Before I talk about Sonic Chronicles and Sonic Unleashed, was I the only UK-based Sonic die-hard to be crushed in disappointment while leaving the Video Games Live event in London last Friday? Don't get me wrong, it was a great show, but after 3 or so years of wanting to go, and after all the excitement of finally getting to see the excellent compositions of Sonic 1 performed by a live orchestra against the background of a history of Sonic game clips, they chose not to include the Sonic segment this time around. I don't mind telling you, I was mighty pissed off. If you don't know, Video Games Live is a world wide tour of game music from across the generations performed by a live orchestra, and with over 50 segments each dedicated to a particular game, I suppose it's not surprising that they only have time to include 20 or so in each show. I suppose it was my own fault for not realising this beforehand, but according to their FAQ on the site, favourites like Mario and Zelda are performed almost every night. You would think, given that Sonic is listed as seventh in their list of 50 titles, that he would be included among that elite group as well. I would try and go again next year, but how will I know if I'm not to be disappointed again? Posting up a list of the segments planned for each event beforehand would be helpful.
My, rather belated, two cents on Sonic Chronicles then. I've played, I'm guessing, past the half way point now, into what I would assume is the so-called second act of the game, and I must say, I'm really impressed by it, and I'm not sure I was necessarily expecting to be either. Sure, the prospect of a Sonic RPG from Bioware sounded great at first, but I soon found the eventual cascade of videos and behind the scenes documentaries to be not-that-riveting, under the mighty shadow of Sonic Unleashed anyway. Still, it's a game that needs to be played for quite a while before you can form a valid opinion of it, and initially I was a bit put off by a certain quality about its comic-book style cut scenes and opening sequence that, while subtle, was at the same time jarringly un-SEGA-like. Indeed, the game starts off a bit slow and boring, with limited attacks to use and at first there's little immediately outstanding dialogue, as everyone said there would be. Before you know it though, a change happens quite quickly and if you're anything like me, you'll start to love it as new characters, moves, strategies, enemies, puzzles and plots emerge. I'm no big turn-based RPG fan, in fact the only one I've really played in full is Pokemon, and generally I can't be arsed with the more strategic approach to a video game battle, but despite this being a Sonic game, which generally insists on a more care-free style of play, Bioware have somehow managed to take those characters and let you use them in an environment where levelling up, buying moves and employing particular strategies for attack and defence against various enemies actually works. All of which are things that have largely failed in past Sonic games, such as Secret Rings, in my opinion.
In Sonic Chronicles, I'm not in the mood to rush through scenery and get on with things as fast as possible anymore, I want to explore, to hone my skills and spend time finding out more about the story, and for Bioware to pull that off where others have failed, to successfully stretch Sonic rather than stretching the properties of an RPG, is actually quite an achievement in itself. Further kudos to them for finally focusing back on the story of the echidnas and Angel Island (although it does present some continuity errors, seemingly mistaking the large piece of land capable of holding several levels - and the Death Egg - that it actually is, for the often mistaken tiny piece of land shown in Sonic Adventure that is actually just an internal plateau used to hold just the Master Emerald). It's nice to see this story, undoubtedly the best ongoing arc they've ever come up with, brought back again after Sonic Team have seemingly forgotten about it entirely, leaving Knuckles as little more than a second sidekick to Sonic, and whose exploits with Angel Island and the Master Emerald usually appear only in his instruction manual bios.
One thing I'm really not big on though is the music. Most of the tunes come straight from Sonic 3D, largely the PC/Saturn soundtrack by Richard Jacques (often hyped up, but I personally prefer the Mega Drive alternative), though it's not that that bothers me, in fact that moment where you match up a tune in a new game, unexpectedly with a track from a previous game is always one of those somewhat rare joys in Sonicdom. No, it's the incredibly minimalistic and uninspiring technical translations of these tunes to the DS hardware, which I thought was capable of a lot more, as the superb soundtrack of Sonic Rush Adventure certainly proves. It's all very slow, thin and low quality techno-sounding, the likes of which you'd probably expect more from the Gameboy Advance and I really don't know if I want any of it in my personal Sonic music collection, despite the links to past tracks. I can see what they're going for with the more subtle approach in levels that you tend to spend more time in than in platformers, but it really feels like they've just slapped on the soundtrack at the last minute as an afterthought (and the re-used tunes actually add some weight to that argument methinks), and Sonic music should NEVER be an afterthought.
