Prince of Persia (360) Review

Everyone has their dirty little secret. Mine is that I didn't play the Sands of Time trilogy. In gaming circles, that's blasphemous. At the same time, it put me in good stead going into this game; With no preconceived ideas of what the franchise "should" be like, I wasn't going to be swayed by the menacing face of change. And you know what? This game is pretty damn good.

The Prince of Persia franchise rose to fame during the last console generation, where its unique take on the platforming genre and interesting time-control mechanics were met with rounds of applause from critics and fans alike. With that story all wrapped up by the end of the trilogy, it was time for a reboot and a fresh direction for the first next-gen installment. Prince of Persia, for the 360 and PS3, is a clean start for the franchise that lays the foundations for future greatness, but falls short of legendary status itself.

The game begins with the luckless Prince - a different Prince to the one from the previous trilogy (and who isn't actually a prince) - caught in a sandstorm in the middle of the desert. He's lost his donkey, Farah, and the king's ransome in stolen gold she was carrying on her back. More to the point, he's hopelessly lost. So when he comes across a beautiful princess named Elika - or rather, when a beautiful princess named Elika falls on top of him - it's little wonder he follows along. Unknowingly, the Prince walks right into the middle of a war between Elika's people, the Ahura, and the all-powerful God of Darkness, Ahriman. Now unwittingly involved, the Prince joins forces with Elika in order to free the four lands of Persia from the hands of Ahriman's corrupted soldiers - and so he can walk away from this alive.

PoP is beautiful. The world has a calming, watercolor look to it that is hard to describe but absolutely beautiful in motion. The draw distance is amazing, with hills stretching on for miles in all directions. The character models are spot-on and the animation quality is amazing; Aside from the Prince's head scarf, nothing ever clips, and there are no "jagged" gaps between different frames of animation. The entire game just flows, and half the fun of this experience comes from watching the world unfold around you.

The gameplay is a refreshing change of pace for the genre. Doing well is as much about letting the Prince glide gracefully around the world as it is about making precision movements. What's even more amazing is how simple it all is. Jump toward a wall at an angle and the Prince will run across it for as far as his momentum will carry him. Jump directly at a wall and the Prince will climb it. Climb to the top of a pole and press A to make the Prince scamper along the ceiling. While performing any of these motions, you can press A again to jump away from the surface, or B to interact with objects on the wall - such as metal rings - which you can use to regain lost momentum and continue your gravity-defying run. There's no button mashing required here; Time your inputs properly and the Prince can traverse entire chasms without ever having to stop.

There are two sides to the level design. On one hand, it's amazing to watch. Running across a wall, jumping out across a chasm, climbing a wall on the other side, jumping towards a pole and then swinging to the next solid platform sounds thrilling as I type it and is the sort of thing you'll see every ten seconds in PoP. The downside is that, in order to make everything flow so well, the level design is incredibly simple. It all looks great, but actually performing these acrobatic stunts requires hardly any button inputs at all. In some cases, you might not even need to touch the control stick after your initial leap, as the levels themselves are designed to push Prince towards his next stunt.

As you progress through the game, you will collect orbs called Light Seeds which - when you have enough - can be used to activate new Power Plates. The Plates give Elika and the Prince new powers for travelling about the world. The Red and Blue plates are essentially the same, bouncing the duo to far-away platforms. The Yellow Plate gives Elika the gift of flight, and the Green Plate gives the Prince the ability to run up walls. Each area in the game requires a different Power Plate, so the order in which you choose to activate the Plates also determines which lands you can access.

Elika is useful for other things, too. If the Prince isn't going to make a jump, tap Y and Elika will hurl him the extra distance. Fall off a ledge? Don't worry, Elika will reach out and grab you, pulling you to safety. Die in battle? Elika will revive you and let you continue the fight (although the enemy will almost completely heal whatever damage they'd sustained). The fact you can't actually die is a great idea: It cuts out any unecessary "Game Over: Would you like to restart?" screens (of course I want to restart) and does away with the need to replay huge sections of the level every time you fail. Not dying doesn't make the game easier, it makes it more fun.

