Review: Sonic Runners
If you listen to Takashi Iizuka, Sonic Runners is a pretty big deal. Though Hardlight has led Sonic to considerable success on phones and tablets, the head of Sonic Team has longed for his studio to give the platform a whirl, and so they finally have. With so many terrible, money-hungry free-to-play games on Apple and Google’s app stores, one would hope that a seasoned development studio like Sonic Team would come in and show everyone else how it’s done. Unfortunately, though Sonic Runners is a lot of fun, it often succumbs to many of the same issues that have dogged mobile games for years, and the overall product suffers as a result.
SONIC RUNNERS
Released for: iOS 8+, Android 2.3.3+
Reviewed on: iPhone 6
The game’s core mechanics stem from what happens when you combine an endless runner with traditional 2D Sonic gameplay. Your character automatically runs to the right without end, so all you need to worry about is jumping, avoiding hazards, and grabbing as many collectibles as you can. As you traverse the stages and stomp on enemies, you’ll be collecting yellow rings, red rings, and some new colored gems, all of which contribute to a running combo score if you collect them fast enough. It’s not very complex – jump when you need to and grab everything in sight.
The levels themselves play out at four different speeds separated by brief “boss” encounters; clear a section, collect some rings from Eggman, and the game gets faster. The first two speed grades are almost boring in their simplicity, but the third section dials the difficulty up considerably with more obstacles and less time to react. The final section, appropriately called Top Speed, is where the real challenge sets in – at first, it’s so fast and unforgiving that you’ll likely die within seconds, but it becomes manageable with practice. To help you survive all of this madness, you can pick up various power-ups like invincibility, magnets, and shields as you play with a few Color Powers along for the ride as well; Drill, Laser, and Asteroid can all be used to liven things up and keep your run going.
For what it’s worth, the gameplay itself is really quite fun. Keeping your combo alive proves an addictive goal to chase, and challenging yourself to keep breaking your previous records has its own appeal as well. The mechanics achieve additional depth thanks to unlockable buddies you can activate to garner additional score bonuses and other in-game benefits. Much like in the Genesis platformers of yore, branching pathways offer better goodies on the higher paths and a genuine sense of vulnerability on the lower ones with pits and projectiles galore. Part of the appeal also stems from a clear sense of improvement and progress. Levels are generated semi-randomly with pre-constructed pieces strung together in no particular order, so although the flow of a level may change, you’ll see the same basic building blocks repeatedly. This allows you to start recognizing patterns and improve your play noticeably; the first time you really start to conquer Top Speed is a pretty good feeling. On a side note, these levels are strung together by cute, if meaningless, text-based cutscenes that forward the game’s very light story. Some may well complain about this, but if you really go into Sonic Runners expecting a deep or gripping storyline, I just don’t know what to tell you.
The game can also be surprisingly generous with how much it lets you play. Though the much-hated “ran-out-of-lives-paywall” still exists, completing a mission resets your life count, so if you get used to the game quickly, you can keep playing uninterrupted for a very long time. For me, this resulted in a few staggered play sessions that lasted over an hour apiece, so I essentially played until the game no longer held my attention. It wasn’t until about twenty-five missions in that I started encountering progression issues, and it was also at that point when frustration began to set in.
If you’ll indulge me here, I’ll use this as the jumping-off point to start voicing my complaints. Let’s start with the game’s rough sense of flow. There’s two ways to continue a run if you fail in the middle of it: stop and watch a video ad, or pay five red rings. If you want to make the most out of each run, you’ll need to do both, which interrupts the pace of the game and puts a drain on your resources. Once you exhaust all your revival options, you’ll usually be forced to endure yet another full-screen ad, and sitting through my ninth video for League of Angels or Game of War really only reminded me how genuinely awful most mobile games are. Between these ads and some substantial loading screens, you’ll spend a fair bit of time staring at something that’s not the actual game, and that’s not exactly something I’ll applaud.
Of course, this only happens if you’re able to launch the game at all. Since Runners went worldwide, players have encountered significant performance issues on older devices and Android gadgets of all sorts. Phones less than a year old may experience lag and stuttering, with even newer and very popular phones like the Galaxy S5 and variants of the HTC One suffering from game-breaking setbacks. To be fair, the game ran incredibly smoothly across all my play sessions on my iPhone 6, but clearly that won’t be the case for everyone. This shouldn’t deter you from at least trying to run the game on your device, but take note: your mileage will vary on this one.
At any rate, the game indulges in that nasty habit of locking its coolest collectibles away; you only have a 6% chance to get Classic Sonic off a costly roulette spin, for example. It’s that endless carrot-dangling that often makes free-to-play games insufferable, and though Sonic Runners does this less than most, it’s no less aggravating when it eventually rears its ugly head. In addition, the game straight-up begs you at certain points to spend money or give it some advertising. Buy more lives! Spin that roulette wheel! Share your progress on Facebook! Why, though? Badgering me with pop-ups won’t convince me to tell my friends about your product, but an engaging and consumer-friendly game will; it’s amazing how often companies forget this. There’s also some odd oversights in appropriateness, such as ads featuring Kate Upton naked in a tub or cutscenes where Rouge talks about being all tied up and helpless. SEGA knows kids can play this game, right?
