Episode 2 Demo.

Who actually reviews a demo?  I'm not gonna go too deep in it, but the Xbox demo has a 2 minute timer and you get White Park Act 1 to fool around with.  The physics feel better but it's really just a bit less derpy (emphasis on the word bit).  There are a lot of areas where the Rolling Combo is just all you need to do for speed and most of the time, you don't have to input anything to progress (and still not liking the fact that it is fully invulnerable to damage unless you just so happen to uncurl from not being able to move forward.)  Flight is strange, but perhaps I'm just not feeling the stop time and everything else dramatization that goes in with performing it.  Just seems to slow down everything and looks/feels wacky.  There's so much automation in the level and it's unwelcoming that if you really want to go fast, all you have to do is press one button and drop the controller - seriously.

Then I went back to Ep1 for a bit to compare the feel of the Sonic.  Episode 1 really, really - really feels bad.  It actually makes Ep2 feel more like a missed opportunity as it was remotely enjoyable (yeah, story of the franchise, I'm afraid).  I say that because as Ep2 feels better (but still suffers the same way as Ep1 did) the game really doesn't seem to capitalize on those improvements.  It only seems like it conveniently has an opportunity to get in touch with it's feel through the new Sky Chase Zone (quite possibly the only area where automation is legitimate because you're standing on top of an airplane - no speed boosters, no springs, no lame team gimmick other than using the airplane as a weapon which is actually nice, and yeah we got bubble chains by the dozens but this is their hometown!)

Even if Episode 2 is better than Episode 1 in overall feel through controlling Sonic (when Tails isn't directly involved) it gets over-shadowed by all these poorly implemented gimmicks.  Although my opinion could change from playing the entire game, I'm actually somewhat confident that the game is an improvement from the first because getting feeling the gameplay through your hands was really the biggest issue in Sonic 4, and ultimaltely it still seems to be that way.  It shouldn't take a multi-million dollar budget to make it happen.

YEAH, GRAPHICS LOOK GREAT, who in the right mind would disagree.  I'll save your eyes the nitpicking of the animations.