Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice is releasing today on the Nintendo 3DS and many review released today. Thanks to NeoGaf member Nirolak, the reviews are all rounded up in one nice neat spot. While it is mixed (currently as of this writing averaging at 67% on Metacritic) it is a big step up from past Sonic Boom titles Rise of Lyrics (32%) and Shattered Crystal (47%)
While Fire and Ice’s art direction and music are woefully generic, the well-constructed level layouts create a solid arcade-style experience that accomplishes a sense of extraordinary speed while accommodating a reasonable degree of control. Sonic Boom successfully draws from much of what makes the best of classic Sonic game play satisfying, sprinkles in a better-conceived exploratory structure, and remixes it into an intelligent, cohesive, and rewarding package.
Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice is a big step in the right direction for the spinoff series. While it still has quirks, it’s a fun, easy experience that anyone can play. Though I still vastly prefer the classic Sonic games, Fire & Ice is an enjoyable spinoff title that brings some great elements of those games back into the forefront.
Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice is – rather like its predecessor – a solid effort and worth consideration on 3DS. The core campaign blends a variety of styles, with the main stages employing an enjoyable mix of exploration and puzzle solving with moments of satisfying momentum and speed. There are some slightly disappointing downsides, and it’s a game that occasionally feels constrained rather than supported by its source material. Overall, however, it deserves credit for what it does well, and should certainly be tempting to fans of the show and also broader Sonic enthusiasts willing to accept its limitations.
Fire and Ice just isn’t a good game. While its platforming may be mechanically sound, the game just tries to do too much – and fails at most of it. If you’re looking for a return to form for Sonic the Hedgehog, Fire and Ice unfortunately isn’t it.
Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice isn’t the worst Sonic game I’ve ever played. It isn’t terrible. The platforming and sense of speed are here, though just not as fun as you might remember them. The whole affair is rather ugly — which can’t only be blamed on the 3DS, though it doesn’t help — and the game isn’t exactly long at a few hours to complete, if that. Hardcore fans of the series will probably get some enjoyment out of this, but for the full price of $40, it is hard to recommend to anyone else. If you’re desperate for another Sonic game, you could do worse.
Sonic Boom Fire and Ice isn’t a bad game. It is a short one, however. The fact that the game doesn’t have much to offer in terms of content holds the game back quality-wise.
The younger players amongst us should have no trouble picking up and enjoying some Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice. It’s geared toward younger kids, and maybe as a 32-year-old man with nostalgia brain, I want to try something a bit more. It feels short with only a handful of hours to work through each stage, many of the stages feel the same, and while the platforming isn’t bad, it’s like a small piece of candy: It’s gone quickly, no matter how nice it might taste. The game is somewhere between the classic franchise titles and the modern ones, but it holds truer to the originals, and y’know, that’s a good enough start.
GameZone 8.5
While it’s not perfect, the Boom universe character designs and portrayals are divisive, and the story is now more than ever a throwaway construct to move from point A to point B, Sonic Boom: Fire and Ice is definitely a great game. It has the speed and well-placed obstacles one would expect from a Sonic game, and the Fire and Ice mechanic is a nice way of adding an extra measure of skill. The Blue Blur hasn’t been this much fun to control since his 2D heyday. Gotta go fast indeed.
Nintendo Insider 7/10
Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice successfully builds on the lessons that were learned from identifying Shattered Crystal’s faltered mistakes. With flashes of near brilliance, the sense of speed becomes an unrivalled thrill, even if that is best seen in the few Bot Racing stages. Brevity is the game’s pitfall, but we expect some would argue that they would rather have a shorter, more polished adventure than a lacklustre, lengthier experience.