""Taco Taco Wheat" or "Rollin' Around at the Speed of Sound""

Sonic the Hedgehog is a fallen legacy to some. The simple "platforming with speed" has been replaced with the camera rebellion of the 3-D games and the "speed with platforming" mindset of the Advance games (although, I believe Advance 3 had come close to that balance). Now Sonic is back, with his first game in the realm of the Nintendo DS. Will Sonic Rush rush its way to Sonic greatness, or will be "setting the stage for a loser's parade"?

Story? Two parallel dimensions merging, Sonic the Hedgehog from one, Blaze the Cat from another. Emeralds stolen, yada yada. Not very complex, but at least it doesn't have eleven endings, ten of which are useless. (I'm talking to you, Shadow).

Let's get this out of the way now: Sonic Rush looks great for a DS game. It takes advantage of the DS's 3-D capability, even pushing it at points. Since the action usually takes place between the 2 DS screens, the graphic quality is mirrored on both, which is something that takes a great deal to do. (Even Advance Wars's modest polygons can only be done on one screen.)

The audio in this game is not so consistent, however. Jet Grind Radio's music director brings several songs consisting of techno and voice clips. Some songs are able to fool you into thinking that they are made from more than ten words (Wake, wake, me up!), and some...are just weird (Taco taco wheat, taco max smack face, uh!). The anime-butchers at 4Kids also loaned a few of their "voice actors" to record random voice clips. Like Shadow the Hedgehog, they do a surprisingly decent job, although newcomer Blaze's voice clips seem to lack consistency (maybe it's just me).

The real problem with the sound, however, is that several loud sound effects cause "tearing" in the audio (Imagine that scratchy sound you get when playing the DS on a very low volume. Now, imagine that when the volume is up).

The gameplay is traditional 2-D Sonic: you run, you jump, you get hit by an offscreen enemy, you fall to your doom. Exclusive to this game is the Tension Gauge, a gauge that increases as you destroy enemies, cross checkpoints, and perform tricks (tricking is done by a single button, very easy). The tension gauge allows you to perform an air dash, a move so strong and fast, it makes Advance series' Boost Mode (which is included here, by the way) look as slow as regular running. While Rushing, all those enemies Dimps and/or SonicTeam placed in irritating locations go down. Since the developer didn't think that that was generous enough, you now drop a max of 50 rings when hit, as opposed to 20.

The Boss battles are entirely different. You only get one screen, but most of them take advantage of all 3 of the game's dimensions. Although a certain boss makes a pointless repeat, these bosses otherwise stay fresh.

The Special Stages are back, and are actually fairly easy to enter (yay for the lack of 60 Chao). They play in a similar fashion to Sonic 2's chute stage, except you use the stylus to control Sonic (thankfully, Blaze doesn't have to repeat the same stages). These stages range from nice and simple to neigh impossible. You WILL have strong reflexes after beating these stages.

There's a new character, too: Blaze the Cat. Blaze can control fire, but is considerably slower than the blue blur, and aside from that and Blaze's potential to get more trick points, they are essentially the same. Hey, it's better than having Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Cream as playable characters, each with pointless abilities.

And now, for the bad stuff. Since the concept of enemies placed in uncomfortable spots is eliminated, what do they do? Throw in tons of booby traps. Rush mode abusers WILL get crushed and/or fall into a bottomless pit in EVERY zone besides Sonic's first one. Oh, gosh, the bottomless pits. Another thing that will get annoying is the new way rings are dropped. Sure, you have a chance to pick more back up, but they bounce and do more crazy things the more you get hit. So one ring-shielding against bosses? Out. Speaking of which, many bosses now have insta-kill moves, which bite. When your Eggman says "Get ready to schooled!", you're about to get schooled. Really.

The storyline elements in between zones are a real bore, and unless you're afraid to miss every detail, you'll either be tapping A or holding R to skip them.

One more thing is that running through the same levels as Blaze, who is pretty much Sonic minus Speed plus Hover is a big price to play the somewhat-underwhelming final battle. But that's something you'll have to find out by yourself (every Sonic fan past #2 has a good idea what this battle is).

But, even with all of this bogging it down, Sonic Rush is still the best 2D Sonic game since Sonic 3 and Knuckles. 4 out of 5 (8/10)

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/04/06