[Phantom Stranger]

Played a Sonic Boom Demo on the 3DS. That was about 31 different flavors of awful.

Where to begin with this fucking thing? Alright, we'll start with the controls, and I apologize if I'm a bit all over the place here.

Sonic has a run button, the grapple, jump/double jump/homing attack, and the spin dash/air dash.

Why the spin dash is it's own button in a 2D game, I have no idea. Air Dash is used to break through barriers and reach higher areas, basically you push in the direction you want and Sonic will dash towards that area. Why they didn't just used the homing attack for this function is beyond me, and when you have to homing attack and enemy, grapple, and air dash all in a row, it can be a bit clunky. It's certainly doable, but it's feels very unnecessary. You will also use the air dash a lot to break through things and reach higher areas, because the level design is not at all designed for Sonic to in any way have speed.

Tails has a run, the grapple jump/double/slow decent/homing attack, and bombs.
Tails cannot fly, only slowly fall. He only ever comes into use when the game specifically places wind tunnels for Tails to reach higher areas. The bombs, while able to stick, cannot break barriers and serve no purpose than to be a very slow way to kill enemies.


Sticks has a run button, the grapple, jump/double/homing, and her boomerang. Holding the x button down makes it work like a remote control batarang for the Arkham games.

Knuckles can run, use the grapple, jump/double/home, and punch. He had no use here.

It's like they wanted to give characters unique abilities, and yet there is very little reason to ever play as them. No one other than Sonic can reach most areas, every one else is very, very situational at best.

Gameplay.

Lets talk about the physics and level design here. Very few hills or slopes in the game, most of it is vertical and flat. The overall layout feels more in line with traditional platformers or RPGs. It's very boxed it like a Metroid or Castlevania game.
What few inclines there are hold no barrings. Going up isn't any slower, and going down isn't any faster.
If you're playing as Sonic, the Spindash pretty much has no point because of this. It's also worth nothing that if you are in a ball and suddenly jump, Sonic uncurls and will get hit. In fact, homing is the only way to attack enemies as Sonic, as he will never be in a ball on the first jump no matter what. There is also a delay when you do homing attack on multiple enemies, it's very distracting.

Tails, while able to fall slower than other characters, falls like a Goddamn rock. Remember how fast he fell in '06? Yeah, pretty close to that. He falls slower than others but that's not saying much.

Running is an absolute joke, no weight at all to anyone(Except for Tails falling) they just stop on a dime, and none of the characters move that fast. At all. Even speed boosters don't do anything. I honestly think this might be the the third slowest I've seen Sonic move, right behind Sonic Labyrinth and 3D Blast/Flicky's Island. Everyone is slow. They make it look like they're running, but it isn't fast. There are Castlevania games faster than this, and that's not an exaggeration.
In fact I'm pretty sure the speed cap for this game is seen with just the regular run, because the auto sections sure as hell don't make you move any faster. It's like the characters stick to walls and ceilings rather than them having the proper momentum. The nicest thing I can say about this game's speed is that it's at least faster than Tails' Adventure.


There are pits in the game but pose no threat so long as you have a shield or rings. That's right, falling down one counts as a hit, which is not how they should fix that problem. If they wanted to do that, just put spikes or some sort of harmful liquid there instead, it would be less insulting to the player.



You can switch between the four characters at any time with the dpad, not that there is much point to it. It's not like you can find any unique pathways with/for anyone leading to new areas in the level. The only use for the other characters is when the game wants you to for the sake of progression, you can't even play as whoever you want because you'll need to switch to Sonic so often for the fucking air dash. If only you could play as someone that fly or climb or something... Or, instead of dashing upwards we would gain speed by running down a fucking hill followed by an incline.

To the level design's credit, there are little off beat nooks with shields and rings, which I like, but are inevitably not that special and are almost always dead ends. Which is so strange for a game that really wants you to use a map function to collect things.

Speaking of, I mostly passed up collecting anything and just wanted to get from part A to B as fast as possible, after all it is a Sonic game. 12 minutes. That's how long the first level is playing through it fast as I could. 12 minutes in a boring, uninteresting, repetitive environment with music I cannot recall.




Holy shit was I bored playing this.


Look I could go on about this, from the tedious sling shots to load new areas of a level, how uninterested I was in the grapple ability. It's not like it's unplayable, the mechanics they have work in that jumping, the grapple etc. work, but I really cannot find anything fun here, and it isn't built for Sonic. It might just be a demo, but that's about as much as I ever to play of the game.


Oh yeah, almost forgot. You get a boss, I think? Some worm thing and the gameplay switches to a behind view. It's pretty much just a Mach Speed section on a half pipe. You get a boost option which is apparently unlimited. You can't side step while boosting, so you constantly have to stop, move, boost, and occasionally use the grapple. Very unnecessary when previous games handled side stepping just fine.
As for the level, I'm pretty sure I was just looping over and over for about a minute collecting rings, and then it ended.

Boring, unnecessary. That's the whole demo right there.