All right, you know things are off to a great start when the PS3 locks up the first time you try to run the game.
One reboot later, I actually get the game to start. It has to load the title screen and the actual menus separately, but I'm really not surprised by that.
Upon beginning the Sonic story, I'm treated to a fancy prerendered HD cutscene showing the city of Soleanna (the game's setting) in the midst of a festival of some sort. The city's ruler, Princess Elise, offers a prayer to the city's sun god before lighting an impressive-looking flame.
THEN SUDDENLY EGGMAN!
Naturally, it wouldn't be a Sonic game without Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik showing up with an evil scheme of some description. He surrounds Elise and her guards with a force of robots, then explains his demands: he intends to obtain the "Flames of Disaster" along with the Chaos Emeralds, which are the key to unlocking the Flames (of course).
Fortunately, Sonic shows up! After destroying all of Eggman's mechs in an overly flashy cutscene, he takes Elise and runs off. As he runs ahead of an impressive missile barrage, a mysterious silver hedgehog (no points for guessing who this one is) watches.
Then the game loads up the next part of the cutscene, which is done using the ingame models and thus looks much worse.
Sonic's running through the streets of Soleanna, when Eggman's robots catch up with him. Sonic then drops Elise to deal with the robots (even though the game will later have Sonic fighting them just fine while carrying her), giving Eggman the chance he needs to kidnap her.
Elise Kidnapping Count: 1
Elise is able to throw her Chaos Emerald (the blue one, for the record) to Sonic before Eggman can take off with her in his Egg Carrier.
I'm then dropped into the game's first hub world and told to collect information about Eggman.
I could just head right to the next cutscene immediately, but I'm going to talk to some people first. I'm doing this because most people ignore what the NPCs have to say, and someone may as well document their inane ramblings. So, here we go:
- Woman: "Soleanna has always been a peaceful country. I can't believe something like this would happen overnight..."
- Boy: "I'm sure the soldiers will take care of Eggman!"
- Old Woman: "There were rumors that the "Blue Wind" was seen during the festival, but I wonder if they're true..."
- Middle-aged Woman: "I was helping with the reconstruction, and boy, am I tired. I just finished. There was someone called Tails who was helping, but it seemed like he was looking for someone..."
- Woman: "The ocean is so calm... It's hard to believe that all of that even happened."
- Girl: "I saw a fox with two tails over by the plaza. It seemed like he was looking for someone..."
- Soleannan Soldier: "You can't get through here because of the construction."
- Soleannan Soldier: "Entry is prohibited while reconstruction is underway."
- Young Man: "We haven't seen anything like that since the festivals started... no, there hasn't been anything like that since there's been a Soleanna. What were the royal guards doing?"
...On second thought, let's not talk to all the NPCs.
Another thing I think I should mention: Sonic leaves yellow footprints when he's wading through shallow water. I can't imagine why.
Anyway, I promptly head to where Tails is to advance the plot. The ensuing cutscene basically just has Tails meeting up with Sonic, then the two of them agree to chase after Eggman together.
I'm now told to find out where the Egg Carrier went.
Everyone I can talk to (out of those who actually have anything to say about the situation, that is) suggests that I need to go to the beach, which happens to require me to cross the water on a line of rings. I'll need an upgrade to do that, but to buy the upgrade I need rings.
Fortunately, there's a man with a blue speech balloon above his head right next to the shop. This denotes that he has a mission for me to do to earn rings, so let's see what he wants help with!
Well, it's not like I really have a choice, and those new shoes could come in handy (...eventually), so of course I help Alberto Robert (did nobody at Sega study ordinary non-Japanese names?) test his shoes! This starts a town mission that for some stupid reason is called "The winder of a Shoemaker". Here's how the man himself describes it:
Yes, we've already got one of these missions. I'm given 2 minutes, but it only took me 28 seconds to get through all of the rings. In fact, the only difficult part was a bit at the very end where I had to use a spring to leap into the air, then go through a line of rings on my way down. That was only difficult because Sonic takes too long to stop in the air, so I'd miss the last ring.
My performance earns me an A-rank, along with 500 rings to spend. If the air controls worked properly I'm sure I'd have been able to get the S-rank, though.
By the way, that mission had four loading screens: one to load the explanation, one to load the actual mission, one to load the congratulatory message, and one to get me back to the hub world. Do you see why most people just skip the optional missions?
