SAGE 10: Review Slew #4

Babies, vs. Gizoids, in an Arena, With A Gun

Today, the Sonic Amateur Games Expo 2010 comes to a close. Of course, just because the official event has come to a close doesn’t mean you or I have to stop celebrating – last year, the “SAGE After-party” lasted almost a full week after the expo had come to an end. And, considering there’s at least one more batch of reviews left to write after this, don’t count on our SAGE coverage ending just yet. That said – let’s get to it!

Sonic Arena 2
Conceptually, Sonic Arena is really quite impressive. This is, essentially, a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG based around the Sonic Universe. Registering is fast an easy, though immediately the first problem becomes apparent: The game’s interface. Figuring out how to register and then connect was a little confusing. Once I was finally in the starter area, further confusion set in as the game provided little indication on what keys on the keyboard did what, and not many people in the global chat seemed willing to help me out. Eventually, however, I figured out enough to get my first quest from Tails, which was to go talk to Sonic. Sonic wants me to bring him back a ring. So I go get the ring, talk to Sonic, Sonic gives me one of the two keys I need. I go back to Tails, Tails gives me the second key I need to open the door and get out of the starter area. Except the door won’t open. Bringing up a list of equipable items does not show the key. So I do the quest again: talk to Tails, talk to Sonic, get the ring, get the first key, get the second key. Door won’t open. There’s no indicator of what, exactly, I am doing wrong. So I quit. There’s no telling what lies beyond the door, but given what was being said in the global chat, it probably involved fighting monsters or robots or something. Maybe you’ll have more luck than I did.

Sonic with a Gun
Sonic with a Gun asks a lot of the user. It is a modification for the original Jazz Jackrabbit – a game that has considerable trouble these days working on modern computer systems. Most people will likely have to run the game through an old PC emulator called DOSbox – which can be quite a challenge to set up for somebody who is inexperienced. Even considering an “all-in-one” package to help you get the game up and running, the original Jazz Jackrabbit does not seem like a game that was designed to be modified – the levels contained within must actually overwrite existing, official Jazz Jackrabbit content in order to function. For what, you might ask? A three-act Green-Hill-Zone-esque level remade in Jazz Jackrabbit. Visually, it fits in relatively well with the Jazz Jackrabbit art style – but the problem is that the levels are actually pretty difficult to play. Ammo seems to be relatively scarce, health power-ups are few and far between, there are too many enemies, many of them are placed in cheap locations that guarantee you take damage, so on and so forth. I died so many times on the first “Act” that I was a single life away from Game Over by the time I finally made it to Act 2. It kind of feels like a typical ROM hack in a way; one made by somebody who clearly loves the source game so much and are so good at it that they make levels for their own skill level – while forgetting that the rest of the world hasn’t played Jazz Jackrabbit 1 in over ten years. Of course, maybe it’s not even that – I played through the majority of the original Jazz Jackrabbit as recently as a year ago, and even I’m having trouble with these levels. Let’s see some proper difficulty balancing next time, please.

Sonic: Time Twisted
Time Twisted and I have a long history; the first SAGE I wrote reviews for (2008) gave birth to a particularly nasty review; which blossomed out in to a rather large debate regarding me grading hobbyists on the same scale as professional, retail games. SAGE 2009 saw a new, considerably improved Time Twisted demo, and my review reflected that accordingly. Now, here we are, the third year in a row for Time Twisted – and back we go to Perplex Puzzle Zone. Things have obviously changed for the better since the last we saw this underwater zone. The game remains just as enjoyable as 2009′s demo, but there are still some issues I have with it. Enemy and hazard placement is a little suspect, as I took more than a few cheap hits. The water could stand to be colored a little bit, too – outside of the occasional bubbles, there’s no indicator that you’re underwater. And, as always, time travel seems to happen almost on accident – nor could I find any reason for traveling between the past and the present. And this is purely a nitpick, but the game identifies itself both as “Time Twisetd” and “Sonic Eclipse” in the program’s titlebar. Overbound recently announced that he is partnering with a dedicated GameMaker coder so he can focus more on level design, so by this time next year, we could be in for something truly special, from what is still basically the only Sonic CD fangame. In the here-and-now, though this Time Twisted demo has a few dull edges, I found it to be worth the download, and can’t wait to see what the future holds.

