Overdue Review: Sonic The Hedgehog 4 - Episode 1 (Xbox 360)

Sega stops beating their heads against the wall for a moment and decides to try releasing something that they at least know was good at one point.  How well did this play out for them?  Read on, Stranger...

Anyone who grew up in the 90's remembers the glory days of Sega.  Those were the days where you could actually have Sega vs. Nintendo arguments and have a leg to stand on.  Personally, I never owned a Nintendo console until the N64 came out, finding myself perfectly content with my Sega Genesis.  And being a Sega kid, I loved the Sonic games.  More specifically though, I loved the real Sonic games: 1, 2, 3, and & Knuckles.  Sega lost me with the Sonic Adventure games, largely because I thought the overall conceit of the Sonic games (run really fast, jump on stuff, grab rings) didn't translate well to 3-D.  Sadly, this was where the series stayed for what seemed like forever, and even their 2-D DS offering, Sonic Rush Adventure was plagued by repetitive grinding and poor level design (largely due to the attempt to make you switch between top and bottom screen at random).  But then, lo and behold, did Sega announce that they were hitting the reset button and bringing us Sonic in all of his side scrolling glory, and my interest was rekindled.

So here is the good news.  If there is still a place in your heart for the gameplay of the bygone days of 16-bit systems, and the style of the Sonic games in particular, then this game will satisfy harder than a Snickers, and I hear that's saying something.  Apart from a few tweaks to the physics (Sonic handles a little heavier than he used to) and the addition of a homing attack, the game plays almost exactly like a combination of Sonic 1 and 2.  The levels are all designed in the aesthetic of levels from those titles (Green Hill Zone, Casino Night Zone, Labrynth Zone, and Scrap Yard Zone), but all incorporate enough new elements that they never simply feel copy pasted, but rather like loving tributes.  You run from left to right jumping on things and solving platforming puzzles while collecting rings.  Finish a level with 50, you get a shot at a chaos emerald in levels modeled after the chaos emerald zones of Sonic 1, with the twist that you rotate the level around sonic as he falls.  Best of all, you will not see one bit of dialogue, attempt at plot beyond "stop Dr. Eggman", or character other than Sonic the entire time.

Could you even imagine a world where

this bullshit never happened?

This game is honestly hampered the most by the age of the style upon which it is reliant.  This was an era where games were only a few hours long so as to be beatable in one sitting, so things like lives were introduced, or perhaps sudden pitfall deaths that would guarantee that you would be playing an area a second time at least.  These are both present in the game, in spite of the fact that a save system should render lives irrelevant, and surprise fall deaths are no less cheap a way to lengthen a game now than they were 15 years ago.  The pattern based boss fights have also not aged particularly well, as they are at best monotonous routine for experienced sonic players, and at worst life after life worth of insta-kill bullshit.  Then, as your reward for playing through all of these boss fights, you go to a final zone, where you redo every single boss fight in a row before fighting a damn near impossible final boss.  I lost 25 lives doing this, and when it arbitrarily made me reset to the main menu, I decided I had had enough for one day.  The pisser is, this final fight is so goddamn difficult that making you fight the bosses seems wholly unnecessary, almost as if they were afraid that their game was too short to justify charging 1200 Microsoft points for.

"Fuck it, Bob, just pop those boss fights in there, put it on the

market, and let's go get us some whores!"

Deciding whether you will like Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 is an easy task.  Is the idea of another side-scrolling Sonic game something that appeals to you?  Then you will probably have a lot of fun with this game like I did.  If you don't care about old school games, or didn't care about the Sonic franchise when it was relevant, however, this is not going to convert you into a believer any time soon.  Sega is planning to do 3 to 4 episodes of this total, and the end of this installment hints that tails will perhaps be available in episode 2.  I do find it worrisome that it appears that Sega is trying to get us to slowly pay 45 to 60 dollars for what is in essence a reskin of Sonic 1 and 2, but I'm not reviewing Sega's questionable business ethics (or their famous love of whores and needle drugs... just saying), I'm reviewing this game.  And I defy anyone who owned a Genesis in the 90's to listen to the Sonic Team chorus shout "SE-GA", before running across a bridge to kill some robot fish and a wasp without getting goosebumps.