Sonic Blur: Episode β

Sonic Blur: Episode β is the second installment of the Sonic Blur franchise, set to be released to the Wii U. It takes place two months after the events of Sonic Blur: Episode α.

Sonic and Tails's Story
After Eggman's defeat, Sonic and Tails decided to team up and to find a way to hide the Chaos Emeralds somewhere that could not be easily found as well to build a mechanism in to make the emeralds hidden if attempted to be detected with a radar. Sonic gave up on his past lifestyle to make sure that not only his land but the world is safe from the threat of Eggman, predicting that Eggman wouldn't easily give up after being defeated. Working alongside Tails, Sonic improved his abilities not only his speed but his combat techiniques as well setting up machines that would localize any threat or news regarding Eggman.

Two months have passed ever Eggman's defeat. One night, Tails was exiting his workshop when he found something weird, a blue blur. He thought that it was Sonic and attempted to approach it, but when he got close he noticed that he looked different, metallic. The creature turned around and revealed itself to be Metal Sonic. Metal Sonic attempts to attack Tails but Tails manages to defend himself by utilizing a supercharged shot of his arm cannon to stop Metal Sonic, which caused a temporary data failure in Metal Sonic's system making him retreat. The shot overloaded the arm cannon and made it unusable. The next day, Tails contacted Sonic about what happened the day before and they suggest that Eggman might be hidden behind all of this. Tails says it wouldn't be possible, considering Eggman was still on prison. Sonic decides to visit the Prison Island Zone, in which Eggman was kept imprisoned. Sonic gets to Eggman's cell and interrogates him, but Eggman appeared to be weirdly quiet. Sonic threatens him and accidentally destroys him and noticed that the Eggman that was on the prison was the fact a robotic clone, the same that was piloting the Grand Dictactor and that Eggman was free all this time.

Sonic asks if there is any way to locate the actual living Dr. Eggman and Tails says that only if he could locate a sample of a digital signature in Eggman's robot. Sonic finds a Badnik and brings it to Tails but Tails doesn't finds any digial signature of Eggman and suggests that they could probably find some in Metal Sonic, which might be one of Eggman's creations. Tails manages to locate signs of robots on the northwest region of the island, in an area called the Basalt Bridge Zone. Sonic rushes towards to the area, with Tails following behind utilizing Jet Boots to keep up with Sonic.

Sonic meets head to head to Metal Sonic at Basalt Bridge Zone Act 3, with the latter immedieatly attacking Sonic after seeing him. Sonic manages to put up a fight against him, but in the end Metal Sonic comes out victorious. Tails manages to once again to temporarily damage his system files by uploading a weak virus on him before he could land the finishing blow. Tails brings the weakened Sonic to his workshop and after a short time, Sonic appears to be better. Tails says that he managed to find a sign of a digital signature in Metal Sonic's system, locating the area of Eggman's hideout, a island named Carnival Island. Sonic attempts to go there by feet, but he is to weak. Tails suggests going there by utilizing the Tornado plane, so Sonic would manage to heal by the time they get there. It appeared to be a good idea, until they actually started their flight. Eggman troops were ready to ambush the heroes and then begins Amber Assault Zone, with Tails having to manuver the plane, while Sonic had to manually use the plane weapons to bring the troops down. They manage to get to the island and defeat the troops, but the use of the weapons made the plane's battery go down faster, making them having to do a landing on a place far away from Eggman's hideout, in a place called Diamond Desert Zone. Sonic, now recovered, asks Tails to find a way to get across the desert fast without Eggman noticing them, with Tails suggesting that if they go through the underground they manage to escape the sights of radar, as Tails notices that his robot radar can't find anything under the ground, but one of Tails's creations is under there. It succeds but at the end of Diamond Desert Zone they find an entrance to a palace underground and they proceed to investigate, but it is filled with ancient robots that doesn't seems to be related to Eggman and those robots were the ones that were underground.

