Knuckles Chaotix for the Genesis 32-X
A Game Review by Chaos Theory T. Echidna
Part Two
(You've seen the official screenshot; now feel free to laugh at my pathetic hand-drawn version.)
Now Playing: "Evening Star" (Evening at the World Entrance) from, well, Knuckles Chaotix, DUH!
The Zones and Special Stages
One thing different about Knuckles Chaotix from any other Sonic game is that the Zones come in non-linear order, and not only that, but each Zone has FIVE Acts! Even Sonic CD can't compare to that, as it has four POSSIBLE Acts, so to speak, for each Zone (Past, Present, Good Future and Bad Future) and unless you're cheating, you're not likely to see both the Good AND Bad Futures of the same Zone in the same game, so you only have to experience three of them per game. Chaotix, however, makes you go through ALL FIVE ACTS of all five Zones every single time. For a whopping total of 25 levels. And that's NOT including the Special Zone, the Bonus Stage, or the huge, lengthy battle with Hyper Mecha Sonic at the end.
The WAY you get to the next level is also quite unique. After first going through a demo thing as Knuckles to find Espio, and then doing a practice as Knuckles and Espio together on the Isolated Island Zone, you are ready to choose whoever you want and go on with the game for real. First you start off in an area with the rather grandiose name of "The World Entrance", where a huge billboard called "Coming Attractions" shows you exactly how much of each level you have left to do. After that comes the Combi Confiner Room, and if you just started playing, you HAVE to stop here and it makes you stand still in the booth while a giant claw moves back and forth across the group of other characters. The characters are frozen and all one solid colour, so they look fake or plastic--not alive (makes me wonder if they're in suspended animation) and constantly dropping through the floor and popping up again somewhere else, so as to make it as confusing as possible!
I don't know how exactly to make it always give you the person you wanted, but I can tell you this--if it's hovering over ANY of the REAL Chaotix members, push down to grab them RIGHT THEN instead of waiting for the ten seconds to be over. Otherwise, if you leave the Combi Confiner to its own devices, it seems that it will practically ALWAYS give you Heavy or Bomb. There are several different copies of them mixed among the others, you see, so it's easier to get them. If you don't mind Vector, then just push DOWN the instant the thing starts, and you'll get him every time. He's always in that spot, and the claw doesn't start swinging back and forth horizontally until YOU tell it to do so. Trust me, I'd rather have Vector than Heavy or Bomb...(If you're playing AS Vector, I think Charmy's the one who's always in that spot, but don't quote me on that...)
Now for the levels themselves:
Amazing Arena This is easily the MOST exasperating, long, frustrating, labyrinthine and confusing level of the entire game! Not to mention the gaudiest. I'd say it's the "Carnival Night Zone" of Chaotix if not for the fact that Speed Slider looks more carnival-ish. Anyway, the deal is, that even if you reach the end of the stage where the sign is, it doesn't count as having cleared the level--you get a "No Clear" and a loud buzzer noise. UNLESS you find a big clock that the game keeps pointing you towards with ghostly images floating above your head and arrows, and somehow bang into the button to start it ticking. Once you do that, you are free to go, and the cool, gloomy blueish-purple nighttime atmosphere of the Arena, complete with awesome mysterious sinister music, changes to brightly-coloured, flash-trashy HAPPY TOWN! From there, explore the level but do it as QUICKLY as you can, because it's BIG and confusing and it's very very easy to run out of time. And here's a hint--if you find ANOTHER clock, after you've turned on the first one, DO NOT PRESS THE BUTTON! It will make your time start running at double-speed!
For some reason, the first Act of this Zone was the one that bothered me the most, and the others seemed to be somewhat easier. I wandered around totally lost in a daze, running out of time right and left, until eventually it seemed as if the game took pity on me and LET me pass the level. I know I sure as heck didn't use any strategy or head in any particular direction...
For all my dislike of it, the graphics in the Amazing Arena are quite comlex and cool-looking, and it reminds me of a somewhat less-sickening version of the Spring Stadium Zone from Sonic 3D-Blast. I think the only real thing that saves it from making me throw up the way the Spring Stadium does is the fact that it's nice, linear, 2-D, rather than that obnoxious isometric view.
At some point during every act except for the first one, you run into a huge movie screen (complete with mondo speakers around it) that shows a picture of Robotnik pounding bouncy-round fists together while laughing at you. (They make this bong...bong...sound.) Then his head comes out of the screen and starts flying around the room at you and to go any farther in the level, you have to whack the head. No, I'm not kidding.
