Sonic the Hedgehog [X360]

Sega's Team Sonic could have churned out a fun, old-fashioned Sonic for the blue one's fifteenth anniversary and the vast majority of us would have been happy. I would have been happy. Instead, Sonic the Hedgehog will at best convince Sega to replace the decision makers in Team Sonic. Individual segments of the game where you actually get to play as Sonic and run fast don't fall apart, but other than those rare portions of Sonic, the game is a disaster. It's more reminiscent of the debacle of Shadow, not the glorious Sonic games of yesteryear.

The hub city, Soleanna, is a charming burg that makes no sense for Sonic and company to be in. I spent the better part of an hour painstakingly hunting down and talking to each of the numerous townspeople to ferret out hidden secrets. I was rewarded for my effort with fifty-five wasted minutes. Individual levels have hidden silver coins (and finding them can net you achievements), but the central city has all clue- or quest-givers color-coded to eliminate any pleasures of exploring. Filling the city with a few dozen NPCs who all repeat the same useless information doesn't make Soleanna feel lively or real; it makes the whole area feel tacked on. And while having a Princess to save is part and parcel of the platforming-hero gig, the storyline to draw Soleanna's liege and Sonic together is unforgivingly mediocre.

I'm Mad as Hell, and I'm not Gonna Take it Anymore!

Getting out of Soleanna and into the missions, some of the more grotesque errors of the Sonic Adventure titles and Shadow have been cleaned up. The lock-on system is much better at guessing who you want to attack, the ring dash is much less likely to mysteriously fail and send you tumbling fatally into the abyss, and Shadow isn't carrying a gun anymore. With those fixes, destroying Dr. Eggman's plans could have been pretty good. Instead, the new Sonic offers a painful experience with scattered moments of happiness. Yeah, I was reminded of a bad relationship too.

Quite a ways off from a checkpoint, I often found myself abruptly shifted to playing Tails, Knuckles, or other second-string characters whether I wanted to or not. That was okay until it became clear that these characters were designed to force me to, oh, destroy every controller I own. Since they generally don't handle as well as the difficult-to-control Sonic and are usually forced on you in areas surrounded by instant-death falls, be ready to restart often. Even if you skip trying to get extras like rings, the camera jumps in a fashion I can only call "malicious" as you try to land non-lethally. Putting Tails on solid land becomes a guessing game, with an instant death as a runner-up prize.

Anything that could be done to prevent you from simply getting to run really fast seems to have been done here, presumably to make the game more "cutting edge," "next-gen," or "hip." Shadow and its gunplay were arguably more fun, because at least I went in expecting a trash game. Here, the misguided attempts at creating alternate gameplay options are unpredictable, showing up at random in levels and quickly costing a few lives as you try to navigate through nonsensical controls and sudden 180 degree camera rotations.