Eggman Hates Furries (21.1Mb)
Here’s a Sonic The Hedgehog fangame by Oddwarg, with great emphasis on boss fights. I’ve mentioned two excellent games of his before, Madness! HERE and Super Sawman HERE.
Sonic has dreamt that Eggman has destroyed him, before waking up to find Tails at work on his bi-plane. Disaster then strikes, and you're propelled right into a high-speed boss battle with a huge machine. This all happens via a narrative with you landing right in the middle of a boss fight as the game proper starts.
The present and fairly recently released game has some platform elements needing wall jumps and spin-dashes, in between numerous boss fights. You have standard Sonic moves, and there’s a gravity effect activated in different directions, fighting some bosses or on parts of the level. Once you have discovered the bosses’ weakness, it’s down to you to exploit them and defeat each boss. Rather than three stages, it’s made up of one long level interspersed with boss fights. In fact the game starts with you thrown at the first boss, as Eggman has obtained the 7 Chaos Emeralds that grant the owner of all these crystals incredible - if not ultimate - power, and you of course are out to stop him!
“Each boss is original and gigantic, as well as intricately detailed and multi-segmented, ranging from Sonic chasing a drilling robot through a freshly dug tunnel that changes shape and angle as the drill progresses, to Sonic falling at lightning speed down an extremely long canal below the surface trying to outrun a tunnel-crawling death ray laser firing monster, wielding four buzz saw arms. There are some great special effects as well.” Oggwarg’s inventiveness and creativity in programming these bosses and their mechanics is nothing short of remarkable!
Controls are easy. ‘Arrow’ keys to move, ‘Spacebar’ to jump and ‘Tab’ key to show the direction of gravity. There are checkpoints along the way and an on-screen tutorial to get you started. I have to say I found the Intro lengthy, tedious and awkward to navigate, without any means to skip it initially, with much the same for the minigame tutorials that start the dream before the game proper. I wasn't amused at having to jump for rings around a circle, perform several or more spin-dashes (performed without a hitch on the first attempt) without an explanation of having to do a spin-dash at the 'exit', nor having to try to find how to exit the run up walls and jump for a hoop screen with gravity direction changes, etc. It would be much improved if there was a skip tutorials option, or at least more info on how to get through the tutorial minigame screens; and a start the game proper option in the main menu without having to complete all of the tutorial screens! The 'F4' key switches between windowed and full-screen mode.
I need to mention something about Sonic’s ingame mechanics here, as Oddwarg has changed these to suit and tweaked them for best gameplay. Sonic runs along whatever surface he comes into contact with. If you jump against a wall Sonic will run sideways up/down the wall. If you hit a ceiling, Sonic will try to land feet first on the ceiling and Sonic automatically spins whenever he is mid air - which is something of a life saver in most battles! This can give rise to problems as for example if you jump and change direction mid-air, Sonic’s very rapid acceleration might make you under-estimate the jump, and combined with ‘slipperyness’ on landing put you in an awkward situation, or land you right on a boss (either not to be recommended!). But you'll soon get used to the controls and adapt to Sonic's movement modes.
The graphics are nothing other than spectacular, and if the (short) platforming parts aren’t as full of action as you might like, the stunning boss fights more than make up for this. You might get blown away by the graphics in the boss fights or, naturally, by the bosses themselves! The music has new tunes as well as music cloned from many popular video games, all seamlessly inter-twined. You might possibly just find some animations/cutscenes/voice-overs a little below par, but overall it’s a super blast, with the boss battles increasing considerably in difficulty - as in getting mega difficult to overcome! And oh those graphics!
The last boss will surprise you and just as you think you’ve got him defeated, there’s a twist that makes the game by no means over! And some good further surprises when you do finally defeat the last boss!
If you are a keen Sonic fan you might find the portrayal of Sonic and Tails inter-actions and inter-relationships a little disturbing, but nothing to freak you out too much! Except maybe for the closing scenes of the game!
It’s a wild, blisteringly fast, intense and furious boss-rush of a game and is very most heartily recommended - provided you've the patience to get through the intro and the tutorials!
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTTXrdG6o_M
You can find walkthroughs on YouTube too starting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUfhTEzmstw&feature=related.
