Awful gameplay and horrible controls drag this down to being one of the worst Sonic games ever created.
Graphics:
One thing you immediately notice as soon as you start up the title screen is that the game makes the Gamecube graphics look as good as an NES'. The first opening cinematic shows a great amount of detail in everything. From the fireworks, to the people, to the water, everything looks just... amazing. But when you see some of the in-game cutscenes, you might notice an insane drop in quality! That kind of tells me that SEGA got lazy designing the in-game graphics, like Shadow's game. That makes me feel kind of like SEGA wasn't trying. I've noticed many glitches in the game. No, "many" doesn't even begin to describe the amount of glitches this game has! This game is up to it's eyes in glitches! In a certain level, you play as Rouge, and you can glide through the air, just like in Sonic Adventure 2. But... during this single part, Rouge gets STUCK to the wall! You can mash on the jump button all you want, but Rouge won't come off, like somebody super-glued her to the wall. So your only choices are to 1. Kill yourself, or 2. Exploit a glitch! That glitch is sometimes when you come to a ceiling of something you can go inside, there is some sort of unfinished part. SEGA didn't program that part to be solid, so you can climb up into the unfinished part, and phase through the wall! Another glitch is that in one point during Sonic's Wave Ocean stage, if you jump onto a vertical wall just right, you can run up and down that vertical wall. Another is during Silver's desert stage. You can pick up a box, put it down next to a door that won't open, lift it and jump off at just the right time to phase through the door! There are also a bunch of other glitches that allow you to finish stages as temporary characters. That's not a mistake, that's SEGA being LAZY with their graphical programming...
Score: 3.9/10
Controls:
The controls are awful. For one thing, the analog stick can sometimes function like a D-Pad, because as soon as you tilt the analog stick in a certain direction, your character's momentum won't change. He or she will just run as fast as he or she was previously, but shift in a different direction, often leading you to bumping into walls, which will cause you to lose the momentum you've been keeping for almost 3 minutes. I guess the controls could be called "stiff". But I just call the game's controls "absolute crap". This mainly comes into play at the "Sonic Mach Speed" sections. During these sections, Sonic will remember, "Oh yeah! I'm fast!", and break the freaking sound barrier. Normally, this would be a good thing, considering that everybody loves it when Sonic runs so fast that his skin should start peeling off, but the Mach Speed sections are even worse than regular controls. First of all, Sonic is bad at making turns. When you tilt the analog stick in a certain direction, it desides not to act like a D-Pad, but it takes it as if you aren't even tilting the analog stick all the way, often leading you to death by MISSING A RAMP. The second problem is that you can't turn when you jump. In fact, jumping is quite possibly the worse thing you could do during these sections! Jumping usually leads to missing platforms that you are supposed to land on. Shadow's controls are just as bad as Sonic's, except with Shadow, you'll be mashing on the attack button's, because Shadow's story is just Sonic's with more killing! Silver's controls are OKAY. In my opinion, Silver's controls don't suck as bad as Sonic's or Shadow's, because building up speed isn't nessecary when you're playing as Silver.
Score: 3/10
Difficulty:
I think that the difficulty wouldn't be as hard, if the controls didn't suck so badly. Again, the controls just ruin the game. During Sonic's story, some levels are very easy, some are perfect difficulty, and some are simply brutal. Shadow's story mainly consists of hard levels that only require repititous button-mashing. Silver's story can be especially brutal, if you've never played a 3-D beat 'em up. Playing as temporary characters suck. They're just so much harder to play as, with the exception of E-123 Omega and Blaze. Mainly due to their attacks being either delayed, or next to useless. Tails' attack is a fake ring bomb. This is what I don't understand. The fake ring bomb has a serious delay when you aren't in the air. When the bomb explodes, a bunch of rings come out, which can confuse you between which rings are real or not. Knuckles is just like Rouge, except Knuckles can't fly as far for whatever reason. Not a lot of complaints here. Amy is brutal to play as. She has a hammer attack, which is severely delayed for some reason, and she has a double jump which wouldn't be as much of a problem if you didn't lose all forward momentum. It's really only good for getting high, not far. E-123 Omega can FLY. If you jump, and then mash on the jump button, Omega will repeatedly shoot out his jets, and won't lose any height. This allows you to skip certain parts.