Although the game feels a bit rough around the edges in places in terms of its presentation, the fantastic drawn area maps give it a real unique graphical touch, and although before playing I had concerns that there wasn't going to be much of a puzzle element to the game, which I suppose is still true, it doesn't really matter that much, as the battles, story and missions requiring you to explore the maps are enough to keep you hooked. Most maps do have one puzzle each however, where you use the characters to press certain buttons at certain times in order to interact with the puzzle presented to you. Such tasks include recognising patterns that are within a grid of squares and avoiding ones that aren't and the good old match-a-tune-by-hitting-buttons-in-order chestnut. Although thinking about it, this statement isn't saying a lot, as I can't really think of a non-platformer in the Sonic series that really ranks up there with the best platformers, but I would go so far as to say that Sonic Chronicles is probably the best Sonic spinoff game yet.
Meanwhile, Sonic Unleashed is really getting to the point now where I'm seriously in danger of seeing too much before I play the game, with, frankly ridiculous amounts of new trailers coming out that are spoiling specific level contents for me and official websites that threaten to reveal all the level locations and names! Disaster! This happens every time, I end up seeing bits of virtually every level in the game, thus degrading, to various extents, the thrill of exploring brand new environments. It's a simple thrill, but one that's important to me, so I really need to employ more self control and keep my eyes away from these tempting morsels. From the amount of new media and info that's been flooding in over the last couple of weeks, you wouldn't think that we still have a whole month to wait! I saw four new movies last night for crying out loud! Still, I've managed to stay away from anything in the official sites, and there remains at least three, perhaps four levels that I'm yet to see anything for and I'd really like to keep it that way. I'm going to have to try and ban myself from taking in any new information for what will be an extremely long month now.
I must say I'm finding it difficult to match my enthusiasm for the Wii version with that of the 360. I plan on getting both, as they're clearly quite radically different from each other in terms of levels, which make the game as far as I'm concerned, so they may very well be classifiable as separate games in their own right. It's just difficult to truly accept the low end graphics when the 360's look so gorgeous, but the endless, unnecessarily wide and empty roads seen all too much in the Wii footage don't do it any favours for me either. Looks more like courses in a racing game in some places.
My hopes are really high for the title in general though. I'm sure it won't get amazing reviews, largely down to the Werehog, but it seems to be on course to at least inspire hope in the disillusioned. One of the reasons that the failure of the last primary platformer, Sonic the Hedgehog, came as such a surprise was, I think, due to the lack of decent information about how it all played out in the months leading up to release. I remember looking for previews in the latter weeks, and finding only a foreign one that seemed positive, though the translations were hard to make out, and that's about it. There was no warning - any other, earlier previews neglected details about poor frame-rates and dodgy controls etc, and we were lead to believe the demo was based on a much older build, which of course turned out to not be so different from the final release. This time however, there have been loads of previews that haven't been afraid to give us the full story, poor frame-rates and all, and the good news is that the previews have generally been getting more and more positive the further on the development gets. Check out IGN UK's opinions on several level's worth of a near final build. They report minimal technical issues and what's more, fun gameplay on both sides of the coin, and this comes from generally one of the biggest Sonic critics out there as far as I'm aware. I think the final proof will be all down to how the whole story mode plays out in full, but it's all certainly looking very positive. Exactly how good the game needs to be in order to win over some people into thinking that Sonic still has it remains to be seen. It doesn't bear thinking about if we end up facing another critical failure.
Sorry my blog posts have to be so few and far between for the moment, but my free time is fairly minimal so I need to devote most of it to rebuilding the site, and blogs always take much longer than you expect them to. I'll probably return to discuss the Sonic Unleashed demo whenever that decides to pop up, if indeed it precedes the actual release. Fingers crossed! And I'll certainly be offering a highly thorough verdict on the final game too.
Comments 9 Comments have been posted.
#1. Comment posted by mercury on Monday, 3rd November 2008, 1:10am
#2. Comment posted by LiQuidShade on Monday, 3rd November 2008, 7:37pm
#3. Comment posted by mercury on Monday, 3rd November 2008, 9:05pm
#4. Comment posted by LiQuidShade on Friday, 7th November 2008, 12:34pm
#5. Comment posted by mercury on Monday, 10th November 2008, 10:19am
#6. Comment posted by LiQuidShade on Monday, 10th November 2008, 10:07pm
#7. Comment posted by mercury on Thursday, 13th November 2008, 7:52am
#8. Comment posted by LiQuidShade on Saturday, 15th November 2008, 6:36pm
#9. Comment posted by mercury on Wednesday, 3rd December 2008, 10:18am