Despite commonly being promoted as being a "reinvention" of the franchise, its a lot worse and plaged with bug
January, PlayStation 3 owners got the latest offering when it was released and despite it looking brilliant, its a complete different story when you boot this game.
You play as three characters in this game. Sonic is your first and only offering and you have to unlock Shadow and Silver's stories by crossing paths in the game, brings back memories when I had to do the same requirements in Sonic Adventure.
Sonic offers pretty much the gameplay as he does in the previous 3D games, speeding past worlds, blowing up enemies, etc. Yet when you play for the first time, this is where the highly anticipated game begins to get its low score.
In Sonic Adventure, you had Adventure Maps. They worked pretty well for the gamer as you looked around for clues, new items, shops and links in the story. In this game, you get a loading time consisting around 20 seconds, these loading times after a while get very irratating and will fustrate when doing a mission and if you happen to screw up the mission, you have to grow through the whole thing again PLUS the loading times.
In Sonic Adventure, you didnt have no bother of any missions apart from using techniques to get to places further in the story and finding keys within the maps to unlock new levels. In this game, you have really silly missions which consume time and also are just stupid. Doesn't fit with the game at all because Sonic's on this desperate chase for the Princess and get to the next level, he has to play hide and seek in one of the missions JUST to get to the next level and get rings. I feel that the whole missions are totally uneccessary and stupid and ruin the game.
Now onto gameplay, what I liked about previous Sonic 3D titles was that you could play almost every character in their own adventure or with them like in Heroes and the Adventure games. This game you have three Hedgehogs but they have their differences, Silver's gameplay is the only new thing that this game offers and even after a while, it gets repetitive and boring.
Sonic's gameplay is okay, pretty much the same but with a few noticeable differences, you play with Elise on several occassions and you get an ability for the levels which is a shield but it aint that great. Sonic's gameplay is bad when you do the High Speed Levels for example Wave Ocean and Radical Train, it is absolutely difficult to control and the fact the camera is screwed up in this title to show the sensation of speed which you can't enjoy makes the possibilties of getting a Rank S near impossible or very difficult.
Shadow's is similar to the last game, Shadow the Hedgehog. Minus the guns thank god, Shadow runs slightly slower than Sonic but has this combo during a homing attack, a nice addition but doesn't feel that good when executing the attack. Shadow uses vehicles like in the last game but I really hated Shadow the Hedgehog for that and wish they just made Shadow like they did in Sonic Adventure 2 and Heroes, I didnt have a problem with that and he sounds like an emo ****
Silver's gameplay as I have said already is a new offering to the Sonic series. He has physic powers and accompyed by Blaze the Cat who debuted in Sonic Rush. Silver's gameplay is good but the whole new physic gameplay sensation wears off after a while and he is slow to move, unless he moved as fast as Shadow and Sonic, I would have liked Silver more.
Saying that, you get to play the other characters such as Tails, Knuckles, Rouge, Omega, Amy and Blaze but don't expect anything special. Tails moves soooooo slow and most of the characters apart from Blaze play terribly.
The gameplay in general is bad. The camera is moved closer to the characters which causes a lot of problems for the gamer. You can't see the surroundings well and it ruins the game bigtime. The other problems to kick this game where the sun don't shine is the consistant bugs, you could be on the highway to a Rank S, very difficult on some levels but then you could just die or screw up in a big way that you will lose a Rank because of it. On top of that, the loading times are still intact and by now, will have really annoyed the gamer.
I can say a few things which are good about this game but won't earn it a good score. The Voice Acting is still by 4Kids (WHY!?!) but in this game, Mike Pollock who voices Eggman does a brilliant job of making Eggman who he is, a badguy!! I miss the other voice actors SEGA got rid off, Ryan Drummond and co. would have done a better job in this game.
The Soundtrack for this game is very good, brings back memories of the old 16-bit days. The Story and Plot for the game is really good also but is ruined by the terrible gameplay this game has to offer.
The bad thing about the story is the end of it, Sonic dies lol but it uses the VERY OLD Super Sonic thing at the end of the game, I don't know about you but that has got very old and I would like to see better gameplay of Super Sonic.
PLAYSTATION 3 VS. XBOX 360 VERSION
In all, I havent seen both properly in HD but I have noticed in the PS3 version, the frame rate slows down when in Soleanna and in certain parts of the game where the 360 version doesnt. The cut scenes where the game is in engine the frames per seconds in the 360 version is 60fps and the PS3 version is 50fps. The PS3 is capable so I don't understand where it goes wrong.
As for best version, I'm going for the XBOX 360 version as it performs better and the fact that the PS3 version didnt take advantage of any decent extras during the delay.
The PlayStation 3 version could have seriously benefited from Game Data Utility, a feature in some PS3 titles which allow parts or all of the game to be saved onto the HDD which is included in the PS3. Because of the loading times in the 360 version, this feature would have been brilliant, despite it having its bugs, the feature which would tackle loading times easily would have got an average review and better score but there is bad stuff about this game and that is why it has the score.
-Good-
Brilliant Graphics for the next generation Sonic
A good storyline which reminded me of Sonic Adventure
Voice acting is good, Mike Pollock is outstanding
-Bad-
Bugs are all over the gameplay
Loading times are just unacceptable
Unneccessary Missions when in Soleanna
Amigo's gameplay is just rubbish
NO GAME DATA UTILITY - really needs it in this game.
Overall
Sonic the Hedgehog is a total letdown, commonly promoted as being a "reinvention" of the franchise. It actually doesn't meet that reinvention and does a terrible job of offering good gameplay and is one of the worst Sonic games released