The premier nut buster game is back! Explore new ways to bust your loads of ammo into some goons and paint the walls with their fluids until the whole city stinks.

This review contains spoilers

This will be a bit ranty and long because this is my first time writing a longer review, and it's a series that while it may be laughed at and disregarded something I'm passionate about and hold dear, so I'd appreciate it if you'd bear with me.

During this fateful weekend through opportunities that came through a mixture of being jobless, lucky, and bored I was able to play both Sonic Superstars and Super Mario Wonder days ahead of their release. Seeing as both games are platformers and historically being compared to one another, they stuck around in my head. As such, I've come to the following conclusion about the two: Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a game that does something I think has been uncommon as a majority of recent Nintendo releases revel in their decades-long popularity and thus grow complacent. It tries new things. New, fresh ideas. They aren't all groundbreaking and entirely different from Mario's already absurdist and surrealist roots, but they spitball things at you at a fairly decent pace. The game is like a conversation between players and developers, showing you new ideas and chucking different ways to think about Mario as a game. There are the new power-ups that aren't just a new suit to wear or an item to forget about and throw. There are shorter, challenge-based levels that don't test your platforming skill, but throw in light puzzle solving combined with the quick thinking the genre itself is known for. Some new enemies play with ideas that at the very least weren't explored as much in previous games. And while it isn't entirely all-new, what returns comes back in loving rendition, with the respect newcomers onto a decades-old icon are due to give. Funnily enough, as the entry that breaks free from the New branding his previous 2D outings were known for, it's a title that feels proud to brand itself as a Super Mario Bros. game.

On the other hand, Sonic Superstars is a game that does what at least 3 other games in the series have tried before it. It tries to recapture the magic of that original Genesis trilogy (plus Sonic CD) while also adding its new twist to the formula. Four-player co-op and new Colors-esque Emerald abilities set out to shake up the 2D Sonic hierarchy. But, like Sonic 4 and unlike Mania, it fails to see the forest for the trees and instead comes out the other end a shallow mishmash of previous games.

My misgivings with Sonic Superstars come down to two big factors: The game's lack of confidence in design, and the few new ideas it DOES have turning around to its detriment and feeding back into its lack of confident level design. To start with the levels: when I say that the levels aren't confident, it ties back into the game's reliance on its history. Act 1 of Zone 2 is a good example of this: The level is, primarily, a fusion of Mushroom Hill's vine running and mini-vine bungees (The frog badniks even serve the same purpose as those weird rope obstacles!) and Stardust Speedway's interconnecting tunnel system. And while that's a fun homage for that part of the act, the fun fades when it not only ends after looping that mechanic 3ish times into a boss battle, but that Act 2 just adds in a cruddy limited visibility segment on top of those two. That's the issue with these game's zones: Every zone is just something an older zone has done before with WAY better precision and finesse. It oftentimes avoids level concepts of its own making and falls back on things that are safe and familiar, for reasons that I believe are due to being scared of failure. And to be fair, I get that. I can't even imagine being Azrest, fresh off the heels of Yuji Naka's arrest and Balan Wonderworld's universal panning. Suddenly, you're back in the hot seat again as you're developing for a franchise that, while it used to be more middling, is back in its biggest resurgence in a long time. And you've gotta develop a game that's a follow-up to Sonic's first green Metacritic rating in YEARS. If I were anybody within the director's chair or producer's seat, yeah I'd try not to do anything nuts too. But this ends up making the game's sense of identity, a concept core with Sonic, bland and risk-averse. That's not what I love the series for, and it sucks to see it trip up like this even if it's for justifiable reasons. We know why [Insert your alcoholic relative here!] drinks, but that doesn't mean I have to smile when I see them trip and spill the booze on my carpet.

