It seems like every Sonic game has to throw in some new character, and this time they introduce Blaze the cat. Now, they've already got a cat character named Big, but I would be more than happy if they replaced him with Blaze. Her ability is more focused on fire, than on Sonic's focus of speed. Instead of jumping into a little ball, she twirls in the air like an ice-skater on fire. She's also from an alternate dimension, and is Sonic's equal. Instead of chaos emeralds she's looking for Sol emeralds, and instead of fighting Robotnik she's battling Eggman Nega. She's a bit of a mysterious character - and it almost looks as though she'll be specific to Sonic Rush. But I wouldn't be surprised if they through her in another Sonic game.

The second and most obvious addition is that you play Sonic Rush on two screens. Initially, you would think that two vertical screens wouldn't be as cool as two horizontal screens since you'd want to see what's ahead of you more than you'd want to see what's above you. But Sonic Team has designed the levels in such a way that it takes great advantage of the dual screens.

For example - Sonic doesn't just stay on the upper screen like on the left. Instead - during certain parts of the level, running straight down a wall will take you to a lower screen, just as bouncing on a spring might throw you into the upper one. It gets pretty crazy when you start dealing with loops that span massive sizes.

What's especially nice about the design of the two screens is that they aren't "invisibly connected". In other words, they make up for the giant bar inbetween the two screens when the DS is open, instead of them being completely connected and expecting you to ignore the fact that they're not actually connected.

This especially shows with screenshots for the game. The one on the right, for instance, shows the correct distance between the two screens, while the screenshot above this text is too close together. Notice how the backround doesn't really line up correctly on the screenshot above? That's because the screenshot was put together incorrectly.

This is also the fastest Sonic game, no doubt. Which is obviously needed because the old Sonic 1 just doesn't feel as fast as it used to. But when I say they made it fast, they really did. It flies by. In fact, it flies by so fast that you just don't feel safe running as fast as you can, because you never know when there will be an enemy sitting just off the screen. But Sonic Team has made up for this problem that occurs in all the Sonic games.

They've introduced the Tension Gauge. See on the left side of most screenshots, the Tension Gauge builds up from destroying enemies and doing tricks. Holding down "Y" or "X" allows you to do a continuous boost, where Sonic pretty much turns into a blue fireball while running. This kills enemies on contact, making you pretty much invincible. It also eliminates the use of the Spin Dash (which is still available anyways).

This is easily the fastest 2D Sonic game yet.

So since you earn boost for killing enemies, and boosting through enemies kills them, you enter into a vicious cycle where you can pretty much boost through the entire level if you do it just right. This makes each level (although already faster than heck) a blazing fast speed that resembles how it felt to play as Super Sonic in past Sonic games. It never feels like cheating though, because you'll never be able to do it on your first run through of each level. Your reaction time just doesn't cut it. Pretty soon it becomes pure level memorization, when to use boost, when to not, where to jump, etc. The boost ends up feeling right at home - and not something out of place. It earns this game so much replay value it's not even funny. We'll get to that later.

There are still Special Stages in which you earn Chaos Emeralds as always, and they're done in the same half-pipe style as the old Sonic 2. But instead of moving Sonic left and right with the D-Pad, you use the touch screen to guide Sonic. It's a really neat idea - and it is especially cool because Sonic moves as fast as you move the pen on the screen. Using the pen gives you an even greater sense of it being a "special stage" and puts more emphasis on it being unique.

The music in this game is the best Sonic music ever. In fact, it's the best handheld music I've ever heard. No doubt about that. The music is upbeat, it's hip, it's stylish, and it's incredibly catchy. It also reminded me quite a bit of music found in Jet Grind Radio (the stylish roller-skating, spray-painting, street gangster game).

When I beat the game and checked the credits for the music, it had, in fact, been entirely created by Hideki Naganuma, who's responsible for the majority of the music in Jet Grind Radio. So turns out I wasn't too far from the truth.

The music hasn't been a selling point for this game - in other words, they haven't mentioned it as a reason you should buy the game, but it feels perfect for Sonic games. It really gives you a perfect sense of the speed, the pulse, and the style of Sonic. It's hard to imagine what Sonic music use to be like after playing this.... Lucky for you - I've included a sample of one of the levels right here for your listening pleasure.

(on a side note - hearing a handheld game system play music with lyrics in it is really impressive. Kind of a sign of the times...)

The boss battles use 3D graphics, but you still walk left and right on a 2D plain. They are a little bit different from standard Robotnik boss battles, but are fun, a little challenging, and a neat twist.

But what makes this game so incredibly fun is the gameplay of the levels itself, and how you get to enjoy them because of the excellent level design and feeling of speed. Just like Sonic's been getting into the "Xtreme Sports" style in his 3D games, they've started incorporating it into Rush as well.

Grind rails and doing little flips through hoops are all fun and easy, but they've also included a "trick" system. Simply pressing right trigger while grinding, or the A and B buttons while soaring through the air gives Sonic sweet little cartwheel and flips. For instance, pressing right trigger three times while grinding allows Sonic to do a handstand on one hand. It's pretty cool looking. The nice thing is that these tricks only make the game more fun, have more style, and they also increase your tension meter.

So if you get really good at it, you can boost through enemies and do tricks while doing it, and it just keeps refilling your boost meter for continuous max speed.

The boss battles are a little slow, but a neat 3D addition to the standard 2D levels.

The reason the replay value for this game is so high is because the game ranks you based on how well you do. So once you beat every level with both Sonic and Blaze, beat the end boss, find all the chaos emeralds, and beat the extra ending, so can still strive to get "S" ranks. These aren't easy, so it requires you to pay attention to the level structure. It grades you based on how quickly you beat the level, how many rings you collected, what your average speed was, and how many tricks you did. It's especially nice because rings actually mean something. On most levels, if you didn't collect 200 rings, you just can't get an "S" rank.

But getting an "S" with Blaze the cat is a whole other story. Blaze doesn't run as fast as Sonic does, and is obviously a slower character. So how can you get good scores when one of the things you're ranked on is how fast you clear a level? If speed is Blaze's weakness to Sonic, then agility is Sonic's weakness to Blaze. The truth is, Blaze is much more capable of getting onto higher platforms because she can boost jump practically four times as high as Sonic can. What this means is that you have to focus on finding alternate short-cut paths that Sonic could never be able to reach. It really gives each character their own unique feel when you play as them.

Aside from trying to get a high score - you can also be involved in Time Attack mode. This is almost a completely different way of playing because now you're not so focused on ring collection or pulling off tricks, because you don't want to waste anytime to get to the end. However, doing a fair amount of tricks is essential to getting lots filler for your tension meter - to get max speed constantly. So there becomes a fine line for doing the bare-minimum of tricks to get the most speed you can so that you don't waste time.

What's even sweeter is that Time Attack automatically puts in ghost races. In other words, you'll be racing against a transparent version of yourself when you cleared the level with the fastest time. That's a lot of fun, and something that's never been in a Sonic game before.

This game rocks - and it really shows off everything that's good about Sonic games. But with all of my luck they'll probably come out with a sequel called Shadow Rush that involves getting hit by anything you touch and focusing on slow level designs as you try to shoot at enemies with guns....

Verdict: A must have Sonic game. The blue hedgehog is back with plenty of style.