Sonic Team, famous for its Sonic The Hedgehog games, is back with a new hero, new world and new series. Meet Billy Hatcher, a normal kid who just happened to stumble into an adventure of a lifetime. This is no Sonic rip-off either, it's a whole new idea, a gameplay that we haven't seen before and, I have to say, one of the coolest platform games I've had the pleasure of playing in a long time.

Right away you know this game is going to make you feel good. The menu features great light-hearted music in the style of Bomberman Generations or Mario, with the cute characters implemented in the background, logo, and menus themselves. We are greeted by a very cool and high-quality intro movie. Waiting around the menu will cause a demo to start playing, which features some great upbeat pop music.

Our adventure takes place in a world called Morning Land, the world of the Chickens. Sure, that sounds silly, but these are the light-hearted adventure games we've come to know and love. Morning Land has been taken over by the Crows, who are the main villains in the game. Most of the time you fight them, however, they will take a different form. Ever since they came, the land has not seen any sign of natural light and so the god of Morning Land recruits Billy Hatcher, a brave young boy, to save them. If he doesn't, the entire world, including Billy's, will not see light again and as you progress through the game you find out more about the Crows; who they are and their plot against the lands.

Billy Hatcher may be brave but he doesn't have his own super abilities; he's just a normal kid trying to do good. To get his power he wears a special suit that gives him the ability to hatch the many eggs found throughout the game. The suit protects whoever wears it, although you can still die from getting hit too much or falling in water. While the name chicken suit may put an image in your head of a really cheesy looking outfit, it actually looks quite cool on little Billy.

This is a 3D platformer but you don't go around shooting things. You don't even punch things; instead, Billy's main weapons are the many eggs lying around Morning Land's worlds. Running up to an egg will cause Billy to latch onto it and begin rolling it around, which helps him run faster, jump higher and roll down areas. In this mode you can kick the egg at villains, do a mad dash with it, jump on it and roll over hills, run on it like a circus act or jump with it, slamming down into the ground. Depending on the timing, you can also slam down and bounce back up with it to gain more height and reach otherwise inaccessible areas. Eggs are absolutely necessary to get places; you need them to float on water, fly through the transporting rings and, most importantly, hatch new creatures to help you along your journey to save Morning Land.

Inside each egg is something special. There are around 75 eggs in all, so you'll run into the same one more than once. While some eggs are empty (you can usually tell right away by looking at them) and others include powers ups such as more life, most have a creature in them that help you quite a bit. No one in Morning Land knows who laid the eggs but they sure come in handy and are literally around every corner; you'd think with so many eggs at least somebody would have seen them being laid. Creatures range from little things like a baby Tiger or Butterfly and each one gives you some sort of power up, such as shields, more health, stronger eggs, flaming eggs and spiked eggs. These don't last forever and do not carry onto other levels however; you must find that egg again if you want the same power up. Occasionally the empty egg (a white egg with big blue spots and small yellow dots) will contain an extra life or two, which is usually given to you before a boss fight.

Most levels give you certain eggs because you need the contents inside to get through obstacles. For instance, there could be a switch that you need to press. The problem? It's surrounded by fire and Billy, being an ordinary boy, must find the right egg and hatch it, releasing a water type creature. This creature can put out the flames, making it possible to reach the switch and be on your way. These animals are what I'll refer to as the big creatures from now on. You can have one at a time and usually there are a few on each level. Once you get one, they follow you around until you die, get another creature, beat the level, or use its power a certain amount of times. Pushing X unleashes a special attack from the creature to either help you finish off baddies or get rid of an obstacle, however you can only do this around three times before your creature is too tired and leaves; once this happens it's time to find the same egg and re-hatch it. Other eggs don't have creatures, some have, extra lives or level specific things to use, such as one level that has you challenging a giant snake that can't be hurt from the outside, so your job is to find an egg that will hatch a Chicken Bomb and make him swallow it!