As you progress through the game, you'll meet up with the four Corrupted warriors of Ahriman: The Hunter, the Concubine, the Warrior and the Alchemist. Each of the Corrupted rules over a different land, and you'll face each of them several times as you purge the world of darkness. Eventually, each one of them will release a different "trap" into the world, which will impede your progress whenever you travel through un-healed lands. For example, the Hunter releases black blobs of dark matter that travel up and down the many cliff faces in the game, forcing you to time each jump carefully. The Concubine releases a swarm of black bees that chase you whenever you're not on solid ground. Furthermore, these traps stack, so the further into the game you get - and the more Corrupted you subsequently piss off - the more traps you'll have to deal with. By the end of the game, you'll be skillfully avoiding all four traps at the same time. As you can imagine, things get rather hectic.

Like the rest of the game, the combat in Prince of Persia focuses on flow. X is for sword attacks, A is for acrobatic attacks, B is for grabs/throws and Y is for magic attacks, courtesy of Elika. To fight most effectively, you need to pause between each button press, watch the Prince execute his move, and then take in any visual clues that will help you string the combo along. Say you pressed X - for a standard sword attack - and then followed it up with a B-button grab. The grab will launch the enemy into the air, at which point the action will go into slow-motion. Here, you can either press A to leap into the air yourself, or you can press Y to throw Elika at the enemy and use her magic instead. Or, you could use a magic attack, and then jump into the air and knock the enemy back to the ground with a sword attack (X). Combo trees literally fold out in front of you as you play, and it makes the combat satisfying even if you're generally not very good at beat-em-ups. As far as looking cool and controlling intuitievly goes, the combat in PoP is unmatched.

Despite my glowing praise so far, Prince of Persia isn't perfect. That doesn't mean it isn't worth a purchase - because it most certainly is - but it does mean that certain aspects of the experience are too disappointing to ignore.

For starters, there's one glaringly obvious problem: There's virtually no combat. In healing each land, you'll fight one of the Corrupted about six times, but other than that, you'll face maybe five regular enemies. Five. There's just not enough to stuff to hit. When the combat system is this good, they really could have done with throwing in a few more opportunities for battle.

Another more pressing concern is the game's difficulty. Or rather, the lack thereof. Prince of Persia is criminally easy, and it isn't because you "can't die". It's because I didn't even know what it looked like to have Elika save you mid-battle until the very last area of the game. It's because traversing the game world is a largely automatic process. It's because the traps released by the Corrupted overlap each other in such a way that, provided you time your initial leap well and don't break the Prince's flow, none of them will touch you. Nothing in this game is challenging. And once you realize that you're not being seriously threatened by anything - not even the immortal servants of a dark God - a lot of the atmosphere is lost.

That isn't to say the game completely falls flat. The many dialogs between the Prince and Elika are genuienly entertaining, and there are more than a few quote-worthy lines thrown about. During one exchange, they discuss dreams, and the Prince warns Elika that "If you dream too much, that's all you'll ever do." Another conversation has the Prince berating Elika for always staring at his ass, to which Elika sarcastically replies "I thought you lost your ass?" It's amazing that a game with only two main characters can keep their conversations fresh and interesting for the entire experience.

In the end, the lack of combat-oriented action and overall difficulty shouldn't turn anyone away from the game. Prince of Persia is as much about enjoying the ride as it about reaching the destination, and when the ride is this good you can hardly blame it. The game flirts constantly with perfection but ultimately does little more than tease; The best game of this generation is hiding in this package and I can only hope the inevitable sequel brings it out. In the meantime, you'd have to be batshit insane not to check this out.

A must-buy.

Sonic Unleashed (360) Review

Oh right, there's this blog thing I update sometimes.

