DESPITE THE PRESENCE OF A MINECART LEVEL…
…we shall be moving HEAVEN AND EARTH (trying to find a VGA cable) and maybe actually playing Sonic The Hedgehog 4 today.
But only maybe. It’s been a long time since we last held a video game controller, and it may trigger unsettling flashbacks.
filed in "NEWS", ACTUAL GAMES, IN-STORE MESSAGEBOARD on Oct.13, 2010
October 13th, 2010 on 1:09 pm
If there is one glimpse of a hover/skate/snowboard then I’m ripping the internals out the xbox…
October 13th, 2010 on 1:31 pm
I’ve played about an hour of it now. It’s alright, which is a massive crime as it should have been wonderful…
October 13th, 2010 on 1:40 pm
In order to bring me to turn on the 360 and actually buy something from XBLA, it would have had to be a complete game (none of this episode bollocks) and better than ‘yeah, it’s quite good’.
Get Super Meat Boy instead (comes out this month and early reviews say it’s amazing. A full game too, imagine that!).
Follow greatness, not nostalgia!
October 13th, 2010 on 3:19 pm
Tried it during lunch. It’s not actually very good at all. How it’s getting 9/10 on Eurogamer is beyond me.
October 13th, 2010 on 3:58 pm
Here’s some news to make up for it
October 13th, 2010 on 4:06 pm
OK, so say I could be bothered to set up my trashed 360 how much would I then have to pay to play this episode?
October 13th, 2010 on 4:23 pm
New Sonic and Gran Turismo 5 delayed? What a day!
http://kotaku.com/5662886/gran-turismo-5-delayed-now-coming-this-holiday-season
October 13th, 2010 on 5:25 pm
I didn’t bother in the end. Was hoping it might be up on the internal review network that I puzzlingly still have access to, but it isn’t.
October 13th, 2010 on 5:48 pm
Good work, Zorg.
Just one question before, what is the point of this blog again?
October 13th, 2010 on 6:10 pm
Tradition?
October 13th, 2010 on 6:58 pm
its terrific. Stop being miserable bastards and go and buy it. You might want to buy a pad with a decent d-pad if you’re playing it on the 360 tho…
October 13th, 2010 on 7:09 pm
I apologise for my last comment. Long live UK:R, whatever it is that it does.
October 14th, 2010 on 12:44 am
The most jarring thing about this game is that Sonic seems to be smiling when he dies.
Also turning into super sonic while invincible doesn’t give you permanent invincibility stars like it used to fuck this game worst ever made 0/10
October 14th, 2010 on 5:36 am
Of course I’ll buy it, I paid five times as much for Sonic Unleashed, didn’t I?
October 14th, 2010 on 9:29 am
You paid £50 for Sonic Unleashed?!
October 14th, 2010 on 12:54 pm
Nice work James – time for a special Sony Lie Watch
October 14th, 2010 on 3:59 pm
“It’s been a long time since we last held a video game controller”
Yes, this Kinect, like, totally changed our gamers’ habits !!!!!
October 14th, 2010 on 10:36 pm
im lovin it – however I would utterly hate playing it on the 360’s shitty one spring D-pad – I been rockin my SFIV pad which is basically a Saturn pad so it was reet enjoyable – I liked the level with the cards
October 15th, 2010 on 11:49 am
It’s good. As in properly good, not just ‘alright.’ I did a quick round-up for a website, here it is for you to read aghast. Feel free to point out how I’m not “hardcore” enough for noticing that the second and fifth frames of Sonic’s running animation are ALL WRONG, or that I don’t think it’s shit that his spikes are too long:
“I admit that I was a little worried about how Sonic 4 would turn out. It’s been pretty easy to get swept up in the tsunami of negativity that bitter old-time Sonic fans have been drumming up, but I (almost) literally cannot stop playing it. Having been through all of the acts and boss levels I can’t wait to get speedrunning/nab all of the chaos emeralds/play as Super Sonic. [Got ’em now. Special Stage 7 is a bit of a biatch).
The trophies/achievements are a balanced mix between welcoming and silly hard. Completing the last boss without getting hit is going to be mental; it’ll likely take about 10 lives just to work out a pattern to beat it.
The ONLY thing that I could detract from Part 1 is that elements of the design are mere remixes of content from Sonic and Sonic 2. Fortunately the level design is nigh-on flawless. I must have replayed the first level’s opening act a dozen or more times trying to get my time under 1 minute [finally managed 57 seconds] and almost never took the same route to the end. I also LOVED the different pace achieved on the Lost Labyrinth level with the flaming torch.
Much scepticism has been heard about the inclusion of the homing attack and I agreed until I learnt how well it keeps the flow of movement going. Anybody complaining about Sonic being sluggish to start running a) isn’t using the homing attack as a ‘linking move’ to stop having to slow down so often and b) is quite possibly is romaticising the animation of the older titles.
