Sonic
The Hedgehog: Zero
Review by Sorok
There is an interesting rule of game development which has largely gone unspoken. Many
professional game developers have followed it. You see it in all types of games- action
games, platformers, RPGs, sports games, you name it. You also see it in Sonic games, most
notably the original Sonic Adventure. The best example is probably the Emerald Coast whale
chase. During that sequence, you can literally let go of the controller and still survive;
but the powerful thing about it, the thing that makes it work, is that you *feel* you're
in control. (That is, unless you think too much, or your name is AJ Freda.)
The rule, as mentioned by Warren Spector in a 1999 issue of Game Developer, is this:
"If the player thinks they're in control, it's as good as if they are." I've
since added my own corollary, which applies strongly to this review: "If the player
doesn't feel they're in control, whether they are or aren't, the symbiosis between player
and game is destroyed and the whole effect of the game could be lost."
That, my friends, is the main problem with STH: Zero.
Almost everyone in the SFG community is hailing it for all its great technical
achievements. And I don't blame them. Most of them are developers; hence, they think like
developers. That seems to be the way most SFGHQ forumgoers approach a game, asking all
kinds of questions related to the more technical side of development: What's it made in?
Does it have original sprites? What new features does it have? Does it have a static
engine? Does it do something no fan game has ever done before? How many of the original
Genesis features does it employ?
Having separated myself from the cerebral mindset of game development for quite some time
now, I'm approaching this from a gamer's perspective, and asking the most important
question, the one everyone else seems to totally forget: How does it play?
I have a lot of negative things to say in this review, so I'll get the positive out of the
way first. I'll start with the graphics. Almost everything in this game is hand-drawn, and
I can sum up the quality of the artwork in this game with one word: WOW. And honestly,
even with all the great graphical competition (such as SRB2) out there, this is the first
time hand-drawn graphics have really wowed me. They're that good. The Sonic sprite, in
particular, is brilliant. It's totally original (and looks almost SatAM'ish), but the
animations of the original Genesis sprites have been almost perfectly replicated. The
terrain and the Eggman sprite are also awesomely done, though the monitors and springs
look a bit too generic, and certain badniks only have one measly frame of animation. Those
are very minor gripes, though- this game has a fantastic look.
And that's about it for the positive. "WHAT!?!?" you say (no bad Zero Wing joke
intended). "What about all the game's Genesis-like features?" What- the ones
that are so badly implemented that they destroy the game's sense of control? You want me
to list those as *positives*? Ha! As if.
Let me describe my run through the first level, Palmtree Park Way Zone Act 1. Good start,
running movement feels pretty good, no problems there. I get to a wall, where I have to
jump up left and onto a platform. The platform, by the way, is about ten pixels too high
for me to reach. I finally get up there by taking advantage of a *glitch* in the engine,
landing *in* the platform, then jumping up. And the level was *designed* this way.
::shakes head:: Onward, then. Nice vertical springs. I go right a little bit, and- oops,
got hit. Rings scatter everywhere. Okay ring loss, but... you *freeze in place* for about
half a second, which seems to be a full third of the time you're invincible- and while
you're frozen, you can't get your rings. Yeesh.
I run left into a right-pointing spring. It springs me left. Whatever. Just... whatever. I
start running, hit a diagonal-pointing spring, which springs me straight up. Thinking it
must be a fluke, I head back down and hit it again. This time, it springs me up and right,
in a nice little arc. I go back and hit it again- same thing. I hold left in midair to try
and alter my direction even slightly. No luck. (See, it's that lack of control again!) I
run at it from the left, and it barely works at all- springs me up maybe one pixel before
letting me continue on. And this is somehow being hailed as "the closest a Click game
has ever come to Genesis perfection". Mm-hmm. Riiiiiight.
I try to spin attack a couple of ring boxes. First of all, they don't respond at all to
being spun- you just go right through them. You have to jump 'em, or they don't work at
all. And then the spin attack is just awful- you can actually *increase* speed while doing
it, and quite often it just "cuts out" for no reason. What I mean is, you'll be
happily spinning along, and then- without falling, jumping, getting hit, or anything like
that- you just... stop spinning. For no good reason.
Other "highlights" (although "highlights" is too positive a word):
- When I reach a breakable wall, Sonic tries to run up *over* it, and gets stuck. At least
it's easy to break down thanks to the stupid "never lose momentum" spin attack.
- I reach a half-loop, and Sonic slows down to about half speed when passing through it,
and goes through it at constant speed. No sense of control whatsoever, plus the camera
jerks around a lot. (I know people wanna put loops and stuff in their games, but this guy
should've just left well enough alone.)
- "Grinding" feels no different from running down a slope, and has no real
interactive element to it.
- Then, in Electronic Hill Zone, there are these ramp things where Sonic runs at them, and
then gets twisted sideways, and is running alongside a back wall. When you hit those,
you're reduced to half speed, and move at a constant speed- any reduction in speed AT ALL
will make you fall off. Plus, when you get to the end of the wall, you resume the speed
you were at when you ran onto it. Laughably bad.
- And then there are the fans. When on the fans, the control is WAY too floaty- it seems
that, regardless of your actual speed, you move left and right way too fast.
I think, by now, you see my point. The problem with this game is not really a lack of
control so much as a destruction of the *sense* of control. Being jerked from speed to
speed, frozen, springed in the wrong direction, stuck in walls and other such things
really destroy gameplay flow.
I really wish people would stop looking at the *features* of the game, and instead start
looking at its *gameplay*. How a game feels is every bit as important as the thought put
into it. Not even this game's awesome graphics can save it from the pit of SFG suckiness. |
