Presentation: The most immediate thing when starting the demo is how great the game looks.Vibrant colors, Detailed character models/objects, nice animation. The art direction is also pretty good. It is definitely a clash of Sonic and Jak/Crash series, most obvious in the machinery,enemy,statue design and the crystals ripped straight from Crash 2/3. Between the clash of the two art directions it definitely looks more like Jak/Crash than Sonic, but I guess that may have been a choice to create distance between boom and original. A plus is this version actually uses Modern Sonic version of the character, still has the tape, but other deformities from Boom Sonic are gladly missing.
Sound: If there is anything SEGA always gets right it would be the music. Was definitely worried here considering most of the Boom trailers were accompanied by Dub Step but nothing of the sort was found, but what was here didn't win any brownie points with me. Very tame and lacking any of the energy found in SEGA sonic games but it wasn't bad. Hopefully it gets better. In regards to sound effects, typical classic ones found throughout the series.
Gameplay:
PROS
- return of knuckles/tails being playable.
- responsive controls
- Multiple pathways
- exploration
CONS
- all characters play the same with only a few unique abilities. This is not like Sonic 3, Mario 2 USA, Sonic advance, Megaman 10 kind of multiple characters. Everybody run runs same speed, sprint same speed, jump same height, Homing attack... No variance... Except Sonics advanced mobility. I'll explain further.
- You can play through the whole level as Sonic, but not Knuckles,Tails, or Stix. There are mandatory obstacles in the form of blue blocks that only Sonic can break and somehow Knuckles cant or walls that are too high to reach for knuckles who cant climb or tails that cant fly up. This leads into next con.
- The other 3 characters feel like situation powers for Sonic. Sonic is Jack of all trades. You perform a tripple/Quad/5x jump in combination with his air dash!!! (has to be accident) that covers more horizontal and vertical distance than tails crappy hover ability, which works like knuckles glide ability that he doesn't have in this game, I found no reason to use stix at all as her unique is the most situational of them all. Knuckles has a punch that I found no point in using over his homing attack and thats does not even ask why I'm him to begin with. . Overall its use knuckles to dig, stix to hit switches, tails..... Submarine game, Sonic is everything else
- Levels are long if you are searching for the multiple collectables. I collected as many as I could and beat the level in 17 mins when the stage had medal rewarded for beating it under 7...definitely will have to replay levels with different goals in mind because beating the stage in 6 minutes, 250 rings, 5 crystals, 4 parts in one swoop wont happen. Long levels wouldn't be a problem if the level did not feel samey towards the end. I actual thought was looping for a minute or two ... Thats how bad it got.
NEUTRAL
- The other two stages were the worm whole which is just another half pipe variation and a race similar to Sonic Rivals. Nothing that interesting.
- Controls: Theres a button for everything, and its annoying. Could have been streamlined.
- energy whip thing was pretty boring, nothing interesting in demo
I know it seems like alot of cons, but its not. Just extension of the original idea that multiple playable characters part came off as very meh in the demo. To sum it up, there was no reason not to be sonic. Hopefully the whole game is not like that.
Overall Demo raised my interest alittle bit.
