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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In contrast to Sonic's Kingdom Valley level, the demo also featured a second playable level titled Crisis City. Here players left the bright greenery and beautiful watery ruins of Kingdom Valley behind and entered the dark, dilapidated settings of Crisis City where an entire city is aflame with buildings and other structures crumbling all around you - sort of reminiscent of Shadow the Hedgehog's starting level. It's also here where players take control of a mysterious new Hedgehog known as Silver the Hedgehog, who Sonic will cross paths with during the course of his adventure, and whose mysteries shall be unraveled as players progress through the game.

While Silver may first appear to be nothing more than a color-swapped version of Sonic from afar, there's a lot more to this hog than meets the eye. For one thing Silver isn't the physical type. While Sonic is busy spin dashing and smashing his way through objects and enemies, Silver relies solely on his powers of telekinesis. In utilizing telekinesis, Silver is able to manipulate inanimate objects around him with his mind.

It's actually a pretty cool gameplay mechanic that takes a little getting used to at first, but once you adjust to it, it's a lot of fun manipulating objects such as large item boxes, car wreckages, as well as giant chunks of debris found throughout the crumbling city, flinging them at enemies as well as weakening/collapsing support structures in the background. With that said, one of the coolest aspects of Silver's telekinesis is that it helps highlight the game's interactive 3D environments and advance physics engine with objects and enemies bouncing around and structures crumbling in impressive fashion.

In addition to attacking enemies, Silver's telekinetic power also has other uses. For one thing Silver is all about levitating. After jumping and then pressing the jump button again Silver will levitate in the air for a limited amount of time, which is good for reaching platforms out of his normal jumping range. His ability to levitate is limited though, as it's governed by a gauge that gets depleted every time it's used, so you'll need to be able to judge the distance between different platforms before attempting any suicide jumps.

In addition to that, at certain points throughout the levels players will encounter minor platforming puzzles they'll need to solve by standing over green circular shaped symbols on the ground and activating Silver's telekinesis power. Often, these symbols will appear at the end of drop off points where additional platforming will be needed in order to proceed but impossible due to the height and/or distance of the target platform.

Standing over the symbols and activating Silver's psychokinetic power allowed us to raise various types of objects that were casting a green glow effect similar to that of the symbols. Afterwards we were able to traverse the raised platforms to reach the out of the way areas. Other times, using Silver's power with the aforementioned symbols sent us flying across to other areas after getting launched into the air by a support beam. While Silver's game was a bit slower-paced and easier than Sonic's, the platforming gameplay mechanics involved were pretty cool.

While the demo was unfortunately short it served its purpose of whetting our appetite for the final game. It felt like a return to form for the series and is the first time since the original Sonic Adventure I've personally had high hopes for one of Sonic's 3D iterations.

The graphics of both versions looked incredibly sharp with plenty of details sprinkled throughout the game's expansive and interactive 3D environments. The levels were impressively large in scope with no signs of pop-up, and with some impressive lighting effects, particles, and motion blur effects being displayed. While the PS3 version experienced a few hiccups here and there, both versions ran pretty smoothly for the most part. In addition to the great-looking backgrounds, the character designs, or let's say redesigns, have also seen some modest changes and aren't your usual Sonic fare, but regardless, we're digging the leaner, meaner new look of the characters.

All told, Sonic's next-gen outing is shaping up to be something special. All of the elements appear to be in place to deliver a proper 3D Sonic title and we're keeping our fingers crossed that this is THE 3D Sonic title we've been waiting a long time for. As we've proven ever since the game's debut a year ago, you can keep it tuned to Kikizo for any new developments on the game.

Joseph Jackson
Staff Writer, Kikizo.com

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