No thanks to a broken US street date, word of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric’s foulness started to spread far quicker than SEGA probably anticipated. Indeed, YouTube footage generated quite a buzz earlier this week, showing off all sorts of glitches and bugs. Not only this, but players have also discovered a jumping technique that allows most of the game to be effortlessly skipped. Good grief.
Reviews of Big Red Button’s Wii U-exclusive are now starting to surface, and while it’s not quite the gaming travesty as Ride to Hell: Retribution was, its current 39% Metacritic is lower than that of the dreaded “Sonic ’06“.
Expect more reviews to appear later this week in time for Friday’s European release. Until then, here’s what the US press has been saying:
2.5/5 – Hardcore Gamer: “It’s admirable that Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric tries so many new things, but every path it follows is a dead end. While the environments look decent and collectibles help give the short story some legs, the lack of difficulty, variation, and personality ruins any chance it had of making Sonic relevant again”
4.3 – IGN: “Rise of Lyric isn’t fundamentally broken or unplayable; it’s just thoroughly disappointing and unpolished, and while it does have some fun to offer, it’s fun that’s been done better in countless similar games”
4/10 – GameInformer: “I thought Sega handing the iconic license over to a new developer might shake Sonic loose of the slump he’s endured via a string of rough Sonic Team titles. Unfortunately for fans and the Hedgehog himself, Sonic Boom is a blemished bore”
2/5 – Slant: “It’s an extraordinarily bad sign when the television show based off a video game is better than the source material itself, but that’s the case here. Even for the most hardcore fans of the famous blue blur, avoiding Rise of Lyric and instead tuning into Cartoon Network on Saturday mornings is the best way to achieve an easily digestible Sonic Boom fix”
2/10 – GameSpot: “While it’s understandable that a franchise may want to move beyond the simple elegance of its origins, a muddled web of poorly connected and even more poorly executed systems is not the answer. The Sonic name deserves better than this, and so do consumers”
3DS adventure Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal – developed by Sanzaru Games – is getting something of a kicking too. “With a heaping helping of poorly written and unskippable cutscenes, Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal is a slog that never finds its footing†said IGN, who gave it 4.0. Slant also found the unskippable story to be a huge problem, giving it 2/10.
Oh well. At least the Sonic Boom TV series is surprisingly decent.