Sonic Shuffle was heavily underrated and a pretty decent game if you let it be, but it can be often frustrating at times
User Rating: 7 | Sonic Shuffle DC
In 1999 we saw the highly anticipated Sonic Adventure platform game. SA received high scores, great sales, and was an all together great adventure game. In 1996, Sonic 3d Blast was ported to the Saturn as the systems main platform game, and it had it's own spin off game, Sonic R, to help promote it, so it shouldn't be any surprise that Sonic Adventure gets a spin off game of its own. Sonic Shuffle is a pretty old game now, released in 2000 following SA. When it was released, critics sighted the game as "Cheap" and "Gimmicky." But if you really take the time to soak into Sonic Shuffles gameplay, you will actually find yourself entertained. But the game is far from great, with half the library full of dull mini games and loading times that would give you enough time to make a sandwich, Sonic Shuffle was decent at best, and highly underrated. The graphics weren't bad. Sega's idea of cel-shading came out pretty decent. But why use cel-shading instead of using a similar style to other Dreamcast titles? It did not make too much sense to me, but it was welcomed. Onto the board design. Boards = Great. Sonic Shuffle's game boards were a lot of fun, running through a Emerald Coast looking stage to a stage that takes place on a run away train, the board designs were great. They had some fun little side-quests, such as helping a dolphin return to its mother, or fixing a leak in the engine. The music was pretty good too. It really captures the mood of each level. sometimes though, the sound could come off as a bit of nuisance. At times I would often find myself muting the TV on certain stages to prevent myself from getting a headache. But a lot of the songs were pretty soothing, such as the Mini Event tune that would sound as if you were going into this mystical forest zone while being greeted by something really magical.
Mini Events were a lot of fun. Especially the neat artwork thrown into them. You could land on a panel, and next thing you know, you would see a portrait of a hooded character on a boat holding something. And depending on your luck, this character could be holding something precious for you, like a jewel stone or a bag of rings. And sometimes, there could be dire consequences. The Mini Games on the other hand, while some were a lot of fun, a lot of them were uninteresting and just plain dull. I enjoyed Sonic Tank as well as luck based ones such as Sonic Cola, and probably much more as well. But roughly half of them were just boring and really difficult. Another negative note to add is the CPU players knowing exactly what cards you have. Lets say they needed a two, and didn't have one, so they actually go through your deck and out of all the cards, hey! What do you know? They got the two! All in all though, Sonic Shuffle was heavily underrated and a pretty decent game if you let it be, and if you can deal with the loading screens, then you may have a lot of fun with this spin-off like I did.
