Wii owners, Sonic fans, unite and rejoice! Sonic is back, he's on Nintendo and he's better than ever.
Well, it would seem that that era is over. After a recent next-gen near death experience, Sonic is back, he's tuned up and hitting almost all the right notes. This game is a true return to Sonic's old school form. But a word of warning: while it brings back all the things you've grown to love about the early Sonic games, it brings just as much of what you hated about them. Casuals may want to rent this sucker first, this game seems to be aimed more at the hardcore gamer.
The story in Sonic and the Secret Rings is, as with most Sonic games, passable yet completely forgettable. I won't waste space with a synopsis of it here, that information is given with much better quality elsewhere. What is unique about it, however, is the way in which it's presented as I'll describe later.
Sonic and the Secret Rings features some pretty fine motion control. This, for the most part, feels quite natural and intuitive and is much more satifying that traditional analong stick/button mashing controls. The game uses the rather popular ExciteTruck control scheme. Sonic runs forward automatically through pre set "courses". Players hold the Wii remote sideways and tilt it to the left or right to move from side to side. Tilting the remote backwards will make Sonic move in that direction. Jumping and stopping are handled with the 2 and 1 buttons, respectively. Thrusting the remote forward in midair or while locked on to an enemy causes Sonic to execute the now standard homing attack. There are some other great little motion controlled things in here too. For example, if Sonic runs into a catapault, bringing the remote down and back up in a, well, catapaulting motion will hurl the little blue fuzzball way into the air. That all seems pretty simple, almost to a fault right?
Wrong. While the "on rails" style of gameplay is easy enough to pick up, there's a lot going on here to make Sonic a very deep, complex, and just plain weird game. The controls described above are just Sonic's base abilities. The Secret Rings features a progressive, RPG-esque customization system where you can unlock several different powers and use them in any combination. Each ability costs a certain amount of skill points which you gain with the experience points you've while playing the game. Some abilities boost Sonic's base stats, while others allow the player to slow time, perform a speed boost, gain extra attack moves or collect extra rings. You'll rarely ever have enough skill points to use all your available powers, so choosing the right ones is essential (especailly since some levels actually require certain optional ablities to complete). What's great about this system is that doesn't feel tacked on. Unlike most action games that feature RPG/customization elements, you'll find yourself seriously taking some time to equip yourself just right for the upcoming mission.
Which brings us to the other quriky element of Sonic's latest installment; the mission system which adds a sort of sandbox/open world nature to the game. The game features 7 different levels and one tutorial level, which are broken down into roughly 100 different missions. Each level has a few main goals which mostly just require you to get to the end of the level or perform some specific task. Other missions have more stringent standards. Some require you to finish the level with no rings, beat the clock, race a blue orb to the finish, kill a set number of enemies etc. etc. etc. For this reason, the story is played out in a completely non-linear fashion, you can complete available missions in any order you choose (and you'll usually have a pretty good vareity from which to choose). Playing missions in one level will unlock other objectives three levels back. Most of the time, you won't end up fighting a level's boss until you've played 3 or 4 levels ahead already. Going back to the same stages over and over could've become a tiresome endeavor, but thankfully many missions have completely different courses or contain new parts of a level you've already played, so you'll want to keep going back to see new parts of the gorgeous worlds featured in the game. Be warned however, that this game is tough. This game is truly old school in that it rewards precision timing and level memorization. If you don't have the patience to master the controls or learn the layouts of the harder levels, you'll die, and die a lot. Like the old Genesis games, Sonic CAN run fast, but improvidently blazing forward with little regard for what's coming up will garner poor results. Any hardcore Sonic fan knows that sometimes you have to play it slow and cautiously, but if you're new to the series or just like your games to be cakewalks, you'll likely become frustrated by the controls quickly.
Did I use the word "gorgeous" about a Wii game? You betcha'. The graphics in Sonic and the Secret rings are great, easily the best seen on the system so far. The environments are bright, colorful, and nicely detailed. There are some nice textures and lighting effects to be found as well. Couple the surprisingly good visual effects with the neat persian art style, and you've got a beautiful-looking game that will make even the most ardent graphics afficionado raise an eyebrow.
But while this game is great, it has its fair share of problems too. First of all, the quality of the level design is a little inconsistent. Some levels are a joy to play, while others seem pointless chores thrown in to pad out the game's length. Also, the difficulty doesn't progress gradually, it fluctuates wildly due to the non-linear nature of the missions. The game isn't very helpful when introducing you to new powers either. I didn't figure out until well into the game that Sonic doesn't automatically equip his special abilities because it wasn't mentioned anywhere. These instances are in the minority, but they do detract from the game. Secondly, while most of the controls are good, backing up is completely frustrating. Just tilting the remote backwards isn't enough to make Sonic move backwards, you have to flip the the all the way upside down. This is functional, but then you can't reach the face buttons easily. As frustrating as that can be, it's not as bad as the camera is while backpedaling. When moving forward, the camera is right behind Sonic's head, which is fine WHEN YOU'RE MOVING FORWARD. However, the camera doesn't zoom backwards to give you a better view when in reverse, so blindly walking into enemies or pitfalls is frequent. This wouldn't be so bad except that sometimes you just have to back up. It's an inexcusable flaw that could've easily been avoided with a little tweaking. The music, while good in a cheesy way, is pretty repetitive and gets old fast. The voice acting is about as nauseating as you've come to expect from Sonic's 3D incarnations (altough the option to switch to japanese voiceovers is a nice touch).
None of these flaws is enought to break the game, but they are an annoyance. Also, the game features plenty of unlockable content. You can earn bronze, silver and gold medals for each mission based on your performance as well. There's also a multiplayer mode which is basically Mario Party, but it's pretty much a throwaway and lacks the great presentation of the rest of the game. All in all though, it's great to have it in there.
Sonic and the Secret rings is one of the best Wii games yet. It can be frustrating, but that just makes victory that much sweeter.