So yes, it’s not quite perfect. However I’d say it’s more than any Sonic fan could have hoped for and bodes well for Episode 2. It was £80 for Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles back in the day so it’s nothing new for one Sonic game to be split into multiple parts. If they’re this good I’ll gladly pay a tenner a piece. It’s a shame that it took 16 years to ‘fix’ the series, but I’m hoping that we’ll see a lot more of Sonic in 2D.”
October 15th, 2010 on 1:24 pm
Sorry, amplifiedAnt, your post wasn’t negative or cynically jaded enough to comply with UK:R’s standards. As a result you have left yourself open to accusations of enthusiasm and open mindedness.
N.B. UK:R’s standards are not ‘community’ standards, as that would imply a degree of cohesion and solidarity amongst the posters, which would directly contravene UK:R’s key tenets of negativity and jaded cynicism.
October 15th, 2010 on 1:24 pm
Still not entirely sure if it’s good or not, what with some people saying it’s great and others “meh”. Don’t tell me I’ll have to download it and make my own mind up, I’ve still not AAA’d all the missions in Allstars Racing yet.
And am unlikely to until I fix/replace my 360. And TV.
Damn you Sega, why do you have to release so many games? Have a word with them, Zorg; tell them to slow down their release schedule a bit, will you?
I demand at least another 16 years before the next episode or I’ll never catch up at this rate.
October 15th, 2010 on 2:32 pm
I’m just disappointed that nobody picked up on this gem in what I wrote (er, copy/pasted):
“is quite possibly is romaticising”
Where have the pedants gone?!
Oh yeah, and the rotating minecart bullshit is only on the iPhone version, thankfully.
October 15th, 2010 on 5:12 pm
A Sonic game that doesn’t instantly make you vomit with rage is now considered a success. :(
October 17th, 2010 on 12:17 am
@Matt: Retail boxed games are tremendously expensive here in Australia.
e.g. a copy of Enslaved will cost you about 67 pounds down here!
Compared to that, the 12 pounds for a typical XBLA game is pocket change.
Anyway, I did buy it, and I like it, especially the minecart level!
October 17th, 2010 on 1:42 am
I don’t own a current game console so my opinion of all this is possibly redundant (that won’t stop me from sharing it, of course) but fuck all this episodic horse shit.
I think I will wait for Sega to release the FULL GAME for the Dreamcast. I mean, it doesn’t look as graphically impressive as that recent fan game and I think the reason for this must be due to a planned Dreamcast release. Obviously.
October 17th, 2010 on 12:43 pm
I just bought it on 360. I was gonna get it on PS3 so I could use my Saturn pad and complete the retro illusion but I’ll make do with that dodgy Mad Catz Fightpad(which is actually working very well, other than that using the buttons feels like pressing a brick wall).
Sega’ll be getting a lot of money out of me this month, what with that ‘spend 2400 points, get 800 free’ offer going on. I’m gonna get Sonic 2, 3 and Knuckles in a sec, and maybe even Sonic Adventure.
Thieving bastards.
October 17th, 2010 on 3:35 pm
Is there a demo for Sonic 4? If someone can confirm this within the next 12 months I may check it out. Lord knows I’m not going to subject myself to all those poorly designed menus without knowing for certain.
October 18th, 2010 on 10:27 am
For the first time, I’m actually excited about a new Sonic game, rather than scared it might beat Mario in some way, like in the good old days.
I must have been indoctrinated by UK:R. Either that, or I’m just a bit too old to care now.
October 18th, 2010 on 1:55 pm
“Is there a demo for Sonic 4?”
I’m going to presume that I’m one of the only people on here with a PS3 so yes, there’s one on the 360.
There is on the PS3 as well actually, but only on the US Store.
October 19th, 2010 on 2:11 am
Imagine if we’d had the Internet in 1994…
“Sonic 3 only has 6 stages, FAIL!”
“Why did they add a double jump? It takes all the skill out of jumping!”
“You have to buy a separate cartridge to get the Knuckles levels!”
“Games have all sucked since they went to bitmaps, just go back to text-mode already!”
October 19th, 2010 on 12:41 pm
@professor dumb: Apologies, sometimes I forget that people live in other countries. While this admission will likely make my opinion redundant, I actually liked Sonic Unleashed (I paid £30 for it), and am looking forward to Sonic Colours. Not pleased with Sonic 4 though at all, tenner or not.
October 20th, 2010 on 2:45 pm
Yes, it is good. The thing that will make you realise this is beating the first level in 60 seconds. You have to learn lots of tricks that immediately make you realise the game is well thought out and not just another sack of shit Sonic game, which is what it seems like to begin with.
So if you still don’t like it, set yourself the one minute target on the first stage. I guarantee you’ll have fun beating it – it isn’t possible to get that time and not enjoy yourself.
October 20th, 2010 on 5:57 pm
ArseGambler – an anagram of Sega Rambler! You’ve been rumbled!