Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg

"The Incredible, Edible Sonic Team Game."

Introduction

Im gonna come right out and say it, I'm a bit biased for Sonic Team games. Ever since NiGHTS into dreams Ive been a huge fan. Ive played nearly all of their games except Burning Rangers. Im not saying I enjoy every game they've ever made, I disliked the sonic adventure series' relative lack of gameplay using sonic himself, and at times I find that Phantasy Star Online can be a tad boring offline. Im not going to say this game is free of flaws, it has them, but I won't ignore them. When I first heard of this game wasn't really interested in it that much until I had heard that it was from Sonic Team. I was quite surprised and quite happy that sonic team was making an original game instead of just a sequal to something else. Any way on with the review.

Story

The Evil Dark Raven and the crows have covered over the sky in Morningland and captured al the Village Elders in a plan to prevent the sun from rising ever again. One day while billy and his friends are going out to play they encounter a young chick who's hurt, about to be attacked by crows. Billy bats away the crows with a stick and then the chick reveals itself to be the chicken god. Billy's show of courage convinced the cicken god that billy is right for the job of saving Morningland. So he presents billy with a magic chicken suit that gives billy the power to control eggs. Blly must use the eggs in morning land to rescue the elders so that they may clear the sky of darkness and defeat the crows. Alright, Im pretty sure at this point your either scratching o hole into your scalp, violently laughing or blleding from your eyes due to the sheer strangeness of this story. Ill admit that It is very childish and wierd, but then again so is the whole game. I Personaly liked the uniqueness of the story even if it isn't very compelling. I don't hold this against the game, its not like its an RPG where storyline is just as important if more so that gameplay. This game is an action game and if video game history has taught us anything its that some of the best action games didn't need great storys to be good. 7/10

Visuals

This games graphics are pretty good. Every thing about this game has a colorful childish look to it, remeniscent of Super Mario Sunshine. The artwork is typical of what one would expect from Sonic Team, characters with Big feet and Hands with really thin arms and legs and faces that look like they belong to Sonic Characters. While the Graphical quality is basically good, it isn't as good as many other games for the GC but at least they don't look like Dreamcast graphics like other Sega games for the GC looked. The only real problem this game has visually is a heavy, annoying framerate drop when lots of characters are on screen 7/10

Sound

The Music in this game is Interesting, it's basically a mishmash of strange sounding instruments and more tradintional instruments used in odd ways to make songs. like having a recorder play the main melody during the some of the opening CG, as well as many childrens voices. Sound effects are extremely cartoonish as if they were taken from a set of stock sound efects for looney-tunes. The make a lot and have your typical childrens voices, but they are obviously Japanese kids voices as they tend to speak with lots of engrish, as if they try realy hard to sound american but still have problems with certain phrases like ''Good Morning'' which comes out like ''Guu Mohnin''. The only thing I didn't like about the sound in this game was that the sound effects volume was set so high and the player was given no option to turn it down, Voices tend to blare at unexpected moments grating on the nerves. 8/10

Gameplay

Sonic Team is known for taking a seemingly stupidly simple concept and making a suprisingly deep game from that. NiGHTS was like this as was the Original Sonic The Hedgehog. Billy hatcher folows this pattern quite perfectly. The Concept is simple, you roll giant eggs around squashing and bashing enemies, and collecting fruits. Yes very simple, almost stupidly so, but it actaully leads to a lot of gameplay depth. Billy can't do much on his own, he needs to have an egg in his possesion to do much so Eggs are scattered conveniantly throughout the levels in case he loses one. Basically, he rolls it around everywhere running over enemies with it, he can throw it forward knocking it into enemies like they where bowling pins having it return to him like a boomerang if he jumps with it he can use it like a pogo stick (yes I know it weird, but his chicken suit lets him do that) or he can pile drive it and use it like a hammer, or toss it like a bomb smashhing any enemies in the way. He needs eggs inorder to use the jumping rings which launch him and the egg around the place. If he collects enough fruits (using the egg of course) he can hactch the egg and gain whats inside, usually a power up of some sort or an animal helper depending on what kind of egg is hatched. There are two kinds of powerups, wearable, which billy wears to give him a temporary new ability or to increase the attack power of his egg, and Expendable, which billy can use only once and usually only last for a few moments. Animal Helpers can either be ridden on, or commanded to attack in a certain direction. There are a lot of different kinds of eggs to find in the game, a record is kept of what kinds of eggs are found called the egg gallery. Fighting enemies is the heart of this game, the egg is very destructive, not only squashing enemies but also destroying various inanimate Items with a pleasing crunch. Destroying as many enemies as possible in one blow scores you combo hits there are many way of doing thiss but the best way is designed into the very physics of how enemies are detroyed. Small size enemies tend to richochet from the egg if hit by it instead of being rolled over. Enemies act like high speed billiard balls, if the egg is thrown at them they will be knocked into the wall where they will bounce around hitting all other enemies in their path. I was very pleased that this game had the kind of gameplay system Ive come to love from Sonic Team and had a whole lot of fun. 10/10

Overall

If my Review convinced you to buy it then by all means buy it, but if you are still not sure, then I Highly recommend you rent this game just to see how wonderfully fun it is . 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/29/03