Anyway, the store isn't selling any of the "stones called gems" yet, but it is selling something I need: the Light Chip. For only 100 rings (not coincidentally the minimum reward for any town mission), it allows me to use the Light Dash to cross lines of rings. You know, an ability that Sonic had internalized by Sonic Heroes.
Really, I don't see what the point of having to buy the Light Dash is, seeing as we get it before doing any levels.
With my newly-relearned ability, I can cross the rings that lead to the next stage. For some reason, Sonic Team couldn't be bothered to put in natural area transitions, so we have to make do with magic mirrors instead. Never mind that Sonic Adventure had actual transitions into the levels back in 1999.
Anyway, it's time for the first stage: Wave Ocean.
So, now that I'm at an actual level, I might as well explain how Sonic controls:
- The left stick makes Sonic move. It takes a while to get up to speed, but there are plenty of dash pads throughout the levels.
- X makes Sonic jump. In the air, it makes him use his homing attack to strike enemies. The homing attack in this game can defy gravity, and it'll be a while yet before Sega invents a visible reticule for the thing, so it can be unpredictable.
- Square does a weird spin kick that has very little reach. Holding Square does a highly nerfed version of Sonic's spin dash, which is barely able to get him anywhere. He can't jump out of it, either. Square is also used for the Light Dash, which could cause some control problems later on.
Pretty simple, right?
Anyway, Wave Ocean is a rather basic stage, being the first level of the game. It has a rail-grinding segment, a few loops (which are entirely automated, but unlike the loops in previous Sonic games these ones lack any invisible points that speed you up), and two parts where Sonic slides across the surface of the water (one at the start, and one near the end).
This stage also introduces the basic enemy types, which include:
- Humanoid robots that are reskinned GUN mechs from SA2. These can have missiles, lasers (not seen in this stage), or machine guns that are fast and accurate, but can only take off 1 ring at a time.
- Small robots that look like the droidekas from Star Wars Episode 1. These ones often come in formations with a stronger leader that you can destroy before the other ones to take them all out and earn bonus points.
- Flying robots that are reskins of the larger flying GUN mechs from SA2 and can be armed with the same weapons as the normal humanoid mechs.
Toward the end of the stage, some killer whales start chasing me in a sequence ripped from Emerald Coast. Unlike that sequence, this one ends with Sonic having to wall-jump between bits of debris after the walkway he's on is destroyed, then he grabs onto one whale's dorsal fin.
I then control Tails, who has to find the switch to close a gate that will keep the orca from escaping. Tails is a lot slower than Sonic, despite the fact that the entire reason he and sonic became friends was because he could keep up with Sonic. He has two abilities:
- Pressing X in the air causes Tails to start flying. You have to hold the button down to keep flying, though, and it doesn't last nearly as long as you'd hope.
- Pressing Square causes Tails to very slowly (seriously, there's like a half-second delay) throw a bomb that explodes into fake rings. With the same sound effect that plays when you take damage. Suffice to say, melee combat with Tails is confusing. Tails can also aim the bombs if you hold the button, and he simply drops them if he's flying.
Anyway, the Tails section is short, but it is on a time limit. Fortunately, there aren't very many platforming segments before the island with the switch on it, though it is at the highest accessible point (high enough that Tails needs to climb up a nearby ledge to be able to reach it) and guarded by some (easily-dispatched) mechs. Once the switch is pressed, the gate goes down barely below the surface of the water, but it still keeps the orca in, causing it to fling Sonic to the next part of the level.
With that quote, we're introduced to the most infamous part of Sonic's gameplay: mach speed sections. You know Battletoads? Ever see the Turbo Tunnel, where you need to very quickly dodge obstacles that appear at speeds that are near-impossible to react to? That's basically what the mach speeds sections are like. Sonic accelerates to speeds so fast that he'll take damage from simply hitting the environment, and you need to guide him past everything in his path. And there are lots of things to dodge.
How bad is it? I was surprised when I got through this one without getting hit, and I credit that success to luck rather than skill.
My miraculous victory earned me an S-rank, which provided me with 3000 rings.
Just to add insult to injury, the cutscene after the level shows Eggman escaping. Tails' response to this deserves to be quoted in full:
Yes, that does mean that this level was a waste of time.
Next time, we'll tackle the next level and see how that goes.
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