Genre: Platform/Third Person Shooter (to some extent)

Players: 1 to 2

Developer: Sega/Sonic Team

Reviewer: Rob Munro.

Intro:

Sonic fans around the world first heard about this game early April, and not surprisingly thought it was an April fools joke from Sega. As time went on though this become less and less likely, and Sonic fans, myself included, thought that this game would be the end of sega, as there was no way that hardcore fans were going to accept the fact that Shadow had been given his own game for one thing, and secondly that Sonic games now included vehicles and guns. Fans were then treated to a trailer from Sega which just added to everyone’s worries, but sensible people thought they’d at least give the game a chance before they destroyed it verbally and waited eagerly till November for its release. November eventually came, and after many arguments with gamestores across London who seem to hate the Gamecube with a vengeance and didn’t have this game in stock, I bought the game online.

I’m going to come out and say it right now… I for one actually enjoyed playing this game and in my opinion it sure as hell isn’t as bad as some reviewers seem to make out. Everyone is of course entitled to his or her opinion, but in all fairness I feel that many reviewers, major websites included "cough" IGN "cough" seemed determined to totally destroy the credibility of this game without even giving it a chance. Yes this game has it’s flaws, and people can probably say I’m slightly biased as I am a big Sonic fan, but if you look past some of these flaws this game can be quite enjoyable, and in my opinion is a vast improvement on the horror that was Sonic Heroes.

Story:

The story of the game revolves around Shadow the Hedgehog and his on going quest to try and find out about his past since his supposed death at the end of Sonic Adventure 2, which still hasn’t been fully resolved. Shadow, as well as the gamer, are still therefore unsure whether this shadow is the real Shadow, or just another robot, and this forms the basis of the game as Shadow travels through many different paths to try and get as much information about his past as possible. The game focuses mainly on Shadow, but all the old school cast are still there, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Eggman etc, who appear throughout levels and can ask for Shadow’s help, but there is also one major new character, Black Doom.

Black Doom is part of an alien race that has invaded downtown Westopolis, where the game starts and is considered to be the major bad guy of the game. His appearance is similar to shadow, in the way that his skin is black and red, and as the opening CG starts and the invasion begins he appears before Shadow and tells him he can help him find his past if he collects and brings all of the Chaos Emeralds to him. This kick starts the story in Westopolis, and allows the gamer to choose to either follow the good side or the dark side, in order to see all 10 endings before finally being able to see the last story. In other words it is similar to the way that in heroes you couldn’t see the last story until you had completed all 4 stories as well as collected all 7 emeralds.

Gameplay:

The Gameplay in this game is pretty disappointing to be fair. The controls are similar to previous sonic games in the way that you can still do the homing attack on targets, and attack objects by pressing the "b" button, but there is also the added aspect of the guns and vehicles. So far I have found bugger all point for the vehicles situated throughout the game, apart from one level where they make it slightly easier to time your jumps over some moving rocks. Apart from that the vehicles are pretty sluggish anyways, and impossible to control effectively, which means you usually end up crashing into a wall and destroying the bike, or driving off an edge and totally mucking the level up.

The guns on the other hand add a new interesting aspect to the standard Sonic platform game in my opinion. You have to aim the guns yourself, which adds quite a nice element of skill and challenge to the game, and they can be bloody useful when you are surrounded by enemies and don’t want to lose your rings. The game also includes a nice range of guns from the simple pistol in the first level to the full- blown homing rocket launcher in the later levels. This adds a nice level of variety to the game, and makes it interesting to try and get hold of an appropriate weapon to get through a part of a level. As well as guns that you pick up from fallen enemies and what not, you can also use gun turrets to try and complete mission objectives, or simply to just clear the area of harder enemies. The only thing that sort of confused me about the guns was that if you were in the air, say from hitting a spring, you could continue to fire the gun off until you ran out of ammo without actually falling to the ground. Not only did this seem unrealistic and strange, but it also made it quite easy to do some parts of a level if you had enough ammo, as it meant you were less likely to be hit.

