Endless Runner Meets the Blue Blur: Sonic Dash 2: Sonic Boom Review

Player(s): 1
Platforms: Android, iOS

In case you’ve been in a cave for the last decade or so and don’t own a smartphone, you’re likely aware of the endless runner genre of game. Sonic Dash 2: Sonic Boom is a take on this genre with a Sonic coat of paint.

As expected, upgrades get expensive fast.

An endless runner game is a game where your character keeps running on his own forever, and you swipe to change lanes, avoiding obstacles and surviving as long as possible to get the highest possible score. Sonic Dash 2, is a sequel that keeps the core gameplay largely the same, but streamlines a lot of features in order to create a more satisfying experience. The game also got a complete makeover in this sequel, basing itself around the characters and themes of the Sonic Boom television series and games that were meant to inject new life into the franchise. You may love or you may hate the character designs, but the core of each character is the same as always. Not that that’s important here, since there is hardly any talking and there is no story at all for that characterization to be seen.

That distinct Sonic feel is clear from the start.

An endless runner game is a game where your character keeps running on his own forever, and you swipe to change lanes, avoiding obstacles and surviving as long as possible to get the highest possible score. Sonic Dash 2, is a sequel that keeps the core gameplay largely the same, but streamlines a lot of features in order to create a more satisfying experience. The game also got a complete makeover in this sequel, basing itself around the characters and themes of the Sonic Boom television series and games that were meant to inject new life into the franchise. You may love or you may hate the character designs, but the core of each character is the same as always. Not that that’s important here, since there is hardly any talking and there is no story atThe objective is quite simple: keep going until you lose. On top of the abilities of an endless runner game (change lane, jump and spin which equates to sliding), there are some features that make this one feel very much like Sonic. You collect rings as currency, which are used as upgrades, and get red rings for special high-tier upgrades and unlocks. You will see very familiar enemies, the environment has a totally Sonic feel to it and the sound effects are as authentic as ever. As you progress, sliding into enemies to defeat them, jumping over obstacles and weaving through the course, you’ll run into some item boxes as well. You can get the standard shield which will protect you from one hit (which only lasts a few seconds, which makes it too short to be useful) or the electric shield which merely pulls rings towards you for a short time. You can enter a brief special mode where you use the device’s gyroscope to tilt your way into rings and orbs (orbs fill up a meter that allows you to become invincible for a short time) or you can hit a spring to bounce up into the sky and grind on rails for some quick loot. all for that characterization to be seen.

Being able to change during area transitions is great.

One of the more welcome features is the banking feature. Periodically through a course, you can choose to enter a cave where your currently held coins will be ‘banked’ that way you don’t lose them if you run into an enemy accidentally. As you get farther and farther into a course things will get more and more complex, offering plenty challenge for the player.

BOOM!

In order to add a level of variety, you are allowed to have an interchangeable party of three characters, each with his/her own special abilities. Depending on what goal you are trying to accomplish on your next run, each character has their own immense value. The downside to this is that unless you spend real money on the game, it’ll likely take you a while to get more than two characters to use. Though there are sometimes special events you can participate in to unlock characters, these are only playable if you hold enough tickets to be able to do enough event runs. I recently unlocked Tails in an event that took me about 8 runs through the event, which used up almost all the tickets I’ve acquired since I first started playing about a year ago. Granted, I play extremely casually, so a player who is more into it will likely have more resources than me. You also get Sprites as you play (a mix between Wisps and Chao) which will give you further abilities or bonuses. The characters and many of the sprites can be upgraded with your resources, further enhancing their abilities and giving you a better chance at high scores or simply getting more resources.

I always had sprites to use.

Sonic Dash 2 has a standard free to play ecosystem. You slowly level up overtime, giving you better scores, and you can slowly upgrade or unlock characters as you play more and more. I’ve consistently played the game once or twice a week for a year, and while that minimal amount of playing didn’t give me a lot of upgrades and unlocks, I never felt the need to spend any money and always got enjoyment out of the game. You can buy red rings with money, which you can then exchange for rings, depending on what resource you need for your upgrades.

Robotnik always has to show his mug at the beginning.

The biggest complaint I have about this game is the invasive ads. During most of the game’s lifetime, the only time you’d really see an ad is if you chose to see it. You are allowed one free revive per run if you watch a 20-40 second ad. It was a great concept, that has recently become marred by ads also popping up at random before or after a run. To top it off, since the more invasive ad system has been implemented, I’ve run into fairly common glitches (maybe once every ten runs) where the run will freeze if I try to watch an ad for a free revive, forcing me to exit into the main menu and lose any progress. What’s even more irritating is that this has only happened to me during events. This means event progress from that run is lost and my hard earned ticket I redeemed to be able to do that run is gone, with nothing to show for it. Thankfully I haven’t noticed this glitch outside of events, but after working extra hard to try and unlock Shadow in an event to have this happen on my last ticket and the last run I needed to get him, I officially gave up on the event mode. This is an extremely frustrating glitch, which I’m sure will be ironed out by the time this review is published, but is very detrimental to the experience if you’re trying to run events. On the bright side, you can disable the intrusive ads permanently by making any purchase (the cheapest being $1.99).

Rails function as a nice break between difficult sequences.

As you can see, the game, at its core, isn’t very special as an endless runner, and contains many of the standard free to play mechanisms that are standard now in mobile games. I do commend them on making the f2p features non-intrusive, and as a fan of Sonic having a Sonic themed runner definitely kept me playing longer than I normally would have in a game like this. Despite there only being 6 characters to pick from currently (Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Sticks and Shadow), there’s plenty to work towards in the game that could easily keep you playing for a while. Each character can be upgraded to level 15, you can go up to level 100, and there are many sprite upgrades to deal with, sprite slots to unlock and event rankings to climb. I can’t speak for the iOS version since I haven’t played it, but the Android version also has 20 achievements to unlock through the Google Games system.

Gotta get those dailies done!

Sonic Dash 2 is essentially like any other runner game, and does very little to make itself unique. Still, if you’re a Sonic fan like me, the Sonic theme might be the only thing you need to decide to stick with this one for a while. I’m retiring from the game after playing for a year, which is pretty good for a game in a painfully repetitive genre like this. If the game had a little more variety it’d be great, but as it stands it’s merely decent overall. But don’t take my word for it! Download it and try it yourself.

- Teepu