All in all, however, even though the levels technically have no real order, I would say that the Amazing Arena is the hardest. At least for me.
Botanic Base: Probably tied for my favourite level with Speed Slider, the Botanic Base is easily the PRETTIEST and most exotic-looking level of the entire game. It takes place in a huge, tropical green house, and the way the graphics are done, it just somehow gives you the impression of...how to put this...humidity. It just FEELS damp, soggy, steamy, and hot. There are beautiful fountains and waterfalls, and you travel up and down sticky grassy slopes among the greenery while trying to avoid robots and stepping on transporter beams. It's all very easy, except for the end boss. The end boss is...CONFUSING! I don't know how the heck to kill him, I just did so eventually after a very long time. I CAN tell you that it's much easier with Charmy--AGAIN!--because his flying ability makes it so that he doesn't get caught in the magnetic field or whatever the heck it is, and he can just wham into Robotnik directly instead of having to wait for the bumper thing to bounce him up there when it wants to.
Marina Madness:
In this Zone, you travel around on the docks, jumping from ship to ship. The way they move up and down according to the waves can be quite confusing and frustrating, as sometimes it makes it so that something you really wanted that you COULD get to a second ago is now totally inaccessible! Easy jumps become hard, you go backwards when you think you're going forwards--it's very annoying. It's also one of my least favorite levels, but not because it's bad or hard, just...boring.
Speed Slider: One of my favourite Zones, and probably everybody else's, too. The music sounds more Sonic-y than the others (it's actual NAME is "Speed of Sound", which is what the word "Sonic" MEANS), very fast-paced and catchy, rather than mellow New-Age-ish stuff like much of the rest of the game. It also is one of the few levels (along with Amazing Arena) that lives up to the name of the place, CARNIVAL Island--it actually LOOKS like an amusement park for a change. Unfortunately there are no rides--you don't get to race on bumper cars or turn yourself into a living bowling ball or jump from tower to tower of the Pleasure Castle or get chased through a creepy hall or mirrors--oh, wait, that's Twinkle Park I'm remembering there, never mind--and despite the instruction booklet's promise of "roller coasters", there is NOTHING you actually RIDE. Just some really really steep hills to run up and down super-fast. However, the music is quite good, the graphics are very complex and high quality, and there are a lot of secrets to explore. All in all it's a fun level.
Techno Tower: I have the feeling this one was trying to be the Launch Base Zone from Sonic 3 but failed. It COULD have been cool, but it was just too...SIMPLE. My main memory of it involves clear green platforms overhead, as you can jump or fly THROUGH those types to get to a higher level, and you can go through several at once to make the level zoom by super-fast. However, on playing it through again, I discovered that there is more to Techno Tower than I originally thought--all I'll say here is, look for levers and switches, and go as high you can.
The Bonus Stage You appear to be falling face-first--only in horizontal, so it looks like you're travelling forward--down a deep, infinite well of some kind, with swirling dark blue walls and annoying beepy music, while all kinds of things--mostly exits--zoom right into your face. You can attempt to navigate your way through this thing with the joystick but you can't stop or "land", there is nothing solid in this creepy limbo. If you can avoid the exits, you can eventually steer yourself into cool bonuses such as 500 Points, things that slow down the Combi Claw so you have more control over your choice, 10-ring packs, and more. HOWEVER--every second you stay in the Bonus Stage takes away one ring, (same as being Super does in the other games) and when you come back out, you will have the same amount in the real world that you eventually had in there. So if you start getting low on rings, DELIBERATELY steer yourself at an exit before it's too late. (Of course, the other way to get out, besides hitting an exit, is to simply run out of rings.)
The Special Stage: This is a WEIRD one. First of all, like in Sonic 1 and Sonic CD, you only get to them by means of giant Gold Rings that are floating in the air after you complete an Act--but you have to complete it with at least 50 rings for it to appear.
The Special Zone is easily the most exciting, difficult, and pulse-pounding part of this game--it's like being inside a 3D waterslide (without the water) from HELL. And so surreal it may make you hallucinate at the oddest times afterwards. At least the colours arn't TOO bright...
You may have seen it described as "a five-sized tunnel in which each side thinks it's the center of gravity", which makes it sound IMPOSSIBLY dizzying and sickening to get through. But if you can handle the Sonic 3 and Knuckles Special Zones, you have a CHANCE at this. See, it's not as if you float in the center of the tunnel and each wall pulls at you because they have their own gravity, as I assumed. You just start off on one floor, and then switch from side to side easily with the joystick whenever you need to, and when you do, it changes the perspective so that what used to be the "wall" is now the "floor". This kind of thing USUALLY drives me nuts but for some reason I just took to it quite easily and understand how to move perfectly. That's not to say I'm good at this. I'm just saying it doesn't make me throw up.
