Sonic Lost World is perhaps one of the most mediocre video games I have ever played. That is not to say it is the worst; that is to say it is the most mediocre. The game suffers from a large number of problems, but is not quite bad enough to say it is horrible. That being said, it is not a game I could recommend to anyone.
So what is wrong with it?
Sonic Lost World is a 2D/3D sonic game – some levels are 2D, others are 3D, and some go between the two.
The game borrows very heavily in its 3D sections from Mario Galaxy – many such sections are on small planets, others are in tubes that you run on the inside of, and still others are otherwise reminiscent of Mario Galaxy’s more linear segments (though all segments are very linear – Sonic is very much a character who goes in one direction). Unfortunately, this is done with very little grace, and very few of the levels are well-designed, with many of them feeling very much like a hodge-podge – a problem that Super Mario Galaxy 2 also had, but to a lesser extent. A lot of Sonic Lost World levels are really not designed very well and just feel off while you’re playing them.
This is laid on top of the controls. As always, Sonic is slidey. Sonic has never been the easiest character to control, but this game at times expects precision platforming – a very frustrating thing. You can do this, once you get acclimated to Sonic, but that takes more than half the game – and you will be miserable until you do.
And frankly, even after you get used to him, you still won’t be happy. The game probably reaches its nadir in the fourth zone, the Frozen Factory, which is full of icy sections which make Sonic even harder to control (oh boy!), and a lot of this part of the game is miserable.
Adding to all this are the many gimmick levels. The Frozen Factory has a casino, which comes with… a pinball machine which you have to solve to move onwards. The first one isn’t too bad, but the second one (which earns you a red ring for completing it) is a four layer pinball machine and is very hard to solve, especially given that this is the only level in the game which uses the mechanic.
There are other gimmick levels as well – there’s also a level where Sonic is instead a snowball, making him even less controllable. There are numerous “run constantly” levels, including a couple of rail levels, the latter of which is very difficult and shows that just because you can copy Donkey Kong Country doesn’t mean that you should.
Most people drop this game within a few levels. Tellingly, there are 100 achievements, they’re all pretty easy to get, but most of them have less than 2% completion. This is because most people recognize the game for the stinker it is and bail quickly.
That said, the game is not wholly awful; there are some moments and some levels which are decent. The last two zones of the game are full of interesting levels, and really only one level (the rail level) is weak, and even that is okay. The game is also chock full of bosses, and unlike many games which have so many bosses, this game has them perform differently every time you face them. They aren’t even remotely similar in most cases to their previous patterns, which is pretty cool, and given that every second level has a boss, that’s something to often look forward to.
The problem is that while the bosses are interesting, that’s about all the game has for the most part; while there are a few good levels, they’re mostly clustered at the end of the game, and going through the tedium of the rest of it to get to “okay” levels is just not worth it.
The game also has an item system (with a limited inventory space!) – you gain items by completing achievements (and you can only complete three at a time) and you use them for a one-time boost. These items are mostly useless, but a few of them (in particular the shield and the invincibility) are handy. Sadly, you have a limited inventory for no reason, and the whole thing is pretty pointless to begin with – the game simply isn’t hard enough to justify the use of items for the most part, and the parts which are hard are generally hard because you’re dying due to falling off the map/into lava/ect.
Frustratingly, the game makes use of a wall running mechanic which works terribly; not only is it difficult to control and use in most cases, with lots and lots of jumps that result in you stopping your wall run and jumping straight up over a bottomless pit, resulting in your death, but it also tries to activate a lot on stair-step portions of levels, requiring you to navigate those portions more slowly or end up constantly getting caught on the scenery. This just adds further clunkiness to the control scheme, which is often not very well documented in-game to begin with – there were numerous things I only discovered via trial and error, and until I found out what I was doing “wrong”, I was getting pretty annoyed with Sonic not doing what I wanted him to do.
My recommendation is to avoid this game. Don’t buy it. Don’t play it. It just isn’t worth your time.
In fact, I’d just recommend never buying a Sonic game again; it is pretty obvious that Team Sonic has no clue what they’re doing.
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