Memorable Melodies: City Escape from Sonic Adventure 2

Song: City Escape

Game: Sonic Adventure 2

Artist: Crush 40

Most people hate all of the 3D Sonic games. To be fair, a good majority of them are hot garbage. Despite that I think that Sonic Adventure 2 was and still is a great game. I am more than willing to fight anyone who disagrees, because it's one of my childhood favorites. You might be thinking that I'm blinded by nostalgia. However, I played the game a few short years ago with some friends and got A rankings on every mission. It's still good.

To be quite honest, City Escape is one of the main reasons I love the game so much. It's up to a game's first level to hook you, and City Escape does just that. It's the name of the level and the song. The stage starts off with a bang as Sonic escapes a prison plane and uses a piece of metal to start snowboarding down city streets to escape from his captors. Somehow the controls actually work well, and you have to time button presses off of huge jumps to do sick tricks in the air. This is all going on while one of the most dope jams around plays in the background.

City Escape is a dumb pop-rock song, and I love it. Crush 40 made a lot of my favorite Sonic songs, which feels kind of odd to say. I loved a lot of the songs so much that I would listen to them at full blast in the game's sound test mode. I have vivid memories of being in my friend Calvin's house blaring this song and rocking out. We also trained up our Chaos a whole bunch. Luckily City Escape was an easy level to run for getting Choa drives.

City Escape is a song that's dumb fun, and I absolutely adore it. 

Party Game Sundays: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games

Since it was Noukeo's Birthday we decided to play a game that we thought might not suck. In order to do that Noukeo purchased Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games. Prior to this past Sunday I had never tried a Mario & Sonic Olympic game, because I'm a very jaded person.

In the 90's when Mario and Sonic were in the middle of Nintendo and Sega's console war no one ever thought that they would be in the same game together, but if they were it would be the greatest game of all time. Instead the game that came out was Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games in 2007. Instead of taking the time to play it I wrote it off as a shitty mini-game collection. There must have been people who really liked it though, because they keep pumping them out now.

This image is amazing. I don't know how I was ever down on this.

Even though I was jaded in 2007, I am even more jaded now. I have lived through numerous Party Game Sundays and have seen true despair. I now realize that while Mario and Sonic could have come together in a cooler game this is completely fine. Nintendo at least puts a little effort into their games, because they want the Mario brand to mean something. That's not the case with most of the games we play on Sunday, so I'm always down for anything Mario related. More often than not the game will be pretty good.

I've decided that the name of this game is too long and no longer want to type it. M&SOWG is actually a very fun game. As you may have guessed it has mini-games themed around the Winter Olympics. Things such as bobsledding, figure skating, and hockey are all available to play. The cool thing is that since there aren't an overabundance of these games each one is developed very well.

I want to go bobsledding in real life.

There were four of us playing, so we formed an Olympic team. We had to work together to score well and earn medals. We were playing in festival mode. We were trying to be the best team by the end of the month long festival. Each day would consist of playing two mini-games. We began by training in the game so that we could learn the rules. The event I remember the most at the moment was bobsledding. All four of us were in the bobsleigh and we had to tilt the wii-mote in order to turn. It was super weird, because if one person was being an idiot the whole sleigh would veer off course. The goal of most of the bobsledding events was to collect coins. It's always surprising to me when motion controls actually work.

Outside of the mini-games themselves the game was just well put together. You can go around the Olympic village and spend coins you've earned from events on various things. You can buy clothes and cosmetic changes for event objects such as snowboards and sleighs. If you play as your Mii you can even unlock sweet clothes. As you progress you can also unlock new music from both Mario and Sonic games and have it play during events.

I've always wanted to see Luigi snowboard.

We only played halfway through a festival, but I'd really like to play through the rest of it. We didn't get to play hockey, we just did the training. It was dumb, because we were just shooting the puck into ice blocks and not actually playing a game.

I could actually see myself playing M&SOWG on my own time. The newest game in the series is for the Wii-U and I'm sure it's of the same quality, if not better, so maybe I'll pick that up as well at some point.

Sonic Generations Review

This Review is based on my experience with the PS3 version of Sonic Generations.

Score 3.5/5

In 1991 Sega’s speedy blue mascot made his debut on the Sega Genesis. He became popular almost immediately spawning numerous sequels and spin-offs. In 2001 Sonic made his transition in 3D as most platforming heroes did. Now we’ve made it to 2011 and Sonic is 20 years old. It’s a common belief within the gaming community that Sonic games haven’t been good for a long time. Some believe that the original 2D games on Sega Genesis were the peak of the hedgehogs career, while others believe it’s Sonic Adventure 2. Regardless of where you stand on the peak of Sonic’s career, Sonic Generations captures the best and worst of both worlds. Sonic Generations has the right idea, but it doesn’t live up to its full potential.

