Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2

Let me start by saying that I’ve been a huge Sonic fan throughout most of my life.  The original Sonic the Hedgehog was literally the first game I ever owned and, although I never EVER completed it, I probably spent a good 50+ hours of my life enthralled with the misadventures of that suave blue roadkill. This qualifies me to say whatever I will about Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 2, which is, quite frankly, a game that should not exist.  At the very least it shouldn’t be called “Sonic the Hedgehog”.

When you think of Sonic you think of speed, right?  Not these guys.  When they think of Sonic they think of treacle, and running through it.  I’ve never seen a Sonic game as slow as this one; it makes Sonic 3 look like it’s running double speed.  You could look at this and think, “well at least you won’t run constantly into unavoidable death like in the others”, but you’re wrong.  The movement controls are just floaty enough make even other slow moving objects a hazard for poor Sonic (he must be getting old I suppose) so you end up having all the cons of running really fast with none of the running really fast.  It’s infuriating.

Speaking of things that are infuriating I should probably warn you about the bosses.  These are some of the most drawn out, boring, irritating boss fights you may ever have the misfortune of becoming embroiled in.  My particular favourite was a boss fight with a machine made out of scrap metal that wastes five minutes of your time trying to drop boxes on you while you ineffectually paw at his health until he decides to pull out his next trick.  After that he jumps from background, to foreground, to the playable area during which time you can hit his feet with a special attack from the front.  The only problem is that when he lands in the playable area he’s always facing away from you, so you need to spend a further few minutes desperately trying to trick the game into facing him the other way. It’s horrific.  Did I say, “My particular favourite”?  I meant, “The reason I burnt my house down.”

I wouldn’t mind the bosses if the roads up to them were good, but I can’t even tick that box.  The levels are mostly made up of mash-ups of various older Sonic levels, the first being a mix of Marble Garden Zone and Aquatic Ruin zone.  None of them are particularly original, and they don’t even manage to capture the charm of the levels they’re emulating, backed with horribly repetitive music tracks that made me thank the sweet Lord that I can run my computer’s music collection through my Xbox.  The only levels that are actually enjoyable are the bonus stages you can earn at the end of a level, and even those are just the bonus stages from Sonic the Hedgehog 2.  Even a level that lets you control Tails’ Tornado does little to break up the monotony, simply adding some of its own into the mix.