Socket

Sock it to me joke goes here

Earlier today I had an exceedingly long travel day.  To pass the time I decided to play a Genesis game at random and decided on Socket.  I had never played nor even heard of Socket before, which is kind of surprising.  It's one of those games that is really good in a lot of ways but has a few fatal flaws that kept it from ever being more than a novelty.  I enjoyed it enough to play it through my entire flight, but would I have played it otherwise?  Let's find out, friends!

So Socket is Sonic in a lot of ways.  I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, literally, but look at the screenshot down there.  It was clearly modeled after Sonic.  Not only is Socket all about platforming in which you gotta go fast, but he's also a robot that destroys enemy with electricity!  The similarities are truly endless.  Jokes aside, the two games do play very much like one another, though Socket has enough differences to stand on its own.  While you do spend a lot of time going very fast and jumping very high, there's also an attack button and an absolute ton of...modes, I guess?  I'll elaborate on that more.

Guess the influence and win nothing.

The thing that stands out most is that, as a robot, Socket's energy is constantly draining.  I never timed it but I'd estimate he can live for about two minutes before you're dead.  Getting damaged takes off a chunk as well, so it's a real race against the clock.  Only it's really not, at all.  Two minutes is a very long time in a game like Socket, boasting somewhere in the realm of a hundred trillion levels.  You could probably finish each level in that amount of time with some practice.  There are also lightning bolt icons scattered all over the place which act as refills.  One bolt isn't going to help you much, but like Sonic's rings they tend to come in groups and there are a whole lot of them in each level.  In my two hours of play I only ran out of energy twice, once because I kept slamming headfirst into enemies during a level I very much did not want to be in anymore.

Remember when I mentioned the game's multitude of modes?  Wasn't that great?  Oh the memories.  Anyway, the bulk of the game is in three different stage types: High speed, athletic, and labyrinth.  High speed areas are just what they sound like.  You can expect to finish them very quickly without ever really figuring out what you're doing.  They mostly exist to be fun, and they are.  Athletic areas are more your standard Sonic levels, mixing high octane excitement and platforming.  Labyrinths are horrible mazes that will try your patience and are not fun at all.  Thankfully there aren't too many labyrinths, so on the whole the game is enjoyable.

Socket moves realistically underwater.  This is not a good thing.

Within the main stages there are also these mirroresque things that warp you to microlevels within levels.  Often these are boss battles, each with their own gimmick, but there are also two minigame-style levels that you have to pass in order to emerge from the corresponding mirror later in the level.  One of these is just a platform area where you go left to right jumping on Mega Man-style appearing blocks.  It's not particularly difficult or interesting.  What is particularly difficult and interesting is the other type of mirror level.  You start off at the bottom with an array of six switches.  Jumping on a switch activates an orange snakelike chain that travels up a clear chain that extends to the top.  I don't know what it's called, but it's that old trope where it automatically turns whenever it can but never goes backwards.  You know.  Anyway, the orange chain you can stand on, the clear chain you cannot, so you have to keep jumping to stay on top of it.  Fall off and you have to try again, unless you fall through a gap created by the switch you pressed, in which case you die.  And by die I mean you actually die and go back to either a checkpoint or the beginning.  It's...unpleasant.

You see now, yes?

Which brings us to the best part of the review - the unpleasantness.  This game is relentless in its cruelty.  While you're not going to be doing much dying because of enemies, the aforementioned minigames are very liable to knock off a life or two every so often.  Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but Socket is very stingy with its checkpoints.  There's one per level - sometimes none.  While the majority of the levels are short enough that this isn't a problem, some, such as the labyrinth stages, end up being a hellish crawl.  But that's not Socket's main flaw.  Oh no.  You see, many of the labyrinth and athletic stages are rather...well, labyrinthine.  You have absolutely no way to know if you're going in the right direction so I hope you like backtracking.  I also hope you like the fact that if you miss some jumps you end up going back to the start of the level, like in Bart vs. The World.  You know, the game everyone played.  And of course, no maze is complete without one way doors that actually send you backwards.  Not paying attention to where you are or you just picked the wrong door?  That's right, you're backtracking.

The fact that most of the game is actually very well made and fun confuses me.  Why would they include all these unfun aspects which make an otherwise great game mediocre?  Nobody likes being forced to do the same section over and over.  But that's how Socket is and we just have to live with that.  Imagine if Sonic 3's "turn the blue orbs red" minigame was not only mandatory but sent you back to the beginning if you failed.  You now know why you've never heard of Socket.  A single terrible design choice can break a game, and that's just what it did.  Still, give it a shot.  You probably won't have the patience to finish it, but it's fun while it lasts.  Like meth.