There are a few qualities I’m immediately drawn to: self-awareness, a sense of humor and an appreciation for nostalgia. So when I heard about the completely free SEGA game The Murder Of Sonic The Hedgehog, I checked the three boxes above with a permanent Sharpie.
The trailer on Steam explained it all with SEGA’s own words superimposed on Sonic The Hedgehog’s gameplay. We’ve heard your feedbackHe Said. Yes… all of it. First up, we have Team Sonic never Breaking the fourth wall and addressing our fans before? And with a cheeky ellipsis, no less! The trailer’s buildup eventually heralds a new direction for the Sonic The Hedgehog series, then narrowly cuts to the image of a discarded blue devil corpse dressed as a sea captain. To be honest, I closed the trailer there and downloaded the game after rushing. Like anyone needs more momentum.
As someone who was present at the birth of the blue hedgehog in 1991, SEGA has always played an instrumental role in my childhood (I had a Sonic doll, for gods sake), as well as a large part of my young adult life. However, a dark part of myself giddily creaked as I pondered the question: Did Team Sonic just kill a golden goose on April Fools’ Day?
Suffice it to say, The Murder Of Sonic The Hedgehog is full of surprises, and the most obvious one is… no real killing! DUNH DUNH DUUUUUNH! The plot thickens. Basically, TMOSTH is a spin-off that takes place in almost the entire Sonic gang under the premise of a birthday party for Amy’s mysterious murder on a high-speed train. Even though it’s Sonic’s latest “game” to date, there’s no advanced CGI or choppy pace. Indeed, the artwork takes on an almost literal quality, as the charming comic book-style graphics are as textured as pictures drawn on a piece of cork. There are random bursts of humor to keep things light, as well as friendly banter between familiar faces, but the deviation from the typical Sonic platform genre immediately made me smile. SEGA actually found a way to put Sonic into a point-and-click game.
Point-and-click gaming was all the rage in the early ’90s, with classics like Myst and Grim Fandango available exclusively on PC, but thanks to more recent hits like Night In The Woods, Unpacking, and Life Is Strange, point-and-clicks are making a comeback on a variety of consoles. , as well as computers. With Steam offering titles from the greenest developers to the most prominent names in the business, SEGA may have decided to test their latest creation on a neutral playing field and under a fairly low profile. If a game turns out to be useless, it would be easier to bury it in the maze of title rooms on Steam. Obviously, this was not the case at all.
You play the awkward and uncertain assistant to the conductor – a completely new furry character to the world of Mobius that you can customize with your own name. Not a problem for me. I’ve been speeding through SEGA games like Sonic since I was a kid, so it was nice to participate as an outsider without pressure to change. The essence is simple: help Detective Tails – in a tartan Sherlock Holmes robe – and the disembodied journalist interrogate the passengers in order to poke holes in their alibis about who “killed” Sonic. Seems easy enough, right? Ah, but that’s where I was wrong, my dear Watson.
After clicking through all the evidence and storing it in the train compartments, you are then allowed to interrogate each member of Sonic’s team, but in order to properly use the evidence during the interrogation, you must build an ‘alibi’. This is where Murder gives fans a nice, fat wink and some good ol’ Sonic gameplay. Every time you want to advance a damned theory, the pink Dream Gear rises (a nod to Game Gear…remember that?), and our blue friend emerges alive, well, and running on a nostalgic marble track. They were like the bonus levels from Sonic The Hedgehog 2, except for the debilitating obstacles that appeared with increasing difficulty. Only by collecting the appropriate number of rings at the end of the course can you interrogate all the passengers and eventually discover the culprit at the front of the train. And I mean Just.
killing Not too complicated, but definitely tenacious. You simply cannot move on and do your detective duties without first passing these proof courses. I must have played these mandatory levels over and over again, but considering I didn’t have a nice, sleek Steam deck, I had to rely on the severely distorted keys and sticky space bar on the MacBook I’m currently using. Then, I swore to forever eating spaghetti while I tried to write.
There is only one direction to go killing, And this is forward. No time to mess around when crime is afoot. This isn’t a huge complaint or anything, but with all the love and care evident that has been put into the train’s comfortable interior, it would be fun to explore a little more off the beaten path. I guess we’ll just have to wait until the next time SEGA decides to drop another one of these surprisingly satisfying emeralds on us. I have a sneaking suspicion that we will see another incident somewhere around February 2nd. You know, for Groundhog Day? Come on, it’s close enough to a hedgehog.
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