Digimon World Legends
Over the years, Digimon has endured along side of Pokemon in the “cute monsters battling each other” genre. Though some of the more rabid Digimon fans will no doubt protest that Digimon predates Pokemon as a concept, there’s no denying that it never reached quite the monolithic status that Pokemon did. Still, it has its fans, which has given birth to the Construct-powered fangame Digimon Worlds Legends. After a text intro (with the occasional typo), we’re dropped in a standard Japanese RPG overworld with one of the aforementioned Digimon following us around. Wander around enough and you’ll eventually get in to a random battle with Persona 4 music playing over it. The problems with the game quickly become evident: I have no idea what I’m doing. Well, I do, because a lot of the standard turn-based RPG elements are in place, but how these things are represented visually end up being extremely confusing. Perhaps Digimon World Legends is banking on the fact you’re already familiar with the “Digimon World” series of games – of which I am not. Of course, there’s also the fact that this is an “alpha”, and as such, there appears to be a considerable amount of bugs regarding the game’s interface. This game clearly needs a little more time in the oven.

Aria of Destiny
Aria of Destiny was a game last year that blended a variety of different game franchises – Castlevania, Sonic, Wario, etc. This year… Aria of Destiny doesn’t really seem to exist. Instead, the creator of the game (who is also responsible for the above Digimon game) has focused his talents toward creating a Sonic engine for newbie game creation suite Construct. In his own words, “it’s a fine bloody piece of work” – but I have to say that I’m not very impressed. It’s getting there, I suppose, but still has far too many animation bugs and unfinished bits to really be considered “good”. I’m sure it took a lot of hard work to make it as far as he did, something he is quite clearly proud of, but it’s in no way ready for anybody to use to make a game with. Sonic isn’t effected by slope angles, and can even get stuck at weird angles. Animations either play too fast or too slow (a problem shared with Digimon World Legends), and Sonic seems to be constantly bobbing up and down in the floor. It’s so unfinished that I actually feel kind of bad writing anything for it at all, because this kind of seems like the sort of thing you aren’t meant to review.

Sonic 2 Dimps Edition
Let’s get something straight, here: Dimps makes good games. In a time where 3D Sonic games were at their very worst, with Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, and Sonic 2006, Dimps was making the only Sonic games worth playing: the Sonic Advance series and both Sonic Rush games. They’ve also been responsible for a number of other games in that time span, including Street Fighter IV. But it would be difficult to argue that they haven’t fallen back on certain… questionable design philosophies, when it comes to making Sonic games. Insult was added to injury when these “questionable design philosophies” began to show up in the Dimps-developed Sonic the Hedgehog 4. Given the fanboy maelstrom currently surrounding Sonic 4, it’s no surprise that this has given birth to Sonic 2 Dimps Edition, a ROM hack of Sonic 2 that, for better or worse, both imitates and mocks the method in which Dimps designs their levels. At first, things start out amusingly enough: Emerald Hill Zone is littered with pointless speed boosters, Sonic is given a homing attack, and all limitations on how fast you can move are gone. It doesn’t take long for the game to get malicious, however, as by Casino Night Zone you’re encountering speed boosters that specifically launch you in to deadly hazards without warning. The hack also highlights how easy moves like the homing attack make the game; the Aquatic Ruin totem boss can be defeated in a matter of seconds, for example. Other changes are more subtle, such as the simplification of the music in order to match Sonic 4′s faux-retro instrumentation. It’s purely pop-fandom, and there’s no doubt that five or ten years from now it won’t hold much relevancy, but for the here and now, it’s an amusing novelty and worth seeing for yourself.

