Rev Up Those Sonic Cycles

[DavidCaruso]

actually the greatest treat in casino zone was basically ran into spikes or being crushed by blocks.

Yeah I replayed Sonic 2 a few days ago and got stuck between two horizontally moving blocks in CNZ. Then it turned out that the blocks didn't actually meet together. =P

Spikes are barely a threat in the zone. I don't remember encountering them at all on that most recent playthrough, and looking at level maps I counted 4 sets of spikes in the entire zone. All of them were in Act 1. The main gripe I have with the zone is that everything feels like it's made to delay you for no reason at all, and even then it's not that hard to get through.

But really, IMO the entirety of Sonic 2 seems to be littered with bad level design moments, like the small pits with springs on each end that keep appearing after Hill Top Zone, or the cannons in Oil Ocean Zone that basically just took control from you for 10 seconds, or the peek-a-boo enemies in Metropolis Zone (who also don't activate at all on the screw things if I just run and don't jump at them), or the infamous Pit of Death in Mystic Cave Zone (especially if you're Super Sonic), or Complete Filler Zone (Sky Chase). There are some cool setpieces (e.g. the earthquake in Hill Top Zone) but they're all a bit too underdeveloped (though most of the ideas are followed up in Sonic 3, and more awesomely at that). Many of the level gimmick objects aren't controllable (e.g. pipes in CPZ, cannons in OOZ), and sometimes their use is even counterintuitive (e.g. having to face the opposite direction on the speed booster things in Wing Fortress Zone to get across pits), which can be annoying. And boss battles have become much less threatening and interesting now that I'm older (with the exception of the Wing Fortress Zone boss and the final one, which are still great).

The other main problem the game has with level design is that there's no need to actually maintain inertia. Half the challenge in the original came from maneuvering Sonic around the obstacles to pick up enough speed, but here you can basically just rev up a spin dash and get through any obstacle. Sonic CD had a similar move with the Super Peel Out, but the difference there was that you had to actually maintain your inertia in order to get fast enough to time travel (which would even justify things like those spring pits), and you also weren't invulnerable to enemies. Sonic 2's levels also don't seem to be designed particularly well around the Spin Dash compared to 3's; my theory on this is that the designers designed the levels thinking the recoil feature they originally put in would balance it out, but then they removed it and it was too late to rebalance all of the levels since the game needed to be out by Christmas, no delays accepted.

Challenge is also reduced by Sonic 2's levels containing many more rings than the original, while the levels didn't get much longer. Data for comparison. As you can tell Sonic 3 had the same problem but it was partially offset by the levels being much bigger and the enemies posing more of a threat than in 2 (plus I think those records were achieved using the S3 special stages to get rings). The hardest zone in Sonic 2 was Wing Fortress Zone (which, not coincidentally, I also felt was the most well designed zone in the game), mainly because the ring problem was offset by the main focus of the level being on platforming. Speed wasn't diminished much there either as a consequence; the level was still a lot faster than something from SMW.

Really, the game is trying to be a bridge between the momentum-focused obstacle courses of the original game to the focus on setpieces and dynamic level design in Sonic 3, but the problem is that neither are really executed very well. The obstacle courses aren't very well designed, as I elaborated on above, and the setpieces aren't nearly extravagant enough or frequent enough to make up for that, especially when many of Sonic 2's ideas were redone in Sonic 3 (example: the earthquake setpiece in Hill Top Zone reappears again in Marble Garden) and better. All you're really left with are some awesome graphics and music. I personally blame the game's rushed development cycle for the quality; it's not that it's a horrible game (it's definitely better than the game I'm supposed to be calling "Sonic 4"), but it's easily the worst of the classic series IMO. (For reference, my personal quality hierarchy is: 3K > CD > 1 > 2.)

So yeah I think my opinion of Casino Night Zone just digressed to a mini-review of Sonic 2 in general, but whatever. Someday if I can find the time I want to do a more detailed level-by-level analysis of Sonic 2, with lots of screenshots and all included, since everyone seems to love the game and think it's the high point of the series but myself so the burden is on me to justify my opinions.