Sonic 4: Episode 1

Sonic is dead. He’s been dead for a long time now – depending on your nostalgic recollection of Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast, either 12 years or 16 (when Sonic and Knuckles came out, and the badical Echidna tolled for things to come) but like a bad horror cliché he’s returned, undead, countless times over the years.

Still, every good franchise has to come to an end eventually – and so too must the bad ones. Sonic 4 is the final nail in the little blue hedgehog’s coffin – it’s the definitive proof that even if they wanted to, the Sonic Team still couldn’t make a decent platformer.

The horror cliché is quite apt, really. On the face of things, Sonic 4: Episode 1 looks and even sounds a little like a real Sonic game. At the start of some of the best supernatural thrillers, that’s how you know something’s wrong. People get sucked in – they believe everything is fine, but there’s something a little bit different about this reality. Something not quite right.

It always gets a few people – the first to die. The people who want to believe things are real so much that they do so, at the cost of their own lives. In the same manner, some people will believe Sonic 4 is the game they knew and loved – a true sequel to the series.

A little keen observation and things aren’t as they appear. Leap from a ledge at Sonic speed and let go and you’ll notice that Sonic drops like a rock. The complex eight bit hardware of the Sega Master System II found itself capable of rendering a physics engine in compliance with Newton’s laws of physics, but apparently that same physics engine proved impossible for the Xbox 360, as Sonic lacks inertia. What this means is instead of a fluid jumping right (and occasionally left) experience you constantly wrestle with making our speedy little hero go the direction you want him to.

You’re already fighting to get him to do what you want him to – Sonic seems to take suggestions, not directions as he traverses four levels which are suspiciously similar to levels he’s navigated before. It takes time for Sonic to start doing what you want him to do – there’s a feeling similar to mouse lag where he will delay for a small amount of time before acting.



This isn’t helped by the game’s use of the analog stick instead of the dpad. While other platformers allow some give for the player to hold their thumbstick at a 110-120 degree angle (think 4 on a clock) it’s not unusual to find this causes Sonic to duck or drop into his familiar spin. For the record, you can use the dpad - but not in every case. Try swinging from a vine in the second level with the dpad to see what I mean.

For those not in the know – younger gamers who think Sonic has something to do with Olympics, Dragon Ball Z plotted RPGs or cart racing – Sonic 4 is a platformer in the traditional sense. The focus is on getting to the end of the level as quickly as possible – and so a lot of the challenge in Sonic 4 comes from trial and error gameplay.

The game is designed to cause you to fail while you learn the nuances of where to go and what to do. The challenge traditionally was in the way the game gave you only a set number of lives – after which you’d have to start over. Sonic 4 doesn’t have this challenge – if you lose all your lives you’re forced to continue, but in reality you need never fail as you can replay any level over and over again.

And the first level of the game is easily finished in about 3 minutes, and you should be able to pick up at least three lives each time you do it. Easily. Instead the challenge in Sonic 4 is in not having to suffer the inconvenience of having to play through other parts of a level again. Protip – if the only punishment in your game involves your levels being an inconvenience, you’ve made a mistake at some point. Not in the game. Career wise. You should be designing Online Banking Fraud systems.

The graphics are good enough, though Sonic looks weird. He looks like he’s made out of Bucatini, a gangly idiot with a shock of blue hair and an attitude which might place him better at a concert for My Chemical Romance or something.

The sound too fails to capture the magic of Green Hill Zone or Casino Night Zone – but it’s fair to say the game had gotten me way offside much earlier – perhaps if the actual gameplay was good the repetitive chiptune music on loop as you play each zone might have been as charming as the songs of yore. Probably not.

You might think I’m too close to Sonic – I want Sonic 4 to be good too much – and that it has affected my objectivity. That the reality of the situation is that Sonic 4: Episode 1 is a competent, if not great platformer with room for improvement, but still fun anyway. You’re wrong. Platformers shouldn’t have half-arsed interpretations of physics. They shouldn’t have a continue system which is for all intents and purposes simply an inconvenience generator. To quote Supernatural - 'What's dead should stay dead... didn't you see Pet Semetary?' Well Sonic Team? Didn't you?