Sonic Rush was a childhood favorite of mine, one that I hadn’t played since I was maybe 10 years old. In all honesty, it maybe should’ve stayed that way. For years, I had been hailing this as easily being the best Sonic game, with such a focus on pure speed, an engaging enough story, and the soundtrack people still bring up pretty regularly for how hard it bangs, it was the full package of what I thought a Sonic game should be.
With that, during my most recent winter break, I had finally gotten DS emulation running on my 3DS, and Sonic Rush was the first game I wanted to play, as I never did end up finishing it during my childhood (and I couldn’t really think of any other DS games I wanted to play).
It was a smooth start, but as I played, some of the cracks (or holes, if you will) started to show, and I started to grow more and more frustrated with many of the design choices made throughout. Certain parts of this game had me feeling like I was playing some NES platformer due to how unfair things were. I felt like the AVGN as I was quite literally yelling out, “WHAT WERE THEY THINKING??” in response to dying for the 10th time in a row to a bottomless pit that I had no chance of predicting or reacting to. It just really pissed me off. The dissonance of having “rush” in your game’s title, then actively discouraging speeding through levels by placing so many instakills everywhere, I’m just left to wonder, why are the developers punishing you for following their own design philosophy?
And to follow that up, the frustrating thing is there are a handful of sections within the levels that have you running at Mach speeds for extended periods, combing endlessly through enemies with that super satisfying combo sound ringing in your ears, only to grind to a halt because they introduced a new stage-specific gimmick mechanic that kills you if you don’t get it right instantly. Every time they’d pull this, it practically made me want to quit the game right then and there. It’s again just a case of “What were they thinking?”
This isn’t even mentioning the boss fights. Others have talked about it before and I don’t really care enough to say what’s already been said, so I won’t. The exception is that final boss fight though. I seriously dropped the game for two months because of this shit man. I was honestly just tired of seeing Sonic Rush on my “currently playing” list so I decided to come back and downgrade the difficulty just so I could check it off the list. Didn’t regret it in the slightest. I had no interest in trying to beat it legit, and it was either downgrade the difficulty or I drop the game entirely lmao. The true final boss wasn’t any better, either. So glad I didn’t have to deal with that thing on its normal difficulty. I’d honestly rather do ANYTHING else with my time.
All in all, I did come away from a childhood favorite with a bit of a sour taste, but I am in a way happy I came back and experienced it again with a more informed lens. I’m still glad the game exists and it still holds a special place in my heart for how much I loved it back then, but by god, I’m never playing it again.
I also posted this review on my Backloggd account. If you want to see the games I’ve played, am currently playing, or plan to play at some point in time, along with some smaller-scale ramblings and thoughts on things, feel free to follow me there. Thanks for reading 🙂
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