Sonic the Hedgehog review (Xbox 360)

Once upon a time the name Sonic the Hedgehog commanded respect, the little blue hedgehog was right up there with Mario as a plat forming legend. Sadly those days are long since past, the move to 3D was just the beginning of a long slippery slope. The hedgehog's trademark speed just didn’t translate well in to a three dimensional environment, the processing power of the consoles just wasn’t up to the job. But now it’s a new generation, todays consoles are more powerful than ever, but is it enough to justify re-using the title of the series debut, could this be a return to form for the spiky blue one?

Same old, same old

Sadly the answer to that question is no, there has been no re-invention of the series, no taking it back to its roots, just more of the same stuff that has been pulling Sonic slowly down the toilet. You get a brand new story, but apart from a little romance between Sonic and the princess (what were they thinking) it’s the same old chaos emerald nonsense. You get some more new characters, but that’s been half the problem with the series, you can’t just keep adding new hedgehogs and expect that to be enough for the fans.

Then there’s the camera, even with the power of next generation consoles behind it still can’t keep up with the gameplay. What Sonic needs is a good kick up the backside, either strip things down to the basics or just start anew from scratch, whatever they do they’ve got to realise sooner or later the way things are going they’re doing more harm than good to the franchise. It’s not all ‘same old, same old’ though, there have been some changes made to the gameplay, nothing radically new, and almost certainly borrowed from other games, but you take what you can get.

Too many hedgehogs…

One good thing we can say for Silver, the new hedgehog joining the roster, is that unlike Shadow he’s not just another Sonic clone, there’s no speeding around jump attacking the bad guys when you play as Silver. Instead this hedgehog from the future is blessed with psychic powers, it looks like the guys over at Sonic team have been looking at games like Psi-ops and second sight for inspiration. Silver is equipped with some devastating psionic attacks, using the power of his mind he’s able to pick up items and hurl them at the bad guys, he can even pick them up and throw them around.

Occasionally you’ll come to spots where your powers can be used to pass impassable gaps, with no jump attack you can’t just hop across taking out bad guys, this is done either by building bridges from loose parts of scenery or bending the scenery in to a makeshift catapult. It all works quite well on its own, but as part of a Sonic game it just doesn’t seem quite right. Sonic games have always been about speed, and having to stop every time you come to any opposition and have to look around to work out how to get past them just doesn’t seem right. They may have been better off taking this idea and making an all new game out of it with no ties to Sonic as it seems to work better than the Sonic and Shadow sections put together.

The camera never lies

The main reason why Silver's sections work so much better than Sonic or Shadow's is the game's camera. It’s been a serious stumbling block for the series since Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast, it wasn’t good back then but if anything it seems to have gotten worse. Not content with having the camera constantly catching up on the action Sonic Team have now decided it’d be a good thing to change the camera angle during combat. It could be worse, but when you’re in the middle of a long chain of jump attacks the last thing you need is the camera shifting on you, it can be very disorientating.

You’d think with the power of the Xbox 360 that they’d be able to sort out this long standing problem, but I guess that’d be too much like hard work, Sonic team seem to have gotten more than a bit lazy. When they’re not doing their best at keeping Sonic stuck in the Dreamcast era they’re ‘borrowing’ ideas from other games. They’ve obviously been looking at Super Mario Sunshine when it comes to the games structure, the game is still as linear as it’s always been but they’ve tried to distract everyone’s attention away from this by making a city hub for the game. In between levels you can wander around the city performing the odd task for the inhabitants, these are pretty trivial stuff though and are badly split up by loading screens. These are a real chore and although you have to perform some of the tasks to progress in the game you’ll be doing your best to avoid the non essential tasks.

End of the line?

It really seems like Sonic team is stuck in a rut with Sonic the Hedgehog, aside from borrowed ideas and new characters it doesn’t look like tit has any real idea what to do with the franchise. And things have been that way for quite a while, new characters aside Sonic the Hedgehog may well have been named ‘Sonic Adventure 3’ as it plays very much like one of the Dreamcast games. It’s not just the gameplay that is stuck in time either, the presentation is also of the same standard as the Dreamcast incarnations.

Graphically it does look a little more polished, but not much, there’s still some serious pop up problems, the cut scenes are nice though, but that’s all they are, pre rendered clips that don’t use the game engine. Sound is also pretty limited, the game places you in the midst of a city where you can interact with most of the characters, but do they talk to you, no all they do is make the same noise as they do when you accidentally bump in to them and there dialogue is all text. Couple all this with seemingly endless loading screens and you could easily be forgiven for thinking you were playing a Dreamcast game, if this is all the Sonic franchise has left to offer us I think it’d be for the best if they put Sonic out to pasture.

Worst Sonic ever?

There’s no easy way to put this, but Sonic the Hedgehog is quite possibly the worst Sonic game ever. It’s a real case of one step forwards and two steps back, while they have added elements that would work well in other games or on their own it’s all for nothing because they didn’t fix any of the problems with the series. It seems like when Sonic took the jump to 3D Sonic team forgot all about what made him popular in the first place, it wasn’t cutesy characters, it’s not about chaos emeralds, it was just high speed platforming action. Until Sonic Team remembers this Sonic is just a cash cow for them but this can’t last forever, even the die hard Sonic fans are going to get alienated with a couple more games like this one.