Sega can consider the mascot that made them rich well and truly milked by now. The Sonic universes's hedgehog-shaped teat has been more than wrangled to produce such gems as Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic Heroes. But Sonic Rush, a side-scroller that's 2D in all but its character graphics, has been given some pretty high scores (8s and 9s) by the likes of GameSpot and IGN.

I personally can't agree with scores that high. Sonic Rush is definitely a worthwhile platformer, no doubt about it. The high speed gameplay, cool tricks, and downright simple tried-and-tested fun is definitely worth a look. It's just that there's more than a few annoyances that make me think there's some other DS games you should prioritise on your "to get" list.

My main gripe with the gameplay is the pitfalls. There's too many places in the game (particularly in the Air Base type level) where it's too easy to have no idea where in the hell you're going and find yourself falling down a bottomless pit to your death. Personally, I think it's bad level design and really goes at odds with the ultrafast pace the game keeps up.

Other than that, all of the usual Sonic ring-grabbing gameplay is in here. To keep him hip and cool and poppin'-fresh, Sonic has his new "tricked out" moves as well as his usual jumping and spin-dashing. He can grind on rails, and as long as your gauge is full enough, Sonic can also dash. All perfectly good fun, but not necessarily worth much more discussion.

Visually, all is pretty good here. Producing the game in 2D was definitely a wise decision, because there's some brilliant tiles that display very nicely on the DS' pixel-perfect screens. Sadly, someone has come up with the decision to make the main characters (but not the enemies) in 3D. They're probably easier to animate this way, and they sure as hell don't look as nice as the nicely drawn 2D sprites in the Sonic Advance games, so this is definitely a rough patch in an otherwise visually pleasing game.

The boss stages, by the way, are in 3D. I thought this'd turn out to be a nightmare, but actually it ends up working just fine because not a lot of intricate control is needed. It does make these fights a little more interesting, and confines 3D gameplay to where it belongs - close spaces where shoddy camera movement can't get in the way.

For Sega fans of old, the music in the game will more than likely remind you instantly of Jet Set Radio. It's catchy without being irritating and it's certainly a lot better than the soft rock and rap music that we had to endure in Sonic Adventure 2, which had the characters singing to us and explaining how they felt about the situation. The characters now have some limited speech in the map screens. Apparently, the voice actors have been replaced with their counterparts from the Sonic X show that airs on kids TV, so if Tails sounds even more annoying now, you'll know why.

There's no drastic flaws with the game's presentation. Everything is wrapped together with map screens and fairly static story scenes that have no usability flaws to speak of. Outside of the game itself, it's packaged in a fairly pretty box which has a jerk-off journalism quote from the British "Nintendo Official Magazine" where they exclaim it to be "The best Sonic game ever!" ("ever" is written in upper case in case we were to doubt the claim). Sega of Europe have thankfully only included English language text on the back of the UK box. I don't have the childish anti-continental thing going on that some Brits have, it's just that I'd prefer not to squint to decipher 3 lines of text that are actually in a language I can speak.

To conclude, you should definitely pick up Sonic Rush if you're in need of a platforming fix, but I think you should also consider my opinion of it not being the best game the blue rodent has ever appeared in. If you want something that's a little slower paced and marginally less frustrating, I definitely recommend you take a look at the first two Sonic Advance games if you haven't already.

Roundup

game	7
visuals	8
sound	8
presentation	8
overall	7

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