Sonic the Hedgehog 2

"Why???"

Ok, don't laugh: this was my first Sonic title. And while as a kid I thought it was the greatest thing on earth, years of gaming taught me that all that glitters is not gold. And is this game meerly fool's gold? Let's look.

Graphics - 4.5/10

If Robotnik was fat before, he's a hamburger now. Just look at him... That is, if you can see him. The graphics suffer from constant blurriness that rivals even the Game Boy. After playing for three hours, you get used to the blur, but then you see new terrain other than a mine shaft, and you have to endure constant blurriness.

Another quirk with the graphics is how big everything is on the screen. It might just be me, but it seems that this was designed for the Master System (which the Game Gear is a portable version of) and crammed it into a tiny cartridge. While on a TV it might look good, the lack of views can cause needless deaths, especially at the hands of spikes and pits, a platformer's two worst foes.

Sound - 7.0/10

While the boss music is good (like all Sonic boss tracks), the music borders on annoying and simply horrible. And the innability to see where you're jumping causes even more headaches as you repeat the levels. Sound FX-wise, they just are... there. The only one that you'll remember is the ''lost rings'' noise, as you'll here that a lot. Overall the music's good, but can wear on you if listened to for any real length of time.

Controls - 5.0/10

Sonic platformers are all about speed, yet the designers felt that the controls needed to be formulated for a console, not a portable. Half of the time, human instinct causes me to move the 'Gear one way, and my hand slips, causing Sonic to fall onto spikes. Also, the game suffers from the poor ''1'' and ''2'' buttons, both of which are far too stiff for this game. And let us not forget the hanglider of level two, where you're supposed to press the D-pad in a certain series to move. To be honest, even when I read the manual, I couldn't get it to work. If we ignore the hanglider, this section would've gotten a 7.5.

Game Play - 2.5/10

Ugh. I really tried to like this game, but no matter how hard I tried, it got worse. As I mentioned in the Graphic's section, the action takes up too much room on the screen, and more often than not leaps of faith will be taken into pits of headgehog - eating centapeades. Also, the bosses have a really unbalanced learning curve, and more often than not you'll have to play a boss twelve times to beat him in one sitting. I've been playing for years, and the first boss still manages to kill me. And the horrible controls of the hanglider simply crush any attempts to easily beat level 2. And don't get me started with Scrambled Egg Zone 2, whose name fits the horrible design. Picture a Sonic game where tubes go every direction, and every ending has an endless wall of spikes. *That* is Scrambled Egg Zone 2, complete with authentic cheap death shirts.

Replay Value - 1.5/10

This is what counts in a game, next to the game play, but this is atrocious. Sure, you could collect all the Chaos Emeralds, but finding them all without a walkthru or needless hours of staying up with the Game Genie on all night tends to be pointless. And you need five of the gems just to get to the final level, which kills any replay value this had before.

Conclusion - 2.0/10

I really wish that I could like this game. So many things kept this game down in the pits - poor screen fit, bad level design, cheap bosses, and a hanglider that causes more death than Scrambled Egg Zone 2.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 03/22/03, Updated 03/22/03