Sonic demo on Live now

By Tom Bramwell Published 27 September, 2006

'Hog all the bandwidth.

Although presumably we'll have to wait a little while for the full impact of X06's Live Marketplace offerings to be made apparent, one particular bit-crater over which the dust has settled contains a demo of SEGA's new Sonic the Hedgehog title.

Shown off on both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 at the Tokyo Game Show last week, and previewed and everything, the new title sees Sonic and a few of his friends (including the blasted Tails) taking on Sonic Adventure-style levels, which mix insane speed and puzzle-solving.

New characters include Silver the Hedgehog, who can use telekinesis to manipulate things, which is great for solving puzzles/showing off SEGA's newfound love for real-time physics.

The demo version on Live Marketplace tonight weighs in at 314MB, although it doesn't offer any details on what's in it and I'm too busy downloading DOOM to care. Sorry.

Edit: I mispelt Tails' name. That's how much I hate him.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (33) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Tejstar #1 5 years ago

    Downloading...

  • joephish #2 5 years ago

    I thought Tails was a "she"?

  • CrunchinJelly #3 5 years ago

    More glitched than the last-gen Sonic games.

    /sticks to SA1 and 2.

  • Razorus #4 5 years ago

    Demo sucks. So will the final game.

  • AFX #5 5 years ago

    Meh, more of the same but with shinier graphics. They need to make it more "arcadey" like the original 2D games were.

  • Universal_Hamster #6 5 years ago

    Possibly the worst thing I have played on my 360 so far.
    I mean, at least Pacman works like its supposed to

  • sharpfish #7 5 years ago

    Can you say "what happened to testing the controls"? Jerky city! It has it's merits but it's no nintendo beater.

    Come on sega YOU can do better than this!

  • Steroyd #8 5 years ago

    So I take it Sega didn't go back to their roots then?

    3D killed Sonic.

  • SimonM7 #9 5 years ago

    I think it's brilliant, personally. Fixes a lot of SA issues and adds a good number of new, great things that affect core gameplay a lot. You can now attack enemies upwards, which means you can basically climb clusters of enemies to find new paths and such.

    Non Sonic fans needn't apply though. It takes more getting used to than you can afford with a tiny attention span.

  • peterfll #10 5 years ago

    Sorry Simon, I have to disagree. I am a Sonic fan, and enjoyed the flawed SA1 and SA2 games. But this is a joke. I could barely get 2 minutes into the demo without losing all my lives, and I would consider myself used to the control system.

    Very disappointing.

  • McBradders #11 5 years ago

    The demo sucked.

    Worst Sonic game I've played since the Dreamcast.






    WHY?!

  • cyacomini #12 5 years ago

    I must add, totally devastated with this travesty of a game. What a joke...

    I loved Sonic games, from Master System through to Dreamcast (Sonic CD the best platform game ever perhaps?).

    I was really looking forward to this version, horrified to find the controls totally destroy the experience. Very very frustraiting and not even that nice to look at. Shocking waste of time and money.

    And this from a 360 fanboy ;)

  • spliffhead #13 5 years ago

    Appauling demo.

    Thought my five year old daughter might enjoy it but we both sat there and ripped the game to shreds, poor show Sega, shame on you.

  • Darren #14 5 years ago

    The game plays just the same as it did on the Dreamcast really and even the graphics don't look that much better... less popup and a little more texture detail but otherwise you could mistake it for any of the Sonic Adventure games really. What really lets the game down is the utterly awful camera which you have virtually no control over yet the developers continue to ignore the criticisms it gets in nearly every review I've read. In a super-fast 3D game like Sonic the Hedgehog you need COMPLETE camera control otherwise it's become annoying.

    I know the developers chose to make it that way so that the player it always facing in the direction they're supposed to go but would it be so difficult to have an onscreen arrow instead, or considering that so few of the controller buttons are used, the ability to press a bumper button to have the game point you in the right direction if you get lost?

    The demo was, otherwise, the same old enjoyable but flawed Sonic 3D game we've been playing for years since his arrival on the Dreamcast and hasn't really moved with the times.

  • SimonM7 #15 5 years ago

    Strange, I've played the demo over and over and I haven't died once. If anything, the controls felt "right" from the very get go. The only thing that took some adjusting is the delay between homing attacks, but even that didn't actually *kill me*.

    As for the camera, I simply center it with L whenever I feel like I have to see what's ahead of me. Usually I have a pretty good sense of where things are in relation to myself, and it's easier than ever to jump off a rail, take out baddies and return to the rail again. I honestly have no idea how people can find the controls so bad, especially people who were fine with the SA games.

  • mrsquare #16 5 years ago

    "Non Sonic fans needn't apply though. It takes more getting used to than you can afford with a tiny attention span."

    Yeah, cos Sonic was *never* about easy, pick up and play fun now, was it?


