First Impressions From The 'Sonic Rumble'

A little while ago, Sonic Rumble, an upcoming Sonic mobile title being developed in association with SEGA’s newly-acquired studio Rovio (known for the Angry Birds franchise, held its closed beta test. Luckily, I was able to participate in it. I had a lot of fun, and there’s plenty to take away from what I played thus far. Let’s look at Sonic Rumble as it appeared in the closed beta.

Let’s start with the gameplay. It’s fairly similar to Fall Guys but with a Sonic twist. First, there’s the basic running mode called simply “Run” which has 32 players run to the end of the stage. The first 16 to reach the end advance to the next round. The second round consists of a randomly selected minigame that only allows the top eight players to proceed. These minigames are “Survival”, “Hunt”, and “Team”.

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The Survival minigame has players facing a boss (usually a giant EggRobo) that they must avoid and survive its wrath longer than the other players. This game ends when eight players are knocked off the stage. Hunt has the 16 players gather the most points before time runs out, and the top eight players advance to the next round. The Team minigames have the players duke it out in teams to gain the most points. The team that has the most points advances to the next round. The third and final round is called “Ring Battle,” and players must run around the arena and collect as many rings as they can—the player with the most rings when time runs out wins. Overall, there’s a decent variety of game modes that’s sure to be expanded upon come release day. The various power-ups are also a nice touch. Also, like any mobile game, there are unlockable players and items you can purchase using in-game currency. Thankfully, the in-game currency is rings, and they’re rather plentiful.

The only issues with the gameplay come from the player’s speed and how the game controls. Firstly, while it’s understandable that a Fall Guys-type title will not be as fast as a mainline Sonic game, the pace at which your character moves feels undeniably sluggish. This is not helped by the stiff touchscreen controls. It honestly felt like Sonic or whoever had gum stuck on their shoes while moving, and there definitely seemed to be some slight input lag. Hopefully, these issues will be fixed when the game is released.

Graphically, the game looks pretty good. The models look appropriately like toys, and there are very few performance issues. The models are also rather detailed for a mobile title. What was especially fun was seeing all of the various emote animations that can be applied to the player's character. They are filled with fun little callbacks to the Sonic franchise’s past and are smooth to boot! Overall, the game is quite impressive graphically.

The story of the game is quite simple. It takes place in a twisted toy world called Egg Toy Land, created by Dr. Eggman of course. Eggman sends Sonic and Tails toys of themselves in an invitation, and Sonic decides he’s up to Eggman’s challenge, using the toys to traverse the world and go through challenges. It’s a simple story, but considering only two other mobile Sonic titles have any sort of story, it’s a miracle that it has one at all. Hopefully, the cutscenes gain voice acting of some sort upon final release.

Lastly, the music seems to be pretty much recycled and remixed from previous titles. Particularly, the game borrows plenty of tracks from Sonic Colors and Sonic Lost World. As the game appears to utilize plenty of stages from these games, this makes sense. There are some original tracks too, however, and they fight right in. Overall, while it would be nice to have some more original music for the title, old Sonic music is still good Sonic music.

If the Sonic Rumble beta is anything to go off of, then it appears that it will be quite a fun little mobile battle royale title. Though there are some slight performance and control issues at times, it doesn’t hamper the overall fun factor of the game.