There are three parts to Sonic Unleashed. The first is the daytime gameplay, in which Sonic blasts madly around beautiful locales at frightening speeds. That part is good. The second is the nighttime gameplay, in which Sonic inexplicably turns into a large, lumbering "Werehog" that plays like God of War but without any of the fun. The third is the manifestation of Sega's unbridled hatred for their fans. That's right, folks: Sega fucking hates you.

Sonic Unleashed is not a bad game. In fact, it's rather good. In particular, the daytime Sonic levels are remarkably fun. Designed like narrow racetracks winding in and around the game's varied locales, Sonic will barrel down alleyways and bounce across rooftops in some of the most solid platforming this series has seen in years. Gone are the days of dodgy camera angles and twitchy controls. In Sonic Unleashed, the camera is either directly behind Sonic or facing him from the side in one of the game's many 2D segments. Should you find yourself wanting to backtrack across a 3D path, the right stick allows you to spin the camera around on a whim. Sonic himself controls with less precision than he once did, but the lack of responsiveness allows you greater control at high speed, with it now possible to maneuver Sonic with some degree of finesse.

There are some curious changes to the button-mapping of certain abilities, but nothing that will set any player back too far. Most notably, Sonic's signature Homing Attack is no longer mapped to the jump button (A), but rather the X button. It doesn't make an awful lot of sense, given that anyone who has played any of the previous 3D titles is going to have to relearn this basic maneuver. Even more curious is Sonic's new air dash move also being mapped to X, meaning a failed homing attack now sends you barrelling off course and (usually) to your death. Considering the old input isn't even used for anything, the change in control strikes me as completely unnecessary.

Sonic has some new toys to play with, of course. The Quick Step, activated by pressing LB or RB, lets Sonic sidestep to the left or right without losing any forward momentum. Sidestepping around enemies and obstacles while scampering down a straightaway is highly satisfying, and this really feels like a move that should have been in 3D Sonics from the start. The Sonic Drift is fairly self-explanatory, allowing Sonic to drift around tight turns without reducing his pace.

The daytime stages aren't perfect, however. The 3D sections are fun and visually appealing, but grow shallow fairly quickly. The 2D sections are far too brief and rarely feature more than a couple of moving platforms to jump across. I've noted in the past what importance Sonic's momentum used to play in the series and how little it plays in the Sonic games of today, and so I'm thankful that Sonic Unleashed takes some baby steps in the right direction. Alternate routes become available if Sonic takes jumps at a high enough speed, and loops are no longer automated, transforming them once again into legitimate obstacles. Yet, the game still features an unnecessary Boost move, which cheapens the whole experience somewhat. You'll rarely miss an alternate route if you just boost the whole time, and loops will never impede you unless you intentionally slow down. Removing the boost from the game entirely would improve it tenfold.

As noted earlier, the 3D segments are flashy but generally hold little in the way of deep gameplay. The game would benefit from being more 2D-oriented, with the 3D segments only used intermittently to add flavor to the game, rather than serving as the main attraction.

Come nighttime, Sonic transforms into the Werehog. And it's... boring. Not bad, just relentlessly dull. It masquerades as a deep brawler - with flashy multi-button combos and whatnot - but is ultimately far too shallow for it's own good. You'll never need any combos other than the standard "X,X,X" or "Y,Y,Y" moves, which do everything you could possibly want. Enemies are generally slow and timid in their attack, and only become dangerous in the later levels where you'll be facing an unholy number of them at once. The platforming here is generally solid, but the levels are entirely linear and frankly, it's just too slow. I don't advocate the idea that Sonic needs to go fastfastfast, but this is too far towards the other end of the scale. I mean, there's a button to make the werehog run - he doesn't run by default - but it is little more than a jog compared to the exhilarating platforming of the daytime stages. Not to mention these levels generally drag on for 10-20 minutes depending on how good you are, resulting in most of your playtime taken up by these boring exercises in mediocrity. You probably won't hate it, but you won't have any fun here either.

