Review

Last year, Sega promised much a delivered little with their 360 reboot of Sonic The Hedgehog. This was supposedly a “back to basics” approach for the series but instead ended up making all the same mistakes as previous offerings, although it thankfully stopped short of putting a gun in the hero’s hand! This could have signalled the end of the line for Sega’s blue mascot, but they also had Sonic And The Secret Rings well into development, so could this revitalise the series?

The short answer is “yes”, this is easily the best title to feature Sonic since the glory days on the MegaDrive, not exactly difficult I know, but this doesn’t make the statement any less true. However, Secret Rings is not without its fair share of problems, which we’ll get to in a minute.

Essentially, this plays like the bonus game from Sonic 2, where you run into the screen and move left and right to collect rings, but as this is a Wii title the movement is handled by tilting the remote from side to side and Sonic himself will accelerate into a run without you touching anything. A fairly lengthy, and mandatory, tutorial takes you through all the basics of the controls: pressing 2 to jump; flicking the remote forwards to attack whilst in the air or jump further; holding 1 to brake – and on the whole these controls work well, but learning them simply isn’t fun and get the game off to a very poor start.

Once you get through this thing pick up considerably and you enter the Sand Oasis world. Immediately you notice that this is one of the best looking games on the Wii so far and as befits the series it all moves past at a blistering pace. When Sega said they were going back to basics, this is the game they should have been referring to, as this is what you expect Sonic to be: fast and furious. As you learn more about the intricacies of the controls you also begin to enjoy it more and more.

Unfortunately Sega consistently try to shoot themselves in the foot throughout. The animated story segments are laughable, the music is never anything other than annoying, there are too many moments where you completely lose track of what’s going on due to the excessive speed and why the camera doesn’t spin around to look behind you whenever you need to back up is a mystery. Also any momentum that the game builds up during a level is completely undone by having everything you’ve unlocked flash up on screen one at a time upon completion. Does the game really need to tell us that we’ve unlocked another level when that’s how games usually work? I think not.

In addition to the main game there are also the now seemingly obligatory collection of mini-games. These are for one to four players and come in pretty much the form you’d expect with many uses for the remote. It’s a mildly diverting sideline: better than Super Monkey Ball but worse than Rayman – and it makes for a nice addition to the overall package.

Sonic And The Secret Rings is another example of developers starting to get to grips with what’s possible on the Wii, but while it’s certainly fun at times it’s actually quite hard to recommend due to the flaws. It’s proof, finally, that Sonic can work in 3D with a bit of thought and effort but it still isn’t as good as the traditional 2D titles. By all means rent it but think hard before you buy it.

About the Review

Platform

Nintendo Wii

Developer

Sonic Team

Publisher

SEGA

Released

2nd March 2007