Awkward controls and frustrating game design make Sonic's trip to Arabia surprisingly irritating.
The story this time around is that a genie named Sharah needs Sonic's help to stop an evil genie called Erazor Djinn from taking over the world of the Arabian Nights. Sharah transports Sonic into the storybook and faces Erazor Djinn head-to-head just to end up cursed with a magical flame that, when diminished, ends Sonic's life. The story is pretty good though the presentation of the cutscenes seem rather dull. Granted, the cutscenes are made to look like storybook pages but, this concept isn't well executed leaving the cutscenes looking flat and uninteresting in general. Other than that, the story is solid though, it isn't winning any Perlitzer Prize.
The games music, as always, is entertaining. There isn't much to say about the soundtrack in Sonic and the Secret Rings that you haven't already heard about any other Sonic game. If any, the soundtrack can at least be complemented on having better music for the action stages compared to Sonic 06's dull background music.
The game play is where Secret Rings makes a distinct decline in polish. What I found rather ridiculous is that though recent Sonic games haven't had picture perfect controls, some of the game design choices made are so bad, it's almost as they tried to make the game a burden. The main "Reach the Goal" mission is easily the best mission for each stage as the extra missions include "Finish with No Rings", "Don't collect any Pearls", and "Don't Die".
These surprisingly odd missions are then topped with equally odd controls that revolve around Sonic being able to run on his own. Knowing Sonic's speed, having less control over the way he runs is initially bad. This leads to Sonic being harder to use the faster he becomes as the game has the gull to introduce a leveling system, meaning Sonic's speed must be leveled up.
It's silly cause when the game grants you the ability to "Speed Break" or run really fast as it is, you'll soon realize that Speed Break only helps some of the time if at all since using it at the wrong time could lead to instant death but don't worry, Sonic has infinite lives in this game so you'll die an infinite amount of times.
It is pretty easy to Speed Break off a cliff or into a spiked ball as Sonic cannot be properly controlled during this outburst as you may have already guessed. With missions like "Don't break any pots", Secret Rings focuses on speed while asking you to slow down just to survive. The two objectives don't mix well and the games unlock-able content is sealed away by even crazier conditions for achievement like "Defeat Erazor below lvl 25 using five different dark abilities". What's sad is that when the game actually works in favor of the player, it pretty much boils down to an automated Sonic simulator. Not even tilting the Wiimote left and right to move Sonic could shake the feeling that I was watching the game more than anything.
Since the game's story mode is rather short, the poor design choices made for the game's extra content make more of an impact than in any other Sonic game. Multiplayer is the closest thing to salvation and even that is plagued by unresponsive Wiimote controls. Secret Rings isn't a mess, it's just very aggravating at times and, despite its appearance, is not a game for young children. The difficulty level will haunt the young ones to no end.
In the end, there is some fun to be had in Secret Rings but, it takes to long to have it. There were times I felt like I was forcing myself to play the game simply because it was Sonic. Secret Rings is OK but, you'd probably be better off with one of Sonic's older 3D titles.