[h1] 1. Introduction [/h1]
I decided to play the so called Sonic the Hedgehog 4 - Episode I, the game that practically everyone who likes this franchise speaks ill of—even though I was already aware of that fact. Personally, I’ve never played it and have looked up very little about it online. And you know how the internet works, right? It exaggerates everything for the sake of comedy until that opinion becomes the truth.
So, with the most carefree and innocent mindset imaginable, I bought and played Sonic 4 Ep. I for the first time, feeling extremely optimistic. Man... I'm happy to tell you all that after completing this game 100%, I can state that it's a pile of crap, it's poorly made, it's horrible, it's ugly, it's utterly disgusting and it's one of the worst games I have ever played in my entire life.
Have you ever felt like crying while playing something? Bro, I did while playing this ♥♥♥♥. This game made me almost sick with rage and hatred over how poorly made it is—from the installation process to my final achievement—and it shakes me to think that a company like Sega looked at this game and said: "IT'S SO PEAK... FANS WILL ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!!!".
Seriously, this game is so bad it feels like a plot of the Illuminati with the New World Order to see just how well a bad product can sell based solely on its name (and it sold a lot). The game sold over 1 million copies across all platforms. [b] Over 1 million people traumatized for the rest of their lives. [/b]
It's time to show you, dear reader, why this game sucks ass. Unlike the other games in the series, I only managed to play it once. I simply can't pull myself together to play it twice, son—it's terrible, and this game doesn't deserve my time. Without further ado, witness the torturous experience of playing Sonic the Hedgehog 4 - Episode I.
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[h1] 2. Art Direction, Graphics and Comparison [/h1]
Sonic 4 was intended to be a smartphone exclusive spin-off. However, a bunch of gyroscopic crap was discarded and this game slapped on every platform as orders from Sega of America, which would explain the HORRID art style and the low budget look at the first episode.
Sweet Mother of God, this game looks GRUESOME, specially on PC (I would argue it looks even worse than Sonic Blast on the Sega Game Gear). For some damn reason, they decided to cover all models with oil and increase their contrast to astronomically stupid levels, resulting in some of the most hideous visuals I've ever seen in a game (Dimps didn't learned their lesson with this while developing the Dragon Ball Xenoverse series).
To show you the amount of "effort" that was put into this, Sonic's movements and facial expressions during gameplay and even on title screen (which is a literal STILL image, may I remind you) lack the fluid, expressive charm of the original Genesis sprite-based games. Environments, characters, and objects look overly shiny, static and artificial, resembling cheap plastic or clay rather than a living world. They all look out of place against backgrounds that often feel flat, fake, or low-polygon.
If you make a rigorous comparison between all the versions, you quickly realize that this game shouldn't even have left mobile devices. Hell, the Wii version was heavily compressed, yet still looks better than the PC port. To make matters worse, the PC version was only released two years later, and they didn't polish it AT ALL. Therefore, there is no excuse.
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[h1] 3. Gameplay, Level Design, Physics and Controls [/h1]
As you would expect, the three main pillars of 2D Sonic's gameplay are [b] Momentum-based Physics, Speed and Exploration. [/b] Sonic 4 Ep. I miraculously FAILS at every aspect of this. Sonic feels a lot more sluggish and heavy than ever, while moving around is quite tedious, honestly. This is very annoying, because there are several other issues with the game that are exacerbated by this lack of precision.
For example, in any 2D Sonic game, if you jump off a spring, you'll have a physics-based arc that feels natural and organic, propelling you across to the next area based on how long you hold right. In Sonic 4 Ep. I, if you don't hold right the whole time, YOU FALL STRAIGHT DOWN. I'm not kidding, this is not a joke, a game from 2010 is clunkier than games from the 90's. This completely changes how you play a 2D Sonic game, giving a really uncanny feel to his movement, and controlling him feels like running on concrete, especially after the Genesis era, which had pretty decent controls.
Also, the fact that Homing Attack is in a 2D Sonic game is obscenely unnecessary. The Homing Attack was designed to be a way to control where Sonic was going when jumping and keeping momentum going in the 3D space, NOT IN 2D. This looks more like an attempt to insert cheap QTEs rather than anything else, which doesn't solve one of the game's biggest problems: the excessive number of bottomless pits. Every bottomless pit in this game is absolutely RETARDED and poorly placed, as if it were a toll you had to pay with your lives.
ALL stages are rehashed zones from the first two games. Thought and planning are the antithesis of this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game's design philosophies, so it's just easier to recycle them for selling cheap nostalgia and pander to a bunch of stupid middle-aged people with no critical sense at all.
Special Stages suffer the same fate as the other stages—echoing those of Sonic 1, but being infinitely worse and poorly executed—as features an awkward and infuriating rotation that forced me to stop and catch my breath. The only good thing about them is that, after going through that mind-bending hell, you gather the 7 Chaos Emeralds and Super Sonic can trivialize most of the stages. But what good it does if the whole game is a monumental piece of garbage? That’s the equivalent of putting your name on a friend's assignment when the project is already finished.
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[h1] 4. Sound Department [/h1]
There isn't much to be said about this game's sound mixing and soundtrack, other than that they sound like ass and can go die. Sonic 4 Ep. I has a level of noise pollution that made me turn the game's volume off and listen to other games' OSTs while doing achievements that require grinding. Try Spindashing the traditional way and you'll hear sounds resembling someone sticking a needle into your eardrum.
The only track that kept me listening a few times was Mad Gear Zone (Act 1)—which is decent by the game's standards—but none of them reach the level expected of the Sonic franchise, which is so beloved and renowned for its impressive and memorable soundtrack. The series as a whole has so many bangers that I could spend the entire day quoting, but that doesn't apply to this game, unfortunately.
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[h1] 5. Conclusion [/h1]
What a terrible game. Seriously, it’s such a chore to play—not because of the challenge, but because of the product itself. Swallowing the few hours of Sonic 4 Ep. I was a greater sacrifice than Shadow's in Sonic Adventure 2. This is definitely the worst game in the Sonic franchise I've ever played. It isn't bad due to a lack of hardware or because it was released a long time ago. Sonic 4 Ep. I was developed by Dimps, who brought us the [i]Sonic Advance[/i], [i]Sonic Rush[/i], and [i]Dragon Ball Z: Budokai[/i] trilogies, there is no excuse.
Being released after so many weak titles also helped tarnish the Sonic series' reputation for years on end. As a die-hard Sonic fan, I acknowledge that this game was a horrendous experience, and I hope never to even think about touching it again. Hell, even Sonic '06 has some pretty good stuff, despite being a bad game.
Ultimately, if you're NOT a die-hard Sonic fan who wants to play this game out of mere curiosity, do yourself a favor and stay away from this game, because you’d rather shove a toothpick under your big toenail and kick a wall with all your might.