Sonic Generations seems as if it’s meant to please longtime fans of Sonic and the deeper you go into the game the more obvious it becomes. The story starts off at Sonic’s 20th birthday party. All of his friends from the modern Sonic games are there to celebrate. As always things immediately go bad. A giant time monster comes and kidnaps all of Sonic’s friends. He tries to fight back, but is incapacitated. When he wakes up he’s in a mostly white world. After playing for a bit you find out that something is messing with time, which is how the game gets away with its main selling point, which is that Sonic Generations features both Classic 2D Sonic and Modern 3D Sonic.

Sonic's 20th Birthday party!

Classic Sonic looks and plays like Sonic did back in the early 90’s. You’re running to the right collecting rings, jumping from platform to platform, and defeating enemies. The Classic Sonic stages do a fine job of emulating the Sega Genesis games. Sonic can still spin dash. Holding square will allow him to curl up into a ball and zoom forwards at top speeds. Jumping works almost exactly like it did on the Genesis. You need to be precise. I found it easy to misjudge jumps, which often lead to Sonic falling to his death in bottomless pits. Overall I think that playing as Classic Sonic feels good. The controls are tight and there’s a good sense of speed. It feels like the classic Sonic games used to, which is refreshing after the extremely floaty controls of Sonic 4.

Modern Sonic is fast and a whole lot of fun to play. The sense of speed is something that is done very well with Modern Sonic. Killing enemies and collecting rings fills up a boost meter. When you hold square Modern Sonic will boost forward at high speeds running through enemies that get in his way. Enemies can also be defeated in rapid succession by pressing the jump button while Sonic is in the air to home in and smash them to bits. If the jump button is pressed too early or at the wrong time Sonic will fly off into the distance, which can be extremely frustrating. The same can be said for boosting. If you boost at the wrong time Sonic will most certainly fall into a bottomless pit. The pain of these deaths is eased by the liberally placed checkpoints in Modern Sonic’s stages.

Classic Sonic is a little chubby and he can't talk.

Like the stages in Sonic Unleashed, Modern Sonic’s stages will sometimes flow into 2D platforming sections. The platforming seems to be a bit easier with the help of Sonic’s homing attack, but the controls aren’t as tight as 2D Sonic, which can lead to problems. These sections seem out of place, because they take away from Modern Sonic’s speed.

Both Modern Sonic and Classic Sonic can buy and equip skills to make your trip through the game slightly easier. Whenever you complete a stage you will earn a certain amount of points. These points can be used to buy skills while in the hub world. The abilities do a wide variety of things from making Sonic faster to having you spawn with a shield. The system is interesting, but it doesn’t run very deep. There aren’t very many skills and they’re not always helpful.

Modern Sonic is  super lean. He can talk.

Generations features nine stages, three rival battles, and four boss fights that span Sonic’s twenty year history. The stages, rivals, and boss fights go in chronological order according to Sonic’s history. Each of the nine stages consists of two acts. In Act 1, you play as Classic Sonic and in Act 2 you play as Modern Sonic. It’s interesting to see how classic levels translate to modern levels and vice versa. They don’t always work out the best, but they’re still fun.
  
You choose which level you want to play by traversing a highly stylized 2D hub world. Only three stages are available at a time. In order to gain access to the next set of three stages you must complete Acts 1 and 2 for all three stages, gather 3 keys, and defeat the boss. In order to do all of this and run right through the story will take about four to five hours. For a $50 dollar game that’s not much gameplay. It’s extended by challenges and secret ring collection that will award you with art, music and skills. However these rewards will only appeal to the most dedicated Sonic fans.

The hub world is mostly white until you complete the stages.

Sonic Generations is a fun game, but at $50 it’s a hard sell. Frustrating deaths and a lack of content blemish an otherwise fine product. If you didn’t like Sonic before, Generations isn’t going to change your mind. I’m confident in saying that Sonic fans are going to want to pick this game up regardless of price. It’s got the best of both 2D Sonic and 3D Sonic and both are surprisingly fun to play. The soundtrack features a great mix of classic and remixed tracks that will bring the memories flooding back. Sega and Sonic Team have been trying to get back on good terms with their fans and I think that Generations is a good start.

Note: I have also posted this review on Giantbomb.com
Also, the text wrap around images isn't very good on blogger. When I post future reviews here, should I continue to put in pictures?

     -Manny