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Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg Review

Chris Leyton

05/11/2003

Is Billy Hatcher the next best thing or will it leave you wanting for Nights2 even more...

Oh dear whatever has happened to my beloved Sonic Team, whilst we never like to involve our personal opinion in reviews at TVG, it must be said that Sonic Team will always hold a special place in this particular reviewerâs heart.

However recent games such as the âSonic Adventureâ series and their obsession with flogging a dead horse has done much to weaken their once mighty image; so itâs been left to âBilly Hatcher and the Giant Eggâ to prove that Naka-san and his team have still got what it takes.

âBilly Hatcherâ certainly maintains the trademark quirkiness of Sonic Team titles, the nonsensical story tells of a strange place named Morning Land where talking chickens rule supreme. When the bright-and-breezy land is thrown into Darkness one day, itâs up to Billy to save the day and rid the Morning Land of the evil crows that bring the darkness.

Thankfully itâs not long into the game before an elder chicken grants Billy a Chicken suit and with it come a range of different powers â“ weâre not making any of this up honest.

The main ability that the suit brings is the ability to pick up eggs that are scattered throughout the landscape, Billy can then roll these around to use as a weapon or an invaluable tool to solving the various puzzles that scatter each location. By simply walking up to an egg Billy will automatically begin to push the egg around, he can then push this towards the enemy and perform a variety of jump attacks with it. This element works nicely, merging âSuper Monkey Ballâ mechanics with more traditional platform aspects; whilst the combat system uses a neat combo system thatâs essentially the same as playing a game of pool â“ get your angles right and youâll be able to spin the egg of multiple opponents for a bigger score.

Defeated opponents leave various fruit items behind, which can be collected by Billy in order for the egg to grow and eventually hatch. Having collected enough fruit icons the egg will begin to flash, allowing Billy to perform a âCock-a-Doodle-Dooâ to hatch the egg. Certain eggs will contain an animal within that will follow Billy around the level and can be used to attack opponents, others contain different hats for Billy to wear granting him new attributes, whilst others yield one-off power ups for Billy to use.

Sonic Team are renown for their work with quirky artificial intelligence, such as the Niightopians that populated the worlds of âNights: Into Dreamsâ or the Chaoâs that appeared in the âSonic Adventureâ series, so itâs a surprise not to see this aspect pushed in âBilly Hatcherâ. When we first took a look at the game we were led to believe that the creatures in the eggs would evolve depending on the different fruit icons that you picked up, however as it stands each particular type of egg will always grant the same type of animal â“ slightly disappointing and not very Sonic Team in our humble opinion.

The level designs have been created to bring the most out of the rolling gameplay mechanic that lurks beneath âBilly Hatcherâ, so you can expect to roll down hills and be sent speeding through loops in a manner very similar to the Sonic titles. Unfortunately controlling an egg is actually quite a tough task, occasionally Billy will just walk away from the egg because youâre pressing in the wrong direction whilst thereâs some dubious issues with collision detection â“ on numerous times weâve lost our eggs and had to go off to find a new one, not the greatest concept for a fun and enjoyable experience.

The game is divided into six different yet generic stages, each with a varying number of goals per stage. Whilst the number of goals changes as you progress through the game, theyâre all fundamentally built on rescuing the captured Chicken Elder first, then scouring the stage for a certain object and finally defeating the stage boss; other challenges require you to wipe out a certain number of enemy creatures, collect a certain amount of coins and racing around levels in a set amount of time. Whilst we applaud Sonic Team for trying out new ideas and concepts in the platform genre, we were a little disappointed by how generic the overall game actually feels.