I’m going to be completely honest. Sonic and The Secret Rings is HARD! I’m one of these people who have little patience. If I can’t beat a board after 5 or 6 times of trying I throw the remote to the floor and have myself a gigantic pity party. I whine, I cuss, I give the TV the finger, and I get depressed. A game, defeats me!? I won’t have it! It is unheard of!
Someone defeated me, and honestly I don’t even know who. That is really how poor the storyline is.
Once you start the game you have to sit and listen to about 10 minutes of the most boring dialogue you have ever had to suffer through. (Like I said, I have no patience, and hate long cut scenes. A minute is more than enough for me, however I sat through it just so I could write this review)
Sonic is told by some genie, (she’s a girl) that the final pages to some book called Arabian Nights have gone blank (Yeah sounds pretty stupid right?) it is some dude named Erazor who is responsible for the blank pages. It is up to Sonic to collect these magical rings in order to beat Erazor and restore the blank pages to the book. Yay!!!
Blah blah, the genie gets a cold, she sneezes, and before you know it your thrown right into game play without even knowing whom your enemy is. Where is Dr. Robotnic?
WHERE WE GOIN’?
You will be taken to many different lands; however the first place you begin is just a tutorial, the desert oasis. Everything here is just a bunch of idiotic tasks you must perform in order to get to the next chapter inside of the storybook (or world). You will have to run through boards without breaking a jug (elebits anyone?), you will have to kill 10 enemies and not miss a single one in the level. You will be asked to collect 50 rings. All of the tasks are fast paced, and most of them are simple. However some tasks are close to impossible to complete.
The game is similar to how the original was. Sonic won’t die if an enemy hits him so long as he is carrying some rings. If he has zero rings, he will die, and you will have to start the level over again.
LAND HO’!
You will be taken to a desert oasis- this is the lands where your tutorial will take place. You will also be traveling to dinosaur land where you find yourself running away from some huge stampede in the beginning, robot land where you will do combat with a bunch of different types of robots, pirate lands, floating lands and more. Each land consists of about 20 missions. Some of these missions will be fast and easy to beat in only about a minute or two, while others can take around 5 minutes, or more depending on whether or not you die. There are a total of 7 fantasy lands, and one tutorial in all. So really there are 8, if you want to count the long boring tutorial.
SONICS’ GOT SKILLS
Depending on how well you completed a mission Sonic will also level up his ring. He will gain experience points depending on how well you did. You can only choose one ring out of 4 to level up. You can also customize your rings the way you want. For instance if you are on a mission that requires you to beat the world in a certain amount of time, you can customize the ring for speed.
You can either add speed, assault or defense when you customize your rings.
CUT! LIGHTS CAMERA, ACTION!!!!
Each chapter in the storybook you complete will take you to a cut scene. Sometimes a cut scene will even occur before you thought you finished the chapter, which can be annoying. Each cut scene is filled with more pathetic dialogue, and most of the dialogue in the scenes is 50% unnecessary. Why do we have to watch the genie sneeze? Why do we have to listen to Sonic say God Bless you?
OKAY
So what’s up with these controls?
Yeah it took me a hot minute to figure that one out too. See I was pointing the remote at the TV thinking that was how to control him. Nope. You turn the wii remote to the side and hold it like you would an old Nintendo remote controller. Now tilt it left or right. That’s how you get Sonic to move.
I find it stupid, and difficult even after a playing for a good hour or so. I don’t understand why the nun chuck was not used to move him, and the wii remote to jump and perform battle moves!
All of your battle moves will be done on the wii remote only, by flicking your arms forward. This is how Sonic kills things. However first you must jump, and then wait for the enemy to light up red. Then you can strike. Killing enemies takes a bit of practice and perfect timing. It is annoying, and most of the time your best bet is to just run passed enemies if you can.
You also can stop Sonic by pressing the 2 button. You make him jump by pressing the 1button.
