10/10's? Are you serious?
I'll start things off on a good note by saying that Sonic CD at least retains all the great aspects of the classic Sonic formula, with improvements in some areas. The enemy design is light years better, all the stages are a good length, your progress is saved by the act, most of the bosses have more to them than simply jumping on them to defeat them, and the game is a lot of fun for the most part. However, the gravy train pretty much ends there, as there's a whole slew of problems that need to be addressed.
The first glaring one is that the item placement in the stages is too random and incomprehensible. Springs are placed all over the maps for no apparent reason, and they just end up bouncing you all over the place when all you want to do is go forward. Sometimes it gets so bad that you'll find yourself holding right on the d-pad while Sonic bounces around like a pinball for 5 minutes until you end up on the ground. There's invisible platforms that disrupt planned falling paths, crevices with shooting enemies, enemies that pop out of nowhere and kill you, and switches that open doors to dead ends. It's just incredibly frustrating, confusing, and unnecessary.
Another problem is that there's too many graphical glitches that screw with you in the middle of a stage. Some levels have invisible holes in the floor that zip you somewhere you didn't plan on going, breakable bricks look exactly the same as unbreakable ones, you can't tell what will kill you and what won't, and the screen won't let you backtrack in certain areas. Also, the framerate drops considerably whenever you get hit and your rings fly everywhere, and you can't collect any of them back for the first second you're flashing. This doesn't sound like a huge problem, but half of them fall through the floor, half of them bounce off the screen, and by the time you're actually allowed to push through the laggy controls to pick up the remains, they're too out of reach. I never got back more than 1 ring after I got hit during a boss fight.
There's also a lot of poor design decisions that disrupt the flow of the game. It's like the only things that differentiate Sonic CD from any of the Genesis titles are things that make it worse. You'll never actually want to use the stupid time travel mechanic in the game as it rarely actually affects what happens. It's just like if every so often I walked over and paused the game for 5 tedious seconds while you were playing. Even if you actually wanted to travel through time, the only time you'll find yourself in a good spot to activate it is when you don't care and it happens by accident. There's no reason why it couldn't just say "Press Start to Time Warp" when you're under a sign. The special stage is retarded too. You'll never figure out how it works unless you read about it on the internet, and your targets act like they dodge you on purpose due to control problems when jumping.
Speaking of jumping, there's more control issues than just that. You'll notice right away that the spin dash isn't the same, as you have to charge it for 2 seconds before dashing, otherwise it just cancels. You'll forget this constantly and it will end up hurting you when you're getting charged by an enemy and it leaves you vulnerable. Finally, if you pause the game and push any button, it restarts the level and sacrifices a life. Why the hell would anyone ever want to do that? I can't tell you how many times it pissed me off when I pressed something by accident after I came back from the washroom. It's without a doubt the stupidest thing I've ever seen in a game; I can't even imagine what they were thinking.
Finally, although the presentation is much better than any of the Genesis titles, every good point has a bad point that goes with it. The intro and conclusion motion videos are sick, but when they're pixilated and at like 1 frame per second you're not gonna wanna watch them more than once. The backgrounds are colorful and vibrant, but they're the same color intensity as the foreground, and it just gives you a seizure when Sonic starts running and bouncing all over the place. The music is fantastic, but the time travel sound effect is incredibly loud and will freak you out. There's no irritating drowning music anymore, but the only underwater effects are on the flowers that spawn on dead enemies. It just looks retarded.
Overall, Sonic CD had the potential to be so much better than it turned out to be. It's a shame, because although all the flaws the game has are minor and could have been fixed easily, they manage to escalate into huge annoyances that bog down the experience considerably. However, there's only so many points you can take off of a classic 2D side-scrolling Sonic, and there's not too many other good games on the Sega CD, so I'd still recommend the game to any CD owner. Just be warned; it's overrated.
- ac