SEGA attempt to get back on form, and come very near success. Sadly, there are many major flaws in this attempt.
User Rating: 4.5 | Sonic and the Secret Rings WII
Sonic and the Secret Rings is pretty clever, with some fast levels, brilliant graphics and extras that make the game feel fresh far after completion, and all this is only made cooler by the fact that the game took a year to make. But despite how much of me wants to break the good news and tell Sonic fans that their favorite character has returned to form, I simply can't as that would be a bald-faced lie. Now let me break down Secret Rings basic gameplay for you. As Sonic you'll need to traverse 7 zones and save the world of stories from the Erazor Djin. Yes, yet another convoluted storyline where Sonic fans will mash the 2 button to get anywhere (believe it or not, but at the end, where one of the final lines in the game is being said, Sonic asks for tissues, so that he can wipe his girlfriend's tears. Yeah, it's really that bad). Anyway, each Zone is broken down into missions, there's one brilliant "Go for the goal" mission in each zone, and a bunch of lazy cash-in levels where you simply replay parts of the goal mission. The lazy lunatics at Sonic team think that they can get away with reusing parts of a level to make the game longer, pathetic. So in term, there's really only 7 levels in the entire game. There's one of the many problems in this mediocre adventure. The next problem is, as per usual, the voice acting, from the cheezy Erazor Djin, to the moaning girl who gets in your way constantly to Sonic, and we already know what he sounds like. Combine those flaws with the controls that refuse to listen to you often and you can barely stand this game. The music is also terrible, did Sonic Team learn anything from Sonic R? Never. Use. Vocals. E-V-E-R, Period. If bad music, controls, voice acting, and a short, lazy game weren't enough, Sonic Team went far enough to add in a minigame mode. Just like Sonic Shuffle, the minigames are complex and the controls are terrible. The minigame modes are also boring, from treasure chests to pirate ships. They didn't even include a multiplayer mode where you could just race through levels. In fact, I forgot, do you know what Linear means? Yeah, there's a heck of a lot of that in this game. SatSR is an on-rails Sonic game which means no freedom, no alternate paths, just running along a preset course dodging left and right. It's just like Sonic Unleashed's Quick step, except it's bad and it's an entire game. Let's wrap this up now, SatSR is terrible game, but for Sonic it's pretty decent. No point in buying it though, unless you're a true Sonic nerd.
