Sonic Battle review

Sonic Battle ruthlessly abducts several key franchise characters (Sonic, Knuckles, Tails and the rest of the gang) to be unwillingly shoehorned into battle arenas for a Smash Brothers Mele-styled brawl. Whilst this may seem a little bizarre, it wouldn't be a first; the Sonic Fighters arcade game took a similar approach but utilised a proper 1-on-1 beat 'em up formula. This attempt adopts a more freeform (and dare we say less refined) dynamic.Impressively (for the Gameboy Advance), the battle arenas are modelled in 3D. Nicely textured obstacles and platforms decorate their flat, rectangular plains. A wide library of animations keep the overlaid 2D characters (based on their 'Advance' - e.g. cartoon style) graphics moving smoothly as they run back and forth across the levels. The fairly constant camera angle means the D-pad moves your chosen character around the arena in all directions quite easily.Story mode sends each of the eight characters one-at-a-time through the main plot (and we use that term loosely) of the game. It follows your training of a rogue robot, Emerl, capable of learning and adapting the fighting moves of the other characters. A diverse collection of moves offers a huge array of upgradeable and varying fighting abilities to learn and master. Alongside the basic starting moves using the A and B buttons you get nine special moves activated by the R button (three main attacks - Power, Shot and Set Bombs - with three variations of each). As Emerl learns from the characters he fights he gains exact copies ('captures') of other fighting moves which can then be mixed-and-matched in the menu to become part of his command list.It's rather unfortunate that the premise of the game rests so heavily on such a muddled and stifled fighting system. Solidly connecting with an attack usually requires being precisely lined up with your opponent (with only the characters' shadow as reference). Uninterruptible strings of animation cause a single missed punch or kick to send you infuriatingly past your target - unable to move until the sequence finishes and left open to attack. Sometimes terrain obstacles complicate matters blocking your view of the action. Still, the size of the environments and the confusion of close-quarters brawling make tactical retreats both desirable and useful; the Block button (assigned to L) can be used for a health recharge during these moments (provided you aren't attacked whilst 'energising'). Unfortunately that "Block" offers less protection from attacks due to a rather slow response time. The key to victory becomes a process of staying back, running around your foe(s) and getting attacks in whenever possible. After that you regain your distance and repeat. Long range jumping attacks can be quite effective, but really what attacks you choose to equip depends most on who you are going up against.All the battle encounters in the story mode are abstractly wrapped around certain events or missions. Just meeting a new character on the map will usually activate the next battle to push the 'story' on. These may have different rules. Usually you receive a set amount of lives which are depleted when you are KO'd. In other cases you may battle multiple opponents (up to four per fight) or face a Survival mode where the most knock-outs performed determines the winner. It's really very basic, and when combined with an awful script, annoying voice-overs and poorly animated dialogue scenes doesn't exactly thrill you into wanting to carry on.The Challenge mode of the game basically lifts the fights straight from the story mode without any of the upgradeable stuff. You battle increasingly stronger CPU-controlled opponents in different combat rings. Battle mode brings multi-player action to the table with a quick blast of speedy combat for up to four simultaneous players (a good use of the link-up functionality, however it requires multiple cartridges). Alternatively it can be tackled solo against the CPU. It feels strikingly similar to the 'Monkey Fighting' from Super Monkey Ball (or SMB Jr.), only with more skill involved.Overall the presentation comes off not bad at all. Apart from the aforementioned poorly made story-pushing sections, the graphics and animation are pleasing. Catchy music and location-specific stereo sound effects (when you use the earphones) make the experience definitely more enjoyable.But in the end Gamestyle found Sonic Battle lacking for substance, and what it does offer is imprecise, repetitive and quite shallowly implemented (despite attempts to introduce RPG-lite elements to the mix). After seeing what each character can do, and exhausting the fairly rudimentary Story mode only the multiplayer modes remain to become the main appeal. It's great for quick, shallow gaming; however a bit of a nightmare to set up. Fortunately few extra mini-games reward your efforts. These multiplayer-only games will work with just a single game cartridge, but are rather basic in their premise and unfortunately need 'unlocking' before you can access them all.Fighting really isn't Sonic's strength - at least not with regard to good gameplay. He needs to be kept on his feet - a balled blur of blue - not flat on his face. At this rate he's merely running himself down a very steep hill.