BOOM is the sound that was heard as my head exploded while wondering what genius over at Sega thought releasing Sonic Boom before it was even close to ready was a good idea. Okay, I’m going to keep this brief because if I don’t I’ll be here all night raving like a crazy man. Sonic Boom is a terrible game. “How Bad Is It,” I hear you all yell in tandem from the audience. Well, Sonic Boom makes Sonic 06 look like a pretty good game.
That’s right, this game will having looking back at Sonic 06 and saying, “Hmm, you know what, this isn’t half bad.” It will take you less than 10 minutes of gameplay to realize that you just wasted money on this rushed, broken, mess of a game. The story itself makes absolutely no sense, deciding to pull some flash forward/sideways/backwards thing within the first 10 minutes. Seriously, I’m pretty sure Sonic (who sounds like he’s voiced by a 45-year-old man) dies outright. Great! Game over, lets return this thing and buy some new Skylanders. Or better yet, buy a Sega Genesis with all three Sonic games and show your kids what it was to actually play a good Sonic Game. It would still be cheaper than getting Sonic Boom for the Wii U.
Game mechanics are just plain terrible. I had the pleasure (at the time) of trying out Sonic Boom during E3 this past June. I had a fun time with it all the while knowing I was playing/looking at something still in a Beta stage. We don’t like doing too many previews around here because you can’t get an honest feel for a product, especially when what you are seeing is tailored to you in a brief 15 minute or so segment. It was a neat concept and the problems I saw at E3 weren’t even addressed.
Unfortunately, the game just isn’t ready for primetime. It really needed a few more months to tweak things, but this wasn’t meant to be. I’m starting to think that Sega has no clue how to function as a game studio. We just recently got two pretty good Sonic games in the form of Sonic Colors (one of my favorite non Nintendo Wii games) and the fun Sonic Generations. At the end of the day I think Sega was more interested in pushing this for the holidays, promoting the show based around it, and generally writing off the Wii U completely.
The game is broken beyond words. It runs at 720p, but gets upscaled to 1080p so you can expect to see a lot of jagged textures. Animations don’t fare much better as many don’t even seem complete and some don’t even exist where you think they would. Sonic’s famous roll maneuver looks like a static Photoshop effect and characters often glitch out and right through solid objects. You can also expect some serious slow down when the gang is moving, even at a brisk pace during the game.
Camera problems plague every aspect of Sonic Boom. It’s like nobody on the development team understands how a camera is supposed to work in the year 2014. It feels just as bad and as dated as it was in Sonic Heroes from 10 or so years ago. Oh, god… Please tell me they didn’t just repurpose Sonic Heroes for the Wii U… It wouldn’t surprise me as the graphics look like a Gamecube era game. And I’m not talking about Windwaker Gamecube, I’m talking more along the lines of Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis. Character models are bland and lifeless which is strange because so much was made about the characters redesigns.
The sound fares little better as audio cues are missed, cut off, or just don’t come through. It’s a shame too, because the soundtrack to the game is the one thing that helps the game from becoming a complete nightmare. I really wanted to like Sonic Boom, I really did. Having enjoyed the last two major outings this one should have been great with everything that Sega learned.
I suppose there was a reason that Sega didn’t hand over any review copies to any press outlets, or that the games writer came out saying this was the worst Sonic game ever. So please, don’t go out and buy this game even if you like Sonic. Go pick up Sonic Colors and save the extra money to go buy a better Wii U game. Heck, just go out and pick up a Sega Genesis and grab Sonic 1, 2, and 3 and still have money left over to get ice cream.
I’m going to leave you with a number of YouTube videos that show just how hilariously bad Sonic Boom is just in case you ignore everything I said above…
R.I.P. Sonic the Hedgehog 1991- 2014
About Author
