Parents' Guide to Freedom Planet

If it's true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then there's a certain speedy blue hedgehog who's feeling quite flattered right about now with this action game. Freedom Planet certainly shares a lot with the original 16-bit Sonic the Hedgehog games. Anthropomorphic characters? Check. A super-fast main hero teamed up with a slower, stronger hero who can climb up some walls? Check, and double-check. The list goes on and on. In fact, squint your eyes just enough and you'd be forgiven for thinking you're playing a missing, gender-swapped, Sonic spin-off found in some hidden corner of the Sega archives. But open your eyes a bit and you start to see the frayed threads around the edges.

Freedom Planet is easy to pick up and play, just like the retro games it emulates. Run. Jump. Attack. All the moves are responsive and simple to execute. The stages all take advantage of the characters' abilities, whether it's Lilac bouncing off the walls like a pinball or Carol racing across the ceiling on her motorcycle. From a purely mechanical standpoint, the game is nearly flawless. The problem is you never feel attached to the characters or the story in any way. The dialogue and voice acting make a cheesy late-night B-movie sound like Shakespeare by comparison. And with so much of the Sonic DNA showing, but not the pedigree of being an actual Sonic title, the game ends up feeling less like an homage and more like a cheap knockoff.