PSP World

Sonic and the Secret Rings Review

After the abominable mess that was Sonic The Hedgehog (Next Gen Edition) I was pretty bumbed out. It was the worst Sonic game since 3-D blast. But I went with my gut instinct and decided to pick up Sonic and the Secret Rings on wii and it just blew me away. Compared to the last games, Secret Rigns feels downright inspiring.

Whereas past Sonic games gave you full control over Sonic, in this one, you’re on rails, able to move slightly left and right to avoid danger. This way, you won’t totally lose control of Sonic when you’re going at break-neck speeds. It’s a design choice that fits the Sonic games like a glove and I don’t know why Sega didn’t think of this sooner. The main problem with sonic games of yesterday was that the camera was glitchy and controlling Sonic at high speeds was like gambling in the state lottery. Here, all of that is remedied and makes for a pretty enjoyable game. There's a multiplayer mode as well, which is kinda like a mini-mario party. It's alright and extends the replay value but it's nothing Sega should base a whole game off of.

The game tends to falter along the story line and environment. The story is forgivable, given that most sonic games have either had little story or just plain cruddy ones, so there’s no evolution here. Sonic has been called into a book to save it from a Genie and you just need a reason to kill bad dudes. The problem with Secret Rings comes from the repetitive environments. Clearly there was little budget for this game, which is a shame considering it’s light-years ahead of anything we’ve played for years. To remedy the low dev cost, the developers decided to make progression mission-based, meaning you’ll be repeating the same levels about 8x each just completing different objectives. Repeating a level 2 or 3 times is fine with me, but when you start getting into the 5th and 6th time, it feels less like a game and more like work.

Clearly, control wise, this is the best sonic game we’ve played in years and maybe even a decade. By focusing on what made sonic games great in the past (speed) and less on what made them bad (exploration in 3-D worlds) Sega created a unique sonic game that deserves some love. However, the uniqueness was mostly wasted due to repetition in environments that suck the life out of the game and a weak and uninteresting story that doesn’t reward players for getting swept into it.