Sonic the Hedgehog (Xbox 360, 2006)

In what might be seen as a move to reset and reinvent the series, the latest game to feature Sonic the Hedgehog is merely called Sonic the Hedgehog. Sega's blue critter has been around since the 16-bit days, when his side-scrolling platformers were strong enough to take on Mario, the then-undisputed kingpin of the platforming genre. Sonic's fall from grace has been slow, starting with a promising first stab at 3D with Sonic Adventure, but it's all been downhill since those far-gone days, and games like this new Sonic the Hedgehog are the culprit. With plenty of bad glitches, poor controls, and totally lame gameplay on all fronts, this one's not going to restore any part of the Hedgehog's name to glory.

Sonic the Hedgehogscreenshot
Sonic and the crew are back with a lackluster adventure that isn't worth your time or money.

While Sonic's name is on the box, you'll actually spend most of your time playing as other characters. The game is broken up into three different stories: one starring Sonic, one starring Shadow, and one starring a new hedgehog called Silver. Each of the stories play differently because of the way each hedgehog controls. Sonic is meant to be the fast-moving one, and he mainly attacks via a homing jump attack that makes most basic fights as simple as timing presses of the A button to bounce from foe to foe. Silver has telekinesis powers that let him pick up large objects and use his mind to fling them at enemies. He's not as fast as Sonic, but he has the ability to float in the air for brief periods of time, letting him cross larger gaps. Shadow the Hedgehog gets his own version of the homing attack, but the big difference is that he can drive around in different armed vehicles. Further watering the game down is a heavy supporting cast, so even when you pick the Sonic episode, you'll still occasionally play as Tails and Knuckles. Other Sonic collaborators, like Amy, Blaze, Rouge, and E-123 Omega also put in guest appearances. While the character variety might initially seem like a good idea, most of them aren't too interesting. Tails moves almost painfully slowly, and his fake ring bombs aren't any fun to use, so when Sonic levels occasionally switch over to him, it's immediately boring. In addition to the single-player levels, you can play the game in a two-player, split-screen tag mode that attempts to force players to cooperate as you progress through the story. In addition, you can go back and play levels you've completed in a battle mode.

While you play as many different characters throughout the main game, the same structure applies across the board. The game's action stages are separated by town portions, where you'll be able to take on dopey side missions to help out the locals or figure out puzzles to proceed. Each of these side missions are bookended by two sets of loading screens, where it first loads up the exact same scene, just with different text dialogue, then it loads up the actual mission. After that, it has to load up some ending text and then load up the out-of-mission version of that part of town. Each load time is fairly long, and when they stack up in this way, it almost makes the game feel broken.

Only the most blindly reverent Sonic the Hedgehog fan could possibly squeeze any enjoyment out of Sega's latest adventure. This platformer is a mess from top to bottom, and any of the occasional moments that don't feel somehow broken only serve to make the game's other flaws appear that much bigger.


In what might be seen as a move to reset and reinvent the series, the latest game to feature Sonic the Hedgehog is merely called Sonic the Hedgehog. Sega's blue critter has been around since the 16-bit days, when his side-scrolling platformers were strong enough to take on Mario, the then-undisputed kingpin of the platforming genre. Sonic's fall from grace has been slow, starting with a promising first stab at 3D with Sonic Adventure, but it's all been downhill since those far-gone days, and games like this new Sonic the Hedgehog are the culprit. With plenty of bad glitches, poor controls, and totally lame gameplay on all fronts, this one's not going to restore any part of the Hedgehog's name to glory.


While you play as many different characters throughout the main game, the same structure applies across the board. The game's action stages are separated by town portions, where you'll be able to take on dopey side missions to help out the locals or figure out puzzles to proceed. Each of these side missions are bookended by two sets of loading screens, where it first loads up the exact same scene, just with different text dialogue, then it loads up the actual mission. After that, it has to load up some ending text and then load up the out-of-mission version of that part of town. Each load time is fairly long, and when they stack up in this way, it almost makes the game feel broken.