And by "collect blue spheres", they don't mean the same thing as in Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles, where you have to get huge FIELDS of them, and when you touch them them turn red. No, if you had to do THAT while travelling down a five-sided magnetic tunnel I WOULD get sick. Uh-uh, they're just scattered SINGULAR blue spheres around the place that you pick up, and you really PICK THEM UP, as in, they disappear when you touch them instead of turning red. (If they DID turn red that would be positively evil...) So what makes you get kicked out of the Zone, then? Well, many things. Again, you are losing rings for every second you're in there (there are paths of rings you can follow to stay in longer, but it's easy to forget them and just go straight for the spheres) and there are spiked bombs, sometimes swinging around on metal chains, that make you loose some rings every time they whack you. And my FAVOURITE creepy feature of this Zone is the Course Outs--there are areas where, suddenly, there isn't any more tunnel, and you fall off into the void! Also, some areas are not tunnels, but rather just one, flat, open plain with no walls to protect you, so you gotta be careful how you steer from side to side. Naturally, the blue spheres like to hang out at the edges...
Oh, and don't assume the star-bumpers will save ya. They are spaced far enough apart in some places that you can actually go BETWEEN them and fall to your doom.
Special Items:
Some of the special items in Chaotix are generic of any Sonic game (Super Rings, invincibility, power-sneakers, and shields) but some of them are quite unique--just like the game itself. I will list only the unique ones here.
The following Power-Ups are available in the normal playing Zones:
Combine Ring: Also referred to as a "Blue Power Ring" (although it's actually silver) what it does is bind all the rings you have into one, big, fat ring that bounces slowly all over the screen for a couple of seconds, giving you a chance to get ALL your rings back instead of just a few. THEN it breaks into its individual pieces, and the power-up is no longer in effect. If you do manage to find a Combine Ring, hang onto it as long as you can, because compared to some of the other Power-Ups it's quite rare.
Swap: Now THIS one's unique to this game--very unique. It makes it so that the control character switches for a brief time. So if you're playing as Espio with Mighty for a partner, suddenly you're controlling Mighty instead! Since it doesn't really last long enough for you to do any real good with the partner's special skills, and the confusion over exactly who is YOU, all of a sudden, make this one a bit of a menace. Interesting, but a menace. You will know when things have switched back to normal because there will be a science-fictiony ZAP sound and your characters will trade places.
Grow and Shrink: These are really more of a novelty than anything else. They make your character either grow to about...I dunno...twice their size?--or shrink to half their normal height (while keeping all proportions the same.) They are FUNNY, however. You HAVE to see Charmy when he's even smaller than normal (when he hits a shrink box, he's about the size of a REAL honeybee) carrying Vector after Vector has hit a "grow" box--which basically turns Vector into Godzilla--and having NO trouble at all...it's so HILARIOUS! It does have some disadvantages, though. If you're playing as anybody except Charmy pretty much and you hit a "grow" box, all of a sudden you're so huge you can't go through loops and can't fit through ordinary doorways. Also high-flying badniks that normally wouldn't bother you fly right into your head! And when you hit a "shrink" box, as anybody but Charmy (AGAIN!) you cannot reach ledges that you used to be able to reach anymore, and can find yourself stuck in one place. (Charmy is, of course, not afraid of high jumps or ledges, because of his flying ability. Now, I'm sure that when the game designers made his character, they intended for his small size to be some kind of disadvantage and for him to have not much value other than cuteness. It didn't quite turn out that way. I wonder if they even KNOW that they accidentally made an almost invincible super-character?!) Luckily, it wears off in time.
Change: Turns your partner into whoever is showing on the monitor screen--and it keeps changing. (In fact, it goes all fuzzy and staticky between changes, so it looks as if someone's switching the channel on an old beat-up T.V. or something--nice touch, that.) Again, it temporarily gives you some abilities you didn't have. Now THIS one is useful. Use Mighty's speed to get you past a ticking clock, use Espio's wall-climb to get yourselves up a cliff, and I don't have to explain again how useful Charmy is, do I? ;)
The Bonus Stage has Super Rings, 500-point blocks, normal rings, and all kinds of things to slow down, speed up, interrupt, or otherwise change your free fall down the well, but the only ones of note are the Stage Select and the Combi Catcher which give you more choice over your next partner and/or level you visit. (If you LIKE your current partner and just go zooming straight through the Combi Confiner Room without bothering to change, the Combi Catcher power-up disentegrates and cannot be used again.)