And that, sadly, is where my generally positive attitude ends. There's a dark side to Sonic Unleashed, and it comes in the form of devious level design. When I say it's "devious", I really mean it was crafted by Satan himself. From about the mid-point of the game onwards, each level is the pure embodiment of evil, causing me mass frustration and a dangerous amount of burst blood vessels. There's enough money in my swear jar to single-handedly rescue the entire African nation from poverty. Fuck this game.

The game takes the route-memorization aspect of the Sonic Rush series - a mild annoyance there - and magnifies it, making half the levels literally impossible to beat the first time through. Now, I'm all for more difficult games, and if I was breezing through the final levels then I'd no doubt be complaining that the game is too easy. But I like real difficulty, where I die only if I make a mistake, not just because Sonic Team are dicks. Take the ice level, Holoska, for example. You do a lot of running on water in this level, and in order to maintain that high speed, you're required to boost. This becomes a problem when the camera switches to the 2D perspective, and you can no longer see what's approaching. And so, Sonic Team threw in a few floating spike traps which not only hurt you and knock you out of your boost, but also cause you to drown instantly. Let me reiterate: You do not - you cannot - know these traps are there until you have already been hit by them.

Repeat the above scenario but with other neatly-placed traps: The "Eggman Spring", which Sonic's homing attack locks onto automatically and which usually bounces you in the opposite direction you want to go, often to your death. The sudden pit in the middle of an otherwise solid platform that you've already fallen in to before you could even see it coming. The grind rails that abruptly drop off and send you falling into an abyss. The game is jam-packed with "oh fuck off" moments that make me absolutely certain that this is the sort of game you make for your enemies, not your fans. "You little faggots didn't like Sonic '06, huh?"

Furthermore, the final level - which alternates between hedgehog/werehog gameplay - takes at least 40 minutes to complete if you're good. That's 40 minutes of bullshit. Now imagine losing all your lives after playing half an hour of it. Does it hurt? It will do, when it happens to you. It happens to everybody.

I suppose it's somewhat testament to the quality of the daytime stages that I kept coming back for more despite the game giving my testicles a kick at every given opportunity. Consider this review your one warning: The game gets unfairly and intolerably unforgiving in the final hour and a half, which is comprised of the final level and no less than three "final" boss fights. When you finally see the ending, you will hate this game with a burning passion. It will have repeatedly wronged and mistreated you. It will have forced you to sit through more than an hour of the least enjoyable gaming moments in recent memory. It will have sacrificed your firstborn child to appease its pagan God. But at the end of the day, at least half of the game is still undeniably fun, and it is unlikely that these horrible experiences will keep you away for long.

Whether or not you should buy Sonic Unleashed depends entirely on what sort of person you are. If you're patient enough to sit through the uninspired and dull werehog stages and to put up with the unfair design of the last few levels, then you'll find that there's a lot to like about the rest of the experience. If you don't have the time to waste playing a shittier God of War, then there's little reason to bother with this at all; The daytime stages take up too little of your total playing time to be worth the $50 price of admission.

Also, don't buy this game if you don't like getting fucked by bullshit.

World of Goo Review

Few games have captured my heart with the same ease that indie developer 2D Boy's World of Goo has done. While only a 43mb WiiWare game, it surprisingly trumps many of Nintendo's big-name titles in terms of soul, and provides a gameplay experience that is tight, refined, and easy to pick up yet difficult to master. While only a glorified physics simulator at heart, World of Goo is such an enjoyable ride that it should find its way into any Wii-owner's library.

The premise of the game is simple: Connect goo balls to each other to build towering, wobbly structures in an attempt to reach each level's exit pipe. Goo balls connect to each other via flimsy strands of goo, acquiring their strength through sheer numbers as the player adds more and more goo balls to their structure. As vertical towers get higher, they begin to sway back and forth, threatening to topple, while horizontal bridges begin to sag the further they have to stretch. Each level in the game requires you to build a different type of structure to reach the pipe, with varying terrain and obstacles for you to take into account. The game is anything but predictable.

