PAX PRIME 2014: Exploring the world of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric

ever before have I witnessed something struggle so hard to remain relevant like I have with Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog, and his laundry list of gimmicks and reinventions over the years. The spiny celebrity has done anything from hosting interspecies relations with a human woman to a werewolf, and so many other endeavors, that it’s no wonder that his appeal has gradually dwindled into disenchantment.

This new direction of the hog going “boom” admittedly comes off like a superficial one at first glance, but after giving it a go, Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric could possibly be the proficient palate cleanser to all the failed expectations.

Ironically, Sonic Boom’s potential to be a good Sonic game is that it doesn’t try to play like a “Sonic” game at all.

As soon as the stage faded in, it became apparent that Sonic Boom wasn’t trying to prioritize speedy action or gameplay, opting instead for a slower, more deliberate pace for the hedgehog hero to maneuver by.

Aside from a bouncing slam attack, Sonic’s attacks are all punches and kicks from the front, and a double jump to replace the homing dash. The one new feature added to his list of talents was plasma-like energy band that he could use to grapple objects and enemies for a variety of purposes, like tossing projectile or enemies at other mobs, or grabbing hard-to-reach objects that are unobtainable otherwise.

It soon became clear that Sonic Boom wasn’t a game that wanted to empathize the zipping and zooming of its blue-star, but one aiming for a more deliberate, exploration-based platforming experience designed around his brawling and grappling instead.

Every segment of the level was a series of rooms and climbing courses, filled with collectables, locked gates that housed treasure or routes, and caches upon caches of loot for Sonic to collect and spend on a variety of things—and while it was completely different kind of pace for the speedster, it all felt familiar at the same time.

As I scurried deeper and deeper into the act, the waves and waves of enemy mobs and the momentum of moving through the map in between suddenly struck me with the realization I was grasping for, why this drastically altered sonic game still manage to feel so strangely familiar. The stage design and dynamics of Sonic Boom loosely reminisced a Ratchet & Clank-sort of feel to the whole affair that was actually refreshing once I got the hang of it.

The running hasn’t been completely abandoned, and is mostly regulated to scripted set-piece moments within stages instead, like in the demo for instance. I was piloting Sonic and Amy sprinting at full speed facing towards the camera, running from some big-ass reptile slug in a precarious corridor that twisted and turned to the very end of my dramatic escape. The slower style of the game also allowed for something astonishingly to rise to the surface, an aspect that I had long abandoned any hope of the series to ever fixing within the last decade; characterization and portrayal—it’s actually good for once.

Considering that there’s a companion cartoon series debuting alongside the rebooted take of Sonic, the venture seems to have benefitted the game’s presentation immensely, all the animated depictions and exchanged of dialogue on display delivered this genuine flair of charisma and personality that these Sega critters have desperately lacked for years. As weird as it sounds, even as I read this back to myself as I write it; the large cast of characters in Sonic Boom actually made the demo more fun to play.

The spin-off adventure game is slated to release this November, exclusively to the Wii U, and while it may not be the departure that anyone ever asked the icon to undergo, the title may very well be the successful experiment that Sega has been chasing for ages, finally coming to be after all.