Graphics and Sound:
Knuckles' Chaotix at first glance looks barely better than the later Genesis games, say, Sonic and Knuckles. You may be wondering, "HEY, I thought this was supposed to be 32-bit instead of 16!" Well, it is, but the differences aren't blindingly obvious. It's not like the differences between Sonic 3's IceCap Zone and Sonic Adventure's version of the same place--it's...subtle. You have to watch the entire game and really THINK about it to notice the improvements.
First of all, the fact that the game can handle TWENTY-FIVE levels and five characters each with their own very unique personalities and movements--that alone must take up a good chunk of memory. Also, the backgrounds are always moving and spinning, and are very complex. The grahpics in the Special Zone are bizzarre but good. The monitor boxes don't just sit there like in other games, they are constantly going fuzzy and then coming back in like an old T.V. picture. The bosses are very 3-D looking. (Hyper Mecha Sonic alone will get your approval I think...) And this game likes to make a rather large point of throwing things right into your FACE; having them zoom or spin right into the camera and then back out again. Such as the way you begin a level, with you and your partner rotating around in a circle on the bungee-ring-cord as you slowly settle to the earth. Or my personal favourite special effect--the way the rings explode out in a TRULY 3D pattern when you get hit--flying straight into the camera as well as up, down, left, and right. NOTHING is ever done simply with Chaotix graphics--if it can possibly move, change, fluctuate, or teleport in any way, it always will. The main thing that'll make you think it's more primitive than a normal 32-bit is that it's 2D instead of 3D, and the Playstation, which is the same number of bits, features the 3D platformer Crash Bandicoot, which looks WAY better. But the 32-X was first, and you must also remember it's using the cartridge format instead of discs. There are still some places that look pretty bad--such as any time your character gets huge, or zooms into the camera. He always turns REALLY pixelly when he does that...
Now on to the music. Chaotix music is...well...CHAOTIC! Very few of the songs have recognisable, hum-able tunes; they tend to be joyous, slapdash, wild mixes of different types of noise. Sometimes the end result is pleasant or at least fun to listen to; more often, however, it's a MESS. A catchy mess, but a mess. The themes in this game just don't seem to have any real STRUCTURE to them; the composer seems to have just taken a bunch of notes and beats he/she liked and to have thrown them together completely at random. There are a FEW more memorable, coherent songs: "Door Into Summer", "Electoria", (one of the chaotic ones, actually, but I like it), "Child's Song", "Labyrinth", "Moonrise", and "Speed of Sound" being some of my favourites, but in general Chaotix music is a big happy mess. I didn't like the music for this game at ALL the first time I heard it, in midi form on the internet. I thought, "Geez, what disappointing music for a game I've been so curious about for so long!" But now that I've HEARD the music WITH the levels, in person, I have to admit it's starting to grow on me. It is, indeed, more resonant, layered, and...I dunno..."sparkly" sounding than typical Genesis Sonic music. That's one place where you CAN tell the difference that the 32-X makes. The soundtrack is very techno all the way through, even on the slower songs. Normally I LIKE techno, but most of the music of Knuckles Chaotix sounds as if someone was just having TOO much fun with their brand new synthesizer. Sonic Adventure--or even the Genesis version of 3D Blast--this AIN'T.
Wrap-Up: The Good, the Bad, and the Different.
First of all, the different. Knuckles Chaotix has MANY things to distinguish itself from the average Sonic game. Such as:
1. No extra lives! When you die, all that happens is that you'll have to do that level again--eventually. (The non-linear nature of the game means it might be quite a while before you get back there.) So if you get to 100 or more rings, nothing happens, other than you get to stay in the Bonus or Special Zones longer. The only way to get a "Game Over" is to either just turn your Genesis/32-X off and pull the cartridge out, or choose "Exit" instead of "Play" at the World Entrance.
2. No Star Posts! That's right, in the largish worlds of Knuckles' Chaotix there are ABSOLUTELY NO SAVE POINTS. That means, if you mess up and die on a level, you'll have to redo the entire thing. They don't even let you try again from just before the Boss, if you've gotten that far!
