Review: "The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog"

 

This artsy scroll-and-click PC game requires little real “playing.” But that doesn’t make it a worthless game. In fact, it just may be one of the best.

The story starts like this. It’s Amy Rose’s birthday, and what’s a girl gonna do? Ever extravagant, she hosts a murder mystery party aboard the luxury train, the Mirage Express! “Mirage” is a fitting name—nothing is really what it seems once it takes off. And when the train begins hurtling strangely fast, everyone is knocked out; when they wake, Sonic is apparently “murdered.” They think the game has begun, but a train employee thinks otherwise… Sonic looks severely wounded. In fact, he’s actually been… killed?! How is this possible? This was supposed to be only a game! Well, it’s not a game anymore. Time to discover whodunit.

The player is not one of our regular cast, however, but the brand new employee whose first day on the job happens to be while Amy hosts her party. You get to choose the name of this sweet, helpful, nervous employee, and see everything from his/her perspective.

The gameplay is simple. When talking with someone, you get to choose what you’ll say (prompts appear on the screen). If not talking, you move the courser along the screen and different people or objects are highlighted, then you click on whatever you choose. Generally this is simple and well-working, but sometimes a lengthy awkward silence during dialogue can’t be skipped and may seem like the game has frozen, since characters aren’t actually moving in this picture-like game. Speaking of pictures, the art style is very similar to the style of Sonic comics, making everything look realistic, adorable, and very well detailed. I greatly enjoyed everyone's outfits, as seeing the characters wear something new brings a fresh perspective to them. (Although, be warned that Rouge wears a jacket that hangs open to reveal nothing more than a greatly cropped tube top--perhaps the most revealing thing she's worn in any of the games.)

That said, the game isn’t restricted to silent, motionless scroll-and-click. Whenever the choose-your-own-name employee you play as must gather his thoughts (“What would Sonic do?”) he pulls out his DreamGear and plays a 16-bit isometric Sonic game. Guess what? This isometric view actually works! As it goes along, the game gets speeds up and gets increasingly difficult. But if you’re a skilled Sonic player, the ol’ DreamGear will leave only a mere scratch or two.

Though everything is in pictures and the only dialogue is written (sounds are restricted to non-vocal noises and background music), there are tense moments. Eggman’s machinery, as usual, turns vicious and attacks the characters and the innocent train conductor, and are also responsible for Sonic’s banged-up condition. The murderer in Amy’s game used a blowdart to put the murder victim in Amy’s game to sleep (not realizing such weapons are not used for a game). Fortunately, aside from spilled circuits from the Egg-tech, the “violence” is, as usual, messless.

There’s little spirituality we generally see in Sonic lore, aside from someone saying how strange the universe works and someone else saying spilled salt ruined their luck and throws some over his shoulder (this part with the salt can be skipped if you don’t click on a broken plate).

This was also a fun trip full of Easter eggs and glimpses into characters' personalities that we don't otherwise see (like Blaze being a good "pretend thief," Espio being terrible at making up poetry on the spot, and Shadow liking chocolate cake--yup, you read the last one right!)

Overall, this is approximately two-hour game is well-designed, fun, and at times, truly exciting. I enjoyed this game and hope you will, too!