This is my first Sonic game! And I liked it! I have tried some of the Mega Drive ones thanks to various collections, but I never got on with them. I couldn’t handle them being either fast and punishing, or slow and tedious. But hey, that’s just me and my shallow understanding of them. I picked this one up thanks to Hideki Naganuma, composer for the Jet Set Radio series and all-around funkalicious dudemeister, who also did the soundtrack for this game. I wasn’t at all disappointed on that front, but to my surprise I really enjoyed the game itself too!
The Rush moniker indicates that the game is a more fast-paced thrill ride and it works quite well. Stages are packed with gimmicks and opportunities to do sweet jumps, grinds, or boosts. All this is built around the core mechanic of the boost gauge; many actions fill it up, and it can be spent any time for instant momentum and as an attack. This overwrites other traditional Sonic mechanics that still do exist in the game, but it creates a “flow” dynamic that really helped me get into the game, and is well served by the level design for the most part.
It’s not expertly executed. It can still get disorienting. Some of the gimmicks, such as the 3D hang-glider bit or the autoscrolling beat-em-up-ish bit are slow and jarringly different. Boss fights too are tedious; switching to easy mode in settings helped me a lot as the main thing it does is reduce their health. There’s also a setting to disable time over—this should be in every game that actually feels the need to have a timer. The core gameplay though seems to me to follow what 2D Sonic is about, but makes it more accessible.
I like the look of the game as well, with nice colourful 2D art supplemented by quaint DS 3D models. The soundtrack obviously stands out, it retains a JSR feel but well converted to a video-gamey style suited to a level-based platformer. It’s really great actually, and should see high rotation on my phone. However the game seems undercooked on some presentation elements: cutscenes are static portraits with text, and the world’s setting and progression feel perfunctory and not well explained. I like the characters well enough, especially new deuteragonist Blaze and her relationship with Cream; her outsider perspective on Sonic’s world and cast was relatable for me, and I liked her slightly slower playstyle. The alternate-dimension plot with two Eggmans (Eggmen?) is also a neat idea but not followed through on satisfactorily.
I think the best achievement of Sonic Rush is making me more interested in the Sonic series, thanks to the open door that Hideki Naganuma beckoned me through. I’m now sniffing around at the sequel, as well as the 3DS version of Generations which follows Rush’s lead for the modern portions—also a good way to get an overview of the series as a whole. But that’s a story for another day.
