Appearances can be very deceiving. If the front of the box was the very first thing you ever saw about Sonics 15th anniversary outing, you would be forgiven for thinking that it was a back-to-basics approach, all about the spiky blue mammal speeding as fast as possible and generally doing what he does best; something to be excited by, in other words. You would think Sonic Team would want to deliver on this, given that this is an important landmark for the blue bomber; a chance to redeem himself after the last few failures that have occurred ever since he made the jump to three dimensions.
Well, Sonic Team must not know what the word anniversary means, for this seems to be a celebration of the absolute worst elements of the series, particularly of the recent efforts. We want to say it now, and get it off our chests; this is not only the worst Sonic game ever made, its one of the worst videogames ever made full-stop.
To begin with, the story is very poor, even by Sonic standards. The dastardly Dr. Eggman invades the city of Soleanna, intending to kidnap one Princess Elise and use her to unleash the Flames of Disaster on the world. Sonic arrives to rescue her like all heroes. Then theres Shadow, and theres time-travel and ancient gods... and well, to be honest we dont think Sonic Team knew what they were writing about either. There are at least a dozen subplots in there, few of which actually go anywhere, and we stopped trying to follow the whole sorry mess after a while. It wouldnt be so bad if the nonsense in there was good and amusing, or if the whole thing was played for laughs - the voice actors are certainly trying for the award of Worst Voice-overs in a Videogame Ever.
However, it is treated as being deadly serious, that we are supposed to be amazed by all of this and find it profound. We got tired of the ridiculous anim melodrama very quickly. As for the somewhat disturbing idea of an inter-species romance between a human and a small, anthropomorphic blue hedgehog... it's like a furry's wet dream.
As to how the game actually plays... well, just to start off, the games almost unplayable, it is so broken. The many and varied problems with the game are at their most evident when playing as Sonic himself. Running along at high-speeds has always been problematic in every Sonic game ever since the move to 3D, and this shows no improvement whatsoever. The controls are far too sensitive and twitchy, the slightest nudge likely to send Sonic running at a 90-degree angle to where you need to go. Aiming your Homing Spin is as problematic as ever, and far more likely to miss than to hit even when you aim dead-on. The camera, which has always caused a lot of grief, seems absolutely determined to give you the most unhelpful view possible. All of this leads to very many unfair deaths, as you are sent plummeting off the path and into the eternally-present bottomless pit for the fifth time in a row through no fault of your own. The sad thing is that flashes of the old Sonic brilliance can be picked up when you're not actually controlling Sonic and just watching him run like mad through loops and up walls. This kind of defeats the purpose of the game, however, since you're just watching Sonic, with the slightest nudge of the controller likely to get him killed at such times.
The same problems apply in Shadow's game, only with the added insult of driving vehicles thrown in there. Did Sega not learn any lessons whatsoever from Shadow the Hedgehog? Vehicles were not a good idea in that game, and theyre an even worse one now. When playing as the new hog on the block, Silver, the twitchy controls become less of an issue, since he's much slower than the other two. However, the underlying framework is still broken, with every other problem with the game intact. His new gimmick psycho-kinesis, the ability to move objects with his mind feels very loose and imprecise, often not picking up the crate or bullet youre looking at, and the aiming suffers from the same flaws as the homing attacks. What could have been a fun little game (though one better suited to a different series completely) is ruined by the fundamental flaws at the heart of the whole package. Several times, you are also forced to play as other characters from the Sonic universe Tails, Knuckles, Amy etc., all of which bring their own set of problems and are no fun to control at all and only serve to disrupt the flow of play.
Even the graphics fail to impress. The environments lack detail, though that doesnt really matter since you'll be moving so fast most of the time. More disturbing are a number of very odd glitches (especially when playing as the side-characters), pop-up and rampant slowdown. There are also several examples of very dodgy collision detection, with Sonic and co. having very frequent flickery spaz-fits for seemingly no reason. The art direction and several design decisions are absolutely horrid. The realistic-looking humans are atrocious; they all look very bland and clash horribly with the anthropomorphic, somewhat rubber-looking animals. They are a huge mistake which cannot be ignored since they play such a huge role - Eggman's redesign, for example, is awful. Also, while Soleanna is very big, its virtually devoid of population, and is completely cold and lifeless. Loading times also dominate the game, with even side-missions having no less than four loading screens. Most of our time with the game was spent watching black loading screens rather than actually playing.
There is replay value, admittedly, through side-quests, rankings and even multiplayer. However, would you really want to do all of that, considering just how painful the game is to play?This is absolutely awful. The Sonic franchise has been dragged through the dirt so often, and this serves to add insult to injury. This game is utterly bland, soulless and broken beyond repair. Sonic Team have had many attempts at getting a 3D Sonic game to work, yet they have made absolutely no attempt to fix the flaws that have plagued this series since Sonic Adventure all those years ago. We were not expecting much with this game, especially after playing the demo, and we still were appalled at just how low this series has sunk. This game is irredeemably rotten to the core; Sonic is dead to us now.