Yyou can't just find any egg and hatch it right away however, you need to roll it around and find food for it, which is scattered liberally around the worlds. The easiest way to get food is by finishing off enemies, as they drop some, or breaking obstacles such as crates, trees or stones. Some areas have infinitely respawning food as well. Rolling over food causes the egg to grow to an enormous size, so big I don't understand how poor Billy can see where he's going, and eventually it starts glowing. The glow means the egg is ready to hatch and to do so you simply stand behind it and push R to do your chicken call. There is also a handy indicator on the lower right hand of your screen that is basically an outline of an egg and when you pick an egg up to roll or use, the icon becomes coloured. As you pick up food the icon begins to fill up more and more, when the colour reaches the top you're ready to hatch. Be careful though, any egg can be broken if hit hard enough. Usually it takes a few hits to break it (you can tell if it's hurt by cracking on the egg and the icon) but strong hits can break it right away.

Also included is a handy Egg Directory, which is a complete graphical listing of every egg in the game, each dimmed until you hatch the egg for the first time. Highlighting and selecting one will tell you what was in it and what the egg looks like. It's not very useful, but nice for those who want to get every egg in the game and get that 100% completion.

The different creatures, obstacles, and power ups add a good element of strategy to this game, keeping it from just being a run around beat 'em up. Each land has five levels to begin with and sometimes a few more later on. The first one usually takes place at night, because that land's Morning Caller (the chicken that calls for morning to come everyday) has been captured and put in a golden egg. Your goal is to get the egg and hatch it without breaking it, because if it breaks too soon you're in trouble. After you do this, morning returns to the land and all the little chickens are happy now. The next levels involve tasks such as fighting a boss, playing a mini-game, finding a hidden area and other different tasks such as killing 100 crows. After you beat each level you are given a summary of how you did and an overall rank. Replay value comes in here; who wouldn't want an A+ rank on every level? There are also five gold coins floating around in each level to collect and you know that getting all of them will earn something. I'm not going to tell you what, though!

Once you beat Billy Hatcher's single player mode the fun doesn't end there. Have a few buddies over? No problem! Billy Hatcher comes complete with 3 different multiplayer modes for up to four players each and they are all a blast. You have your standard Battle mode, known as Survival Mode, which pits you against your friends with eggs, creatures and power ups. Stop them from hatching their eggs while protecting yours on over seven different maps. Time mode is basically the same, except you must defeat the most enemies within the time limit. The final mode, Hatch mode, has you hatching and collecting as many egg creatures as possible.

If you don't want your buddy to play on your game, you're in luck because you can have three different save games, just like most platformers have now days. When selecting a game there is a giant egg above it that looks very similar to the egg icon on the lower right hand screen of the game while playing and as you complete levels of the game, the egg fills up, just like in the game.

From the start, Billy Hatcher appears to be a very easy game but like any decent game as you progress through the magical worlds it gets progressively harder. Is this due to clever level design? Partly, yes it is, but it is sometimes caused by the camera angles. You need to revolve the camera to make some jumps easier but in some cases you must hurry and have no time to do this. To make matters worse, the camera tends to go back to its original position after you move it, even while you're in mid-jump. Some people may be wishing Billy Hatcher was a 2D game after the camera problems, but they're not really that bad. Speaking of 2D, the Billy Hatcher fun doesn't stop with the game. Some eggs actually contain GBA downloadable games! That's right, hook up your Game Boy Advance to your Nintendo Gamecube, and you can play about six different mini-games, until you turn off the GBA, in which case you must go back into Hatcher and download it again. It is very cool that Sonic Team decided to toss in this extra little feature.

Billy Hatcher And The Giant Egg is a great, feel-good, fun platformer that makes a great rental for single player and a good purchase for multiplayer and people who love to get every little thing from a game. Some may call it kiddie game and maybe it is, but who cares? We NEED kiddie games! It's just a refreshing switch from the more mature, dramatic games. You can just boot this up and feel good right away. You'll be humming along to the theme music in no time and saying Billy Hatcher's signature phrases right with him. It may be video gaming's oldest genre but Billy Hatcher proves it's alive as ever with a whole new, and unique, idea that hopefully will inspire other developers to come up with new ways to take this classic genre. With a great single player mode that will take you some time to complete and an extremely cool multiplayer mode, this is one game that will entertain you for every moment of its considerable lifespan.

Reviewed by Chris Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).