Throughout the game, you're introduced to several different types of goo. The standard black goo connect to other goo balls with two strands, and can't be removed from a structure once put into place. Green goo balls connect via three strands (making them very stable), and can be unattached at your preference. Balloon goo balls float, and can be used to hold up sagging bridges. Spiky goo balls can attach to any surface and will never let go. There are even giant Beauty goo balls which are too big to fit into the exit pipe, and often need to be crushed into smaller pieces before you can pass the level.

As mentioned before, levels themselves are remarkably varied. Early levels simply have you build a tower or a bridge of varying length in order to get to the pipe, but things get much more imaginative later on. One level has you using Balloon goos to carry a small goo structure through the air, over the top of a windmill that will carve up any goo structure it comes into contact with. Another level has you building a chain of black goos over the top of three terrain obstacles, then rolling a Beauty goo along it, into the grinder at the end of the chain. Another level has you building a tall tower that you then have to topple, slinky-style, from one island to the next. Reaching the pipe is never easy, and more often than not, the way in which you're supposed to go about completing your objective is not entirely obvious.

You also have to take into consideration that a certain number of goo balls have to be free (ie. not used in your structure) in order to escape through the pipe at the end, which means if you use all your goo just getting to the pipe, you won't actually beat the level. Occasionally the game provides you with jet-black goo balls, useless little bastards who can't be connected to any structures at all, their sole purpose being to make sure you've got something left over once you reach the pipe.

The game's story is perhaps its most charming aspect. In each level, you'll see little wooden signs, each of them written by a mysterious person calling himself "The Sign Painter". These signs tell most of the game's story and set the scene for each level. The Sign Painter is often cheeky in his writings; In one level, he tells us about his rock-hard abs and details his cardio routine (unbelievably, this is also a clue as to how to beat the level). In another, he tells the player that the level is impossible, and that you may as well give up, since nobody will know ("- But the Sign Painter will know.").

Any aspects of the story not described by the Sign Painter are instead told through Flash-like cutscenes. It is through these cutscenes that you are introduced to the World of Goo Corporation, an evil corporation that manufactures products out of goo balls for use by humans. The goo balls, who only want to follow their natural instincts and climb higher and higher into the sky, take action against the World of Goo Corporation and slowly attempt to bring it down from the inside. The game's story is simple and is told through comical means, but the innocence of the goo balls is unmistakable and the epic nature of their quest is not easily forgotten. For all its charm and wackiness, the game's story is remarkably well-told and poignant.

The game features very little in the way of music, utilizing many of the same tracks for each level in the game. Thankfully, the music is very well done and awfully catchy, with none of the tracks ever starting to grate. This may have something to do with the fact that the game is fairly short - five hours at most - but I'm not going to knock it for that. With Nintendo enforcing rather obscene size-constraints on WiiWare titles, I'll take what I can get.

In terms of complaints, there really isn't much to say. Aside from being a bit shorter than it deserves to be, there's nothing wrong with the game at a visual, audio or gameplay level. Early on in the game I did notice that the suction of the exit pipe could be cheaply manipulated to make unstable structures remain upright, and I was more than ready to complain about it in my review, however the game had the cheek to build an entire level around that manipulation, titling the level "It's not a bug, it's a feature!". How could I complain about it after that?

The bottom line is that World of Goo is an amazing experience. The physics-based gameplay is remarkably fun and implemented in an innovative way, the game is long enough to justify a purchase but not too long it overstays its welcome (think Portal), and the presentation is absolutely top notch. Of course, the game isn't exactly action-packed and if that's what you're into, the strategy-centric experience offered here might not appeal to you. But if all you're looking for in your WiiWare is an immensely enjoyable time-sink, then World of Goo is most definitely worth a purchase.

