Sonic 3D Blast

Review

by Christian Huey

Let's not hammer on the obvious here. Sonic 3D Blast reeks of as much gimmickry as a Star Wars toilet paper cover. The title screams "next big thing" as it misleadingly seduces casual gamers into an experience quite unlike what it promises. Sonic 3D Blast is not, in case you haven't figured out by now, neither 3D, nor particularly a blast.

But now that we've lifted the veil, we'll find that we have here a reasonably original game, nonetheless. Sonic has been transported, this time around, from his rather constrained side-scrolling universe, to an isometric wonderworld, where a square is never a square, and the distinction between moving north and moving up becomes blurred uncomfortably.

The gameplay is pure Sonic, which is to say it implements about as intuitive an interface as hooking electrodes right up to your cerebellum. The only minor frustrations come from the sometimes confusing playing field, since the sense of visual depth is fudged only somewhat well. Example: is that fireball-shooting wasp above me, or ahead of me? Pow! Oh. But the little rodent still runs the same, jumps the same, and spins the same. Or, mostly so, anyway. If you thought the biggest draw to the 2D Sonic games was its migraine-inducing speed, you'll have to take a chill pill before playing 3D Blast, because speed is a luxury you can no longer afford. It's not that the game won't support it, but you'll rarely get the freedom to exploit it. The levels in Sonic 3D Blast are incredibly dense, and rife with deadly obstacles. This translates into more carefully calculated moves, rather than flying by the seat of your pants.

The level design is nice, with hills and dips of different shapes and sizes for Sonic to brave, as well as the requisite loops, of which there is an awesome variety in Sonic 3D Blast. Several minutes of tedious tiptoeing over lava pits can be forgiven each time you enter one of the spaghetti-like chutes, which seem to send you flying across the Atlantic and back in just a couple of seconds. Each geographical area of Flicky Island is well-represented within each level, with strong and consistent audiovisual themes. In the ruins you find broken pillars and ancient statues, all overgrown with ivy. The snow and ice-themed level is paved with slippery ice, and random but tiny flurries that momentarily turn Sonic into a solid block of the stuff. The volcano area constantly puts you in a precarious position, as tiles fall randomly beneath your feet to send you plummeting into a pit of molten rock. While this "elemental" approach to level design is a definite cliché, the fact that Sonic Team has explored some rather unique angles here and there, justifies this small conceptual setback.

Now, can we talk about the music? An obviously talented guy by the name of Richard Jaques has crafted about a dozen or so genuinely inspired pieces that are so enveloping, you may find yourself playing just to keep listening to the tunes. No kidding; Sonic 3D Blast may be a "B" game ("B plus" at the most), but its soundtrack gets a gold star in this reviewer's book. With heavy beats and synths that alternatingly drone, then riff, these pieces provide most of the ambiance for each realm, while recalling the best of the most progressive forms of electronic music at the time. It's hard not to think of the best of Enigma's early, spookier stuff when playing the Labryinth Zone, or hear shades of house/techno champions like Moby or The Grid during the Robot Zone.

The boss fights are largely uninspired, static events that feature the nasty little Dr. Robotinik, piloting the same mech at each encounter until the final one. Likewise, the bonus rounds offer nothing new to Sonic veterans, particularly those of Sonic 2. You're still running down a tube, running over rings, and hopefully avoiding the booby traps. But the Saturn version of 3D Blast, naturally, features vastly improved 3D engine.

All in all, Sonic 3D Blast stands as a curious installment to the Sonic series. Its design and execution (it came out on the decaying Genesis simultaneously) reveal that the game was conceptualized during an awkward time in the life of the videogame industry, when developers and players alike were struggling to make the transition to 32-bit processors and 3D graphics. Sonic 3D Blast carries that baggage, but it does so more admirably than one might guess.