Last week, SEGA revealed Project Needlemouse as Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1, and I’d like to take this opportunity to voice my opinions on the game, based on what we know so far. First of all, I’m impartial to Sonic’s design. I feel I should make that clear right off the bat. As a game in the Classic Sonic storyline, I agree that it should feature Classic Sonic, but it doesn’t, and that doesn’t bother me. So long as the gameplay feels like Classic Sonic, that’s all that matters to me.

But what of the graphical design? I like it. In a strange way, it seems to blend the classical with the modern rather well. As with every other site, I’m basing this off of three seconds of footage featured in the reveal trailer. Rather than me try and describe it, let’s take a look at a screenshot, shall we?

It reminds me a lot of the side-on sections in Sonic Unleashed, looking at it. The HUD seems to be arranged in pretty much the same way, and that isn’t really a bad thing. I could do without the little clock though, that’s pretty useless. Another thing I’m a little unsure about is the small puffs of smoke behind Sonic as he’s running, although hopefully that’ll just be when he’s picking up speed, and when he’s at full pelt they won’t be there. The final negative thing I have to say about the way it looks is that the rings look VERY out of place, almost as if they’re meant to be placeholders.

I also have to express an awful lot of concern regarding how many Zones will be in an Episode. At the moment, it’s being rumoured that there’ll be 4 Zones. In classic gameplay terms, that isn’t even a couple of hours gameplay, so it’s not going to be a very long game at all. Couple this with my opinion that the game will cost 1200 Microsoft Points (potentially a tenner on PSN or 1000 Nintendo Points), and it’s going to be a very expensive game if you buy it episodically.

The counter argument to this though, is that if each Episode holds 4 Zones, then we could be looking at a game that is, eventually, a longer game than the originals (or at least the same length as Sonic 3 & Knuckles.) It’s also likely that the game will follow other Episodic titles and get a retail release after all the episodes are released. This could work out cheaper than buying all the episodes seperately, but could you really wait that long before getting it?

Onto the other positives. First of all, this is classic Sonic. Even if it doesn’t hold a candle to the originals, we shouldn’t be complaining about camera issues or anything that’s plagued the 3D games in the last few years. I myself found the two Rush games on DS to be very entertaining, so if Sonic 4 is anywhere near as good as those I’ll be happy. I don’t want a HD Rush though, because if that’s what it ends up being we might as well have had Sonic Rush 3 and be done with it.

I’m also liking the idea of the game being some sort of “Best Of”. Whilst I hope that Sonic Team put some new Badniks in the game, the prospect of facing upgraded originals is interesting as well. The only example we have is Motobug from Sonic 1, who can now turn 180 degrees and come back to attack you if you happen to jump over it. I’m more looking forward to the upgraded Robotnik battles, though.

That’s pretty much all I can say at the moment. When SEGA get around to revealing more footage and/or game details, I’ll probably write a follow up article with upgraded impressions. At the moment though, colour me excited. I looked forward to Sonic Unleashed with cautious excitement and wasn’t let down, so hopefully this’ll be the same. One last point of note, though:

SEGA, Sonic Team, if you’re reading this: Fix Sonic’s smile. It doesn’t look right at all.

Agree/Disagree with my thoughts? Drop me a comment and let me know what you think