Sonic Dreams

Sonic Dreams
Creator	Bluesilver
Genre	Platformer, Adventure
Modes	Single Player Adventure Multiplayer Mode (1-6)
Platform(s)	Playstation 3, Xbox 360
Media	Blu-ray Disc (PS3) DVD-DL (Xbox 360)

Sonic Dreams is a Sonic game released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It is a game based heavily on the format of Sonic Adventure and Sonic 06; as it has a much larger focus on plot and features multiple, inter-winding story lines.

In addition to bringing back the multiple character gameplay that had been missing since Sonic 06, Sonic Dreams also introduced the Dream Shift, a mechanic that allows Sonic to alter certain geographical elements of levels, among other things.

It marks the first appearance of Sonata the Wolf and Aria the Hawk.

Plot

Dr Eggman has created a device which allows him to harvest the energy of dreams and use it to power the Dimension Cannon, a weapon with the power to manipulate the universe. While Sonic embarks on his usual quest to put a stop to Eggmans schemes, Tails defends the city from Eggmans attacks alone, Knuckles and Sonata embark on a quest to find the Chaos Emeralds and prevent their adverse reactions to the harvest of dream energy, Blaze attempts to find the reason she has been forced into Sonic's reality and Aria takes revenge on Eggman for harming her brother Jet.

This is Eggman's biggest and most well-prepared plan yet, and he consistently foils the heroes attempts to fight back with a plethora of terrifying mechs, a battle fleet, a flagship with its own on-board robot factory, a monstrous warmech a flotilla and an orbiting superweapon. However, as the tide of battle turns against him, Dr. Eggman falls from respectably mad scientist to a homicidal maniac, and it becomes clear that not everyone will emerge from this war alive.

Knuckles the Echidna

Knuckles is investigating Chaos Energy coming from the dungeons of the Radiant Bastion. He is ambushed by the Chaos Knight and escapes the Château as a large section of it burns. He chases the knight back to Season Ruins, where he and Sonata fight it together. Knuckles pursues Dr. Eggman to Frosty Bunker, where he learns of Eggmans experiments with Dream Energy, and how the Chaos Emeralds seem to have a sort of pacifying effect on the Dream Energy. Thus he head out on a quest to find the Chaos Emeralds.

In Twilight Hill, the place where he considers most likely to have a Chaos Emerald, Knuckles finds an old notebook detailing an explorers journey into the Sunken Palace, and follows the notes to a Chaos Emerald, meeting with Sonic and encountering the Egg Shark on the way. Together, they chase the Egg Dreadnaught to Inferno Canyon.

Aria the Hawk

Aria's story begins in Scrap Cauldron, fighting against the Chaos Symphony to obtain an Egg Walker to help her find her brother Jet, who's being held somewhere by Eggman as insurance to stop Aria from killing him for an unspecified incident. Following her escape from the factory on the Egg Dreadnought, she encounters Sonic, and fights him after trying to stop her from going on a mindless rampage.

Sonic manages to calm Aria down, and together they plan an assault on Dr. Eggman's base in Mirage Ocean to find more information on Jet's whereabouts and to sabotage Eggmans production line. When the two defeat the Egg Antlion, Sonic chases Dr. Eggman back to Season Ruins, while Aria continues into the pyramid, eventually getting captured by Egg Fighters.

Aria is eventually rescued from the tombs by Sonata, and learns Jet is being held in the Horror Complex. Aria teleports in and rescues Jet from the bowels of the facility. She then continues to the Lunatic Gate with a goal of destroying everything in sight. Having practically destroyed the base in fury, Aria is confronted by Dr Eggman, now in a murderous rage from his recent string of defeats. They battle each other in the Egg Walkers, with Aria coming out on top. Aria comes close to killing Dr. Eggman as he begs for mercy, but finally decides to abandon him on wrecked base.

Last Story

Starting just under a week after the fall of the Egg Colossus, the 6 heroes are invited to a celebration in Eternity Park. As they approach the island by boat, Sonata, Sonic and Blaze discuss how obvious it is that something is wrong, and their suspicions are proved right when the group are confronted by Dr. Eggman standing alone in the park reception.

He calmly explains that he has rigged the park with explosives, and will blow up the entire island with a tiny detonator in his hand. The group note that Eggman will kill himself in the process, though he coldly explains that he doesn't care any more, and that the only thing that is important is their deaths. An aura of Dream energy spreads out from and engulfs Eggman as he starts to laugh menacingly, transforming him into a warped monster. Sonic and friends are sucked into a twisting dream world where they experience a disjointed mash of previous experiences, before defeating the monster using their super forms. The dream world vanishes and the group are deposited back in the Eternity Park lobby, though Eggman is nowhere to be found.

Gameplay

Sonic The Hedgehog

As the main character of the series, Sonic has the most stages of all the characters in the game. He largely keeps the control scheme introduced in Sonic Unleashed: having access to the Sonic Boost, in addition to the homing attack, light dash, drift and stomp. In addition to his normal skill set, Sonic has access to the Dream Shift, a power accidentally granted to him by Dr Eggman near the start of the game. This is upgraded multiple times throughout his story, and has the potential to reshape parts of levels, open up hidden paths, and improve Sonic's other abilities.

While there are still 2D sections in his levels, Sonic's game play is more 3D in the vein of the Adventure era games, and allows for more exploration that Sonic's more recent outings. Sonics game play could best be described as a blend of the best things about the Dreamcast and Modern era.

Miles "Tails" Prower

File:Tails gen.jpg

Tails controls almost exactly how he did in the original Sonic Adventure, being able to fly around stages at high speeds. Unlike Adventure, however, his levels are not a race against Sonic or Eggman, and are instead just complete action stages. In terms of offensive capabilities, Tails is able to use his tails to swipe at enemies and later gets the ability to lay traps and throw electric bombs at enemies.

