SAGE ‘08: Fangame Review Slew #2

Another day, and five more games.

We’re resuming our more brief reviews for this, the next to the last day of SAGE. As I said yesterday, it’s easier on me to do this, and it provides you, the reader, with a much wider variety of reviews. There’s at least one or two “big” reviews we may or may not still be doing, however.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy!

Sonic: Genesis of the Azure Wind
Even though we have a number of 3D fangames this year crafted in Blender, Sonic: Genesis of the Azure Wind goes a different route: modifying an existing engine. Here, it’s the rather oddball choice of Halo: Custom Edition for the PC. Now, as I recall, Halo, for the visuals it produced, didn’t run very well. Furtheremore, I am of the opinion that despite Halo for the PC supporting mods, it was not designed to be modified. Thus it makes a bit odd to see, of all things, a Sonic mod produced for it - Halo was not designed to be a platformer, or even third person, for that matter. And boy, does it ever show. The demo provides you with a version of Kingdom Valley to run around in… but instead of being a normal level, it’s a bunch of disconnected sections linked together via teleporters. There are very few rings to speak of and absolutely no enemies. Halo, with its floaty physics and distinct lack of air control frequently muck up the Sonic experience and are responsible for a worryingly large number of accidental deaths. Though the demo comes with a tool that is supposed to force the third person camera angle, there is a message in their forums urging you not to patch up to the latest version of Halo CE as the hack used to enable third person mode has been fixed. I, of course, read this after I patched. Given the enourmous list of videos that have been posted regarding this mod over the years, I suppose it is pretty impressive that this was all accomplished… but I have to wonder what the point is, as the result I am looking at isn’t at all like Halo, and it isn’t at all like Sonic, and most importantly of all, it wasn’t even really that fun. It was just sort of… there.

Yoshi’s Isle: Sonic Style
I have to admit, I didn’t really know what to expect, here. I like Sonic the Hedgehog, and Yoshi’s Island is one of my favorite games of all time, plus the booth artwork was cute… so I took a chance. Now that I’ve finished the demo (consisting of four or five very short levels and one boss), I’m a bit… disappointed. Each level is a collection of square blocks perched in the sky with almost no enemies to speak of. Each level honestly takes a few seconds to clear, and finishing the level consists of using Sonic’s homing attack to chain together a series of hits until you pass the goal marker. Repeat four times until you face the mildly interesting boss battle. Quite simply put, that, uh, sucks. The lynch pin of failure here is the level design - the engine itself seems to be coded solidly enough, but the levels barely even qualify to be called “levels” as it’s more like “5 floating platforms and a field full of enemies for you to homing attack across”. The artwork is cute, though, and I appreciate the original graphics, but the level design needs tons and tons of work.

Sonic the Hedgehog: GEDA
I’m not quite sure what GEDA stands for, but maybe it means “Generic Sonic Fangame”. This is about as standard as they come, offering up Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles for play in levels styled after the Sega Genesis Sonic games. Nobody seems to have any extra abilities or anything new, it’s just straight up classic Sonic. For what its worth, the level design isn’t so bad - some if the graphics tiles don’t really feel like they match up artistically, but what’s here isn’t so bad. Though underwater physics do feel a little too sluggish - I know they’re supposed to slow Sonic down, but I don’t think they’re supposed to slow him down this much, and the wavy water graphical effect was a little overbearing - made judging distance a little tough at times. Honestly, it’s hard to find something to complain about here, but it’s equally hard to find something to praise - this is just a very vanilla, middle-of-the-road, somewhat boring fangame.

Sonic DL Adventure
Based off the flop that was Sonic 2006, Sonic DL Adventure offers up seven playable characters - Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy Rose, Shadow, Silver and Blaze the Cat. Unfortunately, there’s only one level: Wave Ocean. It’s hard to describe Wave Ocean here, really, but it doesn’t really feel like a level out of a Sonic the Hedgehog game. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of slopes or loops or anything of that nature, really - just a lot of ramps that launch you across sections of water. When you land on the beach again, there’s usually a few enemies you have to take out, followed by either another ramp to launch you to the next section, or a set of springs that accomplish roughly the same task. Each character has their own unique set of abilities - being based off Sonic 2006, Sonic gets a homing attack, Knuckles can punch stuff, etc. The level is somewhat designed to take advantage of their unique abilities, but not really - there are quite a large number of locations that look like they would be solid enough to stand on, but aren’t (there are also a couple of cases where you encounter something that doesn’t seem like it should be solid, but it is). Also odd: selecting Shadow loads Tails instead. Whoops! Overall, I don’t think I’d recommend this game.

Amy Bubble Burst
If you’re looking for something different this SAGE - and I mean really different, check out Amy Bubble Burst. I’m assuming this is essentially an Amy Rose-styled version of classic game “Pang!” (Buster Bros. in the US) - but I’ve never played Pang, so I can’t comment much, there. Amy Bubble Burst has you running around as Amy Rose, sending little hearts in to the air in order to burst bubbles floating around the screen. Each bubble you burst divides itself in to three smaller bubbles, until eventually they get so small they disappear. Burst bubbles will sometimes drop power-ups, too - shields, the ability to freeze bubbles momentarily (making them easy pickings), stuff like that. After roughly two or three stages, you face off against Dr. Eggman. Eggman shoots bubbles at you, and its your job to burst the bubbles in to smaller pieces so they ricochet off walls and back in to him again. It’s fairly tricky stuff, but thankfully, there are no lives to speak of in the game - if you die, you simply start the level over again until you finally get it right. That’s a nice touch. Though it may not be a Sonic game, I did have quite a bit of fun with Amy Bubble Burst. Give it a shot.