Sonic and the Secret Rings brings Sonic's trade-mark speed back to the series better than any attempt Sonic Team has ever created in their past 3-D Sonic games. What was once an extremely fast series began to get slowed-down to a near hault due to buggy controls, awkward camera views, slow characters, and just not enough game-time with Sonic. Secret Rings builds upon the nature of the 2-D games by offering up a journey that has players in control of only Sonic where he is in constant motion, unless you tell him other wise. This in all honesty, is the best 3-D Sonic game to date, but it is very far from being perfect. The story line is sweet and simple this time around, and has alot of humor that has been lacking from the Sonic series for some time now. Sonic acts exactly how he's supposed to. He's kind hearted, serious but never lets things get to him, always finds the best path out of any situation and never puts himself before others and is just down right a speed demon. The story begins with Sonic being awoken by a genie of the ring named Shara who comes from the story book that Sonic was "reading". She tells him of an evil genie named Erazor Djinn who is destroying the arabian nights quickly and once he destroys all one thousand and one of them, he will enter Sonic's world and begin to destroy things there too. Sonic can't let this happen so he ventures into the story book to help this young genie but is quickly shot in the chest with a flame by the Erazor Djiin. The shot of flame was originally intended to hurt Shara but Sonic, noble as he is, jumps in the way and takes the hit. Erazor Djinn explains to him that Sonic must collect all seven world rings and deliver them to him before the flame dies out or his life will be forfeit. This is where our journey begins. Gameplay wise, this game is fast and down right fun. The controls take a long time to perfect but the more you play, the better you will get and you will definitly notice the improvements. The basic concept of the game is that Sonic is always running and it's your job to steer him through the various stages and also perform jumps and other abbilities like time-break and speed-break. You can press the one button to come to a stop, tilt the remote backwards to make him reverse, flick the controller forward to do a homing attack and much more. There are seven stages to go through, each consisiting of a number of missions that range from getting to the goal, racing, collecting rings, killing a certain number of enemys, not being hit and so on and so forth. The problem here is that enemys will frequently appear in front of you and give you less than a second to jump and do a homing attack before getting smacked in the face by it. There are also numerous occasions where you will have to slow Sonic down to cross a tiny ledge or avoid giant death spiked balls. This is very frustrating when all you want to do is run as fast as you can, and it's made even worse because throughout the course of the game you will level Sonic up and he will gain abbilities that can be equipped on one or all of the four of the skill rings that you can choose from before each stage. It's best to equip one ring with speed moves, one with defense, one with offense and one with whatever you want in order to complete different mission types. Some missions may ask you to not get hurt, and when enemys come out of nowhere, you don't want Sonic equipped with alot of abbilites that will make him run head on extremely fast. Others may ask you to race Uhu, a little fairy that is pretty fast so of course you will want to have alot of speed to do this. It's just a shame that there are more missions that have Sonic slowing down than there are with him just flat out running at top speeds, which is the whole reason that Sonic games are fun in the first place. Backing up proves to be one of the most absoloute worst frustrating parts of this game and unfortunatly there are multiple times where you will be forced to back up, even when you get "used" to this, it's still just an overall pain to have to do this. Graphically, the game shines in all aspects. No it doesn't have the beauty of the 360/PS3 Sonic games, but it's faster and has no frame-rate problems what-so-ever. The enviorments are lush, and they all have a certain atmosphere in them and this is truely a graphical stand point on the Wii, proving that it's not just barely above current gen systems anymore. Sonic sports his looks back from the Adventure games and has never looked better. From the flame on his chest to his trade-mark shoes everything looks great and that goes double for everything else in this game. It's the prettiest Wii game to date. Sound wise, the game doesn't get a good treatment. Everyone of the levels has lyrics in the background and sometimes they are just awful. In a few cases the music is so bad that it's good, as is the case with the main-theme Seven Rings In Hand. You wouldn't even expect music this bad in a Land Before Time movie but in all honesty, it gets the job done and fits this game perfectly. That may sound strange but you will have to experience the music first hand to understand what I am talking about. Atleast all the songs are catchy. The rest of the sound effects are pretty standard for a Sonic game, you have the trade-mark ring noise, the spring noise, the running noise etc. No item boxes, check points or goal rings are in this game at all though but Im sure if they were they would sound just like you expect. There is a huge bonus that Sonic Team threw in here called Party Mode with 40 mini games to play through that will remind you of Mario Party in just about every way. At first you can only play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy but fortunatly as you progress through the game you will unlock maps to play on, characters and more mini-games. Not all of the games impement the remote to it's full potential but you are also able to use your gamecube controller so it's very easy to play this mode with all your friends and it's just absoloutly fun. Omochao makes an appearance here as well with a new voice and he plays the basic role of referee in guiding you through the menus and it's fun to have him back again. Some of the games will have you hacking away at wood, rowing boats to avoid falling off a waterfall, shaking the remote after picking up chests and listening for treasure while trying to get the fullest one and so on. Nothing as extreme as Wario-Ware but defitinly worth a play through. Overall, Sonic Team has done a great job with this latest release and it truley brings some of the magic back to the Sonic series that has been lacking for a very long time. The Adventure might prove to be a little short when you play through it for the story line, but doing everything in this game is going to take you a very long time, and completing the special book which contains all of your achievements will prove to be a challenge for any gamer. If your looking for a great game to spend some time on with your new Nintendo system you can't go wrong with the Secret Rings. The land of mystery meets the legend of speed and it couldn't have happened at a better time. Welcome back Sonic.
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