Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 Review — It Doesn’t Suck! Hallelujah It Doesn’t Suck!!!
Everyone pack up your valuables, hide the children, get into your safe rooms, the apocalypse is coming, Sega made a Sonic game that doesn’t suck!
You have no idea how surprised I was when I first downloaded Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1. I was fully expecting another major Sonic flop, but color me stupefied. The game started up and there were no werewolves, knights, genies, aliens, or any other random bull that Sega has been so eager to shove down Sonic fans’ throats. Dr. Robotnik … ROBOTNIK, not Eggman … has captured a bunch of furry animals and turned them into robots, and Sonic, being the forests ever vigilant protector, has to stop him. How do you stop him? Well by braving treacherous levels and popping giant metal capsules at the end of them before eventually having a confrontation with one of Robotnik’s giant death machines. That’s it! Never before have I been so excited about a story so simple.
This game is old school Sonic goodness at its finest. You will guide Sonic through four stages each comprised of three acts and a boss encounter. Sonic can run, jump, spin dash, and collect power-ups, but that’s basically it. All the power-ups in the game are the same power-ups you remember from the old school Genesis days. So that means ring boxes, speed shoes, shields, and invincibility. It would have been nice to see some of the elemental shields from Sonic 3 in there, but I can’t complain.
This game manages to combine all the good things about 2D and 3D Sonic games. By that I mean, it’s a wholly 2D Sonic game that includes the Homing Attack, the only good thing about 3D Sonic games. When Sonic is airborne, you will see a red targeting reticle lock-on to nearby enemies, power-ups, or bumpers. Pressing the jump button while in mid air makes Sonic curl into a ball and rocket toward your target at high speed. You can use this repeatedly to quickly take out strings of enemies all at once, and sometimes it is needed to cross large gaps and reach areas you normally couldn’t.
The focus of the game is its fast 2D platforming game play that feels pretty much like the old Genesis games did. However, each stage has a bit of a gimmick that makes the game more fun without detracting from the original premise. For example, the Lost Labyrinth zone will have you carrying a torch in the darkness and riding mine-carts. The Casino Street zone has playing cards that spin when you run past them, forming poker hands that increase your lives and rings, and pinball machines reminiscent of the Casino Night Zone from Sonic 2. The Mad Gear zone, the final level, has pipes you can spin through, movable gears you can run on, and much much more. Finally the first stage, Splash Hill zone has … well nothing really, which is good becuase I was actually dreading the possibility of a long water stage right off the bat.
Actually water isn’t all that bad anymore. Sonic still can’t swim, but he sure can hold his breath for a lot longer than he formerly could. In fact, the overall difficulty has been toned down for the current generation of gamer. There are still some hard parts, especially the final boss, but the rings and lives flow so easily you will rarely find yourself in a pinch. Even the special stages, which take the form of the original rotating bumper field special stages from Sonic 1 are nowhere near as difficult as they were in the old days. Instead of a stage that rotates by itself, you get to control the rotation of the stage with the controller. Also, there is a new timer you have to deal with and items that increase the amount of time you have left in the special stage along with it, but otherwise it is exactly the same. By the way, you reach the special stages in the same way you used to, i.e. gather a lot of rings and jump into the gigantic ring at the end of a stage.
The major changes to gameplay are actually pretty subtle. Sonic can run much faster than he used to be able to in the Genesis games, and as a result he is affected by momentum a lot more, giving him a “slipping on ice” feel when you try to stop or change directions from a high speed. Here’s a tip, if you need to change direction fast, simply homing attack in the opposite direction. This will save your bacon several times throughout the game. Another subtle change is the fact that Sonic can reach higher speeds when running than when spinning. So most of the time you’ll actually want to start out on foot, rather than spin dash. Spin dashing, on the other hand, is slightly more invulnerable than it used to be, making it a more powerful attack than method of locomotion. Sonic is also a bit more “floaty” this time around, falling slower than he has in previous 2D Sonic titles. This change was made to accommodate the homing attack, so that players would have enough air time to both see the targeting reticle and press a button in order to trigger the attack.
The game looks amazing. Though the environments look similar to old school sonic games with checkerboard hills and whatnot, the game is actually rendered in full 3D. Sonic and all of the enemies move smoothly, while several background and foreground layers dazzle you with shiny lighting effects. There is this one point where Sonic is running through a long loop that towers way above the rest of the stage, and you can see the rest of the stage from high in the air as you run through it. It’s pretty cool.
The sound in this game is amazing. All of the sound effects from the old school Genesis games are back. The whirring of the spin dash, the tinkling sound when you collect a ring, even the crunching sound when you attack one of Robotnik’s giant robots; it all sounds exactly like it did in the old days. The music is great too. It may not be as awesome as say, Sonic 3’s soundtrack was, but the tunes are still very catchy. It’s all synthesized too, so it has a very sound chip type feel to it. It’s almost as if Sega took the original Genesis sound chip and used that to compose the stage themes, and then simply refined those sounds with a more modern day sound system.
If I have any problem with this game it’s that it’s far too short. Yes, yes, I know it’s just “episode 1” but four zones is far too few considering its fifteen dollar price tag. Yes, it’s only about a fourth of a game, so we are only paying about a fourth of the price, but Sonic 4 feels like one of those great shows that ends its season on a cliffhanger. Who is to say that Sega won’t regress to their old ways for Sonic 4: Episode 2? Episode 1 can be completed in a couple of hours or less if you are really good. Sega has re-ignited our collective love for Sonic the Hedgehog, they can’t take it away from us now!
So should you get Sonic 4: Episode 1? Yes! Screw the price-tag, this is Sonic at his best. If you were ever, EVER a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog, you owe it to yourself to pick this game up right now! Sonic may never be this good again, so buy this game and cherish it in hard times when Sega decides to … I don’t know … have Sonic play tennis with the ancient Mayan gods or something stupid like that.
(25 votes, average: 2.80 out of 4)
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