I know that this game is arleady out but I decied that it needed a review anyway. Sonic the Hedgehog is a much needed improvement from SEGA’s last sonic games. Sonic the Hedgehog is the best sonic game we have seen for a long time.
The story is that Doctor Eggman is looking for these things called “The Flames of Disaster” which is some sort of mystical weapon that will do something secret (I don’t really want to give it away [SPOILERS] but I am pretty sure it is linked to this huge evil molten dragon thing in a huge flaming whirlwind [/SPOILERS]). The key to this mystical secret is a girl named Princess Eliese, a 17 year old who rules over the City of Soleanna (The game calls it the City of Water even though the name suggests that it is the City of the Sun). All of the old characters (except for Big the cat, Cream and Cheese) appear in the game as well as a new character named Silver who is another foe of Sonic. Silver thinks that Sonic is going to distroy the world so he goes back in time to stop Sonic. Each character (as always) has a background story to how they are related to the story line.
The graphics are very detailed and the levels you play in are huge and very nicely done. Even to the point to say that they are beautiful. The game can be quite annoying when you are rope jumping. Sonic can jump on ropes like they are trampoleans to get somewhere. However you can fall off the rope if you push the control stick up and the problem is that using the control stick will not move you towards the land but rather push you into oblivion, however no other direction does this, for some reason. The voice acting is well done, they finally got rid of Omochao as being the one who gives you hints and tips. Naration is normally done by Dr. Eggman with a few exceptions where it’s the person who plays Dr. Eggman’s voice. Another great improvement to the game is that there is mulitiple ways to complete a level. There used to be just one and if you didn’t follow it, you would die.
This game is not like Shadow the Hedgehog which some people feared where it was heading. However it has some elements of Shadow the Hedgehog, like shadow can drive a jeep that has been tricked out with weapons and such and a motorcycle.
As with all games this one has a few downsides. Sega has fixed a lot of problems with the Homing Attack, like the problem of homing things that are not really there (this appeared in Sonic Heroes) or homing jump pads rather then enemies (Sonic Adventure Battle 2 and Sonic Heroes) but now the homing attack now has a shorter distance (making it harder to rope jump) and if you push forward and homing attack you miss your target while in the air. The game feels like you are doing missions for everybody (Like Sonic Adventure Battle 2). Another downside is that camera doesn’t move around so well and is pretty slow when you hit the camera buttons (LB and RB). The controls are a bit too simplified. With the player only really needing the A and X button. The problem with this is that the X button has 3 features and the game often chooses the wrong one. The X button is your attack, light dash (sonic will go in the direction of a line of rings) and regular dash. Another problem was that the pause menu wouldn’t let me start over. It kept on skipping the start over option and went directly to quit. Now to the ratings.
The Ratings:
Sound: 8/10 -The music and sounds were great and are an improvement to songs with lyrics in them (which never sounded good for Sonic type games).
Graphics: 9.2/10 – Graphics have severly improved since Sonic Heroes and other Sonic games
Controls: 5/10 – Major problems with the X button. This could have been fixed. Also the forward on the control stick while rope jumping was really awkward (you would think that it would move you towards land).
Playback: 6.7/10 -For some reason I don’t want to play this game over and over again, which other sonic games have made me do. No unlocks maybe?
Improvement: 7.9/10 -Sonic the Hedgehog is a huge improvement to Sonic Heroes but still lacks a few minor things.
Overall Score: 7.6/10 – If controls were fixed and the playback was better then this game would have gotten an 8.2. Some levels could have been worked on more.
Wow, that was long.