Hands-On: Sonic the Hedgehog

Sega's next-gen facelift scrutinised in our latest hands-on impressions of Sonic for PS3 and 360.

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When the original Sonic Adventure first hit the scene, it was the first time Sega's speedy mascot had been translated well into 3D. While the game suffered from a few minor technical issues, it captured the high-speed elements of the 2D classics well, and was great fun to play. But sadly, let's face it, the past few years haven't really been the best of times for true blue Sonic fans. While Sonic Team and the like have churned out various Sonic games over the years, none of them managed to recapture the magic that seemed to escape after Sonic Adventure landed on the Dreamcast (yeah it's been THAT long).

Commemorating the fifteen year anniversary of Sonic, Sonic Team is looking to turn things around with a proper next-gen update, Sonic the Hedgehog. Highlighting the Sega E3 booth were playable versions on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. We had a chance to give both versions a try and we're pretty pleased with the demos for now.

In Sonic's upcoming adventure, players will embark on a new adventure throughout the beautiful water city, Soleanna. After entering the human world and befriending a beautiful princess named Elise, Sonic quickly finds himself at odds with the sinister Dr. Eggman yet again after he kidnaps Princess Elise and sets out to destroy her special kingdom. With that, Sonic races into action in order to thwart Eggman's latest hatched nefarious scheme before he can see it come to fruition.

The game will feature two types of stages: Action stages where players will be tested to keep up with the high-speed platforming action of the game, and exploration levels where Sonic will be able to explore town settings, interact with NPCs, and play through sub-missions in order to advance the storyline -- all pretty much a throwback to the original Sonic Adventure.

The game will also feature at least three playable characters: Sonic, Silver, and Shadow, each with their own interweaving storylines. In addition, the game will also feature a cast of both new and returning characters, as well as multiplayer modes where up to four players will be able to compete as Sonic and friends.

While Sonic the Hedgehog takes advantages of the extra processing muscle of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 to render the most visually stunning Sonic 'adventure' yet, for the most part the gameplay is pretty much what fans have come to expect from the series. The game controlled well with both controllers and thanks to the simple control scheme we were up and running in no time.

The E3 demos featured 2 playable levels and 2 characters to control. 'Kingdom Valley' which was Sonic's level, consisted of some beautifully detailed and grassy terrain first seen at last year's Tokyo Game Show demonstration, that had players racing through the level at high speed with all of the familiar Sonic conventions in play. Sonic can run around, collect rings, perform a sliding move to destroy item boxes housing power-ups as well as destroy enemies by performing a homing attack while in mid-jump.

In trademark 3D Sonic fashion the homing attack serves multiple purposes. In addition to smashing objects and enemies, players can use it in the platforming sections of the game by chaining their homing attacks together to destroy groups of airborne enemies lined up along a certain path in order to reach areas that are otherwise far out of Sonic's reach.

In addition, you have the traditional Sonic checkpoints scattered throughout the levels to save some headaches, and we were able to perform what appeared to be Sonic's light-dash move to successfully follow and collect a long trail of rings positioned over one of the longest death drops in the game.

The action moves at a good pace, with various objects and contraptions in the environments helping to speed things up a bit more. Spring boards and launch pads helped propel Sonic from bumper to bumper as well as bounce off of ropes to reach higher platforms. We were also grinding rails, getting free air rides from giant Eagles and even sliding down narrow water streams that appeared after activating one of the game's puzzle pieces.

While the first half of the level provided plenty of speed, it would be considered a bit on the slow side in comparison to the second half of the level which had us racing through an impressive water-based level. The level scrolled forward very quickly, allowing minimal time to avoid death drops, walls and flying robots. The action picked up even more as we ran out of runway and had to hang on to and leap from the sides of the platforms spread out throughout the watery surface, before running at a 90 degree angle on the waterfalls lining each side of the screen.

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