Sonic Superstars

Genre: Platformer

Players: 1-4 Co-Op / Competitive (Local, Local Wireless), 2-8 Co-Op / Competitive (Online)

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Review:

Sonic Superstars is a Platformer released in 2023 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. After Sonic’s last 3D outing, Sonic Frontiers, ambitiously brought Sega’s hedgehog to Open-World spaces with somewhat mixed results, their 2D follow-up seems to want to try to recapture the widely-celebrated success seen in Sonic Mania. And of course that means all onboard the nostalgia train – woo woo!

This isn’t the first time that a Sonic game has aimed to bring back the glory days of the series by aiming for nostalgia. In fact, it seems like half of the Sonic series is all about trying to recapture what people loved about the franchise back during the series’ glory days on the Sega Genesis and Sega CD. Even Sonic Mania made this its mission statement, going so far as to remix and reimagine classic levels. However, apart from once again following such a direct formula for revisiting Sonic’s early days, Sonic Superstars may be the second-most nostalgia-y game in a franchise that seems locked in an ouroboros loop.

Let’s be clear, though – Sonic Superstars is an entirely new game with new levels, new gameplay mechanics, new graphics, and a new soundtrack. But more than just churning out more levels with an inexplicable checkerboard motif, Sonic Superstars repeatedly tries to hammer you over the head with references to early games in the series – the animated opening intro seems deliberately designed to imitate the intro to Sonic CD, the first level isn’t just loosely analogous to the first Sonic game’s Green Hill Zone as many opening Sonic levels are, it also features many of that game’s enemies, and you’ll notice all the sound effects evoke the classic sound effects of that game. Bonus levels, also, often mimic the spinning trippy bonus levels of the first Sonic game.

On that note, Sonic Superstars features a lot of these bonus levels. It seems like you can’t walk for more than a minute or so without tripping over one of them. They take different forms, with one being the aforementioned throwback bonus level, and while I do generally find them all enjoyable, it didn’t take me long before I started seeing them as a nuisance, breaking up the flow of the game. It’s telling that a game is doing something wrong with its bonus levels when you start wanting to skip them entirely.

It’s unfortunate that this annoyance is the case, because overall this is an excellent Platformer with some fun ideas, such as selectable chaos emerald power-ups you earn in some of the aforementioned bonus stages, level paths that can sometimes toss you into the background, four selectable characters (the hammer-wielding Amy is included alongside the usual trio of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles), and full multiplayer support. While I don’t think this game is quite as well-crafted as Sonic Mania, I do think this is one of the best games we’ve had in the series since the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS games (did you forget about those? If so, you should definitely seek them out – they were wonderful). However, as seems to happen even when Sonic games are good, this one can’t help but trip over itself every now and then.

Take the multiplayer, for example. Sega highly touted this game as supporting 4 players simultaneously. If you’ve played a Sonic game before, you might wonder, “how does that work? Surely this multiplayer must be only via local wireless or online, or it must use a split-screen?”. Nope. The game’s local multiplayer has all four players on the same screen, and when one player advances farther than the others, the other players are forced to press a button to be teleported to where the leading player is. In a game that’s about going fast and exploring diverging paths, this is an inexplicably dumb design choice that requires players to be invisibly tethered to whoever’s in the lead, in whatever way the game determines who is in the actual lead.

There’s also a Battle Mode where players can compete head-to-head, but this fares even worse. This mode does use split-screen (oh, so you can do it then, game?), but it is zoomed in way too close to your character for you to move around the enclosed space competently, and your character is a generic (but customizable) robot character instead of the Sonic series’ many recognizable animal characters, or even a create-your-own animal character. What a mess.

I touched on the presentation earlier, but to get deeper into it, I’ll say that this game is gorgeous, using lovely 3D visuals with tons of detail and some nice lighting. The game also runs at a mostly-stable 60FPS framerate on Nintendo Switch, with a full 720p resolution in handheld mode… and also a 720p resolution in docked mode, with worse textures than on other platforms and reduced lighting effects and water effects. The choice to keep the game at 720p resolution even when docked is inexplicable here, since it’s clear the Nintendo Switch is capable of more than this, and it results in a game that plays beautifully in handheld mode, but not so great in docked mode, and it’s not clear why this would be.

These visuals are joined by the aforementioned sound effects designed to imitate the classic sounds of the earlier games in the series, and backed by a synthesized soundtrack that’s appropriately upbeat, and at times even seems to be trying to imitate the Sega Genesis sound chip. However, overall I felt that this game’s soundtrack never had any memorable themes like the earlier games in the series.

Overall, I’m left with a mixed opinion about Sonic Superstars. The gameplay is great, but the game ruins the pacing by showering you with bonus levels. The graphics look fantastic and keep a wonderful framerate, but docked mode on Nintendo Switch has a disappointingly low resolution and all sorts of other cuts were made to the visuals. And the multiplayer is so poorly thought-out and implemented that it’s not even worth bothering with. Overall, I can still see players enjoying this game if they can focus on the good parts, but this definitely seems like a sign that Sega should just leave the development of future Sonic games to Christian Whitehead and the Sonic Mania development team, who seem to have a far better grasp on what makes Sonic work than Sega’s own Sonic Team does.

tl;dr – Sonic Superstars is a 2D Platformer that seeks to recapture what was great about the early Sonic games with a modern presentation and some fun new mechanics, and it largely succeeds, although not without annoyances like overly-prevalent bonus levels that quickly wear out their welcome, an inexplicably low resolution in docked mode, and outright terrible multiplayer. This is still a fun game, but it can’t compare to Sonic Mania.

Grade: B–

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2023 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Platformer

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