SEGA
£1.49 on Apple iOS
Oh, Sonic.
I feel sort of sacrilegious saying it, but I never played SEGA’s original game.
I did, however, enjoy the wonderfully terrible 90s cartoon, part of those franchise-style kids TV programmes that were actually pretty awesome, like Transformers and X-Men.
Featuring such phrases as “chunkage contained” and references to Axel Rose, as well as the multi-talented Jim Cummings, it was hard to get more 90s than this. [ED’S NOTE: Indeed Sonic himself seems to be a relic of that time. Deliberately designed by Sega to be its mascot in the company’s battle against Nintendo’s Mario, the two franchises duelled for most of the early 90s. That was until Sega lost its way and spent most of the next 15 years releasing terrible, terrible Sonic games (Mario has yet to miss a beat) – smashing the mascot’s prestige and embarrassing the former console giant (Sega is now only a publisher). Most ‘hardcore’ Sonic fans gave up a long time ago, so Sonic’s appeal is more of a nostalgic one – assuming anyone under the age of 25 even knows who he is.]
So here we are – SEGA has released Sonic Dash, a runner version of its classic platformer for iOS, available on iPad and iPhone for your gaming pleasure.
Sonic Dash is an endless runner-style game where Sonic collects his preciouses, I mean, rings, powerballs into enemies such as crabs and weird bulldozer guys, pops floating fish and runs. A lot.
Given that Sonic’s whole deal is that he’s, you know, sonic-boom styles fast, this type of game makes sense for the character (and his motivation, if you will). Plus, when you hit the accelerator pads, it’s hella fun.
Dash is fun and the music is great, but it’s difficult to collect enough stars to skip a level, so you often end up re-playing the same circuit over and over. Plus, you have to purchase revival tokens using collected stars, which means more starting over from the beginning.
[EDITORS NOTE: Sega has also used these game mechanics to ensure that you spend as much as possible in its game store with your real world cash – £2.49 for 30 Red Star rings, for example. After giving you a in game freebies, Sonic Dash cuts off your crack supply pretty quickly].
The graphics are pretty impressive, with bright colours and bobbing 3D cartoons, and the controls are very smooth and responsive, with Sonic performing leaps and bounds while rotating at high speed, contrary to the laws of physics and also to general hedgehog behaviour (we’ve heard – What Mobile does not test on animals).
The game costs £1.49 and there are in-game buying options that are well-placed and explained.
You can play other characters like Knuckles, but again, you’ll need to collect (or purchase) a fair number of stars to do so.
So while it looks good and it is fun, for an endless runner that feels like it plays a lot of the same levels, £1.49 feels like a lot of money to part with.
