This Mario Party wanna-be falls far short of the goal.
Gameplay: You can play as 1 of 4 Sonic characters in story mode and 1 of 8 in multiplayer mode. The main four are, obviously, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy. All characters have their own "special" abilities that really aren't that special. Tails, Knuckles, and Amy all have special spaces that only they can cross while Sonic can move double spaces if he picks the same number card twice in a row. This brings me into the actual gameplay. The story of Sonic Shuffle is that basically, Sonic and co. got sucked into a "dream" world that is going crazy. The Preciousstone that kept everything in order, has been destroyed by a being known as Void. It was broken into 7 pieces and you are tasked by a floating fairy named Lumina to retrieve all the pieces. This may sound kind of weird and thats probably because it is. It makes absolutely no sense in the gameplay, which is made even weirder since no one questions it at all. Anyway, At the beginning there is a deck of cards with 4 of each number from 1-6 and then 3 S cards and 1 Dr. Robotnik card. The number on the card represents how many spaces you can move. The S is a special card which is generally used as a roulette that can be any number between 1-7 (S represents 7 on the roulette). The Dr. Robotnik starts another Roulette that causes random "bad" things to happen. This deck of cards is passed out with 7 going to each character. You can pick anyones cards but you can only see your own cards. The rest is almost exactly the same as Mario Party (with precioustones instead of Stars) except for 2 differences. The first is pretty small but significant. They added a battle system in to make things more exciting. Unfortuantely, this battle system is horribly boring. Basically you pick a random card thats in play (yours or anyone elses) and then it spins from 1 to whatever number it is. For example, I pick a 5 and then the card spins above my head from 1-5. Then you press stop when you want the thing to stop. The final number must be higher than the number on the card over the monsters head. This is the whole battle. If you lose, you lose a bunch of rings or become stunned for one turn. If you win, you either get force gems (special ability things that add a small bit of strategy into the game) or a precioustone. The second difference is much bigger and involves mini-games. Unlike mario party, you must land on a certain mini-game space to trigger mini-games. This cuts back on the amount of games played SIGNIFICANTLY. You can theoretically go through an entire game without playing a single mini-game. This, IMHO, is the worst thing they could have done to the game. The best aspect of party games, are the mini-games. Cutting down on them can only wreck the game.
Another bad part of this game is the computer A.I. On easy, the computer is incredibly stupid, even more so than they should be. They will purposely lose battles and go the wrong way all the time. But then when you go to hard mode, the computer always has favor in everything. They always seem to know exactly what to do and they will always win mini-games and get good events. If nothing else wrecked the game for me, this certainly did.
Graphics: The graphics are the redeeming factor of the game. The cell-shaded character designs are quite nice. They are far from realistic looking, but they do have a certain cartoonish charm to them. Also, the environments are all very different and all have their own charm as well.
Sound: The sound isn't annoying but certainly isn't good. The music is forgettable and the few voiceovers that they have are repetitive and/or emotionless. And of course, tails still sounds whiny. But that's to be expected by now.
Value: If you and a bunch of your friends love party games and don't have a nintendo 64 or Gamecube, then this game is for you. Otherwise, stay away. Far, far away.
Sonic has had many good spin-offs but this just isn't one of them. Lets hope that Sonic stays out of the dream world from now on.