All the negative choices in the classification section. Truly a disappointing entry in the Sonic franchise.
Story: 8/10
The one area this game doesn’t ever fail at is the story. It features a pretty good plot, with twists and turns and an apocalyptic future. Sonic once again must stop the evil Dr. Eggman’s plans and in the process save a princess. Sonic’s story does feature a repetitive save the princess, lose the princess, save the princess, lose the princess formula, but this isn’t really important to the overall story. Shadow the Hedgehog returns with a new enemy, Mephiles the Dark, a mysterious guy with his own evil agenda. New to the game is Silver the Hedgehog, who comes from the future to prevent the apocalypse. All three stories have mysteries and intertwine, and the plot is resolved by completing all three characters’ stories and the final episode.
Gameplay: 0.5/10
This is the primary reason the game is bad. Gameplay is a frustrating experience for anyone, whether they’re new to the Sonic series or a veteran. Like the past Sonic games, the camera can be a problem. No, scratch that, unlike previous Sonic games, in which the camera can be a problem, in this game it WILL be a problem. The camera focuses on various things that either cause you to lose sight of your character, or the camera will flip at the worst time. Both instances can cause of your character’s death. Sonic and Shadow are very similar to how they have played since the Adventure days, with new upgrades and problems thrown into the mix. I’ll discuss Sonic’s problems first. Sonic’s levels have an emphasis on speed, and the levels seem to be designed to have you run through and attack enemies rather than taking your time. Like most previous Sonic games, the levels are filled with bottomless pits, springs, boosts, and spikes. Although the levels are designed to have springs and boosts used to your advantage, they often fling Sonic into bottomless pits or enemies, especially if you press any buttons or use the joysticks. Another problem is the frequent unresponsive controls. You’ll press A to jump off of one ledge to another but instead Sonic will just walk off, resulting in your losing a life. Sonic also has these new, “innovative” speed sections, in which he runs forward quickly and you have to steer him like a car with no breaks that’s moving at 150 mph. These parts are frustrating as well, as jumping to get an item often results in Sonic getting that item but at the cost of flying off into oblivion. He’ll also glitch into walls and the ground and fall down and die, although this doesn’t happen as frequently. Sonic’s optional upgrades are pointless, giving little help unless you’re trying to get silver medals for the achievement. Shadow plays similar and has similar problems, only instead of speed sections he drives vehicles, which is weird considering he used to be just as fast as Sonic, so I don’t really see the point of using a buggy or motorcycle. These vehicles can be hard to steer at times, and if you floor it with a hovercraft over water, then the vehicle will flip and explode, killing Shadow. Shadow also has optional upgrades to power up his chaos bar to use a special attack, although this seems tacked on and isn’t really needed until the last boss. Silver’s gameplay seems like it could’ve been fun if it was worked on properly or finished. He picks up objects with psychic abilities and throws them at enemies and can float over areas. These actions drain his energy bar, so one has to pause and wait for it to fill to use attacks again. Silver, like Sonic and Shadow, often has unresponsive control. Sometimes he won’t pick up or stop objects, which can lead to frustration again. Throwing objects is also buggy, as he’ll usually miss a few times before the box or missile or whatever actually hits the enemy. In that time, your protected target or Silver may be blown to bits. Friend characters are occasionally used in all three modes, and they’re useless. You’ll finish a section of the stage and then take control of a friend character, and you’ll soon learn to think, “Oh great, there go all my rings.” The friend characters are horrible to move and they’re attacks are buggy. Tails flies and uses dummy rings, which are not only stupid but also hard to aim and use. Omega has shooting attacks that miss, Amy has to stand still to hit an enemy with her hammer, which mean you’ll probably get too close to an enemy and take damage in an effort to hit that enemy. Blaze goes flying all around when you’re using her, at which point you may hit an enemy when you’re vulnerable or go off a ledge. Knuckles and Rouge can still cling on walls, with the same crawling animation whether your moving left, right, up, or down. It’s difficult to have them jump off of walls, and they’re attacks also stink. Knuckles has to punch enemies, but rather than be simple he uses drill attacks from the air and charges, making it difficult to hit enemies at times. Rouge uses bombs in the same annoying manner as tails, although they are less buggy than his dummy ring bombs. Similar to Sonic Adventure, there are town areas where you start missions. These really come down to whether or not you prefer the town areas. I liked the ones in Sonic Adventure, but not these. The areas are ridiculously huge, and there’s not much to do other than town missions. It takes forever to get from one side to the other, ruining the experience. And then there are the loading screens. They appear between every mission, scene, and save point. They’re extremely long and give the game a broken feel. To start a town mission, you talk to a person who needs help. They tell you what to do, then a long, long loading screen appears. Then they reappear telling you what to do again, then another long loading screen. You complete the mission, then another loading screen and finally you’re ranked. It’s especially bad in town missions with multiple tasks. Loading screens appear between each task, so if you fail you have to sit through ten minutes of loading screens again before you finally beat the mission. They appear between scenes, breaking the videos up. Especially in the last story, where the opening video is composed of several scenes, this can be frustrating.
Graphics: 6/10
The graphics are amazing at the start, middle, and end of each story. That’s about it. The graphics are mediocre, late previous-gen (Xbox, PS2, GC) at best, too bad this game is for next-gen though. Considering the fact that the Xbox 360 and PS3 are supposedly able to keep amazing graphics through the whole game, this is sad. The levels are okay, although since the same levels are used repeatedly in each story with few differences, the graphics won’t blow you away. Silver’s first level, Crisis City, an apocalyptic level, is the best, but all the other levels have ugly and unimaginative designs. The characters themselves outside of the cinematic beginning, middle, and end scenes, are weird looking. They move kind of strangely and don’t look very real other than Dr. Eggman, who has a new look for this game only. The mouth movements of many characters don’t match up at many points. The enemies have been upgraded from childish egg pawns and badniks to sleek, fearsome robots that look surprisingly pretty good. Sound: 7/10
Each level features a pretty good soundtrack, especially many of the boss fights. The voice acting is another mediocre aspect of this game, at many points the voice actors don’t really sound excited or enthusiastic to be doing their job. Overall, the game is just plain bad. The story is good, but all you have to go through to finish that story isn’t worth it. The gameplay sucks, the graphics aren’t good, the sound isn’t impressive, and there isn’t much to get excited about. The game can be replayed for achievements, but getting those achievements can be another frustrating exercise in an already frustrating game. When a game is very difficult only because of its buggy gameplay and unresponsive controls, clearly there is a problem. I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone, even a big Sonic fan like myself (and trust me, I’m a big Sonic fan, not someone lying so someone will listen to my opinion). It’s sad that such a recognizable and once great franchise has been reduced to something like this. Honestly, you can try this game if you want, but chances are you’ll regret it. It takes a lot to ignore all the problems in this game (I know I’m forgetting some of the problems as I’m writing this). Sonic the Hedgehog is an unfinished game lacking the redeeming values a good game has. It’s a true disappointment.