Sonic Blue Rush

Sonic the Hedgehog is a character that’s easily recognizable by every gamer out there, young or old. Sega managed to hit the sweet spot when they created the blue rascal, because the franchise is still active today and there are countless spin-offs and remakes out there, trying to feast on the glory of the platformer that was designed to compete with Nintendo’s Super Mario.

Sonic Blue Rush is a fan game created in order to help other fans relive the old days and experience a bit of classic platformer gameplay, complete with retro 16-bit graphics and the usual challenging level design. Hence, although it may not be an original concept and most of the ideas are directly borrowed from the official games, you can still have a bit of fun with it and treat your nostalgia.

The game comes with no actual story, and you just start playing with no explanations given, which is actually a much better approach than having to sit through a terrible story written in a rush. Hence, you just jump straight into the action and try to navigate the levels, by avoiding the traps and dealing with the enemies that do their best to hinder your progress at every step.

The level design itself is a tad too bland and repetitive in some cases, but that’s not the main concern. Excepting the fact that Sonic is actually too slow and you do not get to perform the usual tricks and acrobatics along the way, there are just too many instances when you have to take a leap of faith first in order to find out how to proceed. Hence, you are sometimes forced to make a jump without knowing what’s on the other side, which often ends with you impaled on a spike.

Other than that, the game presents you with quite the challenge and you sometimes need to coordinate your actions pretty well if you want to advance. On a related note, the graphics are not exactly bad, but the environments just look barren and devoid of detail in most cases. The sound is missing entirely, not to mention some of the bugs that can get you stuck and unable to continue without resetting the stage.

All things considered, Sonic Blue Rush could have obviously been a lot better, but considering the fact that this is merely a fan attempt at game development, it actually does pretty well for itself. Hence, you can certainly enjoy the experience to some extent, as long as you do not expect too much from it.