Sonic Superstars (PC)

I went into Sonic Superstars expecting the usual SEGA hedgehog compromise: one thing done brilliantly, several things done badly, and a gimmick nobody wanted stapled on top. That prediction landed about 70% correctly, which is actually a decent score for this franchise. The thing done brilliantly is the core movement. Developed by Arzest in collaboration with Sonic Team, this is a 2.5D side-scroller built across 12 zones, and the physics feel closer to the Genesis originals than any other modern attempt. Spin-dashing through loops, grinding rails, and bouncing off pinball bumpers all carry the right momentum weight. Critics across the board flagged this as the game's strongest suit, and after spending time with it, the consensus holds. The four playable characters, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy Rose, each have distinct movement options: Knuckles glides and wall-climbs, Amy uses her hammer spin on jumps, and choosing the right character for a second run through a stage genuinely changes how it plays. Collect all seven Chaos Emeralds across the bonus stages and you unlock Emerald Powers, a set of traversal and combat abilities that include cloning yourself, transforming into a water dragon, or triggering a short-range dash. They add an exploration layer that rewards replaying zones rather than just blazing through them. The zone design itself is a mixed bag, but a more interesting one than you might expect. Stages branch heavily, and some routes even push Sonic into the background layer entirely. There is a cyberpunk zone where you temporarily convert into a voxel version of the character and travel through wires, a junkyard level on a ticking countdown timer that forces you to slow down and plan, and a late-game area with zero-gravity sections and a time-reversal gimmick. That variety keeps the campaign from feeling like a Greatest Hits package, even if several zones (sand world, ice world, machinery world) lean hard on familiar Sonic archetypes. The visual presentation is colorful and technically clean, running at a locked smooth framerate on PC without demanding much from the hardware. Here is where things get uncomfortable. The boss fights, almost universally, run too long. Several require more than ten attempts before their patterns click, and the patience they demand clashes badly with the loose, speedy flow the stages build up. It is the single biggest reason the Steam reception sits at a mixed 68%, and that friction is real. The Chaos Emerald powers, while fun, are sometimes underused by the level design itself rather than left to player discovery. And the online Battle Mode, a shallow quasi-battle-royale involving robot avatars and point-scored mini-events, feels like a checkbox from a product planning spreadsheet rather than something designed to be played. Local co-op for up to four players sounds good until you realize the camera follows a single lead player, so anyone lagging behind gets warped forward constantly. Without split-screen, it works better in short bursts than as a full playthrough mode. If Sonic Mania is your benchmark for what a modern 2D Sonic should be, Superstars will feel like a step sideways rather than forward. The raw feel of running is arguably better, but the design confidence and momentum control of Mania's levels are not matched here. If your reference point is Sonic 4 or the post-Colors era of 2.5D entries, Superstars is a clear improvement. Solo players who want well-built zones, multiple replay incentives through character switching and hidden Medals, and the best Sonic movement model outside of the pixel-art entries will find real value here. Everyone else should wait for a sale before committing.

Alex · Scout Team

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