Undaunted by the flood of negative reviews Sonic the Hedgehog’s games earned last year, Sega is giving its blue hedgehog mascot a chance to redeem himself with a Nintendo 3DS Sonic Boom sequel, the publisher announced today.
Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice promises “an entirely new experience” built around character abilities and special moves. Players can use new elemental powers in order to progress through the game’s side-scrolling, puzzle-filled worlds.
Developer Sanzaru Games, creator of last year’s Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal, appears to address criticism aimed at the previous game’s slow pacing with a renewed focus on speed. “The new title also delivers gameplay that enables players to run through the game at top speed, or take their time with deeper exploration and puzzle play,” publisher Sega notes in a press release issued today.
Based on an ongoing animated series, Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric for the Wii U and Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal for the Nintendo 3DS earned a degree of notoriety among Sonic the Hedgehog series fans last year. Rise of Lyric in particular was poorly received, launching with a series of game-breaking glitches and gameplay quirks. Most famously, an easily executed glitch allowed the muscle-bound Knuckles the Echidna to take flight, soaring over roadblocks and checkpoints and allowing speedrunners to complete the game in under an hour.
The Sanzaru-developed Nintendo 3DS version of Sonic Boom was an entirely different game, presenting its action from a side-scrolling perspective reminiscent of Sonic’s earliest adventures on the 16-bit Sega Genesis. Though it wasn’t as glitchy as its console counterpart, Shattered Crystal earned its share of criticism for plodding gameplay that forced players to frequently backtrack through expansive levels – an unexpected shift for a series built on speedy platforming.
Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice will launch this holiday season for the Nintendo 3DS in North America and Europe.
