Having to battle Metal Sonic in one of these sections comes off as particularly lackluster. Sonic basically walks very slowly back and forth to move the whole plane around, which looks weird and also has the effect of destroying any enemy the plane comes into contact with. However, the way they control is really odd.
There is one zone, the Sky Fortress, which has a couple of flying sections as Tails flies Sonic around on top of the Tornado bi-plane. You won’t find many inventive traps or gadgets to assist Sonic or Tails, making each zone feel largely-by-the-numbers. The only zone I really liked was the final boss zone, as it opened with a gravity-defying platforming section that was more imaginative than anything else in the game. There’s a castle that fills the ‘water level’ role, a ‘snow level’ theme park and the ‘desert level’ oil field. For the most part, these levels don’t really have anything new to offer. There are four main zones, and then a final one consisting of boss battles. If you’ve got similarly Sonic-obsessed friends, Tails also brings local and online co-op mulitplayer with him.Īs in Episode I, there simply isn’t a lot of content here. I only encountered it a couple of times, and neither time did it do anything a couple of well-aimed spin attacks couldn’t solve, so this one feels fairly poorly-implemented. There’s also a strange team-up power move you can perform by encountering special icons within a stage, which shows a little cutscene and lets Sonic & Tails clear all enemies on-screen. Remember all those bottomless pits Sonic has a habit of falling into? Well, now you have a chance to save yourself thanks to this move, as long as you’re quick enough on the button to summon Tails. However, Tails’ flying move proves to be one of the more invaluable additions to the game. These parts of the game feel like they somewhat artificially hinder your progress, as there’s always a hovering screen informing you of what move you need to perform, removing any thought from the process. Frequently, you’ll come across impassable obstacles, which you’ll need to either fly over using Tails to carry you, or destroy by combining your rolling attacks. One of the big changes in Episode II‘s gameplay are the new team-up moves with Tails.
To combat these new foes, Tails also returns as Sonic’s on-screen partner, able to follow him around every level, although not quite as uselessly as he did before. If Episode I’s setting and design and took inspiration from the original Sonic the Hedgehog, then Episode II equally draws inspiration from Sonic 2 and Sonic CD. Sonic’s increasingly-less-threatening-with-each-appearance robotic doppleganger, Metal Sonic, is back, along with Doctor Eggman and a new, Death Star-sized battle station, the Death Egg mk.II. The physics have been improved, and Sonic can no longer hang upside down a loop-de-loop simply by walking slowly up one of its sides. Instead, we have fully-rendered 3D characters and locations, with designs that are more or less in line with what you’d expect from a Sonic title (although don’t ask me how Oil Field Zone got in there). Gone are the 2D backgrounds and quasi-cel-shaded graphics from Episode I. But is it enough?Ĭertainly, things look a lot different at first glance. It’s taken almost two years for Sega to bring out Episode II, and they have obviously tried to learn from their mistakes. However, the first half of the game in 2010′s Episode I didn’t go down so well, with botched physics and lackluster design. A direct continuation of the original Sega Mega Drive series, with 2D gameplay and a renewed focus on simple stories and familiar characters. Now, we all have great Sonic games in the form of Sonic Colours and Sonic Generations, which seem to indicate at last that Sega ‘get’ what makes a good Sonic game. Over the last couple of years, Sonic fans have finally been rewarded for their patience in putting up with that really bad half-decade filled with the likes of Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 2006.