Never worth the purchase, only rent if you're a diehard Sonic fan...
Because of this, I figured "Hey, can't be much worse can it?".
I was wrong.
Sonic the Hedgehog takes place in the Human City of Soleanna. Eggman is up to no good and Sonic sees it as his job to save the day. Along the way he meets Princess Elise, along with the usual Sonic characters (Tails, Knuckles etc.)
You can play as three characters in the game, and each plays differently. You start with Sonic, and then you unlock Silver and Shadow along the way.
Before I begin talking about the gameplay, I feel the loading screens deserve a special mention. First off, they're everywhere. If you start a sub-quest, then there's a loading screen, followed by a description, followed by a loading screen. And these aren't short either, they can take up to a minute each, and when they're this frequent, it's simply inexcusable.
I'll start with Sonic, because his levels are the best (But that's not saying much.).
Sonic's levels are standard fare. You run along through the level, the objective being to get to the end. No puzzles, no complications. The problem lies in two forms: Bad programming, and perhaps the worst camera on a 360 game. The camera is positioned behind Sonic. Not slightly overhead, so that you could see the floor, because that would be useful. This means you can expect to fall down holes you didn't actually see. In some of the faster sections, the camera will quickly switch between behind you and in front of you, making control exceedingly difficult.
Here's a description of me playing a level from Sonic the Hedgehog:
The level starts on a grinding rail. Sonic grinds down on a board of some kind (Where it came from is a mystery.). I reach the bottom and jump off the rail, still on the board. All around Sonic, there are exploding cars falling from the sky. I dodge the first two, and the I dodge the third one. The game however, thinks the car hit me, because of the bad collision detection. I die.
So I start again. This time, I dodge the cars and get to a series of ramps. Text appears on the screen saying "Hold A and release to jump!", as well as Sonic saying "Hold A as long as you can!". So I hold A. I make it past the first few ramps, but the dodgy physics cause Sonic to go slightly up in the air. The game registers this as me jumping, even though I haven't let go of A, and I die. Again.
But I'm a patient person. A couple of goes later, and I've made good progress in the level. I'm now at a part where you're running down a long highway, being chased by a wall of fire. The look is reminiscent of the bonus levels from Sonic 2, at least until you move. Rather than have you move left or right, it has you turn left or right. And you can't stop moving, because Sonic is running automatically. This results in perhaps the cheapest deaths you'll ever see in the game. Because you can't stop, or alter your jump, you're having to jump in a perfect straight line. If you don't you'll either hit a wall and die, or jump over the wall and die. This is when I stop playing.
Sadly, Shadow's and Silver's levels are no better. Shadow's levels are like Sonic's, but with vehicles. Rather than go with a modern control scheme, i.e. Halo or Forza Motorsport, they went with a PS1 quality 'A= go, X= reverse.'. This means you have no control over the speed. Add in the huge turning arc, and it's damn frustrating, and certainly not fun.
Silver has the power of telekinesis. What you may not realise is that he can only use it on objects within 2 feet of himself. And it's his only form of attack. Needless to say, these levels are really bad.
Now I'll discuss the sound. The music is okay. It's tolerable. It's also so quiet you'll hardly ever actually hear it.
The voice acting, once again, is pretty bad, but again, it's tolerable.
The graphics are debatable. On the one hand, it looks better than the last Sonic games, but on the other hand, they all looked the same, and two were ported from the Dreamcast. Basically, the graphics could be done on the original Xbox (Minus the self shadowing, the one highlight of the graphics.).
The textures are poor, the character models are good, but not incredible, and the environments look no better than on previous games.
The one advantage is that it will probably take a long time to complete, but that's mostly because of the massive difficulty increase due to bugs and the bad camera.
The bottom line is this: Sonic needs to move on. How about they get rid of the lives system, get rid of the short stages you can't save in, get rid of the horrible 'emotional' storylines and fix the damn gameplay. Why not make huge levels, in which you get checkpoints that you can save you've gotten to? Why not get rid of the accurate jumping, and allow for human error? Sonic has arms, surely he could grab a ledge? How about a witty story, filled with characters similar to Sonic (That is, animals, rather than humans.)? There was a time when Sonic was compared to Mario as the 'Platforming King', however now that comparison is laughable.
Sonic needs to move on. Nintendo realised this with Mario, and it shows.
Sega has to keep up, or it'll get left behind.
This game is worth a rent if you REALLY like the Sonic, but I wouldn't ever recommend buying it.