Even with run button firmly held down, Sonics top speed is more like a geriatric power walk, ill-fitting of the rocket jet sound it triggers. And yet somehow, this snails pace doesnt stop the game from having slippery controls, which can make hazards unnecessarily difficult to deal with.
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Of course, the four playable characters may as well be the same: all of them handle nearly identically to Sonic, save for a single character-specific special ability, usually mapped to the X button. Most of these abilities are only useful in specific situations in which they are explicitly designed for. For example, you never need to switch to Sticks unless theres an unreachable fuse that needs to be broken with her remote-controlled boomerang, and Knuckles is useless unless you see a mound of dirt for him to dig in to. None of these abilities are ever used to solve anything that would even be tangentially defined as a puzzle; just match the character to the single gameplay mechanic theyre useful for and youve basically solved the entire game. Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal is a game of locked doors where youre quickly given all of the keys, and you just need to switch to the right one when youre told to. Thats not fun, its busy work.
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Unlike previous collect-a-thon platformers, which usually only required you to scoop up a fraction of its loot in order to finish the game, Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal asks that you find almost everything on your first go. If youre unfortunate enough to finish a level without meeting the requirements for all three emblems, its likely that you wont be able to progress forward until you go back and get them. Level design even predicates on this: later levels will occasionally split in to two or more separate paths, locking you in to one specific route through the rest of the level. Attempts to backtrack to these alternate routes are stymied thanks to every level being broken up by a confusing network of warp points. What this means is that most levels are designed to be played at least twice, sometimes more, as you hunt for its various collectables through their bland, maze-like interiors. This gets to be very boring, very quickly as you spin your wheels looking for that last missing crystal shard in a level youve already been through twice.