Sega, sega, sega. What're we going to do with you, eh? Some great games, a colossal console failure, a stream of 3d crap masquerading as one of your best series and now what? A 2d sonic game for DS. Amazing. I'm skeptical, I have to admit. But still, lesssee what we got here.
So, two separate characters. Sonic the hedgehog, of course, and Blaze the cat. Not heard of her. I'll go for Sonic. First zone? Not bad, not bad. Better than not bad in fact. It's bloody brilliant. The first zone in Sonic games is always a speedrun zone. My current record for Zone1 act1 is currently just over a minute. I can pull off the first act in the original sonic in about 58 seconds. I seem to recall the record being about 30. But I digress. It's all going well, and then it happens. The first boss. It's 3d. Full 3d. But Sonic is limited to his little 2d plane. I feel trapped. I didn't feel trapped in the minuscule space I had in the old sonics, but here i feel claustrophobic. Takes me a while to get used to it. But the feeling of actually beating it? Brilliant. Utterly great. The fact that the boss is a level of its own rather than bolted on to Act2 almost seems to fade as they do a great freeze frame of the killing blow. Then a cut scene starts. There's a story on this game, and it's keeping me from enjoying myself. There's a save system. Complete the two acts on each zone and you're safe if you can't beat the boss straight away. You can even go back to easier levels to collect more lives. dammit, this is depressing. Blaze is worse, in a way. She's not as easy to control as Sonic. Has this weird hover thing. The levels aint bad, to be honest, but the bosses. Oh, the bosses. They're nasty and 3d and difficult. The final zone took me at least 30 bloody attempts to beat, and my reward? a crappy cut scene and an order to get that last chaos emerald that I can't get because the special zone becomes fu*king impossible by that point. Welcome to hell, gentlemen.
And you get rewarded for beating the game, right? Well, yeah. You unlock time attack. Complete an act or a boss in the fastest time possible with only one life. Ha. Ha. Good joke guys.
Sonic Rush: first good sonic game in a while, but no, it's not up their with the best.

Stephen Whitehead
18th April 2006 21:42
This is Intellectual Freeware.