Sonic Rush!

[pitch]

(Knowing my track record for topic flops, I'm condensing what I have to say here. There are about a million more things I have to say about the game, but till I see a point, I'ma save my breath finger energy)

Suffice it to say I was disappointed when I heard all Sonic Rush would do with the second screen was use it for more level space. That seemed... a tad boring of an idea to me. That plus the 3D characters seemed very muddy(lacking the detail they could have as sprites). Throw in the fact that I was worried it wouldn't play as well as the classics(Sonic Advance 2 and 3 have kinda really changed from the classic formula, imho), and I was pretty much dead set against buying this game.

But I happened upon $40, so bought it anyway. And boy am I glad I did.

I'll try to cover the strong points as briefly as I can:

• Backgrounds - It's been a long time since I've been awed by a background, but the backgrounds in this game are pulled off absolutely wonderfully - the whole levels too, as a matter of fact.
  
• Classic-feel - There's a story to the game, and the inbetween scenes are kinda meh in my opinion(the ending's pretty good though), but the levels play through very nicely and really gives ya that feelin ya might get playing any of the Sonic trilogy on a Genesis
• The Tension Gauge - This's an interesting little bugger. Kill enemies, or pull off tricks and you build up Tension(I don't know why they call it Tension), then you can press X or Y and blast forward at real high speed crushing everything in your path. It's really nifty if you need that extra boost to get over a ledge or if you get hit in the middle of a charge and have to get back up to speed.
• SPECIAL STAGES!! - They're too easy to get into, but they're absolutely brilliant. They're Sonic 2-style special stages with the touchscreen for control, which is very precise. It's very nifty, the only pain is jumping
• Blaze the Cat - She's basically a female Shadow-like character, but manages to break that funk by the end of the game. She'd make a great regular.
• The Final Zone - The cinematic before hand and the one after is beautiful, in my opinion. Anyone remember Sonic Advance 2's little scene before the extra Super Sonic level? kinda like that but with the 3D guys. But yeah, like the Advance games, this is basically a level like the Doomsday Zone from Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Not exactly, again it's more like Sonic Advance 2's final level, but it's real nifty and you have to fight two enemies, respectively as Sonic and Blaze. It's like Doomsday DS.. no DoomSday. Yeah.

That's all I'll cover for now.

btw, do we have a Sonic the Hedgehog topic? I scanned over the boards and didn't find one; I might've missed it though.

[Darfox8]

Guess what. For all my Sony defending and all my "PSP is teh awesome" I bought a DS yeterday!!!!! I got Electric Blue with Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. I don't want to clutter this thread with my thoughts on the game and all the system's features. But needless to say I love it. When I was there it was a pretty hard choice for me and it did come down to Mario and Sonic(Talk about a classic showdown) But I chose Mario becaues I thought it'd get me more play time, it being an RPG and all.

Sonic Rush might be my second purchase. It's been a great series and it's seems perfect for hand held but I've never had a chance to play any of the prior ones hand held Sonic games.

Now after this... I want a game that uses the touch screen alot(Since Mario & Luigi doesn't at all... at all. Not even in menus) and another game that uses online play. Like Mario Kart.

[pitch]

Hahahah! That was good, I liked that. Truly a classic decision, even though Sega and Nintendo are on good terms at this point.

As far as Touch Screen usage goes, you may want to try another game if that's what you want. All Sonic Rush has for touch screen is the Special Stages, and while those're great, there're only seven. No online play either. They really could have added a little extra to the game, in my opinion(though I haven't fully explored it). I mean, you got your standard gameplay mode, seven levels/special stages + the final level + The FINAL final level; Two characters(Blaze plays the levels in a different order though); a time attack mode; and a soundtest(it's a bit better than it sounds, a lot of the songs have lyrics). I'm not sure how good Multiplayer is - all I've done is Download play, and that was just a race through each and every course. There may be more to standard multiplayer. But yeah, it's a great game, I just think they could've added a minigame or something(even the Chao Garden would've sufficed; that could be phun with Touch usage)