Sonic Rush. (DS)

Sonic worked on the Mega Drive, many say this is because of the simplistic design or the appealing character, but the one aspect that’s never mentioned is the save system.Because of the save system, Sonic titles of late have all been stupidly easy, simply keep trying a level you get stuck on, or go back through the levels looking for the chaos emeralds. On the Mega Drive, Sega forced you to do this on one play through, collecting emeralds on your way; this gave the games a degree of challenge.

That’s not to say Sonic Rush is bad, far from it, it retains the usual hedgehog flair of high speed and twitch gameplay, but it’s just far too easy and short for its own good. The dual character system is also flawed, seen as both characters do the same things but in a slightly different order.

The game lasts (including emerald collection) under ten hours; if you’re proficient you can probably see the true ending within 5. And to top it off, the multiplayer is only an amusing distraction and only offers play for two players (when the advance games allowed four) and because the time attack has no reward, it is only good if you have friends ready to compete with.

7/10

Star Fox Assault. (Gamecube)

Star fox has always been known for intense action, fast paced flying levels and fun but shallow multiplayer. And what does Assault do? It gets them the wrong way round! All of a sudden, the multiplayer is brilliant fun, offering a decent level of depth for those willing to explore it and a shallow, not to mention short single player game.

The single player removes Fox from his Arwing but at least he has a gun rather than a stick, right? Wrong. While Fox has his blaster, and many other weapons, the game feels loose and lacks any feeling of impact, enemies die pathetically, and pose little to no challenge even on the gold difficulty setting. The flying levels are a step up and almost hit the nail on the head, but these are too few and far between to save the experience. The single player’s saving grace is its score attack, which can prove good competition between similar minded players.

In contrast to this, the multiplayer offers a nicely customizable game. When offered the choice between weapons, vehicles and power ups the game comes alive, with players ducking and diving and playing to their strengths, and some of the unlockable features make the game even better. The only part of multiplayer experience that suffers is the dog fighting, which only works on one level because the maneuvers don’t negate lock on blasts as in Lylat Wars. As far as I'm concerned, if Smash Bros can get away with being considered brilliant several years since release mainly for multiplayer, why can’t this?

8/10