Two of Tails levels have segments where he pilots the Tornado in a similar fashion to the Sky Chase levels from Sonic Adventure and Tornado Defence from Unleashed.

Knuckles the Echidna

Knuckles can glide, climb walls and dig, again similar to how he controls in Sonic Adventure. However, unlike in Adventure, his gameplay does not revolve around hunting for pieces of the Master Emerald, or anything for that matter. Instead, his levels are similar to Tails in the sense that they embody the more platform-heavy side of the Sonic series, though his abilities lend themselves more to a more complex level design, compared to Tails high-speed platforming.

Although it is no longer the focus of his stages, Knuckles will still have to dig to find certain items at times. Once he unlocks the digging upgrade, Knuckles can drill into certain surfaces similar to the drill wisp from Sonic Colours, opening a host of underground areas. Exploration will also still be a strong theme in his stages, as many multiple routes will allow Knuckles to reach the goal.

Sonata the Wolf

In stages, Sonata is played almost exclusively in 2D, and controls almost identically to the classic games of the Genesis era. Like Blaze, Sonata has a lot of abilities available to her, which are unlocked by playing through mission mode. These include a hovering spin, a music-based projectile attack, and two different double jumps. She can also obtain boosts in her ordinary skillset, such as a more powerful spin dash, or better jumps.

Blaze the Cat

While Blaze controlled identically to Sonic in the Rush series, her playstyle is similar only on the most basic levels. While she is still a fast character, Blaze is still slightly slower than Sonic. Blaze's levels are designed around her acrobatic and pyrokinetic abilities, which she uses for precision platforming and performing complex manoeuvres in mid-air. Her levels all have an element of puzzle solving to them.

She keeps the trick actions from Sonic Rush, the Axel Tornado and Jump Step, which she uses to fly around landscapes with ease and access areas that other characters would find difficult. She can also use the Burst Hover to traverse large gaps in mid air.

She is the most difficult to control of the characters, but also one of the more open-ended ones. Her skills are heavily customisable; ranging from allowing her to stay in mid-air for longer, perform additional jumps and perform the Fire Claw attack. These moves are acquired by collecting the Sol Emeralds. All of her different abilities allow her to explore her levels and complete puzzles in many varying ways.

Aria the Hawk

Armed with a version of the Egg Mobile, Aria play style is similar to the Tails/Eggman stages in Sonic Adventure 2: locking onto and shooting any enemies who dare to get in her way. Aria is not confined to the Egg Mobile, however, and can dismount the vehicle at almost any time to move more freely. Outside of the Egg Mobile, Aria can fly like Tails, but covers more vertical distance than horizontal. She can also generate psychokinetic blasts to attack enemies and slash through enemies by spinning straight through them.

Side Characters

While most side characters not part of the main six stick to assisting the player, there are sections where they get an opportunity to shine. Unlike the main characters, their movepool is nowhere near as expansive.

Cream can fly like Tails, though she can cover more horizontal distance, at the cost of gaining less altitude. She can attack using Cheese, who will home in to a nearby enemy or circle around Cream.

Stages

Action Stages

• Twilight Hill
• Urban Jungle
• Mirage Ocean
• Frosty Bunker
• Eternity Park
• Radiant Bastion
• Sunken Palace
• Inferno Canyon
• Egg Battery
• Scrap Cauldron
• Tempest Forest
• Horror Complex
• Mysterious Vestige
• Havoc Garden
• Crazy Engine
• Lunatic Gate
• Dreamland

Hub Stages

• Vectopolis
• Season Ruins
• Egg Bunker
• Eternal Forest

Bosses

• Egg Keeper - fought in Twilight Hill and Tempest Forest
• Egg Hydra - fought on the Egg Dreadnought and in Egg Battery
• Egg Antlion - fought in Mirage Ocean
• Egg Carousel - fought in Eternity Park
• Chaos Gunner - fought on the Egg Battery
• Egg Shark - fought in Sunken Palace
• Robot Legion - fought in lots of levels.
• Chaos Snowman - fought in Frosty Bunker
• Chaos Symphony - fought in Scrap Cauldron, Lunatic Gate, Vectopolis and Mysterious Vestige
• Chaos Knight - fought in Radiant Bastion and Season Ruins
• Chaos Tree - fought in Tempest Forest
• Egg Serpent - fought in Crazy Engine
• The Mainframe - fought in the Horror Complex
• Egg Colossus - fought in Havoc Garden
• Dr. Eggman - fought in Lunatic Gate
• Serendipity - fought in Dreamland

Mission Stages

Most levels are only encountered during the story by three of the six characters; the exceptions being Tempest Forest and Dreamland. However, all characters have access to all seventeen action stages in Mission Mode. The Mission Mode hub has a similar appearance to the White World from Sonic Generations, with representations of each level being separated by a white void. All of the characters can be controlled in these voids, though all of the missions for a level can be accessed by any character.

There are 18 missions in every level, 3 for each character. Different kinds of missions include using the assistance of another character to reach the goal, using a characters own abilities and limitations to reach the goal of another characters level (e.g. Aria in Blaze's Radiant Bastion), or beating variations of stages under certain conditions. For characters without a story level in particular, Mission stages may be entirely new stages, but many are modifications of existing ones.

Trivia

• Before Aria the Hawk was introduced, the role was originally filled by Silver the Hedgehog and later by Shadow the Hedgehog and finally Rouge the Bat. All three characters were reduced to the supporting cast as Aria's play style was deemed to be too different.
• Similarly, Blaze replaced Amy Rose as "acrobatic" character as she was thought to be more interesting to play as.