It pains me to find so much fault here, because there’s a really fun and attractive game underneath it all. Though it cribs most of its overall aesthetic from Sonic Lost World, the game’s soft and cartoony presentation feels very natural. Plus, despite some of the music and sound effects coming straight from other games in the franchise, the original soundtrack is simply fantastic; the catchy and energetic tunes sound like something of Sonic’s traditional console offerings, not a mobile game – seriously, they’re really good. When the free-to-play crap steps aside and all the right pieces fall into place, the game really feels like something special, something that Sonic Team should be proud of and we as gamers should embrace. Unfortunately, it puts so many distractions and hurdles between you and the fun that, for some, it simply won’t be fun anymore.
It’s for that reason that I’ll be hard on this game – because it’s so easy to see how great it might have been. If you’re patient and take its shortcomings with a grain of salt, Sonic Runners will likely leave you satisfied for as long as you’re willing to meet it halfway. That said, if all you want to do is play, then its flaws and quirks may get under your skin pretty quickly. Ultimately, though, if your device supports it, I’d suggest that you give the game a chance. It’s free, after all, so you have nothing to lose – and maybe that’s the problem.
![[ID: L_K9AlPVk-0] Youtube Automatic](https://lastminutecontinue.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/id-lk9alpvk-0-youtube-automatic-360x203.jpg)
![[ID: r0ucSDmbRWo] Youtube Automatic](https://lastminutecontinue.com/wp-content/uploads/id-r0ucsdmbrwo-youtube-automatic-360x203.jpg)
Due to a related observation, can photos now always be posted in articles using this better photo viewing widget/add-on? I found it always annoying having to click to a separate page where there was a micro-sized, impossibly visible thumbnail image, only to have click again to see the thing.
Agreed. Loving how the pictures are on this article.
call me hard to please, but I’d almost rather click twice on each thumbnail than have to scroll through the whole gallery on the off-chance there’s a picture worth seeingt. I almost never want to see EVERY picture, so the lack of thumbnails is almost worse XD
“It’s for that reason that I’ll be hard on this game – because it’s so easy to see how great it might have been. ”
>gives it 3 out of 5
Like..ok.
It’s sad but also funny that the only quality Sonic mobile titles are the remasters of 1, 2, and CD…and those are made by 1990s SEGA and one very dedicated Christian Whitehead.
The only thing holding this game back though, apart from technical issues, is the fact that it’s free to play. That’s the difference. Sonic 1/2/CD aren’t good “mobile” titles, they’re serviceable ports of REGULAR titles.
If this game cost 10 bucks (on the high end) at the expense of F2P gimmicks, I’d buy it in a heartbeat and give it 5/5
Well it could’ve been worse,it could’ve been reviewed by Donnie who would’ve gave it instant 5 stars just because it has Sonic on the cover
1st off, I agree with Hifihedgehog. Second of all, this:
“It’s free, after all, so you have nothing to lose – and maybe that’s the problem.”
Very well said. I hadn’t thought about it that way for a long time. I think I’m inclined to agree with this statement as well.
I tried to “meet the game halfway” but after a bit. Maybe about a week of playing an hour every day you’ll get to about level 30 or so and progress will take millions of points per square. At this point you get red rings so little that unless you just straight up buy them the carrot dangling becomes more or less moot.
Not wasting space on my S4 for this piddly, gynormous abomination.
Not only that, but I hear it’s so badly optimized, it overheated even the best phones to have some serious potential damage. That and you kind of have to gamble with “fun bucks” to unlock a character.
the phrase “fun bucks” made me laugh 😛
I’m not the first to call it that. People nicknamed red rings in Sonic mobile games as “moon money” and “whacky dollars” as well :V
Also, once you reach top speed the game stops giving you any rings. Seriously, all rings are replaced with gems and the one’s you get from Eggman disappears immediately after the boss fight due to the unskippable checkpoint/bank thing. It’s incredibly dumb and unfair.
You mean like the death egg zone?
It’s a new level of difficulty. It’s harsh, but rarely unfair. The game can’t stay easy forever, and the speed itself isn’t always enough of a challenge.
I think it was put in to separate the top players from everyone else, without it everyone would be racking up high scores if it simply repeated the 3rd stage over and over. Doing well in that stages requires fast timing and predicting the level layout it’s the game’s equivalent to speedrunning.
At least most of its flaws are fixable.
As of today, I was finally able to download this on my GS5. I barely managed to get past the second tutorial stage before lag and stutter forced me into an early death.