They explore and discover it is actually a palace of the Echidna's clan, called Hidden Palace Zone. Sonic visits the center of the palace, where they meet with a red echidna, named Knuckles, for the first time. Knuckles asks what Sonic and Tails are doing there and what are their intentions. After the heroes explain, Knuckles still isn't sure and challenges Sonic and Tails to a battle. Knuckles comes out victorious. Knuckles introduces him and his story to the team as well explaining how he knows about Eggman and the danger of a creature known as Chaos as well the reason he fought Sonic, earlier in his journey, he fought a similar hedgehog with weird powers but couldn't see him because it was nighttime. Tails assumes that means that Knuckles also saw Metal Sonic. Sonic asks Knuckles for help, but Knuckles states that he has higher priorities right now, but if they need his help, he will be available after his journey is completed, although Knuckles points out an easier shortcut to the exit of the palace that will lead them to Copper City Zone. Sonic and Tails thanks for his help and wish him the best for his journey, although Sonic states that he will be ready for their next battle, with Knuckles smiling towards Sonic's statement and left the palace.

They leave the palace and come out to Copper City Zone, with Tails stating that they could find a shortcut to Eggman's hideout by going to the city's train station. It would be easy, but what they didn't noticed is that Eggman localized them on the city and sent his troops towards them. Sonic and Tails make a run towards the train station without being caught and then proceed to run on the train rails of Silicon Station Zone with Eggman's remaining troops taking the train and using it to reach Sonic and send troops to make his journey difficult although Sonic and Tails do manage to defeat them and reach the end of the rails.

After that, Sonic decides to stop for a while to take a breath and rest since they managed to defeat all troops that Eggman sent towards them with Tails stating that there is a cabin near them that appears to be empty and abandoned that they could rest in it. In the night, Sonic wakes up after hearing something weird and leaves the cabin to see what is it and notices a red blur similar to his blue and meets up with a hedgehog just like him, but this time it wasn't a metallic one. The hedgehog tells that his name is Shadow and that he has been waiting centuries to fight Sonic, but calling him "Jules" instead of Sonic. Sonic asks Shadow how he knows that name and Shadow makes a small laugh and immedieatly attacks Sonic, beginning a fight between the two. While equal in power, Sonic defeats Shadow but before landing the finishing blow, Shadow disappeared. The sun rose and Tails woke up asking what happened with Sonic explaining what happened. Tails is confused by the situation and asks Sonic if that wasn't simply a nightmare, with Sonic not being sure of what to answer. Sonic decided to continue the journey anyway, to the Parasite Path Zone that leads to the Halite Hideout Zone, where Eggman is hiding.

At the end of Parasite Path Act 3, Shadow appears once again, starts monologuing but is quickly interrupted by Sonic attacking him. Tails attempts to help Sonic on his fight, but Metal Sonic captures him and puts him inside the hideout. Sonic challenges Shadow for a fight again with Shadow proudly accepting the battle. After a long battle, Sonic defeats Shadow at the last hit and manages to land the hit by knocking his Chaos Emerald out of his hand. Sonic asks for questions, how he knows his father's name and what was he doing with that Chaos Emerald. Shadow is amused by his defeat but nonetheless accepts it and gives Sonic the answers of his questions, explaining that he was created by Gerald Robotnik, created to be a better version of Jules, set there to defeat Jules but he never managed to complete him because he died before completion and as a safety procedure, he sent the capsule containing Shadow towards Earth, saying that he was released long after he was intended to be released with his original intetion still intact and decided to hunt Sonic due his gene being similar to Jules. He explains that he is basically a living Chaos Emerald radar, since he was powered up utilizing all seven of them and managed to found them and gave them to Eggman in exchange for information of a fast hedgehog. He is able to utilize a techinque that only the ancient hedgehog clan could utilize, Chaos Control, which can teleport one being to a place not too far away from they currently are and also, in Shadow's words, "two other techiniques that is fun to mess around with" and so he teleported away before Sonic landed the final hit in his original battle. Sonic asks why Shadow answered his questions if he was sent to kill him, Shadow answers that Gerald was too obsessed creating a better version of Jules and forgot to remove, what Shadow calls "Jules's biggest flaw", his ability to respect a worthy opponent. After his final battle with Sonic, Shadow decided to rebel against his programming, since he has no reason to actual kill him nor he has a reason to help Sonic, but he is doing anyway because he has nothing else to do and leaves the area. Sonic is confused by what Shadow just said but nonetheless continued his journey to defeat Eggman and save Tails from Metal Sonic.