But since the frequent and lengthy load times don't quite do it, it's up to the action stages to make the game actually feel broken. The camera is the most immediate problem, as it doesn't bother to give you a good view of the action on its own, and your control over it is inverted, with no option to change it. In some cases, the game changes angles at the worst possible time and the controls don't automatically compensate for the new angle. In one Sonic level, you're snowboarding down a mountain and must stay pointed in the right direction. When the camera flips around to give you a new view of the action, you immediately grind to a halt, because you're no longer pushing in the proper direction. This makes some sequences of the game a frustrating exercise in trial and error while you attempt to compensate for this mess. This is but one of several cases where the camera causes often-severe gameplay problems, and it gets frustrating to the point of being nearly unplayable. Since none of the hedgehogs can swim and there's plenty of water and endless, life-ending cliffs nearby, jumping or trying to do a homing attack when you're near a ledge is often scary, since you're rarely able to get a good look at the world around you. Death can also be a bit scary, because you have a limited number of lives and you're kicked all the way out to the main menu when you run out. The game doesn't save automatically, and you can't save in the middle of a mission, so special care must be taken to save immediately before you enter a new area, just to make sure you aren't later forced to repeat lengthy sections of the game.

The Sonic the Hedgehog series was one of the first to give Nintendo's Mario a run for his money. With blazing fast platforming and unprecedented gameplay Sonic became an instant success. Unfortunately his 3D adventures have not always enjoyed as much success as their 16 - bit counterparts.

Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast began Sonic's real foray in 3D (Sonic 3D Blast was a dismal isometric adventure for the Genesis and Saturn; Sonic R was 3D racing game for the Saturn). Sonic Adventure was very graphically impressive for it's time with equally good sound, replay value, memorable characters, and story line. The only problem seemed to stem from a few camera problems and the deemphasis on the main hero. Sonic Adventure continued this path even further with excellent graphics, great sound, and the further deemphasis of Sonic with the introduction of Shadow.

After these games, Sega released a string of mediocre games with Sonic seeming to lose his front and center stage to other characters especially Shadow (Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Heroes, etc).

The next Sonic the Hedgehog promised a brand new adventure but the graphics are barely next gen and suffer from framerate issues: the environments lack detail and you'll find that although the worlds appear 3D you will be stuck running on a 2D path. The game play aslo suffers from extremely bad camera angles which will make even the most experienced platformer frustrated. The other Hedgehogs Silver and Shadow attempt to steal the show and create an overall experience that is not very reminiscent of past Sonic Games.

The very essence of the series has been about speed but this new Sonic has constant stop and go game play. You'll find yourself running blazingly fast until you have to "handle environmental hazards and enemies" (IGN). With this in mind, it just seems as this game is more of a rental than a buy. Sega has truly killed our beloved Sonic the Hedgehog.

What a game this is. Tons of bugs, yet really fun to play. I think Sega would have hit home with this game had all the bugs and glitches been cleaned up and the game's optimization polished.

Gameplay:
PROS: Fast and fun with Sonic and Shadow; Interesting and puzzling with Silver. Decent control. Different abilities and play styles make the characters a lot of fun to play.
CONS: Camera control is a bit difficult to handle. Glitchy areas, especially Kingdom Valley. Sonic doesn't run as fast as he usually should. Loading Screens--too many of them!
RATING: GOOD

Storyline:
PROS: Extremely interesting and high level storyline for a Sonic game.
CONS: Time Travel is confusing
RATING: EXCELLENT

Music/Sound:
PROS: Voice acting has improved since Shadow the Hedgehog, the music is beautifully orchestrated, and is pleasing to listen to.
RATING: GREAT

Difficulty:
PROS: VERY Challenging levels, whether the glitches play a part in it or not. The levels are fun challenges.
CONS: GLITCHES--they tend to kill you, a lot, and it's frustrating.
RATING: GREAT

OVERALL RATING: GREAT (Good for ebay) (8/10 for normal ratings).
This is a fun game to play. It's one that Sega should go back to and fix up to make it even better, to make it a good Successor to Sonic Adventure 2.

This game is disappointing. It would have been great, but they rushed it, and it feels way too unfinished. There's slowdowns, there are lot of things that haven't done (even the manual tells about some moves that you can't use!), there are way too much loading screens (they take about 30-40 % of ALL gameplay) even INSIDE THE LEVELS. Yeah, when you get into certain part of a highspeed action, you must wait a few minutes before you can continue...

Music is fine, like always. Graphics and musics are the two absolutely best things in this game. Game's musical theme is awesome. Story is bad, very bad. Who would want to see a relationship between Sonic and a human princess? Well, at least I won't.

You can also play as Shadow or Silver. But, you don't want to. Trust me. I loved many other Sonic games, Sonic Adventure 2: Battle is my favourite game of all time, I loved even Sonic Unleashed, finished Sonic Heroes 100 % etc etc, but I just can't stand this game... If they would have polished this game another six months, it could've been a decent game. But, now, it's just... very bad.