Oh, dear God, make it stop...
Playing the demo and five minutes of the full game is all it took to convince me how terrible this game is; personally, the one of the only good things I find about the game are the graphics. Gameplay, above all, should be the highest priority when making a game, and in this one, it seems they try to do something new, but in the end, it had only completely shattered everything. Why should I have run at a slow pace, speed up, and then slow back down again when the game demands it? Why can't I do it on my own, this game feels like a slave-driver when it comes to that. Also, why are there stationary enemies in the fast parts? They're not even doing anything so what's the purpose of having them there?
Another thing I want to touch on, is Sonic's speed, you might be thinking, "oh, it's a Sonic game, you're supposed to run fast, right?" Wrong. Well, that would the response this game would give. Remember the golden days of Sonic where he used to be fast? The level design wasn't completely bland? Wasn't a buggy, broken mess ("IT'S NO USE!")? They're gone now, and this game confirms it. I can't even run as fast as Sonic used to go, everything just feels weighed down to death, and even worse, the game just rubs it in your face by adding a storyline, in which I could really care-less about. Who's Elise, and why the heck do I even have to protect her? It wouldn't matter anyway, because it turns out that in the end, none of this actually happened. Also, why does Sonic run fast in the cut scenes, and not during the actual gameplay?
The camera seems to be more broken than ever, it can't even follow the character without hitting a damn wall or tree, I find myself constantly adjusting it just so I can see what my character is doing, and when I need it most, it's never there. It reminds me of Shadow the Hedgehog, but only more of a hassle. The action stages feature pretty colorful environments, but they are just a pain to go through because the camera is so unresponsive. In this game, death is your worst enemy, when you run out of lives, you go back to the last save-point. The problem is, you can only save while in town, and there are no save or auto-save options during stages which makes it imperative that you save frequently between stages.
When you're not trudging through action stages, you can walk around town aimlessly, talk to people, buy stuff and just screw around. There are also town missions you can do, but they are just even more disappointing, especially when you bring the load times into account. Failed to break the five boxes? Retry? Ok! …And then it goes through a five minute load time just to set up the same five boxes again. Being that we're in the seventh generation of gaming, this is unacceptable at this day and age, heck even Super Mario Galaxy had an annoying mini-game where you had to blow up all of the trash in thirty seconds, it's a great game don't get me wrong, but at least it didn't involve load times of this length.
You can play as other characters of course, but I couldn't give a damn about that, being that I've only played as Sonic and I rather be honest than cover it up and give half-assed arguments. There is also a multiplayer mode as well, but it all just feels like one huge mess, and the placement of objects, is mostly to blame. Here are some of the many questions that come to mind when playing multiplayer: "How do I get over here?", How do I get over this fence?", "What am I supposed to do?", "Why can't my character jump that high?", and most likely, most of these will go unanswered. Other than that, the controls are broken to the point where it's impossible for me to explain them, and there are inconsistent frame rates and numerous graphical glitches. Well, at least the music is good.
Bottom line, Sonic the Hedgehog isn't that bad of a game, but it is bad enough for me to classify it as one. For those new to the series, it'll be anywhere from average to mediocre, but for the purists of the series, this one will feel like a kick in the nuts.