With that out of the way, we'll move on to one of the few new ideas they have: Multiplayer Co-Op and the emerald powers. There's not much to say about multiplayer in Sonic: To be blunt, it’s not good. I think it as a feature falls apart when you play with someone who picks up the game a little faster than you, or vice versa. Then it just becomes you or them dragging everyone on a wild ride, as whoever gets ahead first grabs control with the camera, and the players left in the dust are thrust to get ejected and pop back into existence sometimes multiple times during a segment. I played with two other good friends of mine, one who was semi-experienced with Sonic and the other who had no real interest in the series but played it with me because the co-op had him intrigued, and the experience was marred by either me or the semi-experienced lurching ahead and wrestling control between each other. This isn't even mentioning the extra parts of the game, like SINGLE PLAYER EXCLUSIVE LEVELS that lock you into a character and force other players out. Why these are in a game that advertises 4-player co-op is mind-boggling to me, as all I can see is a group of kids getting ready to enjoy the new Sonic the Hedgehog game and then waiting because, oh wait Josh has to do this Sonic only level. Wait, this level is huge! Why can't we play on this one? It's a strange decision that only compounds itself when you also take the special stages into account. To the game's credit, these are brand new special stages, quite unlike anything we've seen before (although I'd argue they play similarly to Sonic's mobile outings, however it's unlikely they had an impact on the game.) However, to be blunt, they're not very good. At best, realizing most of them go in a circle makes the solutions pretty cut and dry. At worst, you're chasing them through a grappling hook with zero satisfying movement and an incredibly dodgy reticle. And it's even worse in co-op, where control is snatched from you every two turns so that everyone can put in the work to get the emerald, only it ends up feeling disorienting and leading to confusion more than anything else. Once you do beat these levels, you get access to a power associated with the emerald you obtained. The problem with THESE now is that they're grossly overpowered abilities that let you turn levels on their head, and while I'm usually down for such stuff like that as a postgame you can get such abilities as early as the very first level, the emerald from that zone giving you a red hot omnidirectional airdash that has no limit but the timer associated with it which is already quite generous. This one alone causes so many problems with being able to invalidate whole sections of levels, becoming relevant all the way until the final boss where you only can't use it because it more or less has a giant hitbox next to its face the majority of the time. The issues tie back to the game's unconfident design: Giving your character the ability to just skip segments of the level if he so desired from the start of a playthrough shows lack of confidence within your own design, and makes me question why I'm spending time on this game instead of another. Why would I spend time with the game where I don't have to do bad parts if I don't want to when I could be playing games that don't have those bad parts to begin with? A similar argument can be made with another Sonic game I've gone on record being fond of, Sonic CD. In that game, to get the best ending possible you need to go to the past and destroy the robot generator within every zone. Doing so turns that zone's future into its Good Future counterpart. However, this is technically an optional objective to get that good ending, as if you don't want to scour the levels for these generators (which at times can be troubling to find) you could always just simply collect the 7 time stones, which automatically destroys all generators, therefore, giving you good futures in every zone and giving you the good ending. However, I'd argue that this isn't an avoidance of a mechanic but more an alternative way to playing the game, as collecting the stones does offer a different perspective to the game, You instead have to focus on different objectives. Rather than focus on getting to the past and exploring the level, you've got to get your hands on 50 rings and make sure not to lose them by the end. Then you have to complete special levels, which many may describe as particularly frustrating. It offers a different, more familiar challenge while still not sacrificing the game's identity. You still have to look for something throughout levels, only now you're looking for rings. This also gives the future and past variants more utility than seen before: if you can't locate any more rings in the present variation, maybe you'll have luck in the breezier past. Or maybe the monitor-rich but mechanically tougher future will suit your needs. It breathes new life into the game in a way that is to the game’s benefit. Superstars' emerald mechanic does no such thing. You can use them to obtain secret paths (some of which are only available on a second play with later emerald abilities), but they yield no secrets other than maybe some medals for your Battle Mode robot. Getting the emeralds doesn't get you a special ending, so there's no reason to get them unless you want Super Sonic really badly, and even then you won't be able to use him until the final zone in the game either way. The only difference you can make in your run is to not get them, which then lets you deal with the game's level design in full, and that has its stated problems already. And that's their big issue: They offer no fun changes to the game and only weaken the game's already struggling levels.

