Memoirs of a technicolour furball.

Alternatively titled: Sonic chronicles: First impressions.

Well, talk about a game with a duality complex. Two different sorts of fans are gonna see two very different games with this one.

• Bioware fans will see a VERY mediocre Bioware game, and commence weeping.
• Sonic fans will see the best Sonic game in nearly ten years, and commence throwing huge parties.

Let me tell you about my experience with the game so far. We won’t go into what I’m playing it on or how I’m playing it, because as long as I say nothing more specific, I haven’t fatally implicated myself yet.

All you need to know is the game has 20 chapters… And I’m on chapter 2. So, Let’s break this down in a system where my thoughts aren’t gonna be helter-skelter everywhere, thereby confusing even me as I think ‘Wait a tick, didn’t I mention that already?’.

Visuals:

Oh. My. God. I may have stumbled in to heaven. Bioware, if anything, are extremely good at taking peices of an otherwise fragmented and canon questioned franchise and meshing everything together so it works with just enough little references and straight up ‘Hey, remember…’ to tickle even the most jaded fan’s happy nerve. I’m happy to report they’ve delivered again, managing to translate a few classic Sonic environments into a glorious 2D painted style of map that smells of some holy hybrid between Sonic The Comic, Archie, and the games. Hell, in the VERY beginning of the game you’re plopped right down in Green Hill Zone, at which point Tails and Sonic even have a breif dialogue talking about the first Sonic game.

However, I digress, I’ll get to how the characters interact. How about the characters themselves? Well, I can’t say much seeing as they’re about the size of my fingernail when at their largest, and about as big as a piece of rice crispies I ate earlier otherwise. However, thus far, everything seems very well intact, no Riders style crazy redisigns, and the character portraits in dialogue sequences feel like a nice mix of Sonic X and Sonic Adventure, the latter greatly redeeming the former. Good on ya, Bioware.

Story:

Not a Sonic game’s strong point. Ever. Until now. While, granted, SC:TDB doesn’t exactly have a story that’s going to envoke your deepest moral self questionings with emotional choices and tales of political intrigue… It IS good for a story about a bunch of talking animals. Here’s your premise: Eggman is presumed dead (though the D word is never said thus far, just that he’s ‘gone for good’.), everyone’s gone their separate ways for some vacation time, a couple of years have passed (Amy is now 15, tails 10, Sonic 17 or 18, etc.), and Sonic gets a very sudden ring from Tails that goes along the lines of;

“Dude, Knuckles is kinda missing.”
“Shit. Are you serious?”
“Yeah, bruh, some black suited mofuckas took him.”
“Ooooh, Imma fuck ’em up.”

Least, that’s how it’d play out in Shadow the Hedgehog or a Dave Chapelle sketch. You get the idea, though. You now have a mission: Find Knuckles. Strangely, I think one of the earliest Sonic fan games had a similar premise. Oh, obscure memories of early Sonic Fan Games HQ…

Uh, again, digression does my soul good: While admittedly I’ve only made it through two chapters, I’ve read plenty of spoilers (oops) and already trounced through several dialogue sequences, which are really the joy of the experience so far. the dialogue options all give the characters a new, less cheesey life while retaining certain conventions from the Adventure games. Sonic is a snarky bastard if you choose him to be, Tails is a genius independent kid, Amy shows up just for the sake of being around Sonic, Rouge is being a crazy spy, Knuckles I guess was guarding stuff before he was ‘nabbed, and I assume Shadow is off being a forced badass somewhere. I’ll tell you when I run in to him. Point is, the characters are filling the positions they’re SUPPOSED to as opposed to buddy buddy somehow we’re always in the same place and SAWNIK HEWOES.

Look, the point is, it’s good. It’s no KOTOR, but it’s good.

Gameplay:

Is this where the game will fail? Is this the horrible underbelly to the heavenly content otherwise? Surprisingly, no! Not yet! I’ll admit, the fight system annoys me a bit, but maybe that’s because my tablet just isn’t quite as accurate as a DS stylus. I mean, what. Your special attacks for each character depend on a sequence of correctly timed stylus strokes and taps, it’s harder than it sounds, but it’s extremely satisfying to pull off correctly and do massive damage to some poor enemy crab. And yes, characters can expose weak spots, so attack for you-know-what.

So the other main question is… How do you translate the almost speedy to a fatal fault Sonic the Hedgehog to a more paced genre like RPG? Simple: A little give, a little take. While it’s no blistering platformer, it’s not a trudge along RPG either. The more sonic-esque navigation moves (loops, jumps, flying, etc) are controlled through little icons that pop up near your current character, allowing Sonic to zoom around like it’s 1991.

All in all… It actually feels good so far. I haven’t gotten too far in to the deeper elements, but there’s a Codex containing tons of info on the Sonic verse, a chao system in which they become equiptment, thus making Chao useful for the first time ever, and items to augment your characters, though thankfully they don’t show up on the actual model.

Conclusion:

If this seems vague so far, it is. Two chapters in, ffs. I’ll keep you updated.