Imagine a peaceful world full of cute woodland creatures minding their own business, When suddenly a menacing egg-shaped human captures them and turns them into his mindless minions. Who is the one to try and defend these helpless critters. None other than the blue blur himself Sonic The Hedgehog.  

Together with his new sidekick Miles “Tails” Prower they must make their way through several different environments, including such places as a chemical plant, A gigantic casino and even a giant space station. To try and fulfill their mission to stop the Evil Ivor Robotnik and to save their friends!

Sonic and Tails have a total of 11 Zones to try and navigate through, These Zones are as follows
Emerald Hill Zone- 2 Acts
Chemical Plant Zone – 2 Acts
Aquatic Ruin Zone - 2 Acts
Casino Night Zone – 2 Acts
Hill Top Zone – 2 Acts
Mystic Cave Zone – 2 Acts
Oil Ocean Zone – 2 Acts
Metropolis Zone – 3 Acts
Sky Chase Zone – 1 Act
Wing Fortress Zone – 1 Act
Death Egg Zone –  1 Act

The stages slowly increase in difficulty as you become more accustomed to the mechanics of the game and the scale that the difficulty increases by is fair, There is no sudden spike in difficulty either. So people who fail to beat the game on a first sitting will easily be able to pick it up again without feeling like they have been cheated.

The level design is also very solid, There are multiple pathways in each act. Some which can prove more tricky than others. There are also routes that people who have played Sonic 2 for years have not noticed such as the passage in Chemical Plant Act 2, That skips the water escape section and leads you straight next to the boss fight with
invincibility.

The graphics for this game are solid and are very visually entertaining to look at, Sonic and Tails easily stand out all the time, regardless of what act you are playing which is highly important in such a fast paced 2D platformer. Everything is easy to spot when moving at such a fast pace, Enemies don't blend into the background, Springs and spikes are easy to see and most importantly the screen is able to keep up with you so you don't blindly fall into a giant pit!

The music for Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is amazing. All the songs are instantly recognizable and really set the mood for the zone you are in.  For example Mystic Cave has a creepy vibe. Sonic games are usually well known for their solid music and this is no exception,

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is a game that if you are familiar with can be completed in about 1-2 hours. So it is a game that you can pick up and complete within a single sitting. Unfortunately the game does not have a save feature, but as the game isn't that long it isn't such a huge hindrance.

Besides completing the game normally you can also try to obtain the 7 Chaos Emeralds from special stages so that you can become Super Sonic.

The special stage is essentially a half pipe that you run down and try to collect as many rings as possible. There is only two difficulties when trying to compete/complete a special stage and that is Not being able to move effectively enough to collect enough rings or Hitting bombs which reduces your total ring count by 10.

Super Sonic turns a bright yellow and is invincible (except instant kill stage hazards such as crushers and pits) He also moves faster and jumps higher than regular Sonic making  him capable of beating stages a lot more easily and quicker too. The only thing to be aware of is that you need to get 50 rings before you can become Super Sonic (after collecting the emeralds)

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is not a very difficult game at all. Most first timers will easily make it pass the opening stages, and may struggle on final 2 stages where the platforming and bosses become a challenge. Especially Death Egg zone where you have to fight two bosses with no rings. Basically meaning that if you get hit once you die. Luckily lives are very easy to obtain in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, You can find many scattered among the levels, You get them from collecting 100 rings total as well. You can also get continues by either completing Special Stages or by completing an act and getting a bonus of over 10,000 points. The bonus is decided by how long it took you to beat the act and the amount of rings you had when finishing the act.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Also has multiplayer capabilities. You can either get a second player to control Tails in Single player. Or you can compete against friends to prove who is better on 4 stages.  The stages are as follows.
Emerald Hill Zone
Casino Night Zone
Mystic Cave Zone
Special Stage

Each act will be judge on 5 factors to decide who wins that particular act they are
Score  - Who scored the most points during the level
Time – Who completed the level the quickest
Ring – Who finished the level with the most rings
Total Ring – Who collected the most rings in total
Item Box – Who broke open the most item boxes

Each zone is best out of 3. With the 3rd stage Being a special stage zone. During these stages your objective is to have more rings than your opponent at each checkpoint. The trick to these Zones is getting your character in front of your rivals by jumping over them. This can also happened when the player in front hits a bomb.

Finally Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is one of those games that a lot of people have strong nostalgic feelings for (myself included)  as it was one of the most popular Sega Genesis games. Despite not being a launch title Sonic 2 sold over 6,000,000 copies and was the second highest selling game for the Genesis with only it's prequel Sonic the Hedgehog selling more.

Would I recommend this game to new players, Yes I would. I feel that anybody that has not played Sonic 2 should give it a try.  It's easy to pick up, beautiful to look at and won't take long to complete  either!

This was a solid review, the only things I really noticed was at a few parts it seemed a little bit more like a guide than a review with you talking about how to best beat the stages. And you actually listing all the name of the stages seemed kind of pointless.

It also seemed a little bit cluttered, somehow dividing it into sections could help with that, either just going with the site categories or doing it your own way.

Still was an entertaining read and a very solid first attempt at a feature length review, especially when just doing it out of boredom xD

Nice job. I thought it was a decent review overall. Although I, like Zlinqx thought it jumped around a little from being a Review to a little bit of a guide and back again. This is only a couple paragraphs where you talk about being invincible and how to beat the level and whatnot. So not the end of the world.

As far as Sonic 2 goes, it's a great game but not among my top 10 or so Genesis games.

Jordanv78 :
Zlinqx : Yeah I understand the comments you both made. Honestly speaking I see so many "reviews" that follow the same formula so I wanted to do something different if that makes sense... I just wanted it to be more in depth than others I had read before.. Where they use generic statements in pretty much every paragraph... I wanted to show that I actually had knowledge on the game and that my review of it was fair as well. 

Also there is a structure it's just not laid out with titles...

Introduction
Gameplay
Game Design
Graphics 
Sound
Longevity
Unlockables
Features
Sales...

I will however revert back to the "vizzed" system though. I do agree it's probably far too informative for a review.. This is why I stuck to writing first impressions lol

Either way thanks for the advice.. It may seem as I'm ignoring your feedback and branding it wrong.. But I'm not. The next review will be different.. And finally thanks for actually reading it... 

sonicmcmuffin : No problem, I definietly enjoyed it. And I see that but having a label before each section may make it easier for the reader if they want to jump to a specific part of the review.

I like that you put effort into it and not take the easy route and try to make it differ from the standard format, unlike a lot of other people who just write reviews for the TdV and dance around the subject to make review seem longer than it really is...

sonicmcmuffin : I don't want you to feel like you have to follow the structure that everyone else does, laying things out in categories and whatnot, I just thought you went on a couple small tangents talking about how to beat certain parts of the game, rather than talking about the merits of the game, but that's just my opinion.

I encourage you to do your own things with regards to reviews though.

He may be called Eggman, but IVO Robotnik does NOT look like an egg. Get new glasses man

An although I disagree with your assessment of the game - I was never able to get through Chemical Plant without some help - you worded it in a nice manner. You even gave more details of the 2-player option than I did; I guess it was more important to you .

Little suggestion: put technical stuff (like the number of copies sold) in the introduction rather than at the end.