Sonic Babies
Sonic Babies is back for its second year in a row, but, much like last year – I find myself at a loss for words. The full game is on offer here at the show, offering up a “story” mode on three game boards, more than a dozen minigames, and CPU player support. The game is, essentially, a Mario Party clone of sorts, played from the perspective of Sonic characters as – what else? – babies. If you’re familiar at all with Mario Party, you’ll undoubtedly notice some similarities in the minigames in Sonic Babies. A number of them are lifted, verbatim, from Mario Party, and given a Sonic Babies re-skinning. Truth be told, while there’s nothing technically wrong with Sonic Babies, there’s a feeling of… sloppy design that pervades. Graphics tiles are stretched well beyond their original size, leaving pixelated blobs of color in their wake, the game uses a mixture of digitally sampled music and ear-splitting MIDIs, most sound effects consist of generic cartoon bonks and royalty-free baby coos. The presentation is all over the place, and the theme of “Sonic Babies” has me rolling my eyes a little bit, to be honest. I don’t want to be savage in this review, I really don’t, because what’s here is functional, and I can imagine somebody would probably enjoy it, but maybe… just maybe, I’m too old for this kind of game, and this kind of presentation, and this kind of idea. So in the end, all I can do is apologize, to you, the reader, and to the person who created this game.

Sonic the Gizoid (Episode 1)
For our final review, we turn back to Solus once again. Sonic the Gizoid is one of those games that does not work on my system – after an excruciatingly long loading time, I get to the main menu and it sits on a black screen forever. The game, however, works for Solus, so I’ve asked him to sit in for this one:
As Ryan’s pointed out previously, the game features an initial lengthy load, although not as bad as Sonic Gijinka’s, and some strange pauses mid-game, possibly related to loading sounds or music into memory. This didn’t occur every time, but it was a noticeable stutter. I can’t be clear if this is something uniquely affecting my PC, and I lacked the time to test the alternate MIDI version for the same issues.

This is another game that drinks from the Advance game well, this time much closer to Sonic Advance 2, but with a twist akin to Sonic Battle. The Gizoid’s move set is directly controlled by which ability cards you load him with, within the confines of his EXP limit. You can also customize four different palette colors of the Gizoid, although the gloves won’t tint for the full light-to-dark like the rest of the body will, and there’s an option I was unable to test that allowed importing your own character graphics in for the player. This is a game that embraces personalization.

Each zone is broken up seamlessly into connected acts, with the level design often pushing you through complex scenery at a ridiculous pace, particularly if you landed the speed-oriented set of ability cards early on. You don’t just jog through the same three loops over and over, however; there’s a nice variety to the ramps and structures you sprint around and through, and there are times when you stop to battle enemies or do some careful platforming. It was the latter where I hit a snag, falling behind a set of steel-cornered boxes. I was unable to break them to my knowledge, I had no ability card, and my jump was too low to vault them. On reading the instructions again later, I learned R or F2 would have at least returned me to a playable point, but at the time my first instinct was to hit Esc, which instantly closed the game. A later second attempt had me stuck in a similar situation, and it wasn’t until I equipped the card earned from Mecha Sonic a second time that I realized it was a double-hop, and likely key to continuing.

So it has the predictable issue with a game that allows customized physics, in that not every point of the level is going to work with every combination of skills. That said, I think the issue will reduce dramatically once you’ve obtained a few more cards and the EXP to carry them. The level design, for an Advance 2 mold, is very solid, and the customization aspect is a nice change to the formula. My only other issue: the HUD needlessly wraps around the right side of the screen, creating a miniature barrier right in your line of view when running through the levels. It’s nice to look at by itself, but it’s just a little too distracting for gameplay.

Come back tomorrow as we’ll cover the final seven games of this Sonic Amateur Games Expo 2010.