The sequel to Shattered Crystal, this gives Sonic and team fire and ice powers. It’s mainly used for freezing and melting blocks of water, but I think the simplicity helps the game. However, the most significant change in this game is how the collectibles are handled.

In Shattered Crystal, you had to go slow and explore every inch of the map in order to progress. In Fire & Ice, the collectables are still there with sections of the map to find and discover, but the collectables are all entirely optional. Although I think this game goes slightly too far as the rewards for doing so are quite meaningless. On the flip side, it does mean you can blast through all the levels as Sonic, and doing that is quite a lot of fun.

Other than the first few levels, which introduce the different abilities of each character, the character abilities (other than a few Sonic-only racing levels) aren’t actually used in the “main path”, they’re only used for finding collectables. So if you aren’t bothered by them, then your choice of character makes no difference, which can be a good or bad thing.

That said, with the jump, homing attack, grapple and switching between fire and ice powers, there’s a lot of abilities to play around with. The game is at its best when you get to string along these abilities, it feels almost like a rhythm game where you have to quickly press the correct buttons. The game will go from these sections that require precise timing to sections of the game where you don’t have to do anything at all for a bit.

Overall, Sonic Boom Fire & Ice isn’t a bad game, but it’s also not terribly exciting. It’s fine for a quick blast through, ignoring all the collectables.