The DS-why?

Satoru Iwata, the head honcho over at Nintendo, is an undeniably greedy bastard. Either that, or a master businessman. Maybe both? Who knows. Either way, I'm left scratching my head at the DS-i.

Does anyone really want a camera or an mp3 player on their DS? I mean, really? When virtually every portable electronic device these days can play music, browse the web, do your laundry and walk the dog, it seems somewhat irrelevant to slap some superfluous features on a current-gen unit and call it a new product. Not for Nintendo, though; Their ability to turn even the most pointless upgrades into money-printing licenses is absolutely absurd, and the DS-i is by far the most devious product they've come up with in very a long time.

The GBA SP presented itself as a viable alternative to the standard GBA because it looked sleeker and had its own backlight. The Lite took over the mantle of the original DS because - you guessed it - it looks sleeker and has a better backlight. In both cases, nobody was alienated; Owners of the standard GBA/DS were not to miss out on anything, because despite the different shapes and features, the capabilities of each console were identical.

The DS-i does many of the same things, such as backwards/forwards compatibility, with the newer model justifying its own existence with a few new features. Most standard and Lite owners won't feel alienated, because DS-i exclusive games don't appear to be Nintendo's main focus. But at the same time, that exclusive DSWare Channel and future games potentially only working on a DS-i are certainly things that will have many current DS owners pondering yet another purchase.

And that's the key difference between the i and the Lite, or the SP and Micro before that. The Lite and SP provided a more refined version of the product, but were still the same product. You'd upgrade if you could, but it wasn't mandatory. The DS-i is, for all intents and purposes, the same console (which prevents the alienation of people who aren't going to upgrade), but at the same time offers things gamers will actually want that can't be done on the older version of the hardware. Nintendo have essentially split this generation in two - the "old" DS and the "new" DS - and expect you to pay for the same system twice. Should you choose not to, you'll be in the same boat you'd be in if you didn't upgrade from a PS2 to a PS3, or from a Gamecube to a Wii.

The mp3 and camera functionality are simply included to placate gamers, to give them some way to justify the purchase of their new DS-i console. "But, it also has a camera, and plays music! I'm not just buying it because it has it's own Shop that is theoretically not impossible to implement via firmware upgrades to the console I already own!"

The DS-i is easily my least-anticipated event of next year. No doubt it will sell like hot cakes, but does it deserve it? Does Nintendo deserve it? I really don't think so.

What's wrong with Sonic the Hedgehog?

A short introduction:

As a long-time video game enthusiast, it never seemed likely that I would eventually "grow out" of the hobby that I love. This blog's sole purpose is to provide an outlet for my musings about this world in which I am so firmly entrenched, this form of entertainment that supercedes all others (when you're not playing something shit, anyway). Most importantly, this blog is a place for me to write about something I care about, and while you're here, you'll damn well care about it too.

To start things off with a bang, I'll be taking an in-depth look at my most cherished childhood mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, and why the little mite is having such a rough time of it lately.



Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was the first video game I ever played, at the tender age of three. At my cousin's house one Christmas, I was introduced to the latest and greatest addition to the family - a Sega Genesis - and the wonders that little box could produce. My cousin and I decided that together, we could have the game beaten before the end of the night.

Of course, I was horrifically bad at it. Being punished for running straight into enemies was a gameplay nuance I had trouble understanding, and so the phrase "Here, let me show you how to do it" was uttered with frequency by my teammate. Unfortunately for me, his idea of "showing me how to play" involved him playing the entire level while I watched, giving me the controller at the start of the next and letting this sorry process repeat itself ad infinitum. At the end of the night, as the final credits rolled, he was left with the feeling of satisfaction that comes with a game overcome; I was left with a hunger for that feeling myself.

