I remember the first time I booted up Sonic the Hedgehog and how I was just blown away by how good it looked and sounded in comparison to the games I had been playing on the NES at the time, and I was hooked. So, you can imagine my surprise a couple of weeks ago when I found a copy of Sonic Rush, one of the Sonic games I missed out on, sitting on the clearance rack at my local Target for a mere four dollars. I finally popped the game in a few days ago, as I had just finished up Generations, and was still wanting to spend some more time with the famous blue hedgehog. As a fan of Sonic Team's Sonic Advance games on the GBA, I had high hopes that this would be an excellent handheld outing for Sonic, so let's take a look and see how this game holds up.
Sonic Rush was originally released on the Nintendo DS in 2005 and was developed by Sonic Team and Dimps. The story of the game revolves around the Sol Emeralds, an equivalent of the Chaos Emeralds from another dimension. The game begins with Eggman stealing the Sol Emeralds, as he wishes to use them as a means to achieve ultimate power. After defeating the first of Eggman's machines, Eggman drops one of the Emeralds as he runs off and it is grabbed by a mysterious girl who thanks Sonic for defeating Eggman and vanishes. Sonic and Tails, concerned about who this girl is, decide to chase after her to find out who she is and what she wants with the Emerald.
The gameplay for Rush should be more than familiar to anyone who's played a Sonic game, with it being very similar to the Advance series. The goal of each level is to race through two acts collecting rings and reaching the goal as quickly as possible, of course multiple routes are available in each act which gives players incentive to replay levels to find the quickest routes through each stage, find hidden item boxes, and special stages. After beating the second act of each stage, you will face off again Eggman in one of his machines, beating these with Sonic simply advances the game while beating a boss with Blaze will give you one of the Sol Emeralds. The gameplay for the two characters is very similar with the only real differences I have noticed so far, other than cosmetic and sprite differences, are that Sonic is slightly faster than Blaze and that only Sonic can play the game's special stages. New additions to the game since Sonic Advance 3 were the addition of the tension gauge, which is very similar to the boost gauge from the modern Sonic games, which allows you to take off with a burst of speed and destroy any enemies in your path as long as you hold the button, the gauge decreases very quickly however and, for Sonic, allows access to the game's special stages. The special stages are done in a very similar style to Sonic 2's special stages, with Sonic running through a half pipe and avoiding enemies and obstacles which trying to obtain a certain amount of rings in order to receive one of the Chaos Emeralds. Each level has it's own special stage, so you can't get all seven Emeralds in the first stage, and requires you to have at least one full bar on your tension gauge to open, if you have any less you'll simply waste what you have and be unable to access the stage. Controls for the special stages are handled entirely on the touch screen with you moving the stylus back and forth to move Sonic and tapping enemies to destroy them.
On the audiovisual side of things, the game follows a similar look the Sonic Advance games, however with a more 2.5D approach. Background and stages are done in 2D with sprites for Sonic, Blaze, Tails, Cream and the game's bosses done in 3D. The character models look decent, if not a little blocky, but seem out of place with the 2D backgrounds. The stage design is similar to that of Sonic Advance 3, but the backgrounds of the levels are very boring and uninspired with a static background appearing whenever parts of the stage aren't in the way. For audio, the game's music was composed by Hideki Nagamura, of Jet Set Radio fame. As far as music goes, this is my least favorite soundtrack in the series, which I do like Nagamura's other work, I just don't think his style of music suits a Sonic game, and despite listening to the tracks for each of the stages I played briefly, I usually ended up muting the volume part way through the first act. There is also a few voice clips in the game, but the cut scenes in the story are mostly handled exclusively with text, and voice work rarely pops up at all.
So, how does Sonic Rush hold up? Well, I certainly plan on finishing the game, it's fun, despite my not enjoying the game's music. It's a solid outing for the famous hedgehog, which is a good thing since most fans weren't enjoying the home console games that Sega was releasing at the time. This is a solid handheld Sonic experience that shouldn't be overlooked by Sonic fans with a DS, especially since it can found very easily and for around $10, so this game comes recommended.
