original. The Sonic in this is distinguished by being younger. This is generally regarded as the easier mode of the game.
Act 2 is the newer “Sonic Adventures” style play. This is a combination of side scroller with 3D action. You are constantly twisted between 3D action and side scroller precision. This also offers you an instant speed mode called “Boost” and the ability to target things in mid air to immediately jump to next.
These two ‘modes’ offer the stories main arch involving a time destroyer capturing all of your friends and locking them in time. You have to join the Sonic of past with the Sonic of present to beat this menace.
Sonic comes with a huge cast of friends, 28 in total. That is 14 from the past and 14 from the future, of the same person. Each of these characters offers a different style of a race that usually involves interacting with them. The ninja Rouge for example will stop you from winning the race unless you can uncover his stealth and attack him.
In classic Sonic the score was tallied up based on ring collection and time. This game is entirely based on time with the coveted S ranking being the highest.
The game has no shortage of enemies, along with standard Egghead and some Dinosaur thing there is also the Doppleganger (yourself) and Shadow. Shadow the Hedgehog is Sonic’s ultimate enemy and to get to these races you will need to figure out minor puzzles.
The game has 90 missions total each on average 2 minutes long putting the average play length at 3 hours. Each area has two main missions (Act 1 and Act 2). Each time you complete a mission you will unlock access to a large number of side quests. After you beat side quests. One out of the side quests give you access to a key, the others give you access to unlockables.
Three keys unlock a boss battle. Boss battles are all different and all involve different mechanics that you have to learn on the spot.
The game also features an equip. This gives you the ability to choose powers that will help you in your levels. An example of this might be the Take two hits before dying perk.
Strengths
Fast paced
Non-linear side-scroller experience
Interesting twists on old formula
What do Sonic the Hedgehog and Neutrinos have in common? They both move faster than the speed of light. Just kidding neutrinos have been proven to be the same speed as light.
This game is fast. Maybe too fast for its own good. The game makes up for being too fast by giving you a lot of flashy indicators to tell you what to do ahead of time. If you don’t follow them and you don’t get around fast enough, you will lose. Everything about this game is based around speed. Even in the underwater levels you are forced to try and get out of water as fast as possible since you cannot hold your breath for very long.
This fast paced play leads to some amazingly fun play. You can be supersonicing your way through, fly off a ramp and in a split second you have to make the decision whether to jump again when you land, or blaze your way across. The game offers a rating system to encourage you to play better, something that few games have these days.
The levels are distinctively non-linear. In an average side scroller you go from point A to point B the exact same way every time. In this game you have 3-4 paths to get to the same place. In a 2 minute level there may be 42 permutations for how to beat it. The permutations that win are the ones that get the S rank at the end.
The permutations allow for a skillful player to navigate through the levels with quick reflexes to get that extra advantage. The newer less skilled players will run along the bottom and slowly learn and get better and hitting timings.
The best part of the game is all of the side missions you can do… this is also the bulk of the game. There are a tonne of modes in here. Most importantly is the companion missions. Compansions will either work with you or work against you. Some of these are actually REALLY hard to get an S rank with because you have to rely on the speed of your enemies.
I’ve beaten this game with all missions S rank putting in multiple attempts to beat the same level. Very few games challenge you to hit perfect like a Sonic title.
Weaknesses
Client crashes
Low content
No Multiplayer
After an hour of playing the game, my client crashed. This is a common problem that has not and will not be fixed.
The problem deals with the speed of the game. At certain points in certain levels there will be a FPS (frames per second) drop because the game engine cannot handle the effects it is making. If there are two of said effects in a row the game crashes.
Another major problem comes in with exactly how open the Sonic levels are. There are so many places you can get stuck in. Imagine you are running up a ramp and you are stuck running in place upside down. Yep, that happens occassionally.
The bugs do not break the game completely and are merely nuisances.
The game also does not have a lot of content. It is a game that you playthrough once in 3 hours and that is it. The ‘challenges’ are what you would normally just call Levels in any other game. Unfortunately it only has about 20 missions that are connected to the main story that you have to do which accounts for maybe 50 minutes of play. This means you can finish this game in 50 minutes. That other 2 hours is the ‘bonus content.’
How many games can you think of that ship with one hour of play?
The other problem is that there is no multiplayer. The game supports a doppleganger mode which allows for two shadows to exist in a level as well as the option to switch between two characters. Yet it has still not managed to find a way to make a multiplayer experience where two friends can play a mission together or compete with each other directly using attacks and level elements to strike your opponent down.
Concluding Thoughts
When people picked up this game they all screamed “holy crap a good Sonic game.” Not only did they say that, but they also (sometimes) were happy they had picked up a good Sonic PC game. Rarely do games from consoles play well on PC, but this one did.
The game currently goes for $29.99 for roughly 3 hours of play. If you have played Sonic games in the past you should pick this up if you enjoyed them. The fast action packed gameplay has me yelling WAHOO and COME ON! If you are new to the franchise you will get a far better bang for your buck.
If you were fortunate to hit this up during the sale consider yourself lucky, Sonic Generations is a smash hit worth picking up at 50% off.
My only concern is you will need a gamepad for this game, otherwise it is pretty horrible to play. So if you have a gamepad, definitely pick this baby up.
