Sonic Dash
Year: 2013
Rating: E
Time Played: 50+ hours
It’s interesting how most video game franchises that started on consoles have trouble breaking into the mobile gaming sphere. Sonic Dash is probably the most successful because it capitalizes on one cornerstone of mobile gaming: the endless runner. Who better to star in an endless runner game than a character known specifically for running? The problem is that , while the game is fun for a while, it becomes repetitive and stale the further you get into it.
I first started playing this game as Sonic Dash+ on Apple Arcade. This version has no ads, which is perhaps its greatest selling point, as it feels that half my time on the free-to-play version is spent watching ads to get free consumables (rings, red rings, character cards, etc.). And mobile game ads have gotten no better as time goes by. Still, the amount of regular updates the game receives is just frequent enough to keep me playing so I can unlock another new character. Not that any of the characters seem to have a significant difference in how they play.
My biggest qualm (other than the ads, which I get is a requirement for F2P), is that there are hardly any additional levels to unlock once you get through the base set. Sure, it takes some time to obtain the needed gems to unlock everything, but there are so many unique levels from the franchise they could use, and yet they only do the occasional movie tie-in level instead. I appreciate they include remixed versions of the original songs for these levels, but don’t like that they only do so for two of the later levels. Still, there are worse ways to pass the time than playing this game.
A fitting endless runner mobile game that has a lot of the mobile game problems, I give Sonic Dash 3.0 stars out of 5.
