Recently Aquired: Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 1

My lovely partner bought me the Sonic Hits Collection on Steam, so I spent a good portion of last night indulging in the Sonic games of old (StH, StH2, StH3&Knuckles), as well as having a play of Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 1.

I've only done a zone and a half, but it is really quite excellent. It's very reminiscent of the older games in style and gameplay, with the boss of the first zone being a reference to StH1's Green Hill Zone boss.

My main love of this addition to the series has been the Special Zones. 

I'll admit that I'm not great at the Special Zones in the first place. The only ones I ever got decent(as in, I could complete them) were the ones in StH2, StH3 and StH3 Advance.

The ones in this game are similar to the ones in the first Sonic game. This video shows them all, but you only really need to see the first minute to get the idea. Sonic is being controlled by the player, and the maze rotates around him either clockwise or anti-clockwise, with speedups and slowdowns possible, if certain tiles are hit.

In 4, however, the player is controlling the maze, guiding Sonic around under a fairly tight time limit. I've managed to get 2 Emeralds, with very little time to spare and missed one due to time running out.

It's great! A challenging Sonic game, and not because Sonic doesn't translate brilliantly into 3D, challenging because it's actually designed to be!

Excuse me, I think I need to go play some more...