Radio Free Videoland: February 2009

Last week, I was selected as one of a few members of the gaming press to get a VIP pass to a short preview build of Sonic Team's newest Action RPG offering Sonic Beyond: The Battle for Earth.

After the requisite logos and disclaimers, a short Anime sequence began, featuring Sonic and his many (many) friends in different locales around the globe smashing up robots to the strains of a blazing hot electro remix of the Crush 40 tune "Open Your Heart". I wasn't 100% sure whether the multitude of members in Sonic's Technicolor Army were actual characters from his long-running game series or custom characters from SB:TBFE, but one thing was for sure, these furballs meant business! Definitely a treat and probably second only to the exciting Sonic Unleashed intro for sheer wow factor (The animation was done by Manglobe, the guys behind Samurai Champloo).

After navigating the rather slick menu system, I dove right in to character creation. High-level creation begins by choosing the kind of critter that you want to use to fight Dr. Eggman's army. You can pick from a wide variety of Mammals, Birds, Lizards, and Insects (Sonic Team promises that Fish, Amphibians, and Hero Robots are coming soon). Once you decide what animal best suits your fancy, you have a nice selection of ages and builds to pick from, followed by a surprisingly large number of haircuts (furcuts?), and dozens of colors and patterns for skin and eyes. I decided to resurrect my old fan character Lady SummerSpines, a golden hedgehog with a heart to match (a few of you may remember her from the old forum RPG on the now defunct Daily Mobian website). After you've finalized your base creature, you have the option to pick two character classes from a pool of Mechanic, Mystic, Speedster, Sharpshooter, and Warrior. I decided to stick with the classic Speedster/Warrior in the vein of Sonic. The clothing options were quite robust, at or above the level of a Tony Hawk game. There are dozens upon dozens of accessories to personalize your characters. I decided to deck Lady SummerSpines out in an 80s ensemble with hot pink kicks, leg warmers, a headband, and a cute half shirt. Lastly, I named her and gave her an appropriately chirpy voice. All in all, I think you could make almost any kind of platformer mascot that you could conjure up, from Felix the Cat to Fritz the Cat.

Once the game began proper, a short cutscene showed me starting my first day at Sonic's Super Fast Delivery Service, working for a rather harried Amy Rose, who served as a secretary and recruiter. Unfortunately, there were a lot of low-res textures and framerate issues at this point which was a little distracting. Amy walked me through a short tutorial in the form of a VR simulator that Tails had built (hooked up to a Dreamcast!) which showed me the basics of combat and platforming. I struggled with the mouse and keyboard controls for a bit before giving in and switching over to my trusty 360 gamepad (which the game was nice enough to auto-config).

The game essentially controls like a cross between the classic Psygnosis racer Rollcage and Crash Bandicoot. The feel is is much tighter than previous Sonic titles and the engine actually seems to generally handle loops and curves with actual physics instead of scripted events. There were still a few too many dash pads and rails for my taste, but I actually managed to get through the whole tutorial (which had a rather complex architecture) without any camera problems. Combat was pretty intuitive as well. I had the option to jump on the heads of badniks in the traditional manner, but with contextual controls I was also able to perform special moves like zooming around them to make a whirlwind, jumping between them with some neat acrobatic moves, or even disarming them and blasting them with their own weapons. Once I completed the tutorial, an 8-bit chiptune version of the classic "act complete" music played and I was whisked back into the real world.

Amy was impressed with my skills and gave me a special package that had to be delivered to a new Sonic Museum that was opening across town in seven minutes. She equipped me with a special watch that gave me a countdown and a radar screen to tell me my destination and I was shoved out the door.

After a (too long) loading screen, I found Lady SummerSpines on a rooftop at night in the center of a bustling urban center. A JUSTICE-style bloghouse track pulsed in the background and a disembodied voice counted me down. I was off! From the start, the impressive draw distance actually let me see a few miles out beyond the edge of the city to the waterfall where my quest log told me the museum was located. The city itself was a gorgeous affair, sort of a "clean" Brazilian favela meets Hill Valley 2015 with a flat shaded pastel look that really seemed like a living painting. The running was dynamic and well executed and there were very few limits to what I could run or jump on. You could tell where the stage was trying to funnel me in the right direction, but going backwards or any direction I wanted was actually accomplished pretty easily and without camera headaches. I went down to the street level just to see what would happen and (despite a little pop-in) there was actual traffic and clusters of people and furries going about their business in the city. It was pretty natural to bounce off of street signs and telephone wires like a pinball and go right into a grind or a wallrun. You can even blow up the skirts of pedestrians if you're going fast enough. The buildings unfortunately, were mostly non-enterable facades, though in running about, I did blast through an outdoor mall and some rooftop greenhouse gardens.

Every minute or so I would run into a squad of G.U.N. police bots which were fairly easily dispatched. I had the option to stick to standard Sonic moves but there were a lot of nifty ways to take out the little buggers. For instance, if you time it just right, you can hop onto the back of a mini tankbot and ride it like a skateboard into a wall or crash the flying drones into a flagpole or even use the whirlwind attack on a fire hydrant to blast an enemy with water. There is also auto-taunting when your character finishes a particularly complex combo attack; Lady SummerSpines did a few cute ballet flourishes and stuck out her tongue at the metal husks of the bad guys she defeated. I can easily see the potential of this engine for creating lots of procedurally generated versions of the faux-cinematic sequences from the Sonic Adventure series.

With a few minutes to spare, I was zooming out of the city limits and into the countryside. The music track made a nice seamless change into a kind of funky ukulele beat. Flowers swayed nicely in my breeze and just the sound of the grass crushing underfoot was really nice. I went over a ridge and saw a small crowd waiting in front of building with a statue of Sonic. I sped down to them and the Mission Complete screen appeared. Apparently my performance was good enough for an "S" rank!

The crowd separated in half and the man (well, hedgehog) himself walked up to me. I handed him the parcel and he gave me a fist bump. He told me what a good job I did and opened the package. Inside was a bottle of mustard. He reached behind himself, pulled out a chili-dog from some sort of crevice, and squirted the condiment on top. "Hard to work on an empty stomach" he said, winking at me. Lady SummerSpines did a cartoony faint and Sonic went up to a small stage. He made a short inspirational speech and went to cut the ribbon. Suddenly, an anchor fell from the sky and exploded the Museum into shards. It was Dr. Robotnik in a city sized airship. He mocked Sonic over a P.A. System and said he was claiming this land for himself. Sonic was furious. He looked over to me and asked if I was ready for my next job. Lady SummerSpines nodded and the two ran up the anchor together and the game freeze framed into a makeshift comic book splash page. The demo ended.

Overall, Sonic Beyond seems like a very impressive effort. The Sega Rep who was showing me the ropes assured me that Sonic Team had listened to fan complaints from other games and despite the change in genre, this game would stay true to Sonic's 16-bit roots. If they can work out some of the niggling technical hiccups and polish up the gameplay, we could be looking at a serious Game Of The Year contender.

I rate this demo a solid 7.5.