Sonic and the Secret Rings

The Good

• Lots of high speed thrills
• Good graphics and nice effects
• Some decent music which gives off the Arabian feel
• Good controls
• New RPG element adds a nice amount of depth
• Lots of unlockables and extras
• Decent voice acting
  

The Bad

• Some unnecessary and sudden slow downs
• Awkward music
• Some control issues
• Unlockable skills are essentially game settings, which creates an frustrating difficulty level
  
• Bland party mode
• Some poorly designed extra missions

The Review

It was 1991 when the world first said hello to Sonic and since then, many great sequels have spawned. Although recently Sonic has been in a rut of sorts. It seems Sega has had quite a bit of trouble taking 2D Sonic and letting him roam in the free 3D world, unlike Nintendo mascots. It seems that Sonic was outrun by everybody else. Now, finally, it seems by making it an on-rails game Sonic has finally picked himself up and is ready to run again.

The point of the game is to zip through various levels getting the fastest time whilst avoiding enemies and various obstacles. Although this is the main story, there are 100 missions for you to complete. They are indeed not all basic concepts as getting to the end of the level as fast as you can. There are many things for Sonic to be doing. Some missions ask you to collect a certain amount of rings in the fastest time possible or finish the course without collecting a single ring! Some ask you to race against a spirit, and others want you to defeat a certain number of enemies.

If a mission is finished in a good time, you will be rewarded a medal. A gold medal automatically unlocks one of the massive amount of unlockables, silver medals need to be collected before unlocking something, and same goes for bronze although you can only unlock only a limited amount of things with a bronze or silver medal. Which medal you get is determined how fast you completed the mission objective.

Sega and Sonic team have also introduced a new element to Sonic and the Secret Rings. They have added a certain RPG element. How well you do in a mission determines how many experience points you get. These experience points, like any RPG, level Sonic up. As Sonic levels up, he learns new abilities. There are about 100 or so of them. Some examples of what these abilities allow Sonic to do are:

• Go faster
• Brake faster
• Turn quicker
  
• Gain more experience
  
• Increase pearl collecting ability

And many more. These skills are quite helpful along the adventure as they can make many missions quite a bit easier. One skill called the splash jump allows Sonic to flip over walls if he collides into one in midair. This is extremely useful in saving Sonic from falling into pits and making jumps as he can just splash jump along the edge to climb over a particularly large wall or obstacle.

Although there are many skills, not all of them can be used at the same time. To maintain which ones Sonic will use, you can organize them in one of four rings Sonic has. These can be customized before missions. This adds a much needed amount of depth to the Sonic series and it's truly a welcome addition. Unfortunately, some of these skills seem like they should be game settings and essentially only provide control settings. This creates a problem with the difficulty level as well as with the controls.

There is a mutiplayer mode included to complete the package, although it is a minigame collection. It invites you and your friends to pick up a Wii remote and start playing games with Sonic and other characters from the Sonic universe. These minigames are fairly shallow and don't have much replayability. You and your friends will get fairly bored of them within a short while. Although these games are a nice thought, there are already plenty of minigame collections for the Wii on the market which are much better than this one.

Overall, the on-rails gameplay is fairly well done and fixes many problems that previous 3D Sonic games failed to accomplish, mainly being the lack of speed. It also fixes up the camera issues for the most part. Backing up is not only a control problem, but a camera problem as well since it doesn't allow you to see back properly.

Also, some missions are designed poorly and make it impossible to attempt at your first time unless you get around the problem by a fluke.These problems are things like enemy spawn spots and some level build problems. As well, most just require luck (dinosaur eggs!) and are frustrating to complete. The game's rewards are great, though, so completing these missions is satisfying, especially if the level was quite difficult.

The graphics are also a strong-point in this game. With lots of detail to enemies, backgrounds, and environments, this is one of the better looking games you can find on the Wii.  Some textures are a little washed out but since you'll be going so fast, you won't be able to notice it unless you stop and bother to examine them. As well, explosions look a little grainy and 2D.

Even so, the frame rate never dips despite a lot of action going on. Explosions, lots of enemies, and intense speeds don't stop the game from keeping a nice and steady frame rate. The games art direction is also well done and creates a perfect melding between Sonic and the Arabian theme.

The music to the game is fairly interesting. It mixes traditional Arabian music and puts a classic rock spin onto it. Some of the songs are flat out awful but others have a nice rhythm and provide a nice atmosphere to the up beat and speedy action in each level.

The voice acting is where the main problem is. The voices fit for each character, but it's all fairly exaggerated and it sounds a little annoying.

Sound effects are well done. Explosions sound a little unreal and some of the effects sound a bit tinny. Other effects, like ring collecting, are still solid. There's nothing exceptional to the sound effects quality but nothing awful either.

There is a lot to do in this game. If you zip through the story, it will probably only take you about 7-10 hours. But with so many missions to do, so much to unlock and collect, and to get all gold medals and fire souls, the game will last you a long, long time. Perhaps roughly 50+ hours. Although it can be sometimes a little discouraging to try some of the harder levels and get gold medals in them, the rewards are satisfying enough. So while there is a lot to do in this game, you might not necessarily not want to pick the Wii remote for a while.

Wii remote controls are easy enough to use and it's very responsive. Turning left and right is as easy as tilting the Wii remote. Using the homing attack requires you to jump and flick the remote toward the screen a bit.

This truly is a good game but with a little more time, the game's difficulty settings and obstacle placing problems could have been fixed. As well, some controls with backing up or turning can be a bit annoying. It's definitely not for everyone as many people will be discouraged by the difficulty but with a lot of unlockables and content, a decent story, and some incredibly high speed thrills, you will want to give this game a try.