Sonic Superstars looks like what the Sonic collection has been working towards for years however hasn’t fairly had the braveness to do till now. The collection has been leaning laborious into nostalgia surrounding its speedy, 2D platforming roots with video games like Sonic Mania reimagining previous ranges and Sonic Origins repackaging them for a brand new viewers. As a result of the collection has been leaning on some older methods, Sonic Superstars is refreshing as a result of we lastly have one thing new in that previous 2D framework.
I performed two ranges of Sonic Superstars at Summer time Sport Fest, opting to play as Amy and Tails over the blue blur. Amy’s hammer offers her some prolonged attain on her assaults, and Tails’ flight offers him extra air time to succeed in excessive locations and assault enemies within the air. For anybody who’s performed traditional Sonic video games, that is the half and love.
Superstars feels just like the sidescrollers of previous however with beautiful 3D paint that’s vibrant and pops off the display. Visually and mechanically, Superstars feels prefer it understands the attraction of a 2D Sonic with out feeling so strictly beholden by the previous that it has to make use of equivalent property or ranges to evoke a response. Spin-dashing by means of a stage as Amy and passing by the beautiful seashore backdrop of 1 stage made me wish to decelerate and take within the sights.
Whereas it captures the essence of a traditional Sonic video games, it additionally provides its personal twist with new, particular talents. Those I used to be in a position to make use of included shapeshifting right into a water kind that allows you to swim up by means of waterfalls and a cloning mode that allow me spawn dozens of copies of myself to assault enemies. The primary added a brand new layer to ranges and the second let me overtake bosses with a military of little anthropomorphic guys.
This was solely a small pattern of the brand new mechanics in Sonic Superstars, and I’m already wanting to see how others would possibly change the way in which I’ve performed these video games for years. However admittedly, a few of that pleasure comes with the caveat that I don’t know if will probably be sufficient for anybody who’s not already on board.
If 2D Sonic was by no means your jam, nothing I performed tells me that is going to alter your thoughts. It nonetheless looks like an previous Sonic sport, for higher or worse. As numerous these video games do, Superstars feels slippery and generally unwieldy as your character picks up momentum, which I discovered particularly irritating within the boss fights, which regardless of intelligent design, tended to grind in opposition to the momentum my characters would construct as I ran from one aspect of the display to the opposite. There’s a precision to those fights that took me a number of makes an attempt to nail down. It felt good once I completed that, however there are nonetheless lingering frustrations, and if that’s been the sentiment you’ve felt towards previous Sonic video games, that’s nonetheless intact in Superstars.
Paying tribute to an previous model inevitability means the nice and unhealthy elements are a package deal deal, so Sonic Superstars looks like a contemporary tackle one thing tried and true, however I’d be stunned if it received over anybody who wasn’t already frothing on the mouth for it. Nonetheless, I like seeing a 2D Sonic sport with new concepts to discover, and I’m wanting ahead to seeing extra of them when Sonic Superstars involves PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Swap, Xbox One, and Xbox Sequence X/S later this 12 months.