Jump forward ten years and you'll find me in my living room, playing my freshly-bought Sonic Heroes. My competency (and general motor skills) had drastically increased, and I now looked forward to facing and - eventually - overcoming this challenge on my own. Yet, in a cruel twist of fate, I once again found myself watching the game being played by someone else, someone far more capable and clinical than I could ever hope to be. But who? The controller was in my hands, and there was no one else in the room. What could possibly be stopping me from playing this game by my own power?

In short: The game itself.

Sonic games degenerated into mere spectacles somewhere around Sonic Adventure 2, but the process had started as early as the first installment of the Adventure series. Gameplay elements had been dubiously tossed aside in favor of scripted set-pieces, non-interactive sequences and dynamic camera angles. By the time Sonic Heroes came about, looking cool and fast was the only thing the series was about, and the dramatic downward spiral Sonic finds himself in today is a direct result of this misguided attitude.

The source of the problem comes from an almost universal misunderstanding of what makes a Sonic game. Ask almost anyone what the original Genesis titles were all about, and the answer you'll most likely get is "Speed". Sega's much-touted "blast-processing" and the general hype of the originals certainly allude to this answer, but the shocking truth is that it is almost completely incorrect. Sonic games were never "about" speed, although they certainly had it in spades. The speed was just a by-product of the core gameplay dynamic that made the original Sonic games among the best of their era: Momentum.

It was the momentum-based physics of the original games that made them so unique. The entire world was made to take advantage of Sonic's momentum, with speed being the visual reward for gathering and mainting that commodity. You can't "see" momentum like you can see speed, and so it was the obvious focus of the many marketing campaigns, but anyone who feels that speed was the focus - as modern-day Sonic Team do - is wholeheartedly missing the point.

To compare and contrast the two schools of thought - "Momentum-based" and "Speed-based" - we need look no farther than the iconic loop-de-loops that litter Sonic's world. In the Genesis games, the loops presented the player with an obstacle. If you apprached a loop with too little momentum, you would not be able to propel yourself all the way through. You would need to retreat, gather momentum elsewhere, and then approach the loop again. A failed attempt at passing through a loop would result in the penalty of losing any gathered momentum, while successfully overcoming a loop would reward you with both a visual treat and even more momentum than you had before.

In 3D Sonic games, loops are set-pieces that look cool. Their purpose is to give the player something pretty to look at, not to challenge them. At the base of almost every loop you will find dash-pads, which provide you with "free" momentum did you not already have enough to get through. The camera will switch to a perspective that shows the entire loop in all its glory, as opposed to one that is practical for playing the game. In many cases, Sonic's position on the loop will be locked to dead-center, so he cannot deviate from the specificed route, crash into a wall half-way up, and thereby ruin the spectacle.

Loops are just an isolated case and not the root of the problem - scripted loops would not ruin an otherwise solid game - but the attitude that makes modern-day loops what they are permeates through every aspect of the modern franchise and corrupts it completely. Compare the Metal Sonic race in Sonic CD to the whale-chase in Sonic Adventure, or Sonic 2's Wing Fortress Zone with the rail-infested Ark levels of Sonic Adventure 2. In virtually every aspect of the game, the shift in attitude from "let's make it fun to play" to "let's make it fun to watch" is obvious, and the series is suffering as a result.

Look at the good old Spin Dash as opposed to the new-fangled "Rush Meter" introduced in Sonic Rush. Both serve roughly the same purpose - to provide you with free momentum - but function in such radically different ways that it seems they have no business being in the same game together. The Spin Dash was a trade-off, a calculated risk. In order to execute it, you'd first need to forfeit any gathered momentum by coming to a complete stop. You'd then need to hold one button and tap another until you had revved up to the desired extent. Once moving, you would experience an initial burst of speed much greater than Sonic's standard movement, but would quickly become subject to the will of the environment around you. With Sonic curled into a ball and his strong little legs tucked neatly away, you were at the mercy of your surrounds. An upward slope would eat up your momentum quickly, while a downward one would provide you with so much speed that Sonic would disappear off-screen. Without coming to a complete stop (and giving up momentum), Sonic couldn't leave his curled up state and start running again, leaving you with little choice but to ride it out, come whatever may. You gave up control for some free momentum, and it was almost never better than gaining the required momentum naturally.

