Sonic The Hedgehog 2 review

Sonic The Hedgehog 
sonic_the_hedgehog2

After playing iLLuSioN's first Sonic The Hedgehog map, we decided to give the sequel a spin. The map plays similar to its predecessor, in which you start in a large room and get to pick what level you want to play. There are six story levels to chose from, that you unlock by playing in order (just like before). But what is more noticeable this time around is that the spawn room seems a lot more compact and less cheesy. This time around, the levels seemed to have improved a lot, but lost some of the extremely fun challenging difficultly of the previous entry. Dying is less of from trial-and-error trying to figure out how to complete the map and just from mistakes you could have prevented if you were more careful. 

Speaking of death, this map has the same issue as before: when you chose the level you want to play and you die, instead of spawning in the level you chose you come back to the spawn room and are forced to go back and pick the level you were in again. It doesn't seem as bad because the spawn room is smaller than before and death will be a lot less common this time around, but the process of choosing the same level every-time you die is still tedious. 

Completing the six main levels unlocks the boss level, where you spawn on an airplane looking at Eggman's ship. This level is probably the easiest and quickest to beat in the entire game, and really looses the boss-battle feel the final level had in Sonic The Hedgehog, where you just had to keep smacking Dr. Eggman with your crowbar. After you destroy the interior of Eggman's ship you get a big emerald and basically completed the story. As before, you can replay the maps and look for the hidden emeralds, which are extremely hard to find and really require a good-eye to spot. Also, there is a mini-game which is basically just another map with an emerald on top. Once you get all eight emeralds (including the giant one from the final level), the floor opens up in the middle of the spawn room and you gain access to the hidden HYPER SONIC room. 

This was a huge problem with us, quite frankly, it didn't seem to work. There was some sort of capsule thing in the room (see picture above) with two signs and a button. One of the signs (pictured) has instructions on how to become HYPER SONIC and other is a warning, prompting players to not go over 5000 HP. The warning (and directions) seem extremely useless, because as in the earlier map, this whole segment seems broken. Hitting the button just caused a white ray of death to engulf and destroy your character. We tried at-least twenty times to get this machine to work, but it seems to either be some sort of poorly implemented or a joke. Either way, it really isn't worth the effort of finding all the hidden emeralds for. 

The levels are a lot more polished and better structured than Sonic The Hedgehog, and the emeralds add reason to revisit the levels but it seemed to have become a lot less FUN.
6/10