| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| GameBoy Advance | 5.50 |
| Overall | 5.50 |
|
I played and finished Sonic Advance 2 today which I had never played before. The first Sonic Advance was as close to the Genesis Sonic's as we have ever gotten, Advance 2 sadly is a departure and is the origin of the Sonic Rush gameplay. The levels aren't designed as a platformer, they are more about sending Sonic running, spring jumping, grinding through loops and a level that is more like a twisting race track. Very few enemies and for a lot of the game you may just be holding the right button and see a bunch of cool stuff happen. The main problem with this is that it creates a game where you kind of just fly by the level, you almost experience it more than you play it. Rush works because it incorporates a boost and scoring system, remove that and you have a game without much to do. As levels go on they get a bit harder cause they add random pits of death. These aren't pits you see coming, these are pits after spring jumps where you don't know where you are going to land. So as you are falling down quickly you notice a tiny spot you need to land on or you are dead. This happens with rails often as you can only grind them if you land at the start point, try to land in any mid portion of the rail you will simple fall right through, often to your death. The levels are huge with many multiple paths but you fly by so quickly that you hardly notice it all. For the most part you whiz by the level and what ever path you so happened to to take you take, the level is over in like 2-3 minutes. Strangely the game wants you to explore these levels as to get to a special stage you need to find 7 hidden coins. These are scattered randomly in different locations, off of different paths. Everything in this game is designed to shoot you forward so trying to stop and go back for something is almost impossible. Boss fights are horrible. All of them have Sonic automatically running and Robotnik is in front of you in some vehicle throwing crap at you as you try to speed up enough to hit Robotnik. It is so annoying and cheap. The best part is, the final level is a boss gauntlet, so you get to play all these horrible boss battles again, yay! The design is pretty crappy but at the very least they include some incentive to play again. You unlock different characters to play as, Tails, Knuckles, and Cream. Each come with their own abilities which can make searching for those coins much easier, like having Tails fly around. I guess if you try to master the game and go for high times in time trail mode you can find some addicting gameplay, at the moment I don't feel like doing that. Of course getting all emeralds gets you a secret boss fight with you as Soper Sonic and the true ending, again once through the game is enough for me. It also looks nice for a GBA game, Sonic animates very well. It controls just fine, ok music, it's not a bad game at all. It just isn't any good either. This is the perfect 5 range game, totally forgettable, it does nothing that bad to be bad, and nothing good to be good. It is the inspiration for Rush but it is half the game Rush is. |
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Posted by Dvader Sat, 27 Feb 2010 04:07:39
Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:08:19
The first one was reportedly pretty good. Have you tried that? I'm now guessing that it had to be like the second one, that they used the same engine.
Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:35:36
Yeah the first one was good. More like classic Sonic.
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