Behind the Blue Blur – Sonic Origins Review

Developer: Sonic Team | Platform: PS5 | Playtime (1/CD/2/3): 2:30/2:20/2:50/4:10 | Platinum: 12:25

This is the first entry in a sort of series on the site – Summer to Summer of Sonic. Starting with the first games (via Sonic Origins), I’ll be going through all the mainline titles in the series ending with Sonic Superstars/Sonic X Shadow Generations this time next year.

Despite playing games for around 20 years now, there are still major gaps in my gaming experiences, one of which is Sonic the Hedgehog. Save for mindlessly mashing through Sonic Heroes as a kid, I hadn’t played any. Thankfully the semi modern trend of rereleasing collections of older games (Sonics been doing it for years to be fair) means I can enjoy the series from the beginning. This is going to be a difficult review to write since my feelings were all over the place during these games.

Before anything I can talk about the aspects exclusive to the collection, those being all of the elements outside of the four titles. I have a love of cool menus, it was a highlight of my brief time in VR, having little hub menus. Origins doesn’t have this but it does have a uniform menu for the four games (not unique to this collection I know) as well as having islands representing each game in the background. It’s the little things. As this is an anniversary collection, there’s the Museum – filled with concept art, soundtracks and the like. There are also Challenges the player can try – I did enough for the trophies but that’s it – if I enjoyed the games more I’m sure I would have done more of them. The cutscenes that were added to the start and end of each game that tie the narratives together was a nice touch too, they probably work quite well in the mode that lets you marathon all 4 titles consecutively.

That’s all by the by really, my thoughts on the games are what’s important. It’s hard to quantify because I went from genuinely not enjoying myself in the slightest (I’ve quit other games for less but persevered for the sake of S2SoS) to genuinely quite enjoying myself. Sonic 2 was easily my favourite, with the original or Sonic CD taking the bottom spot. Sonic 3 & Knuckles might have just suffered a little for being the last game in the gauntlet.

I finished these games two weeks ago, I’ve finished 5 games in the interim time and I’m writing this review on my night shift. Those factors combined with the nature of the games means the review is going to be a little unorthodox.

I started the games obviously with Sonic the Hedgehog, the first game. I assume the whole Sonic mantra of “Gotta go fast” was present even back during the original games, so it’s a wonder why levels so often work against that. So many times I’d be frustrated by a near Kaizo like enemy placement that completely destroys any flow the game has. Stages like Labrynth Zone present a similar problem where the player is forced to wait for platforms. Sonic isn’t that interesting as a precise platformer. Sonic CD then has the opposite issue that any kind of speed will see you blast through the level in seconds flat. From what I’ve read, Sonic CD is meant to be more about exploration. I feel the game offers no incentive to explore its levels, especially when it doesn’t explain its Past/Future mechanic (I realise that might just be a coddled modern gamer take but it’s a mechanic that fundamentally alters the levels and there is no information).

I don’t know what changed but Sonic 2 just seemed to click with me, I was actually starting to enjoy myself. I didn’t think the level theming was any better or worse than it had been previously, perhaps it was the level design that did it. The introduction of Tails proved to be interesting, alleviating some of my annoyance at the way Sonic games deal with health/damage. I’m sure everybody knows but Sonic collects rings, when he takes a hit he loses all of his rings. If he’s hit again he’ll die. While you lose your rings, you can retrieve them back meaning you could in effect be invincible. Sonic 2 seems to lower the spread of the rings meaning some level of control is applicable. All of this just leaves Sonic and Knuckles which I deem to be a slightly lesser Sonic 2 that just went on a little bit too long.

Boss fights are something I was surprised by, how consistently good they were over the course of the four games. Anything different from the Mario style of “hit 3 times” is good but I enjoy the diversity here – highlights off the top of my head include a sawblade treadmill one and the Metal Sonic Race (I found the Metal Sonic race annoying I’m just glad it was there). Bosses do perhaps take too many hits though, amplified maybe by the lack of visual health bar, makes fights feel like they last longer than they should.

A big part of Sonic lore are the Chaos Emeralds - there are seven to find in each game and lead to an alternate ending. I got maybe one emerald across four games so I didn’t see any of the true endings. You could argue that I didn’t actually beat the games but honestly I didn’t enjoy them enough to do them.

I technically played the Plus version of the game which also adds a whole load of the classic non mainline games, I intend to play these at a later date, once I’ve made my way through the mainline games.

I can’t say I massively enjoyed my experience with these games but I’m glad I played them. If I’m going to play the entire series then I need a solid opinion on the foundations. Even if I didn’t fully vibe with them, there’s a reason the Sonic franchise is as big as it is. Onto the Adventure duology next!