Would you believe that one of the best Sonic games in years doesn’t include a single blue hedgehog? Recently released on Steam, Spark The Electric Jester 3 – a mouthful title – concludes a trilogy of heavily Sonic-inspired platform games from Brazilian solo developer Felipe ‘LakeFeperd’ Daneluz, who made his first breakthrough in game development through Sonic fangames. to make. While I’ve enjoyed the entire trilogy, Spark 3 is the first to go beyond its inspirations and give Sega real competition.
Just as A Hat In Time and Demon Turf take a lot of inspiration from 3D Mario games while doing their own thing, Spark 3 has its own feel and is immediately intuitive after playing 3D Sonic. The first major difference is the combat. Spark spends most of his time running extremely fast and bouncing off smaller enemies, but sometimes slows down to take down bigger enemies in a Devil May Cry-lite battle, building up a combo multiplier that also takes the hit. damage increased. It’s a decent combat engine with a satisfying parrying mechanism, but it can break the flow of some levels. There are some vehicle segments and even a massive mech battle at one point, but for the most part this is a game about extremely fast movement.
Although well known, the movement has its own feel. While the fundamentals are very Sonic-esque (loops, rails to grind, a homing attack that bounces you through smaller enemies), there’s a consistent physics engine at work here. With the right combination of speed boosts and wall jumps, it’s possible to launch Spark through levels at outrageous speeds and into areas that otherwise seem unreachable. You can absolutely do dizzying jumps, which is a wonderfully liberating feeling, and while mastering Spark’s vast moveset (part of which is unlocked with money collected in levels) is mentally demanding, I found it very satisfying to play every extra technique for extra speed, height and power in combat. Just expect to use almost every button on the gamepad.
Up and down and around
The pursuit of mastery is as fundamental here as the fun of speeding through Spark’s brightly colored sci-fi world. Moving from level one to the credits, Spark 3 clocks in at maybe five hours, which isn’t unreasonable for a speed-focused platformer, but you also barely have a chance to explore the environments, including a city under martial law ( crowdsurfing on protesters as a gimmick), an orbital platform, and a colossal desert mining facility, all of which are scenic in their own maximalist way. If you want to see all it has to offer and explore these environments, you can easily double or triple that figure because of the clever way most of the stages are built for replayability.
I can only describe the last hour of Spark 3 as Sonic filtered through Dragon Ball Z via Yoko Taro
While there are a handful of levels that are simply straight point sprints from point to point, most stages of Spark 3 have multiple, mutually exclusive victory conditions, awarding medals for speed, exploration or scoring through combat and collecting bonus items. “Diamond” rankings (especially in the speed category) often require sneaky shortcuts and mastery of motion physics, making a sprint to the end thrilling and surprisingly technical, but it’s the exploration that sets the level design apart for me.
Distant areas that seem to be just bits of background are often alternate paths, filled with battles, surprises, and hidden scout medals. While a first time through a level may seem like the whole experience was on rails, repetition reveals that it’s possible to jump off the rails and run wild whenever you want, and you’ll likely find something interesting in the process. It takes four or five runs through many levels before their full scope becomes apparent. That can take a while, too: the last few levels in particular are dizzying sci-fi megastructures that take forever to traverse, even at blistering speeds.
The sheer scale and variety of the levels makes it all the more impressive that this was a largely solo project. Aside from the soundtrack (which is always great, though not my favorite in the series) and a few art items, this is a one-man show, yet it continues the almost purely linear design of many of Sonic’s larger outings (including Colors, Powers, and Generations). ) to shame.
The ultimate life form?
Being a small indie production, Spark 3 has some rough edges. Mostly minor bugs and typos, but there are some annoyances such as graphics options not saving properly at the time of writing. That’s especially unfortunate, as it looks shockingly good on maximum settings, especially when you can see uninterrupted levels for miles. Most issues have been acknowledged and will likely be patched, but the downside of a one-man studio is that things like this can take a while.
Spark 3’s story can be skipped completely if you just want to go fast, but for better or worse it’s a wild ride. It only makes sense if you’ve played the entire trilogy, but I can only describe the last hour of Spark 3 as Sonic filtered through Dragon Ball Z via Yoko Taro. I could criticize, but I’m still impressed with the dare of his plot twists.
While I’ve seen the credits roll on Spark 3, I’ve barely explored much of the levels, and some of the post-game unlocks have opened up even more options for optimizing speedrun routes, though there doesn’t seem to be much extrinsic reward for mastery . Some of the best times on the standings seem almost impossible, proving that there is a lot more for me to learn. If I let the speedrunning bug bite, I can see myself losing quite a few hours here. If you need to go fast, at least try Spark 3’s hefty demo.
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