The boost in Sonic Rush is another story entirely. You tap a button - whether you're standing still or moving - and gain an instant and immense increase in speed. You remain in an upright position, so Sonic is still completely in control, and if you ever want to quickly stop, you can simply boost in the other direction. You sacrifice nothing and gain a lot, thereby making every environmental obstacle completely pointless. The Rush games actually containing loops is a complete joke; They're not much of a spectacle in 2D any more, and as terrain objects, they serve no purpose. The boost means you will literally never have to stop.

Speed is now what weighs the series down as opposed to what elevates it above the rest. Sonic's stunts look better at high speeds - they always have - and so everything that actively lowered your speed has been brushed to the wayside. The whole idea of momentum has been scrapped entirely; Sonic goes from a slow jog to breaking the sound barrier within an instant, terrain no longer impedes you, and should you ever find yourself travelling at a comfrotable pace you can bet the developers didn't intend you to. Speed is now receiving so much focus that the very thing that is supposed to generate it - momentum - no longer even exists.

Look at any trailer for the upcoming Sonic Unleashed and you'll see this issue out in full force. Does Sonic ever stop? Maybe. But if he does, it obviously isn't worth showing, right? The werehog sections might slow Sonic down, but making him go slower is not the solution to the problem. If the werehog sections don't utilize momentum - as it appears they don't - then they may as well be scrapped, because if Sonic is going slow because the game forces him to (à la Sonic Labyrinth) and not because the player isn't playing well enough, then the concept is stupid.



Imagine one of the traditional Mario games for the SNES, but with Sonic's name and face on the cover instead of Mario's. Imagine running through the Mushroom Kingdom, but faster. Does this sound particularly fun to you? More to the point: Does this sound like any one of the classic Sonic games to you? It seems that Sonic has been so heavily typecast as "a faster Mario" that everyone has forgotten what made him so great in the first place. A strange phenomenon indeed, when you consider that even a brief comparison of how the two games played will show that they were always worlds apart.

There are, of course, other problems that currently burden this series that have nothing to do with a fixation on speed. The Adventure series, Heroes, Shadow and Sonic '06 all suffer from serious design flaws that go well beyond simply having the wrong attitude. Glitches, bugs, poor level design; You name it, these games have it. Which is why, to some extent, Sonic Unleashed looks like a very tentative step in the right direction. At the very least, everything seems well-designed, the controls appear solid, the level design intuitive and the ideas implemented properly. If Sonic Unleashed manages to fix all these things, then we'll be getting a fun game. A fun game that comes nowhere close to recapturing the essence of what Sonic is all about, but a fun game nonetheless. In reality, these design problems need fixing before a change in attitude will make any difference at all - good intentions don't make a good game - but if Unleashed pulls this off, then the platform is laid for Sonic's return to form.

The sad truth? That platform will be ignored. The Rush games fixed a lot of the problems with the Advance series and garnered modest success because of it, yet the series is simply sticking with what it knows rather than heading down the road of improvement. Rush 2 was just as much about holding Right and the boost button as the original was, and I fear that any success with Unleashed will see Sonic Team stick with it until forever. This is the very definition of a double-edged sword: They may very well fix the series to the point of playability, but should they do so, they'll have no reason to take the risk of changing the series' direction.

Sonic is not about speed. At least, he shouldn't be. And until the folks at Sonic team realize that we want a fun platformer and not a glorified series of quicktime events, don't ever expect the series to rebound. All the talk of "back to his roots" and "recapturing the glory days" that invariably accompanies each new Sonic game is complete rubbish; We're a long way off from 1991, and the immediate future is anything but bright.