I've talked at length already about games that eluded me during my youth and the mythical aura I've regarded them in since. Knuckles Chaotix a prime example of this phenomenon. I remember having a magazine which had an extensive preview for Chaotix that I poured over like religious text. I read that feature so much the glue on the spine started to come undone. I practically begged my mom for a 32X, and thankfully was unable to convinced her to pony up the cash, sparing her the indignity of buying a 32X and me a permanently warped perspective on what Knuckles' Chaotix is. I'm sure if I played this game in 1995 I would still be making a case today for how misunderstood it was. Having not played it until just a few years ago, I'm able to look at it more objectively and call it like it is: a no good crap dumb bad game.
Chaotix has a great lineup of characters. I'm talking peak Sonic the Hedgehog design. Vector, Espio, Charmy, and Mighty all look fantastic, and joining Dr.Robotnik as the secondary (arguably primary) antagonist is none other than Metal Sonic. Heavy and Bomb are also here. Unfortunately, rather than giving each character a unique way to play and adhering to the excellent stage design that Sonic Team had perfected with Sonic 3 & Knuckles, you're stuck picking your player character through a roulette system and, worse still, tied to the literal hip with a tag-along character who is also chosen at random. If you thought Tails' pathing was wonky in the original games, just imagine that flopping around behind you, weighing down your jumps.
To be fair, I do recall it being fairly easy to time this mini-game juuust right and get the characters you want, but the stages are not designed in a way that make the best use of each character's unique features. Everyone blends together and your selection will ultimately come down to a preference on who looks the coolest rather than what utility they may have. What you don't want to do, however, is end up with Heavy or Bomb, the two joke characters who actively punish you for having the misfortunate of being partnered with them. What a very neat and cool and super novel feature!
Zones are much more vertically oriented and require you to make use of your partner character to fling yourself towards the goal. You can do this in a number of ways, such as pinning one character in place while running in the opposite direction you want to go, then releasing and allowing the tether connecting you to rubberband your character ahead. The problem is that a lot of stages lack interesting platforming, and many share very similar portions of geometry. The zones themselves look great graphically speaking, but are barren, dull, and at times just plain confusing to navigate. You also select what stage you go to at random, which causes some significant issues with difficulty pacing. This all results in a game that feels like a total mess, with so many scattered ideas and mechanics that utterly fail to coalesce into something playable.
It is such a shame too. My youthful romanticizing of Chaotix aside, I think there's a lot of wasted potential here. The idea of Knuckles and his own gang stuck inside an amusement park operated by Robotnik is great, and Knuckles is a good enough character that he honestly could carry his own game... at least he could have at the time, long before he was turned into the series resident dumbass. The soundtrack, character designs, and sprite work are all terrific, they're just squandered on a game that is designed to be about as fun as walking through a tire fire.
I'm giving this one star for the excellent aesthetic design of Chaotix and awarding an additional star purely for Door into Summer, which is an all-time jam.
Chaotix has a great lineup of characters. I'm talking peak Sonic the Hedgehog design. Vector, Espio, Charmy, and Mighty all look fantastic, and joining Dr.Robotnik as the secondary (arguably primary) antagonist is none other than Metal Sonic. Heavy and Bomb are also here. Unfortunately, rather than giving each character a unique way to play and adhering to the excellent stage design that Sonic Team had perfected with Sonic 3 & Knuckles, you're stuck picking your player character through a roulette system and, worse still, tied to the literal hip with a tag-along character who is also chosen at random. If you thought Tails' pathing was wonky in the original games, just imagine that flopping around behind you, weighing down your jumps.
To be fair, I do recall it being fairly easy to time this mini-game juuust right and get the characters you want, but the stages are not designed in a way that make the best use of each character's unique features. Everyone blends together and your selection will ultimately come down to a preference on who looks the coolest rather than what utility they may have. What you don't want to do, however, is end up with Heavy or Bomb, the two joke characters who actively punish you for having the misfortunate of being partnered with them. What a very neat and cool and super novel feature!
Zones are much more vertically oriented and require you to make use of your partner character to fling yourself towards the goal. You can do this in a number of ways, such as pinning one character in place while running in the opposite direction you want to go, then releasing and allowing the tether connecting you to rubberband your character ahead. The problem is that a lot of stages lack interesting platforming, and many share very similar portions of geometry. The zones themselves look great graphically speaking, but are barren, dull, and at times just plain confusing to navigate. You also select what stage you go to at random, which causes some significant issues with difficulty pacing. This all results in a game that feels like a total mess, with so many scattered ideas and mechanics that utterly fail to coalesce into something playable.
It is such a shame too. My youthful romanticizing of Chaotix aside, I think there's a lot of wasted potential here. The idea of Knuckles and his own gang stuck inside an amusement park operated by Robotnik is great, and Knuckles is a good enough character that he honestly could carry his own game... at least he could have at the time, long before he was turned into the series resident dumbass. The soundtrack, character designs, and sprite work are all terrific, they're just squandered on a game that is designed to be about as fun as walking through a tire fire.
I'm giving this one star for the excellent aesthetic design of Chaotix and awarding an additional star purely for Door into Summer, which is an all-time jam.
Weatherby
10 months ago