Sonic Rush Video Game Review

I am an old-school gamer. I was eight or nine when the Nintendo Entertainment System came out, and my first gaming experience was the Atari 2600 system at my orthodontist's waiting room when I was six or seven. I still remember trying to beat the high score at Q-Bert and Pitfall before having my pre-adolescent maw examined. When I was in the seventh grade, I got a Genesis with the original Sonic the Hedgehog, and it was like nothing I had ever seen before.

So Sonic Rush was really nothing new to me. Graphically, there isn't anything special here, just a collection of 2-D zones to race through, but with no way to retrace your steps and explore them. And that was one of the best features of the original Sonic game; there was a collection of alternate routes and hidden rooms to discover.

Sonic Rush's levels are nothing new, either. There's an outdoorsy zone with lots of greenery, a Myanesque ruins zone, and an underwater zone. The only breaks from these generic levels are the game's pseudo 3-D boss battles, which are visually the most interesting part of the game. Also, the DS's touch-screen is only utilized as a means of controlling Sonic in the bonus levels, which are clones of the bonus levels from "Sonic and Tails" where you run down a half-pipe collecting rings. Controlling Sonic with a stylus is fun for a while, but it gets old pretty quickly.

I suppose if you are young and new to the Sonic series, Sonic Rush might appeal to you. The in-between level banter between the different characters is definitely geared towards a younger audience, and won't appeal to anyone above…say twelve, but if you're into kiddy Japanese shows like Pokemon I could see how it might be your thing. Other than that, there isn't much about Sonic Rush that I can recommend to anyone. Nothing really stands out about this game-not the level designs, not the graphics, not the music, not even the play-control. Sonic Rush is just very…average, and when you're remaking one of the best games of all time, average doesn't cut it.