Any potential Sonic The Hedgehog had of returning to form has been destroyed by the fact that his PS3 debut is a broken mess. Honestly, for a supposedly 'finished' game it can be an embarrassing joke at times and we can scarcely believe it made it past Sega's game testers - or anyone at Sega for that matter.
There are so many glitches that the game becomes defined by them, and the few good ideas it has get lost among fractured polygons and rotten collision detection. The sad thing is, if it weren't for its numerous technical discrepancies, it'd be a pretty good game.
The game revolves around an RPG-style hub, the seaside town of Soleanna. It's a weird, blocky, characterless place full of poorly-rendered humans who you have to chat with to proceed to the next level. These bits feel like a careless afterthought and they're an enormous pain because you have to go through them every single time you run out of lives in the regular levels. Tasks include rescuing a little girl trapped on a roof, finding the captain of the guards and defending a gate from Eggman's marauding robots. It's pretty yawnsome.
Old-school
But get past the lame 'RPG' stuff and you can get involved with some classically Sonic-esque levels full of corkscrews and jump pads and all the stuff that made his 2D adventures great. Only... they aren't very good at all. Again, because of those glitches we mentioned earlier.
There are some bits that are undeniably exciting, including a death-defying ride through a post-apocalyptic city on the back of a tiny bit of metal, but for every shriek of joy there are a thousand grunts of annoyance and filthy swears.
Things get better when you find yourself controlling Silver the Hedgehog. He has Second Sight-style telekinetic powers, so you can pick things up and toss them about, which is actually quite entertaining. Other playable characters include Tails (who can fly, as ever), Amy (good at jumping) and Knuckles (good at punching). In fact, the whole cast of the Sonic universe is in there, with Blaze and Rouge both making regular appearances. But the three main characters (each of whom have different episodes) are Sonic, Silver and - you guessed it - Shadow. Bleurgh.
But when you sit back and look at it from afar, you realize that despite your blinkered love for the speedy blue hog and his pals, and the lovely graphics, it's actually just a poor game rammed with flaws. It is worth a rent, however, just to savour the few good bits, laugh at all the glitches... and to start crying when you remember what Sonic games used to be like in the '90s. Sob.
Comments
1 comments so far...
CaptainCortez on 5 Apr '07 said:
Alright, after reading your review and owning the game myself, I felt the need to share my verdict on the blue hog's new outting. So, if you want to hear an opinion from a slightly older gamer (nearly 20), read on by all means:
In short, this feels like an un-finished game, but it can be pretty good at times if you give it a chance (when you get past the amount of glitches within it, which is hard, as I agree - It feels like little effort has gone into the development of this). However, even if they did sort out the glitches, you still have to contend with the annoyances that are:
Bad FMV Sequences - These are terrible. I'm a pretty big Sonic fan, but come on, sure I can get the gist of the storyline, but with the amount that the fmv's break up, it's hardly enjoyable.
A.I. - The AI in this is just plain stupid. The characters run around like headless chickens following you, and as soon as you jump or turn a corner, they don't seem to know what to do, other than to jump off of a ledge for sheer excitement, and plummit to their doom, screaming every 5 seconds.
Speed - This is one of the slowest Sonic games around. The only time it seems to get fast, is when you get onto the parts with sonic where he automatically runs, and you just have the joy of pressing left, right and jump at the correct moments.
Attacks - Unlike Sonic Adventure 2 for the Dreamcast (The best one ever in my opinion), you can't just mash on the buttons to do fast homing attacks...........instead, you have to press it once, wait for sonic or shadow to bounce in the air for a second or two, and repeat. This is hardly fast, and a major disappointment to me.
As you can see by now, most of the game has far too many problems, but if you can get your head around most of this, and just pay attention to the storyline, you can get "some" enjoyment out of it.
Overall though, this does feel like the retro ones........but that's because it's so basic and bland. The only thing is, the original retro ones were better, as you couldn't really get lost on them (funny though, as they didn't even have glitches in, or not many at least, and look how old they are).
To be fair though, I think it's damn right out of order for SEGA to release a game of this standard. If you're gonna charge £40 for a game, you can at least sort out the bugs in it, and at the very least make the fmv's solidly watchable. If SEGA were decent at all, then they should call back every single PS3 game that they ever despatched, sort out the issues, and then re-release them, or even offer our money back.
I used to love SEGA, and the Dreamcast more than anything, but I'm disgusted at how SEGA can release a game with this amount of bugs and still charge full whack for it. £5 or £10 would be a fair enough price, but even still, I wish something was done about this, because as soon as I've finished my game (and I'm on "Last" at the minute), I am most likely going to sell this, and I didn't ever plan to get rid of any Sonic game. Not only that, I'd feel slightly guilty selling this, as I don't feel that anybody should own it with how it has been released.
I really am truly disappointed, and whether it's Sega or just Sonic Team to blame, I don't know, but either way, you're killing off your "once known" good names.