sonic the hedgehog 4: episode 1 - 6/10
i must have hit my head decently hard. i think this game do game good
i must have become a woman possessed. i don't know what has come over me, i don't know what clicked, but... may god save me, and if i get cooked for this i can't even blame anybody, but god damn it if i didn't enjoy this game this go around.
to get the obvious downsides out of the way - it plays nothing like the mega drive games (i'll tap back into that later). it's very much undeserving of the 'sonic 4' moniker, the true sequel to sonic 3 to me will always be mania, make no mistake. most of the music is just sort of whatever, to outright egregious in some areas, the graphics (especially on the PC version) are what happens if you try to new super mario bros. -ify sonic and it is of course unmistakably unoriginal in a fair majority of its ideas (on the face of it, at least).
however... this time, i found myself appreciating a lot more of what makes sonic 4 episode 1 stand out amidst the crowd. what makes it tick, how it is designed and how it wants to be played in contrast to my, and i'm sure many many fans' expectations of what this game should have been. putting aside the name of it, this most assuredly is not the sequel to sonic 3 that was 18 years in the making; however, i believe that to be an oddly unique charm.
rather than being designed wholly in line with the classics, episode 1 is by large a more stop-and-go affair - rather than large sweeping levels filled with lots of opportunity to go fast and maintain momentum and speed to bypass a fair chunk of the more difficult platforming challenges once you get good enough as featured in the mega drive games and especially sonic 3 (and later mania, of course), you have levels that will focus on platforming challenges, and will expect you to engage with them by slowing down and learning them first. this stands in direct contrast to a majority of the classic levels, in fact i dare say that the few that did try this approach in the classics such as wing fortress and metropolis from sonic 2 are some of the most egregiously poorly designed levels in series history. however, because that's the focus here, it ends up being executed on fairly well.
in miniature, one of my favorite examples of how this game can flourish is present in splash hill zone act 2, so allow me to unpack it. the level begins by introducing you to these swinging vine obstacles, which sonic can hang off of and then jump off of to great heights, and can homing attack out of it to either another vine or enemies or springs or what have you. simple, right? at the start, it's just the one vine so you can get accustomed to the new obstacle, followed by the introduction of a few in succession, with a reward if you decide to use the momentum from jumping off to your advantage in order to take a top route. following that, around midway through the level, there is a large vertical gauntlet of vines, which you can again use momentum to get to the top of, and subsequently continue along the top route if you can execute it well, met with a bubbles homing attack chain at the very tippy top to ensure that you're not just blindly spamming, or if you fuck up, you go to the bottom route, astutely decorated with further vines for you to practice or maybe even manage to strike your way back up to the better route if you're patient and lucky. then, as the peak of this obstacle, it pairs the vertical gauntlet of several vines with a spike pit beneath at the end of the level, set to punish you unless you understand this mechanic. that's the name of the game with episode 1; it has a really wonderful understanding of just how to introduce its mechanics, tutorialise and increment them to a point of maximum difficulty, and it's largely one per act, making each stage feel a lot more distinctive from one another.
so, that's nice and all, right? but it's sonic, where's the speed? and most people who've played the game are probably yelling out right now "Them Bloody Speed Boosters" which, sometimes, can be true. however, i feel as though there's a fundamental misnomer here. rather than the speed being an intrinsic reward for skilled play in this game, the speed is a tool by which the true reward is reaped - a sense of flow.
this game, honest to goodness, when you get everything in a level down, know precisely where to homing attack, when to slow down, when to speed up, when to spindash, where to jump, getting the right cycles, everything - it feels godly. it feels like sonic is a knife carving his way through hot butter. this is something that is also true of the classics, but by and large, the platforming within those stages is very much enclosed and the gauntlets are made to actively cut your speed down, which can feel frustrating to first time players, and even if you're returning but your run gets shat on from a great height by the side of spikes getting in your way, not even damaging you but just stopping you dead in your tracks, it can be really annoying. conversely, in episode 1, due to its closer reliance on this reduced pace, you're less likely to run square into obstacles and lose all your speed, yet that doesn't mean that you are entirely barred off from it; you can manage to finagle your way through a section with some delicate movements that, yes, in the moment may be slow, but in terms of the overall line that you get going through the stage, it's one uninterrupted go of it. it's like integrating a far easier to access speedrunner mentality without the barrier of having to react to everything at a moment's notice or otherwise memorize entire level layouts off the cuff. i would dare to argue that, as a result of this, mad gear zone is less a rip-off of metropolis from sonic 2 as most would credit it as, but rather a sequel, an exploration of "what if we really did make it central on platforming, but in a way that didn't feel like you had just gotten a live grenade in your trail mix?".
that's something else, too; i feel like whilst these levels are no doubt heavily influenced by their classic counterparts, they are very much distinct from them in level design, if nothing else. splash hill is no more green hill than emerald hill before it, with the little breakable rocks from angel island (and sonic 3 at large, really) hiding springs, the zip-lines that funnily enough, would later go on to be a mechanic in mania's green hill zone, the aforementioned vines; a lot sets it apart to make it more than just a green hill clone. i feel like a lot of people see the baseline aestheticism of these zones and immediately write them off due to them having at least a visage of familiarity. i'll say this much - at least it's not just green hill, outright. it tried to be at least mildly different whilst also appealing to that classic idea. i also like where it pays homage to the classics in other ways, such as the special stages being in the vein of the sonic 1 prototype design, which is a super cool idea, and another wonderful way to show how it's an exploration of reinterpretations of the classic stuff that you already know, at least in my opinion.
i feel like a lot of backlash to this game is because of the title setting a certain expectation. that's something i cannot disavow anyone for, as i would say that it is certainly reasonable for expecting the next numerical entry in a franchise that hasn't seen one for 18 years to be somewhat in keeping with that prior entry. unfortunately, marketing happened and had to effectively shoot this game in the ass before it even had the chance to exist. if this game simply was not called sonic 4 and instead was some sort of in-between for sonic advance and sonic rush, i think it'd go down a lot better. a lot of frustrations in the sonic community are borne of expectation, more than anything; everybody expected a sonic adventure 2 sequel, but sonic heroes came out. scathing hatred towards it. everybody expected a sonic mania 2. everybody, including myself, more or less immediately wrote off superstars because... well, it isn't mania 2, what's the fucking point? and there is certainly legitimacy in that; there is no issue with expecting and desiring something, however, when it clouds our judgment of a game on its own merits, in a vacuum, distinct from the surrounding context, i feel like that may be a bit of a stumbling block. that doesn't proclude games from being shit even in that viewpoint, of course, but sonic 4, i feel, is undeserving of that scorn, at least a fair bit of it.
whilst it is a poor classic mega drive-style sonic game, sonic 4 is a pretty good game in it's own right, and i've grown to love it for that. this was the first game i actively remember going for 100% in. and i did it again for this visit. wonderful time. really wish the steam version wasn't guaranteed to crash when you get the 7th emerald.
