Easily one of my favorite games from last year was Sonic Dream Team, developed by Hardlight and released exclusively for Apple Arcade. It ruffled a bunch of feathers at the time because it’s a game that, knowingly or not, feels like it was throwing back to the original era of 3D Sonic games on the Dreamcast, and it featured a number of characters that are fan-favorites but aren’t regularly seen in other games. Putting all that behind a requirement to have Apple Arcade in order to play is the feather-ruffling part, but regardless of how you feel about that Sonic Dream Team is an excellent new 3D Sonic game which is something that’s harder to come by than it might seem. We enjoyed it a lot in our review and chose it as our Game of the Week when it released this past December.
Besides being tied to Apple Arcade, the only other real complaint I’ve seen about Sonic Dream Team is that it’s a little short on content. If you’re just breezing through the game to completion I can see how that’s true, but there is a lot of value in going back to find all the collectibles and whatnot, some of which are extremely well-hidden. There’s also weekly Tails Challenges with leaderboard support, which kind of remixes layouts and challenges from existing levels to give you something new to do each week. It’s fine… but there could be more.
Well, this afternoon, there WILL be more. The first major content update for Sonic Dream Team is arriving as I type this. It will add Time Trials to every level, so you can compete for fastest times online in all the normal campaign levels. It will also feature 8 new boss missions as well as revamped boss fights. Another minor criticism about the original release was overly-easy and kind of boring boss fights, so hopefully this helps in that regard. And finally a ranking system is now implemented into the main campaign levels so you can work on speedrunning the game. Gotta go fast! Look for this new update to go live shortly, if not already by the time you’re reading this.