Phone heated up some, but I stopped playing after the lag, so I can’t determine how unreasonable it may get.
I think they speced the game out for recent iOS devices and crossed their fingers it would just work on Android devices without having to tinker with them. The game simply has too much going on, you’ll have the asteroid wisp and be plowing through hordes of spiked balls, rings, badniks and the hopping animal armies they produce and only everything but the rings are 3D models. The game uses the Unity engine which promotes itself as having one click porting between platforms, that sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.
As for the heat this was never confirmed but people suspected for the worldwide release they used a new Android feature that lets a app control the minimum clockspeed the OS can throttle to in response to heat. Sonic Team might thought they could use this feature as a bandaid.
The stupid thing is it worked JUST FINE on Android before they added whatever they did to make it worse.
I was running into issues with streamlined mode cutting off sound effects, and when I turned it off it seemed to clear up the lag. So… hmm
Game has a tendency to crash a lot on my iPhone 4S. Specifically, when ads are running. Not to mention sometimes, I’ll watch an ad to get a free revive, only for the game to take me back to the continue screen with no revive, effectively ending my run (don’t feel like paying the Red Rings).
There’s also the problem with the premium roulette. 50 Red Rings is incredibly expensive considering how rare Red Rings are without paying for them. I managed to get Classic Sonic on my first spin, but with Omega being on the wheel now, I’m trying to get him. Lord only knows what’ll happen to me whenever they put Blaze on that wheel.
“On a side note, these levels are strung together by cute, if meaningless, text-based cutscenes that forward the game’s very light story. Some may well complain about this, but if you really go into Sonic Runners expecting a deep or gripping storyline, I just don’t know what to tell you.”
Now see, this is why I don’t consider mobile games real games. The second sentence specifically is something that nearly everyone, from developers to publishers to advertisers to consumers, seems to have in the back of their minds when it comes down to mobile games. Whether that’s as a concession or a complaint depends on the individual, but everyone seems to think it at some point. The game, any game, may be an ok time waster, but it will never be a real game to me because “I shouldn’t expect it” to be.
There’s a lot of solid reasons that mobile games won’t ever be considered real games. You’ve got the intended market, the price, data restraints, and memory restraints. No one is going to pay 60 bucks for a game on their cell phone, they’re going to pay 10-15 at the absolute most, and even that’s a stretch if you want a smash hit (which, let’s be honest, is the only reason you’re making the game for mobile).
Devs can’t be bothered to write an engrossing story for a 0-3 dollar game, and they’d be hard pressed to present one without it being long-winded and text-based (jrpg), since individual phone memory and data plans can’t really afford for big the FMV cutscenes gamers have grown accustomed to. Also, with mobile games’ focus on microtransactions and such, you can’t really have an end to your story, because that would mean an end to your milking of the consumer. You have to build these things to last forever. ENDLESS RUNNERS. In Sega’s case, this is the ONLY reason they’re making mobile games.
With their intended audience being everyone, not core gamers (again, you’re only developing for a platform like mobile in the hopes of reaching EVERYONE and their mom), you have to consider the market. Most people gaming on their phone aren’t looking for “real games”, because core gamers have better platforms available to them for that, and because the majority of phone owners aren’t core gamers, don’t have a ton of free time to devote to a story-based experience, don’t have great data plans, and aren’t willing to install a 5gb game on their phone. A smash hit with universal appeal has to be inviting, simple, and non-demanding, but addictive enough to encourage people to spend money.
Unfortunately, a story/”real game” just doesn’t fit those parameters. But hey, at least we’ve got the 3DS.
I get that, all of it. I understand that mobile games are essentially the arcades of yesteryear, designed more to milk you than actually be fun (hello, Ghosts and Goblins). What I don’t really get is the mentality. This mentality that says everything must be a shallow, grinding, money and time sink of an experience. I guess it’s the “everything must be Call of Duty big” mentality mixing in with the “give us all your money” one.
And yeah, thank god for 3DS. I wish Vita was more competitive (without taking ALL the games like it’s sister console) though, that would only be good for us.
I can agree with most of what you said.
On thing I will say, though – The ads are probably run by a Google script, so they’re personalized to whoever is playing Sonic Runners, that’s probably why you got the ads you did. xP
I personally am having a blast with Sonic Runners because I’m much more tolerant of the “free to play” mobile model than some. I think it’s the best mobile game of this kind next to Plants vs Zombies 2. Tomoya Ohtani is back and much better than in Lost Worlds soundtrack to me, which I found difficult to enjoy for a long time. I don’t think I need to give the game a rating or anything, that would be missing the point – I’m glad it exists the way it does and it’s probably almost as good as it could be. Well, apart from having more content in general.
very disappointing after this long waiting time for the release.
long loading times when you start the game and before each stage.
there are only about 2-3 stages, you always play the same.