2.5/5 ★ – Protector_Of_Memes's review of Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal.

Trouble has most certainly not kept me running faster. So I've been on a quest, a quest to play as many Sonic games as I can in my lifetime, namely stuff I ended up missing out on prior to 2020, and it's been an interesting ride. I'm actually fairly close to finishing that up, only games left are Shuffle and Free Riders. But today, I figured I'd rise from my grave and talk about the latest Sonic game I've played in this journey, that being 2014's Shattered Crystal. We've all heard the dreadful song and dance that was Rise Of Lyric, I won't be repeating that, but most seem to have forgotten that its companion title on 3DS even exists. Unlike RoL, this game was developed by Sanzaru Games, previously known for Sly Cooper Thieves In Time and the infamous PS2 port of Secret Agent Clank, so their resumé is a bit mixed. How well did they do with their first go at making a Sonic game? Put simply, Shattered Crystal is a game. The plot begins with Amy getting captured by Lyric after making the fatal mistake of taking a phone call with Sonic while she's trying to fight for her life, as Lyric is after the titular Shattered Crystal and wants to use the knowledge in Amy's head to find it, so Sonic and the gang travel across various places and eventually reach Lyric, save Amy, and send him falling to his doom. Shadow also shows up a couple of times, but he ultimately bares no relevance. That's the basic gist of the plot, as beyond that, little reason is given for Lyric looking for the crystal beyond being an evil asshole that wants to take over the world, even with the prequel comic you can view in Sonic's house, less so than RoL where they at least established his anti squishy mentality in a trip to the past, which doesn't make him in any way interesting. Of course, what's a story in this day and age without cutscenes to convey it? SC's cutscenes opt for having character models essentially act like mimes reacting to what the dialogue beneath them is saying. Definitely a step up from Gens 3DS as the models themselves have more variety in their animations and expressions, but it just averages out to ok. The writing for these cutscenes however just makes me roll my eyes, as like with the show, it's aiming to be comedic, but pretty much every attempt at comedy falls flat, at times just being painfully unfunny, such as Knuckles and Sticks treating doing laundry and cleaning rain gutters as the height of evil, or Lyric's response to Amy threatening to kick his butt being "I'm a snake. Snakes don't have butts", and at one point Sonic feels the need to explain his joke about Shadow appearing from the shadows. This certainly isn't on the calibur of Crash Twinsanity, I can tell you that much. On the note of presentation, I should say that the game looks alright. The visuals are fairly solid, packing a good colour palette and a decent amount of detail for a 3DS title, and the models are alright, though I'm not a fan of Knuckles' mouth, it looks like he's storing nuts for the winter. Unfortunately, like with Rise Of Lyric, the OST is extremely unforgettable, to the point where I can only recall two songs, the main theme, and the Worm Tunnel theme, and that's only really because of how many times you end up having to hear it. Shattered Crystal at its core gameplay is a 2D platformer akin to past games, with the characters not having much of a difference between them barring their special abilities. (Cont)