However in order for him to jump high he must be completely stopped. Then you hold down the 1 button to get a higher longer jump. Weird, and in my opinion its lame to have to bring him to a full stop just to get him to jump high. Most of the time though he is running so fast it is impossible to get him to a full stop to perform a jump, so he just throws himself off of the ledge. This stinks because in most missions you will throw yourself off of ledges because you don’t know where they are, and they come up so fast. You will most likely die during these jumps until you’re aware of where they are, and when they’re coming up.
Sonic can also grind on rails. What I mean by that is he can jump up on rails and gain super amount of speed while he is zipping by. The rails however I would try to avoid. He slides so fast that once you see an enemy blocking your path, it is too late to perform any actions to kill it or get out of its way.
You can also tilt the remote back towards your body to get him to move backwards. Sonic will however go extremely slow when moving backwards, and it really messes with your vision when you try to back up.
What stinks about the controls in Sonic and the secret rings is how sonic is always moving forward. So if you happen to find yourself up against a wall, and an enemy behind you, it can get glitchy when trying to back up and smash the wall without getting killed by the enemy behind you.
SOUND-
Like I said before, the dialogue stinks, the tones of the voice actors are all over the place, and not only that but the songs in the game are all stupid little drumbeats trying to sound cool, but they are just annoying, and can give you a headache.
Not only do the songs and voices stink, but so does the fact that while in game play there is not a whole lot of different sounds. You will hear the chimes of rings being collected, sounds when Sonic hits an enemy, and a few others. There is not really a large assortment that you would expect. Each song and sound is the same as the last. Nothing really changes.
TONE DEAF?
Not only that but when a character is afraid, they sound happy. When they are mad, they sound calm. The tones of the characters are so off it can at times actually be funny, but not for long.
Eventually the whole dialogue just becomes a waste of your time, and really your patience.
I WOULD OF LIKED TO TAKE MY TIME AND SMELL THE ROSES-
There will be none of that in Sonic, and this is where I have the biggest bone to pick with the game. The graphics are beautiful, I will not deny that, the 3D scenes are beautiful; only, I can enjoy them for about a second.
Every world is colorful and charming. It is a mix of fantasy and reality and it does look stunning.
However Sonic runs so fast at times that I could see how one can easily pass out and start having an epileptic seizure. I found myself dizzy and getting headaches from this lightning fast game play.
It would have been nice if the fast packed action wasn’t such a blur. It would have been more enjoyable if I could have indulged in my environments instead of zipping through them with such ridiculously high speed.
The speed at times gets so out of control that you will not even be able to avoid enemies or spikes that pop up from floors or walls.
YOU SMELL SONIC, TAKE A BATH AND CLEAN YOURSELF UP
What stinks about Sonic and the secret rings is that the game play doesn’t continue in order. You must go into the chapter in the storybook, then click on the chapter you want to play inside of the chapter. Confusing yes? It’s not really hard to figure out when you are playing the game, however I find it annoying to have to continue to go back to the pages in order to play the next part of the game. Why could it not just continue in succession?
Not only does that stink, but the replay value stinks as well. I couldn’t fid myself wandering back to this game after completing it. It’s pretty and all, but it just lacks that ‘lets play more’ (again) aspect.
CAN MY FRIENDS PLAY?
They sure can, in party mode there are 30 different mini-games that come with Sonic and the secret rings. They are sort of fast paced Warioware type games, or Mario Party type mini challenges. All of them are fun, however after you’ve played each one they don’t really have that much replay value.
This is not what I was expecting from a $60 game purchase. The original charm from Sonic has been erased and fans have been striped of what made them fans in the first place. I really hope if they add a part 2 for the wii that it is nothing like this game.
YOU’LL WANT TO TRY IT, BUT DO NOT BUY IT
I would not advise anyone to go out and spend $60 on this game. However it is slightly fun, and probably worth a rent. Nothing more.
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