Inside the Halite Hideout Zone, at Act 2, Sonic fights against Metal Sonic, but this time he manages to put up a fight against him but Eggman interrupted the battle to fight to trap Sonic giving Metal Sonic a free hit with his lethal beam. It all appeared to be over until something appeared. Hyper Knuckles appeared and deflected the laser away from Sonic and turned back to normal. "Told ya I would be help when I finished my journey.", Knuckles said. Sonic defeats Metal Sonic and frees Tails. Him, Tails and Knuckles goes towards the center room to fight Eggman.

Eggman is frustated at Sonic, saying that he didn't even had time to "do some comedic banter"  or "taunt you with my weapons" with him because he was too busy perfecting his machinery and was just starting to begin his new plan to conquer the world, but he did managed to finish a machine, Grand Metal Sonic Kai, a gigantic version of Metal Sonic, which turns super by utilizing the Chaos Emeralds, which then proceeds to challenge Sonic. Knuckles utilizes the Super Emeralds to turn Sonic, Tails and him into their hyper forms. A battle ensues, with the heroes coming out victorious.

This time, they make very sure that Eggman is in prison by keeping him in a secret prision, located in a isolated island with Tails creating traps of every kind that could counterattack every kind of exit attempt that Eggman does. At the end, Sonic looks at the horizon with Knuckles appearing behind him. Sonic asks what would happen if antoher threat appeared that was not Eggman. Knuckles states that he finds Sonic a great hero and that he will be there to help Sonic fight any threat that appears on their way. Sonic then replies asking Knuckles if he remember the promise he made the last time they saw each other, that he would be able to defeat him in a battle, with Knuckles challenging to put that promise to the test. The credits end when the battle is about to start.

In a post-credits scene, Tails is seeing on his workshop looking for tools and working on a machine hidden behind a curtain. He pulls the curtain, with the camera focused on him and says "Well, this is going to be interesting.", after he says that, the camera then focuses on Metal Sonic, with a black and yellow painting, the same one that is used by Shard.

Gameplay
The gameplay of Sonic Blur: Episode β doesn't changes much from the original installment. The game continues to be a 3D platformer with elements from both of the 2D and 3D Sonic games, although it has some differences. Sonic and Tails share the same story and the player can switch between the characters at any time during the game (with the exception being Amber Assault Zone), Tails is much faster than he was in the original game, to make up for the fact that him and Sonic are now playing the same stages which are focused on speed, which is explained in the story with Tails creating the Jet Boots. Knuckles retains his ability to drill the ground from the endgame of the previous title which is used to complete puzzles in the game.

Shadow is the new playable character introduced in this game and he plays similarly to Sonic but his gameplay is different in a lot of ways. Shadow utilizes the Chaos Control, which can either stop time, teleport him or speed up, which to do so, it is required Soul Fuel, which can be get by defeating enemies. Shadow's stages also has the use of Chaos Weapons in the form of the Chaos Spear and the Chaos Javelin and his stages are more combat-oriented than Sonic and Tails's speed based gameplay and Knuckles's more puzzle oriented stages.

Each character goes through 9 stages, which is more than the previous installment, although each story has two unique stages for each story. The game also retains the emblems, with each stage having three different objectives as well different challenges. Similar to the previous game, getting a certain number of emblems unlocks extra stages for the players to experience.

Sequels

 * See also Sonic Blur series.

Sonic Blur was originally intended to be released as one game, although it was remade into a three-episode title. The first game, Sonic Blur: Episode α was released in 21 November 2015. The sequel of β, Episode Omega is set to be released one month after this one. After the good reception of the first installment and the overall series, a sequel was announced in the form of Sonic Blur: Freedom Fighters and a spin-off entitled Sonic Blur Battle set to be released in 2016, for the Wii U and 3DS, respectively.