Following right after the ending of the original Spark the Electric Jester, you'll take control of Fark, now in the third dimension, in his quest to find out his true identity! Speed through several fast paced platforming stages, action packed bosses and fully animated cutscenes.
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I think this is the weakest of the trilogy since it's basically just an inferior version of 3, but also serves as a necessary stepping stone for that game. It's kinda difficult to recommend now that Spark 3 has all of its levels as well but I had fun when I played it at the time, going back to it I now realise how the controls are very finicky and the physics are far less refined though. The combat is also entirely mindless since the parry is just so braindead.
I have no idea what happened with the story ngl. The stages were a highlight with some cool ideas and music. An over enjoyable if not confusing time.
This game was the first and necessary step into 3D for Spark, so unfortunately it suffers from having to be a learning experience for the developer, which results in the game not feeling as polished as Spark 3. However, the game itself shows the potential that 3D can have for Spark, and the game is still quite fun with the options that it gives you to experiment with. A necessary game, but still very good.
Sonic Generations vibes.
It'd be nice if they told you how the shadow costume makes getting good times infinitely easier.
Pretty ambitious to go straight from Sonic 1 to Sonic Adventure 2.
In truth I played this game a few months ago, and I had completed it, with the plan to check out any post-game stuff. I put off playing it again until today (turns out there's not much post-game stuff), so my review is largely based on not so fresh memories.
For one thing the game does control really well. It's smooth, has some great mechanics for speed and momentum. The stages themselves are fun, and have a feel very reminiscent of the games inspiration.
Unfortunately the amount of weapons has been stripped down massively, to only 5. That could have been compensated by each power being used vastly differently, especially in a 3D space, but they mostly feel the same and I never felt more or less advantaged when using one power over another no matter what stage or boss I was fighting. That's not to say there's no differences between them, it's more just that I don't feel the game gave any reason to bother switching once you find the one that's 10% more your style than the others.
It's a pretty short sprint to the end of the game, and replayability largely comes down to each stage having 4 total medals to collect. 2 medals for time attack, and 2 for score attacks. If you know me at all you'll know I'm not a big fan of collectables that are essentially pointless by themselves, and only give any kind of reward when you get every single one. It means if you're not going for 100%, there's no reason to go for anything except the bare minimum. In this case, getting every medal unlocks "Super Fark", basically Super Sonic, for use in the game. Getting 119/120 medals (I don't remember the exact amount) does absolutely nothing.
But the biggest question about all of this is...what's the point of gold medals at all?? If medals do absolutely nothing without collecting all of them, and platinum medals are just higher criteria versions of gold medals, then even collecting every gold medal in the game gives you absolutely nothing.
I get that some games have (generally) pointless rankings at the end of levels, including Sonic itself, but this isn't even that. These aren't bronze-platinum medals based on how well you do, they're 2 tiers of the same challenge, even the lower of which is unlikely to be completed on a first blind run.
It's ultimately not an important criticism because it doesn't affect a casual run of the game, but all-or-nothing collectables kinda bug me. And this game does it in a way even weirder than most.
Other "rewards" are also kind of lame. There's a shop between levels where you can buy any of the power-ups. But they're so abundant in the levels, and I don't think you can lose them except to switch with another (and you can hold 3 of them at a time, so you're only missing out on 2 in any case). Combined with the "no level needs one power-up more than another" thing, the amount of times I felt the need to buy a specific power-up in the shop was exactly 0. You can also buy a random art piece of the gallery. It's like concept art and the like. Not too bad, but also as the only real thing to spend the money on, it's a bit of a let-down. You can also find these art pieces in stages, and I'm not sure if it's like specific ones you can get in stages and specific ones you need to buy from the shop, or you could technically just buy them all and the stage ones may even be randomized.
Completion rewards unlock a few new modes, like "complete all stages in a row with 5 lives", "complete all stages in a row with 5 lives and no power-ups" and "boss rush". I guess boss rush is an obligatory and nice mode, but the rest can just be self-imposed challenge runs basically.
It's a fun enough game to just run through, even if short. It's mostly just lacking any extra meat beyond that, and the stuff it did add just feels lazy.
In truth I played this game a few months ago, and I had completed it, with the plan to check out any post-game stuff. I put off playing it again until today (turns out there's not much post-game stuff), so my review is largely based on not so fresh memories.
For one thing the game does control really well. It's smooth, has some great mechanics for speed and momentum. The stages themselves are fun, and have a feel very reminiscent of the games inspiration.
Unfortunately the amount of weapons has been stripped down massively, to only 5. That could have been compensated by each power being used vastly differently, especially in a 3D space, but they mostly feel the same and I never felt more or less advantaged when using one power over another no matter what stage or boss I was fighting. That's not to say there's no differences between them, it's more just that I don't feel the game gave any reason to bother switching once you find the one that's 10% more your style than the others.
It's a pretty short sprint to the end of the game, and replayability largely comes down to each stage having 4 total medals to collect. 2 medals for time attack, and 2 for score attacks. If you know me at all you'll know I'm not a big fan of collectables that are essentially pointless by themselves, and only give any kind of reward when you get every single one. It means if you're not going for 100%, there's no reason to go for anything except the bare minimum. In this case, getting every medal unlocks "Super Fark", basically Super Sonic, for use in the game. Getting 119/120 medals (I don't remember the exact amount) does absolutely nothing.
But the biggest question about all of this is...what's the point of gold medals at all?? If medals do absolutely nothing without collecting all of them, and platinum medals are just higher criteria versions of gold medals, then even collecting every gold medal in the game gives you absolutely nothing.
I get that some games have (generally) pointless rankings at the end of levels, including Sonic itself, but this isn't even that. These aren't bronze-platinum medals based on how well you do, they're 2 tiers of the same challenge, even the lower of which is unlikely to be completed on a first blind run.
It's ultimately not an important criticism because it doesn't affect a casual run of the game, but all-or-nothing collectables kinda bug me. And this game does it in a way even weirder than most.
Other "rewards" are also kind of lame. There's a shop between levels where you can buy any of the power-ups. But they're so abundant in the levels, and I don't think you can lose them except to switch with another (and you can hold 3 of them at a time, so you're only missing out on 2 in any case). Combined with the "no level needs one power-up more than another" thing, the amount of times I felt the need to buy a specific power-up in the shop was exactly 0. You can also buy a random art piece of the gallery. It's like concept art and the like. Not too bad, but also as the only real thing to spend the money on, it's a bit of a let-down. You can also find these art pieces in stages, and I'm not sure if it's like specific ones you can get in stages and specific ones you need to buy from the shop, or you could technically just buy them all and the stage ones may even be randomized.
Completion rewards unlock a few new modes, like "complete all stages in a row with 5 lives", "complete all stages in a row with 5 lives and no power-ups" and "boss rush". I guess boss rush is an obligatory and nice mode, but the rest can just be self-imposed challenge runs basically.
It's a fun enough game to just run through, even if short. It's mostly just lacking any extra meat beyond that, and the stuff it did add just feels lazy.