Sonic Advance

Summary

Genre: Action
Number of players: 1-4

Review

Most people in the gaming community never thought it would happen - Sega's mascot Sonic the Hedgehog appearing on a Nintendo game system. But now that Sega have pulled out of the hardware market and focussed on software alone, a Sonic game for the Gameboy Advance became much more likely. And now the game has arrived, with the extremely unoriginal title of "Sonic Advance". Granted, it's marginally better than the names of the blue hedgehog's games on the Mega Drive (or Genesis, if you're a Yank), such as "Sonic 2" and "Sonic 3", but, honestly...


Gameplay: The gameplay follows the standard 2D Sonic format: for those out there unfamiliar with this, the basic premise is that you run around and jump into enemies (while jumping or rolling, Sonic et al become a spiky ball which can kill unprotected enemies on contact) while avoiding various spiked traps or enemy projectile attacks. An abundance of golden rings decorate the levels, and being damaged by an enemy or trap results in your entire ring collection being scattered around you most depressingly, unless you have a shield powerup which protects from one hit. Get hit without carrying any rings and you lose a life. Simple.

Simple it may be, but the premise is definitely an enjoyable one, and has worked well in the many previous 2D Sonic games, which have all been great fun, if perhaps a fraction shallow. Sonic Advance spices things up by adding a character-selection scheme featuring four totally-different characters: the eponymous Sonic himself, his flying-fox-friend Tails, pink echidna Knuckles, and newcomer-and-token-female Amy the Hedgehog. Each character has very varied attributes which carry over from previous games: Sonic has a mid-air miniature shield attack, a mid-air dash and a diving attack, while Tails is able to fly and swim for short periods of time. Knuckles can glide and climb up walls, while Amy has a hammer to attack foes and make high jumps with. It must be said, however, that there is a serious imbalance between the four, with Tails being by far the easiest and Amy being all-but-useless, given she doesn't attack by jumping and can't do the spin dash of the other three. Nonetheless, it does mean you can travel the game's levels in a number of different ways and find different routes with each character, which keeps things interesting.

The gameplay is certainly fun, though being on the small screen of the GBA does tend to make it a bit less so than on a TV with the earlier Sonic titles. You can't exactly fault the game for that, but if you're used to the Sonic series you may feel a bit disappointed by this. Nonetheless, the game is still most enjoyable. It does have the same general feel as the older games, which is a good thing if you like that retro style.

Level and boss design is good, and there is plenty of variety to keep you interested. Even so, there are quite a few niggles I have with the main game. One is the proliferation of rather unfair spike traps: you'll commonly find yourself racing down a path, only to hit a small wall. While you're registering that you need to jump up on top of the wall, you will almost invariably be flung backwards and lose your rings due to the spikes which have just popped out of the ground beneath you. This is rather underhand, to say the least. Also annoying are the special stages, of which there are 7 in total, reached by finding a secret spring in each of the worlds. These stages are quite reminiscent of the brilliant Sonic 2 special stages on the Mega Drive, only not a fraction as good. You travel down a tunnel collecting rings and avoiding bombs as you go, only you aren't running down a pipe, but falling, and so can move in any direction rather than needing to jump. Nor are there any bends to surprise you, with the whole stage being a straight pipe. Worst of all is the extremely-poor representation of exactly where the rings are in the tunnel: rings that appear to be in the middle of the pipe seem to be impossible to collect until you realise they are in fact near the top of the pipe. It is very visually confusing, and just doesn't work.

Nonetheless, this doesn't greatly hurt the game. As a bonus to the main game, there is also a minigame mode dubbed the "Tiny Chao Garden", where you get to raise a small virtual pet (named a 'Chao', you'll be surprised to hear) in a tiny garden, and can play minigames with it to win rings to buy it food and items. This isn't quite as good as it sounds (not that it sounds that good to begin with...) since there are only two minigames, both of which are okay, and you have to wait around for some minutes before the creature gets hungry enough to eat any of the fruit you can buy. There's not really much you can do while waiting, which tends to get rather boring. This mode will certainly have a short lifespan, but it is nice to have it all the same.

There is one other single-player gameplay mode, the Time Attack mode, which is also a good mode: you can choose from any unlocked stage, and the goal is simply to get to the end as fast as possible. This is definitely a good addition, and as a bonus the top three times for each level, for each character, are recorded, although sadly there's no option to put your initials to the time.

All up, then, Sonic Advance has great gameplay, with a good deal of variety.


Challenge: There are a total of six worlds in the game, each composed of two 'acts', with a boss to battle at the end of the second. The levels start off very easy, and eventually do get quite tricky, although never hugely so. The game can be played on either of two difficulty settings, which make a fair difference to the challenge. You can choose to begin the game from any level that has been accessed by the character you have chosen, which is a nice feature, although one that does tend to make playing through the game less of an 'adventure'.

While it won't take very long to play through the game, especially if you use the easier characters like Tails or Knuckles, the main challenge comes from finishing all the levels with all four characters, and then tracking down all seven special stage springs and collecting the seven Chaos Emeralds from them. Once you have accomplished all that, you get rewarded with a final, 'extra' stage, where you can play as Super Sonic. It's just a shame for longtime players of the series that you don't earn the ability to change into Super Sonic in the main levels, which was always fun. Still...


Graphics: The game looks pretty good, but never moves far beyond the standard GBA fare, which is a shame. The character detail is okay, and the levels themselves are perfectly sound, but there are no stand-out effects or anything really stunning.


Sounds: The game's music is also okay, though fairly nondescript. One or two tunes are good, and it's nice that each different Act has its own tune, plus the inclusion of one or two classic Sonic tracks is welcome - but ultimately the music isn't that great. Sound effects are similarly restrained, though not bad by any means. Sound, overall, doesn't add very much to the game.


Multiplayer: Multiplayer is one of the game's strong points. Sonic Advance boasts both a single-cartridge multiplayer mode and a multiple-cartridge one. Single-cart play is a fairly-simple, yet hugely enjoyable, mode where you and up to three others compete to collect the most rings over a single, large course. This is well worth playing, even if there's only the one course to choose from. Multi-cart mode allows up to four players to compete either alone or teams in one of two games: either a race through any of the game's levels, or a challenge to collect the most Chao creatures from one of several special levels. This mode is also top fun, although the need to have four copies of the game makes it quite unlikely that you'll know enough Sonic-owning people to try out the four-player version...


Summing up: Overall, a solid title to own, especially if you have played and enjoyed the older Sonic games. If not, you may well still enjoy the game, and could do worse than give it a try. A most enjoyable platform game with plenty of variety, and it should keep you going for quite a while.


Gamesmark: 80%


Reviewer: Maverik



Tangycheese's opinion: Sonic Advance is the same style of game as appeared on the Mega Drive, and as such is not a great step forward in gaming. It's not what I had in mind when I heard Nintendo was releasing the new handheld. Why go back to such an old game on such a new and exciting machine? The game itself is a repetitive affair, following the basic game style of "find rings, keep rings". I'm also not impressed by the way Sega seem to think you don't need to see what your character is doing most of the time. The game could have been so much more if Sega had been willing to change their game style slightly, which to my mind is both dated and uninspired. Only for fans of the Mega Drive games.