There's so much I could go into paragraphs and paragraphs talking about, like nitpicks to how because of an over-correction on Knuckle's glide (Funnily enough this started in Mania) for the past two games he's been the worst feeling character to play in the games and how crushing that is for someone who's been a BIG fan of the character since my start with the series. Or talk about how much the bosses go from boring to bad to Oh My God Is That The Death Egg Robot For The Fifth Fucking Time Now GO AWAY. OR talk about how halfway through the game it feels like Dimps took the reigns and we start getting pits of death and devious jumps that uncurl you straight into a wall of enemies (If I didn't switch off of Sonic to Amy around Zone 3 I might have taken a star off of this review). There's so much to unpack about this game that makes me feel sad, mad, and everywhere in between, but I'd be here for days and nights on this damn thing.
So to start kicking off the last bit, I want to start by sharing a thought I had the earlier on the day I was writing this review. I was watching a live performance of Ready To Fly by Masayoshi Takanaka, played by himself and the iconic Carlos Santana. Throughout the performance, there were several call-and-response segments that enamored me so much I couldn't go the whole day without thinking about them. It's stereotypical to say, but it felt like a conversation so real I could picture it. It was incredibly playful, yet polite, and showboat-y in a way all unique to them. Comparing music to video games is kind of rocky as it is, but what I'm trying to say by bringing these up is that crafting an experience for a player requires that conversation, instead of a call and response it's more like a create and response. That back and forth between developer and player is what I think is vital to unique experiences you don't get in other mediums. I think Mario Wonder devs understood this and used it to their best ability to create a game that, in terms of levels, we'll be thinking about a while afterwards. I don't think the Sonic Superstars devs DON'T know this: Azrest is full of industry veterans. I think it's bad faith to just go "They repackaged the old thing and made it new again! They're lazy!" Because I don't know them. But here's my hunch: I think they do know how to make that experience, it's just that years and years of getting shut down and beaten up have led them to have so many reservations, and this game for better and for worse represents that. And maybe that's also wrong and they just fucked up. Maybe we'll never know. But whatever the case, I hope that'll be the kind of game I replay on a whim a couple of years down and discover I was wrong about it.

P.S. I'll probably do a replay once the day 1 patch is out, and I'll make an update if any relevant new thoughts come about.

P.P.S. Forgot to mention what I liked about the game so I'll bust through ‘em quickly: Art style is nice except for Sand Sanctuary where it looks genuinely unfinished. The new character, Trip, is a cutie, but her super form is too over-designed to take seriously and I wish they went crazier with her proportions instead of giving her Vector's ball animations in order to differentiate her. The physics of the game are great, but mostly because they're spot on to mania, which is ALSO because, as far as we know, Christian Whitehead was involved in making sure that was the case, so I'm not too inclined to give them points for that. Music was actually fine for the most part, although it could overall be better even Senoue's rank fake Genesis synth was okay this time around. Tee Lopes crushed as per usual except for one of his songs which I don't remember the name of right now.

It may not be JSR, it definitely isn't Tony Hawk, but it's way better than Future

Really fun time if you like games that are good. mid 2000s Disney XD ass game

one of the games that remind me i love vibeo games

the map screen music alone added 2 stars

a game w pretty decently cool system mechanics but buttons/a chaining system that makes me feel like my pad was plunged into a honey tank. also the lore and chars kinda stink

this game's writing is too funny bad to get mad at it

i played this instead of vampire savior bc i was annoyed by it (i was broke)

2022

kinda cool dude puncher until you pass the second boss and then the game nosedives into an gas station that doubles as a nuclear reactor

not that crazy but pretty cool