    My main issue is that theres no sense of cohesion - its just a random bunch of platforms floating in space, like in Sonic Heroes. Levels like Emerald Coast in Sonic Adventure were proper environments with a sense of progression, and so much more exciting to play through as a result. On Heroes (and this too, by the looks of it), for all I know they could just swap the textures over from one level to another and be done with it.
    Edited by 1 at 28/09/06 @ 10:25

  • cyacomini #17 5 years ago

    Sorry, I have to disagree that all 3D sonic titles have been rubbish...

    I for one really enjoyed SA's 1&2, excellent games throughout - perhaps the RPG sections should have been designed a little better though. Sonic Jam on the Saturn was also pretty reasonable, even if it was only a collection of previous titles with a little 3D thrown in.

    Sonic on 360 plays nothing like any of the previous titles, it's horrendous !!

  • mechamonkey #18 5 years ago

    gash

  • numptyboymatt #19 5 years ago

    Im a bit of a closet Sonic fan, and was secretly looking forward to this, but after this demo, Im convinced that I can find something better to spend £40 on, frankly.

  • SomaticSense #20 5 years ago

    Shit. Utter shit.

    Loved the old Sonic games and the GBA, but whats with the FF-esque anime style cutscenes, awful camera and appalling oversensitive controls in this pile of crap? I know it's only a demo, but it's possibly the most frustrating and least enjoyable things I've ever played on a games console.

    Releasing this pile of crap in demo form was possibly one of the worst mistakes Sega could have made, as it's surely going to persuade people NOT to buy it.

  • SimonM7 #21 5 years ago

    http://ww w.gamespot.com/pages/profile/vi...

  • The-Bodybuilder #22 5 years ago

    This was my experience....

    home in on enemy,
    miss,
    falls off into the bottomless abyss,.
    rinse & repeat.

    Really, atleast be on par with SA1 & 2 (I loved both), but this was just cack.

  • numptyboymatt #23 5 years ago

    Watched SimonM7's video on his link.... this bears no resemblance at all to any of my numerous attempts to play this game - where was all the losing control and falling off into nothingness, the homing attacks that home in to nothing and cause you to fall off platforms? Bizarre.

  • Darth_Flibble #24 5 years ago

    even worse than Sonic heroes and Shadow, Someone tell Sega, games are suppose to get better

  • The-Bodybuilder #25 5 years ago

    What happened to you sega? wasting money on crap like this when shenmue data lies in some japanesse archieve?

  • SomaticSense #26 5 years ago

    Had a little look at some other forums regarding the demo, and it's amazing how many fanboys are convinced that everything will turn out ok in the full game, and any attempt to explain why you thought it was awful is shot down by "it's only a demo and is not representative of the current build".

    That may be true. but I just can't fathom how what is probably the worst and most frustrating gaming experience i've suffered in recent memory could ever turn out to - all of a sudden - be great, as it didn't seem to be down to any typical 'demo' lack of polish, but purely down to terrible gameplay mechanics. Stuff which surely isn't going to be that different to the retail version.

    I know it is pre-E3 and all, but have Sega have actually completely changed the whole game since then? Doubt it.
    Edited by 1 at 29/09/06 @ 01:46

  • Mr_Whacker #27 5 years ago

    I was frustrated by all of these same things at first but I stuck with it (love Sonic) and played it a few times - the controls felt better as I got used to them. Still, I won't buy this unless it miraculously reviews well.

  • Darth_Flibble #28 5 years ago

    the fan boys are defending the game to death, look on gamefaqs board, anyone who says the game is poor is screamed at with stuff like "SHUT UP SHUT UP this gamez is the best evarrrrr!!!!11111111111111, gameplay kicks ass!!!!!!11111"

    it's sure sign the game is crap when tards defend with their sad little life

  • SimonM7 #29 5 years ago

    Perhaps the mindless fanboys are people that actually know how to play it properly?

    I refer once more to the video I posted earlier ^^^

    If the game is so shit, how come I can even play it? It has a learning curve, it doesn't feel like every other 3D platformer, and just like any racing game when you don't know how to take curves properly you'll cock up until you do.

    Writing off the ones liking this as stupid fanboys is just ignorant. To some, it's a really enjoyable game.

  • darshannon #30 5 years ago

    Downloaded the demo. Played it for about five minutes. Erased it off the hard drive.
    It certainly had potential, but at this stage the whole thing is just too rough to play. And camera controls are just plain awful.

  • Darth_Flibble #31 5 years ago

    The trailer at the end shows some better levels but being chased by something has been done before like in SA1 and 2

  • numptyboymatt #32 5 years ago

    Im a "sonic fanboy" though, and I cant play this for $hit..... maybe Im getting old or something... I dont know.

    OR maybe the controls and camera are badly designed, and bounding around on tiny floating platforms whilst moving at high speeds causing you to fall and die before you realise what has happened is a actually what the game is all about, and in that case, i am a total pro at it already.....

  • oerhoert #33 5 years ago

    Well, to me, it's not impossible for a game <em>both</em> to be shit <em>and</em> to be enjoyed by the dedicated...

    :)