Score: 4/10
Story 1/3 (Sonic):
Sonic's story starts out in a city or nation known as Solleana is holding a festival, in which the flames of disaster are lit by Princess Elise in honor of a sacred being known as Solaris. Almost immediately after the flames of disaster are lit, Eggman robots swarm Solleana and Dr. Robotnik demands that Princess Elise gives her Chaos Emerald to him. Sonic then appears out of absolutely nowhere to save the day once again. (yay.) All of the Eggman robots are immediately destroyed, and Sonic carries Elise away. It's kind of a weak story, considering Sonic went from saving either the world, or the creatures of the forest, to saving... a princess. Yeah... SEGA, I know coming up with a story for a hedgehog fighting a fat guy wouldn't be THAT hard. You don't need to copy just about every Mario game to make a good story. I wouldn't mind this as much if beastiality wasn't brought into this game. Imagine what Sonic and Elise's kids would look like...
Score: 5.5/10
Story 2/3 (Shadow):
Shadow's story begins with him racing through a snowy forest to get to some kind of fortress. Why he is doing this in the first place isn't even explained until a bit later in the cutscene. Apparently, Shadow can run past robots, and somehow make them explode. Wouldn't that have been incredibly useful in Sonic Adventure 2, when he was fighting Sonic? Whatever the case, he then bounces off of a robot and lands in the fortress. Then the cheif decides to talk to Shadow through a communicator that he apparently had installed in the rings on his gloves. The cheif explains that Shadow apparently jumped into Eggman's base and he needs to save an agent that was trapped in the base for 26 hours. Shadow ends the communication and warps, when he could have just warped into the base without drawing all the attention to himself when he blew up a whole load of robots.
Score: 7/10
Story 3/3 (Silver):
Silver's story begins with him floating through a destroyed city. He mumbles all of these emo things to himself which, to be perfectly honest, I would expect Shadow to say. He apparently tries to seem like a poet with his amazing ability to talk in a beautiful, poetic way. Suddenly, a flame tower rises up, and Silver destroys it with his Psychic powers, which haven't been explained. It also seems that he is able to fly much longer in the cutscenes than his gameplay. Blaze the Cat shows up, and tells Silver that "He" has appeared again. How Silver and Blaze know each other is beyond me, considering the game never feels the need to explain anything to you. Silver blasts off into the distance, and appears to be going faster than Sonic, while Blaze tries to follow him on foot. It seems that the characters demonstrate more of their abilities during the cutscenes than any other part of the game.
7/10
Entertainment:
The game will probably have you so frustrated with it's awful controls, bad gameplay and glitches that you'll shut the game off before you finish Sonic's story. Some parts may be fun to look at, but this game is not fun to play at all. There are only so many parts that are even worth playing more than once. One thing I absolutely hated about this game was the amount of time I sat there, staring at a loading screen. Here is a description. You go into town and accept a town mission. 10-20 second loading screen. He tells you the mission description. 30-40 second loading screen. You do the mission. 20-30 second loading screen. The guy talks to you and you get your rank. 30-60 second loading screen. The game may as well have just involved staring at a loading screen and doing quicktime events while the screen loads, and nothing else. On top of that, town missions are just stupid. Why would I do town mission when I can just play through an easy level?
Score: 3/10
Overall, this is a terrible game that I wouldn't reccomend to anybody. It is NOT. FUN. It may have good graphics, but that doesn't save this game from being a mess of loading screens and town missions.
Final Score: 3.1/10
Good and Bad
---------------------
+Pretty Graphics
+Great Soundtrack
-Bad Controls
-Bad Voice Acting
-Mach Speed
-Lack of gameplay variety
-Temporary characters suck
-Brutally difficult