Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Impressions from E3

There wasn’t a single game in my youth that commanded my attention like Sonic the Hedgehog did. I put more hours into the four titles on the Genesis than all other games combined. I collected the comic books, watched the TV series, bought the action figures—I loved the franchise. It was an absolute tragedy to me to grow up and see Sonic Team release terrible game after terrible game featuring the blue blur. I have wanted nothing more than for SEGA to reboot Sonic the Hedgehog and let me forget the the last 16 years of garbage ever happened. Fortunately for me, SEGA finally heeded the call, and I was finally able to get a taste of the true successor to Sonic 3 at SEGA’s E3 booth.

I’m going to get right to it and say it: Sonic 4 does not suck. The build that I played is definitely a work in progress, but the game is not going to continue the trend of abominable gameplay and design. The game is fast, simple, and classic. Funny enough, the secret to its success is one that SEGA perfected back in 1994.

The gameplay feels completely natural. As I began to play, I knew exactly what I was capable of, how fast I could go, and how to reach certain areas. The familiar style that I had grown to love in my childhood was completely intact, and the way I played Sonic 4 on my first try was the same way I would play Sonic 3 on my 100th playthrough. SEGA has nailed the gameplay design, and I am happy to say that Sonic 4 plays exactly as it should—as a classic Sonic game.

That being said, the sense of speed in Sonic 4 isn’t quite as absurd as it had become by Sonic and Knuckles. We were assured at the booth that Sonic’s speed is still being tweaked and that it will be boosted before released, however. Sonic is in good, attentive hands.

In Sonic the Hedgehog, stages were very brief and over before you knew it. By the time Sonic and Knuckles came out, each act was so long that racing against the 10 minute time limit finally became a factor. The length of the acts in Sonic 4 seemed to be about the length of those found in Sonic 2. It is a comfortable median length between the two extremes.

I literally teared up while playing, this is the game we've been waiting for

The stages themselves offer much from the design of the original styles. As you speed through them, you will see optional paths and hard to reach secrets in all directions, just begging you to slow down and explore. Discovery by both intention and mistake was a huge part of the gameplay in the original games, and it procures a certain sense of excitement as you find more in the acts as you re-play the game. Sonic 4 captures this sense of excitement, and allows the player to play the act as they wish, rather than sticking them on a rail in the way the 3D titles required.

On the subject of the acts, Sonic 4 approaches the full game in a way that is quite different than the originals. In Sonic 1 and 2, the player had to progress through the entire game from start to finish. If you died, you would start over from the beginning. Sonic 3 introduced a save system that not only let players record their progress, but it also enabled a stage select for the stages completed at the point of the save. Sonic 4 actually lets the player choose any act of any stage right from the beginning. You don’t have to play the game in order—you can start where you want. It is an interesting design choice, but when you consider the effort needed for collecting all of the chaos emeralds to obtain the true ending, being able to attack it from any angle becomes an advantage.

A big part that has been missing from the recent Sonic titles is appropriate music. They have all featured grunge songs with awkward lyrics. Knowing the legacy of the music on the original Sonic games, these new games had a sense of identity crisis thanks to the poor choice in music. Despite the noise on the busy show floor, I did find the music in Sonic 4 to be fantastic. It has an excellent retro feel as if it was actually designed for playback on the Genesis. No more guitar solos and whiny voices, this was real Sonic music.

I did experience a few issues with Sonic 4. The one thing that struck me immediately was Sonic’s animations. Sonic 4 is a 2.5D game—it plays like a side scroller while the world is presented in 3D. Sonic’s 3D model looks fantastic, but his animations looked a little bizarre to me. Transitions between animation types looked weird and rigid—Sonic’s feet always seems to slide on the ground rather that grip it, and other various details felt off to me. Perhaps its just the nature of a game like this in 3D, or perhaps I’m just a nit-picking animation nut. The animations were hardly distracting though, and it certainly isn’t a deal breaker, but it would be nice to see a little more polish in the animations before release.

Another problem is the addition of a new feature that debuted in Sonic Adventure. Because of the difficulty of navigating Sonic in open 3D worlds, the game featured a “homing attack” that would guide sonic to a target, represented by a flashing reticule, and execute a perfect hit. This move has been included with Sonic 4, and I found it to be frustrating because of the side scrolling nature of the game. It took much of the skill out of navigation and attacking. For instance, when you come barreling out of a loop and find yourself face to face with a deadly enemy, you’re forced to make a split second decision on how to survive. With the homing attack, as long as you press the jump button, you’ll destroy the enemy and continue moving. It does lend to the overall speed of the game, but I felt that it made much of the gameplay too easy for those who have quick enough reactions.

The few noticeable issues in Sonic 4 are really too small to matter when you consider the 16 years of pure garbage we’ve had to deal with. Even so, Sonic 4 is a game for Sonic fans, by Sonic fans. The team is working diligently to make sure that the gaming world gets the classic Sonic game it deserves. I was very pleased with what I played at E3, and there is no question in my mind that Sonic is back. It is the rebirth of one of gaming’s most important franchises. It’s about time.