3. NEGATIVE Rings! That's right, you can go BELOW ZERO with your ring count. How? Simple, every time you hit the "A" button it calls your partner, and that makes you loose 10 rings. Do it too often without picking up more rings along the way, and you can easily drop into the negative. -100 will KILL you, same as +100 gives you an extra life...in OTHER games, that is...
4. Teamwork: Unlike the way that Tails, maybe, occasionally, picks up ONE ring for you or kills ONE badnik when you play as Sonic and Tails together in one of the other games, in Chaotix you and your partner are a real TEAM, and your partner REALLY helps you. He picks up TONS of rings, kills badniks regularly, whacks monitors and helps you reach tall ledges. Also your partner adds an extra measure of protection. Them having a shield protects you just as much as if YOU had gotten the shield, since having your partner on the screen is one of the main ways to keep from dying. As long as your partner is with you you can't die, basically, and protection, such as rings or shields, for your partner equals protection for yourself.
5. Non-Linear Levels: I discussed this earlier but it deserves to be mentioned here, as it is very DEFINITELY different!
6. Bungee-Ring To understand how different this makes the play control, you simply MUST try it yourself--it's almost beyond explaining.
7. Time Limit in the Special Zones The other Sonic games didn't make you loose one Ring for every second you were in a Special or Bonus Zone, did they? No, they didn't!
8. Day and Night So far, the only other Sonic game to do this (that I know of) is Sonic Adventure...
THE BAD:
The main problem with this game is that it's too darn EASY! I mean, sure, HyperMechaSonic isn't exactly a pushover, and I have yet to beat all the Special Zones so I guess that to REALLY beat the game, as in, become Super or whatever, is hard. But I am a very very BAD player--I can't even beat Sonic 2! Heck, I have a hard time with the FIRST level on Sonic Adventure!--and yet I managed to clear all five Zones entirely in a matter of THREE DAYS. And no, that wasn't while playing constantly! The traditional Sonic-game perils of drowning, crushing, and falling off a cliff were completely absent from this game. It all had the feeling of running around inside a holodeck with the safeties on--no REAL danger anywhere.
Also, the levels just didn't seem to be specific enough to what their themes were supposed to be. Botanic Base, one of my favourites, had plants and stuff in the BACKGROUND, but they hardly ever came into actual PLAY--the stuff you jumped around on was usually normal flat platforms and high-tech teleporters. Compare this to the toadstools you can bounce off of in the Mushroom Hill Zone or the vine rope-swings in Angel Island. It just wasn't IMMERSIVE enough. And all the levels had similar problems: Techno Tower was way too repetitive, with all those green transparent glass floors...Marina Madness took place down at the docks and yet NEVER got you wet, Speed Slider was the ONLY actual CARNIVAL-ish looking level in an entire place called, supposedly, "Carnival Island" and yet the stuff that made it look like that was just, again, decoration. Whatever happened to bouncing off balloons or spinning on a circus barrel?
The game's biggest strengths are also its biggest weaknesses--the fact that it's meant to be non-linear means that there is no feeling of progressing, of going from The Safe Place to The Mean Place. The levels are all about the same difficulty as each other and there is really no one spot where the music starts getting more intense and sinister, to freak you out. It's all about the same level of easiness. Amazing Arena bugs me somewhat, but I STILL managed to conquer it along with all the others in three days...
THE GOOD:
To wrap up this review on a positive note, I will now list all the things that are GOOD about Knuckles' Chaotix. Mainly, that, again, it's DIFFERENT! It's non-linear, it has a bunch of characters to choose from and none of them are your typical furry, it has wacky and extremely FUNNY gameplay, it's colourful, it's pretty, the music is catchy--it's just...FUN. Not a big challenge, but fun. The game designers did TRY to make it harder by putting in the things like negative rings, no star posts, and making you loose one ring for every second you're in the Special and Bonus Zones--not to mention the Special Zone is guaranteed to make you dizzy as it is! The characters are all very individual, and you get a real feeling of personality from watching their animations. AND it deserves some credit for introducing nighttime play and the ability to play as (or actually, WITH, but same diff) one of Robotnik's robots--four years BEFORE Sonic Adventure!
The end verdict? Knuckles' Chaotix may not be a triumph of video game design, but it's a fun, different, and entertaining little game--and RARE. If you are any kind of a Sonic fan, pick it up before it becomes any rarer. It's definitely a worthy addition to your collection. Not perfect, but worthy.
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curious tourists have finally waded all the way through Chaos Theory T. Echidna's lengthy review of "Knuckles Chaotix"--and then realised that it would have been FASTER to have played the entire game themselves!