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Sonic Chronicles: Hands-on community event

Posted by Graham. Filed under Europe, G, News, Nintendo DS, Sonic. Tagged with Bioware, Hands on, Sonic Chronicles.

On Thursday June 19^th, we were invited to the Wii Flat, in London for a preview look at the latest build of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood on the DS.

As with most Sega Community Events, the affair is a relaxed one, which means everyone gets a damn good go on the game(s) on offer. But unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take any pictures or videos of the game. However, I think I had a pretty decent play of the game, and should be able to give you a fair hands-on impression.

Hopefully most of you will have already read George’s impressions of the game, from Sega Gamers Day a couple of months ago. I believe the build I was able to play, is a newer one, as the Sega reps told us that Bioware had recently added some new features to the game, and that the build was about 90-95% complete.

We started from the beginning of the game, however we were told that our play was restricted to the first two chapters only. But, those two chapters ended up being a decent hours worth of gameplay (at least), which is more than most people get with an early hands-on experience with a game.

As George pointed out, the entire game can be played with the stylus only, and quite frankly, I think that it works damn well.  One thing I hate is when DS games mainly use the stylus, but then have some random elements which require button presses - it breaks up the flow of play, and can be damn awkward.

Of course, for those that do like pushing buttons, some of the controls can also be handled with button presses - like skipping through conversations - but the main gameplay elements all require the touch screen.

The battle system is good fun. It is basically a standard J-RPG style turn based battle system - but with some lovely Bioware charm thrown in.

When the enemy does a special attack, you get a chance to block it - by tapping circles on the screen, in time. It sounds easy, but I screwed it up quite a bit. Also performing special moves yourself, you are required to use the stylus in a similar way - tapping or sliding the stylus across the screen.

This might piss off some gamers, but it seemed like a good way to try and involve the player in the combat more, and keep them on their toes - rather than just selecting ‘Attack’ and watching the characters do the rest (like in plenty of other RPGs).

One other good element to the battles is the use of Chaos. You find Chao eggs throughout the areas in the world, and they automatically go to your Chao Garden, where they hatch. At anytime you can visit the garden, and you can equip a Chao with your different characters. They add special powers to your attacks - like lightning or water - which some enemies might be weaker against.

Another bit of Bioware charm was with the conversations. George mentioned this too, how you get to select different types of responses, like in other Bioware games. You can ask questions, be very helpful, be a total jerk, or be really cocky - I tended to be the latter where I could, and the character responses (especially from Amy) were great.

I have to admit, I loved the art style in the game. The world looks very good, and seems to suit the style of play quite well. Steering your character around the maps was easy enough, just drag (or hold) the stylus in place, and watch as Sonic follows it around.

There were a few instances, however, where I found it awkward to get the character to go exactly where I wanted. At one point, I needed to go up a slope/ramp, but just in front of the ramp was a spring (like from the good old Sonic games). For some reason, I found it hard to get round to the front of the ramp, and kept touching the spring - this sent me flying in the opposite direction, down to a lower level on the map. It happened twice, and I was pretty peeved about it - but I did get there in the end.

I liked how the world has many elements from other Sonic games, like the springs and also the loops. The world has some ‘platform’ sections to it. But rather than running along and jumping around, when you come to a ledge, loop or gap, an icon appears, and touching it will make Sonic do the desired action - jump or zip round the loop.

The music in the game is pretty good. Certainly more likeable than the Sonic Rush games (sorry but I didn’t think the Sonic Rush music was that good). Though I can’t really remember the Chronicles tunes, so I guess they aren’t as memorable as other Sonic games.

As I said, we were only able to play until the end of chapter two, and unfortunately this did not reveal a huge amount of the storyline for us. Still no mention of The Zoah, and the only real piece of story was Knuckles being captures by some robots - which we have been told is solved early on in the game.

I had a lot of fun playing the game. Even though a Canadian-based team is developing the title, they have included quite few bits and pieces from the Sonic universe and I think big fans of Sonic will enjoy this game.

I’m definitely looking forward to the game now.

So that all?

Well now, apart from our decent session on Sonic Chronicles, we were also given another look at the latest Sonic Unleashed trailer - but in proper high-def, not crappy YouTube quality. The graphics looked even better, just hope we get some play time soon.

Plus we were treated to a play on the upcoming Samba De Amigo for the Wii. Unfortunately we ran out of time, and I did not get a go, but everyone who did play certainly appeared to be enjoying themselves.

But don’t worry, all is not lost. We should be having a decent hands-on play with Samba very soon, so stay tuned.

~G~