Sega Nerds

SGD08: Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood hands on

Posted by George. Filed under George, Nintendo DS, North America, Preview. Tagged with event, Hands on, SGD08, Sonic Chronicles.

If anyone fights over what they think Sonic should be, it’s definitely Sonic fans. I swear, he has some of the most passionate fans on the planet. However, I’m not going to judge Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood as a Sonic game. I mean, I already knew it wasn’t going to be fast!

So does a turn-based RPG work with Sonic characters?

The Sega representative asked us if we wanted to play the game. Of course, I wanted the chance to play a Sonic game before its release date. Who doesn’t? If Sega let me do this with Sonic 06 they would have saved me some money.

The guy said I could either play a saved game that starts off in the third level, or make a new game and do the introductory stage. I thought it would be best to start off slow, so I went and made a new game. The game starts with Knuckles being kidnapped, which was already confirmed a while ago. But apparently, that’s not the main plot because you get him back in the next few stages.

The Sega representative said that the game is going to be “all over the place” when it comes to the plot. Things change right away and there will be a lot of twist and turns as you go along. I thought it was a good idea, because if Knuckles being kidnapped was the main plot, that would have been a snore fest! I don’t want to rescue him, it’s like rescuing an ugly Princess Peach who will punch you in the face if you try to hit on him. No thanks.

The game cutscenes are styled like comic books. I heard a lot of people saying that the art for the game reminds them of the Archie Sonic comics, but I’m not sure if they did get it from Archie. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing either way.

If you have played almost any Bioware game, you know you’ll have a speech tree. In Sonic Chronicles, you can either be a jerk or a nice guy much like Bioware’s previous games. I couldn’t help being a jerk to Tails. I couldn’t help it… I hate him so much. ::shakes fist in a rapid motion!::

The game starts off with Sonic trying to find out what happened to Knuckles. There is a scene where you go to the Green Hill Zone (I guess this is going to be the tutorial stage). When Bioware said the game will mention the older games, they weren’t kidding. Right away they talk about the time Eggman turned their friends into robots.

Then Amy jumps in the scene trying to make Sonic jealous by saying she has a boyfriend. That’s when my mouth hit the floor! How could she, that stupid skank. After all that Sonic has done for her. She then joins your party, but tells you not to try anything fishy with her. Apparently that means no, you can’t look up her skirt. Oh well.

The game is controlled completely with the stylus, meaning everything is manipulated with the touch screen. I think it worked rather well and didn’t feel forced at all. Tap anywhere on the screen to move in that general direction. If you want Sonic to jump on a ledge, move up to the ledge and an icon will appear over Sonic’s head. Tap the icon and your jump will be performed. They also had a loop-de-loop in the game. You go in it the same way as you jump off or on a ledge.

Then I saw my first monster. The enemies are shown and aren’t random like traditional RPGS. It’s more like Grandia II or EarthBound. You get to see them on the world map and engage, so I did just that. If you’ve played almost any RPG, you know right away what to do! The list of commands are like all the others. Attack, defend, special move, run, etc. I didn’t choose all. I only did some attacks.

One of the cool features is the chase mode while in a battle. I guess this happens randomly in some battles, where an enemy will try to run from you, and if they do you have to chase them. Your character will run after them automatically (you don’t control your character directly). When obstacles get in your way, you have to tap on your character. You have to tap on every character on your team when an obstacle is in their way. I only had Sonic and Amy so it wasn’t that tough. When you catch the enemy, you can engage the battle once more.

I didn’t have enough time to really get into it like I had hoped, but this is the case with RPGs. Some things that the representatives said is that special moves will be some sort of mini-game to perform. For example, with Amy you’ll have to hit dots on the touch screen for her to perform her move. Also Rings in the game are used as currency. I bet the rings are stronger than the U.S. dollar.

They were explaining moves and aspects of the game to me while I was playing. But I was too focused on trying to figure out how to take off Amy’s clothes in the game to listen. I’m sorry, but I know you guys would have done the same thing.