Sonic Rush Adventure

September 24,2007 - Everybody's favorite blue hedgehog, Sonic, has been losing some steam because of all the mediocre adventure games coming out lately on the consoles. While he may no longer be Sega's marquee character to the hardcore gamers, he definitely still has some lasting appeal. Thankfully, that lasting appeal might have done wonders, because Sonic Rush Adventure on the Nintendo DS is one of the better Sonic games to come out in a while.

Sonic Rush Adventure is actually a follow-up to Sonic Rush, and it's exactly what its title suggests--a sort of a rushed adventure. The game begins with a rather long cutscene that shows Sonic and his fox friend Tales being stranded on some random isle. Later, a tomboyish raccoon by the name of Marine helps them out. After a few useless scenes of dialog, you eventually gain access to a boat that allows you to get onto a level map.

After that long bit, the fun actually begins. When you gain access to the Wave Cyclone, the first boat you get, the touch screen turns into a sea chart. Much like The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (coming out in a few weeks), you have to plot and chart out where you want to go, by connecting the dot of your current location to the dot of your destination by drawing a line on the touch screen. After confirming your destination, the camera goes into a 3D view, and you pretty much go into a third person behind-the-boat perspective. To accelerate the boat, you simply point your stylus on the screen and keep it there. You can double tap to go a little bit faster, and dragging the stylus at any part of the screen will allow the boat to maneuver left and right. The true fun in this comes from the ramps, because you're able to perform tricks Wave Race style. Eventually, you'll reach your destination, another island. That's where the true Sonic action starts.

If you're no stranger to Sonic games, then you should feel right at home with the high-speed sidescrolling gameplay. If you somehow aren't, that's all fine because there's a tutorial about how to maneuver through a level. It is pretty useless because any idiot can figure out that you have to go to the deepest part of the map to finish a level. Regardless, Sonic fans should find familiar ground with the gameplay. Sonic's life depends on the many scattered rings around the stage, and if you get too carried away running around the course and you get hit, you lose all your rings as they scatter out of Sonic's body and disappear. If Sonic gets hit with no rings in possession, he dies; it's that simple. Aside from that, there are plenty of pinball-inspired obstacles like springpads and the infamous spiked areas to add more depth to each level.

Now what sets the Sonic Rush games apart from the rest of the Sonic games is the expanded moves you can pull. In midair, you can continue to tap the triggers in various combinations to pull tricks that add to not only your score for the end of the level, but for a blue meter on the left as well. This meter gives your power dash technique more juice. You can activate this technique by holding the Y trigger while running. It allows Sonic to just blaze through everything in his path and take out enemies along the way, so in other words--it makes him a bit invincible. You'll be able to dash through worlds of nature, machine, water, lava, and the whole mix of areas stereotypical of a colorful 2D platformer.

There's a boss at the end of each world and they actually end up being pretty intense and refreshing battles. Those who've played Sonic games for years are probably tired of running into Eggman and jumping on his head three times to defeat him. Rest assured, in Sonic Rush Adventure, there's a lot more to it than that. While some bosses, just like the first, are as easy as jumping on a weak spot, some require more strategy. For example, the boss in the machine world has three wrecking balls that you have to hit him with, and the speed and timing of your jumps affects whether or not you actually do hit it. But while there is an increased sense of strategy, the true stress of challenge is taken away by the fact that you know when your enemy is about to be taken out. Instead of just faster reflexes, you can see the boss' health bar on the bottom of the screen, and that's really not necessary.

Speaking of unnecessary, you eventually gain the ability to use Blaze the Cat instead of Sonic in any level. The difference between the two? Tremendous. Blaze is slower, doesn't jump as high, and her
"spin dash" is more of a "twirl dash" that doesn't have all that much speed. There is some good to this though, because she actually catches more air that Sonic during her leaps and it gives players using her access to some areas you probably couldn't reach as the hedgehog. While it's probably more of a good thing than a bad thing, it's nowhere near as fun as using Sonic.

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