Billy Hatcher and The Giant Egg

[NoFace]

They included the full Saturn version of Nights in Billy Hatcher?

If they had done that, I'm sure you would have seen a lot more people going crazy over the game. With good reason I suppose.

[Kinopio]

Played it for a little more than an hour. I'm not sure how I feel yet.

There is definitely some replay value for those into getting good grades, similar to how it worked in NiGHTS and Sonic Adventure.

[Scourge]

Picked this up today and put a couple of hours into it in single player and multiplayer.

I really didn't know what to expect, so the heart of the gameplay was a pleasant surprise to me. This game has a lot more old-school platforming than I expected, and that to me is a good, good thing. The first level kind of just gets your feet wet letting you figure out your moves and what good the eggs are for you. It's not laid out very complicated, but it's pretty tight in that it does 'train' you in your basics well. The egg rolling is a lot faster than I expected, and so is the egg growing. It's not as though you have to really nurture these things like a tomagochi or something. You run around collecting food like you would coins or rings in a Mario or Sonic, though they are not as plentiful so as to make it somewhat challenging (though not very) to get your egg large enough to hatch as fast as possible. The different types of eggs are pretty much power-ups once you've hatched them, giving you different abilities, though simply rolling over enemies or using your egg in a yo-yo like fashion damages or kills the baddies.

It took me a while to figure out that I had a double-jump of a sort, which I needed in order to jump higher to access a launcher ring I couldn't otherwise reach to get to a higher elevation and open up a door to expand the level. Once that occured, the level was obviously more well designed than I originally thought and some of the true charm of the platforming became apparent. I can also see the potential for some fun puzzles.

Once I got to the second level, it was immediately apparent that Sonic Team did put some good time into level design, as it was almost as if I'd entered a large outdoor pinball machine with semi-old style mine-cart type moving in parts and floating rings similar to the bumpers in Sonic games that propel you through the air in the direction you need to go, ... if you hit them. The second level kicked my ass several times in a row, mostly due to really needing to get my bearings and figure out what I needed to do next. One thing about it, inclines give you a lot of downward momentum when rolling the eggs and you really need to plan ahead. Some inclines are like slides which you are unable to ascend should you miss something on the way down. After dying at the bottom of an incline a bunch of times, I took a break and played some multiplayer with my son.

This is good stuff! We played deathmatch, which is like you'd think it would be, but the weapons you use are based on the eggs you hatch. Most of the weapons you aquire when hatching an egg are partners similar to weird Pokemon-like beings who follow you around with special abilities, such as projectile firing, freezing or bombing large areas. One we ran across that was pretty funny was a bull that you could put into a rage and he'd go ramming everything around him. We also ran across a couple of SEGA franchise characters, the guy from Nights, Knuckles, a Chu, a Chao, all with their own special abilities to help you out. The deathmatch felt exactly as it should, like any other good huntdown and kill match, but with everything based on the game's major premises. Fun was had by all.

With a good multiplayer and a single player mode with a grading system for how well you perform and how fast you get through the level, it looks to me like Billy Hatcher has good replay value. I think fans of Treasure's Wario World will enjoy this game, eventhough it's lighter on beat-em-up and heavier on platforming. It's got the feel of classic gaming and has been really enjoyable thus far. The first boss is a walk in the park, but I doubt the rest will be quite that easy. The camera takes some manual adjusting that doesn't feel natural when you are running full steam ahead with a huge egg in front of you, because you *really* need to see where you're going always since falling off an edge is instant death, but the eggs become transparent and it's not as though you're penalized for slowing down and putting the camera back behind you. It certainly wasn't irritating to me so far. And I haven't noticed any pop-up that is distracting; the levels so far are laid out in a way that doesn't give you visibility that far off and what does get drawn in does so in a smooth, almost natural way. If I gave games scores after 2 1/2 hours play, I'd give it an 8.

--Scourge .

[NoFace]

Very good impressions, really looking forward to tomorrow afternoon now. Thanks for a good read.

I'm pleasantly surprised by how much you all seem to be enjoying the multiplayer. And I'm excited to hear that NiGHTS and Knuckles are in there too.

[Frogacuda]

I have to back up what scourge said. One point of contention though: While the camera [i]does[i] require manual adjustment, you don't have to stop and fuck with it, and I had zero problem adjusting it on the fly in the middle of running around and squashing things. Doing so felt very natrual right from the get-go. Not like Mario Sunshine at all.

[NoFace]

I sometimes feel I'm the only one on Earth that didn't mind Mario Sunshine's camera... in fact I rather liked the level of freedom it allowed for. So if Billy Hatcher is anything like that, but easier, that's cool too.

[Captain Vegetable]

I am very excited about purchasing this.

[sggg]

Scourge: Thanks for the excellent impressions. The game sounds great.

[epmode]

I sometimes feel I'm the only one on Earth that didn't mind Mario Sunshine's camera...

the mario sunshine camera would be great if it could go through walls.

[stormy]

being poor sucks

i want this game. I thought the demo was very clever. It made it seem like there will be a lot of puzzle solving in the game, like trying to figure out which special abilities to use where to get to new areas. I just like the way Billy clutches the egg and rolls around on it. It made me happy.