The levels themselves were on the whole pretty enjoyable and well laid out, but this could be quite easily overlooked due to the rubbish camera angles. The camera angles aren’t quite as bad as they were in Heroes, but they are still pretty badly done in my opinion, and sometimes make it impossible to work out where to go or what to do. This can get frustrating in places and lead to cheap deaths, which have always seemed to be a part of the Sonic games since SA2. The best example I can give to anyone who has actually played the game is the level right before the end of the semi-good path where the Ark is failing to pieces and you have to jump from piece to piece, and with the camera angles as bad as they are it is really difficult to properly work out where to go. The homing attack can also go horribly wrong like it did in Sonic Heroes, and you can easily end up just missing the enemy and going over the side.

The multiple endings in this game add a nice diversity to game, and for hardcore gamers make them determined to complete each ending in order to find out different aspects to Shadow’s past, and ultimately to get to the final ending. Personally I have only finished 5 of these 11 overall endings, but once I have some free time I am determined to just sit down and try and fully complete the game. There isn’t really much difference between many of the endings, and Shadow continues to be the same disturbed moody hedgehog we have learned to love, but the fact that you can get to an ending through a variety of different paths adds to the game, as it allows you to avoid levels that you don’t particularly like. In all I think the library consist of around 326 different paths, so only a hardcore sonic fan would sit down to try and complete all those, but there are scarily people out there hoping to achieve this. The game does reveal quite a lot about Shadow’s past, but as with previous games still leaves the gamer guessing as to what is really the truth, as many of the endings seem to contradict each other, and make it difficult to come up with a definitive answer, but this is what we’ve come to expect from Sonic Team nowadays, and at least it allows for debate between Sonic fans around the world.

Moving back to the idea that you can either follow a good or evil path throughout the game, Sonic Team also included special attacks, which can be triggered when the appropriate bar is full. These can be very useful in places, and add to the enjoyment of the game. Chaos Blast, which is the evil move can be triggered if you go through the game destroying GUN robots for example, and allows you to destroy or do damage to everything on screen. This is particularly useful against bosses as well, and the animation for it looks very impressive.

Chaos Control is the good move available to Shadow if he destroys Black doom’s aliens, and allows him to zoom through the level at break neck speed until the gauge runs out. This can be both a blessing and a pain in the arse. It can be a blessing if you are trying to just find one object in a level, such as a Chaos Emerald as it allows you to go through the level at a faster pace, and therefore allows you to avoid unnecessary fighting and get a better overall score, but can be a real pain if you have to find a certain number of objects in a level, and as a result of using Chaos Control miss one of them, and therefore have to spend ages back tracking to find it. The animation looks great though, although it can be very glitchy as well…for example it is supposed to always drop you off in a safe place, but on many occasions for me it has just stopped over a big drop and as a result I have died. This can get irritating after a while, and you do think that a programming company as experienced as Sonic Team would be able to at least spot and solve this glitch.

The AI in this game is pretty dysfunctional, and can get frustrating after a while but you just have to learn to live with it really. The biggest problem seems to be that the AI can’t recognise friend from foe, and as a result you can be attacked by your supposed allies, even if you are trying to complete their mission. This can be infuriating in places, and sort of undermines the fun of the game, but you can learn to just live with it, and kill everything on screen as I usually do.

Overall: 6/10

Sound:

The music in this game is smashing, as is true with all sonic games. Sonic Team have once again recruited Crush 40 to do the main opening and closing theme tunes, and they are both really nice and rocky, and add to the evil atmosphere of this game, the dark ending music especially. The level music is also really well done, and each piece is appropriate to the type of level you are playing through. As with heroes though, the Voice Acting in places lets the game down a bit. Shadow himself actually sounds really cool and moody, which is a relief considering he is the main character, and therefore gets most of the lines in the game, the same can be said for Black Doom, who just sounds like a certain creepy villain from Star Wars.

Some of the other minor character’s VA’s are also bearable, for example Sonic and Knuckles, but certain characters have been totally destroyed beyond recognition. Vector and Charmy for example are now done by the voice actors who did their voices in Sonic X, and the results are terrifying. Charmy’s voice alone was enough to nearly make me throw my Gamecube out of the window, and Vector just sounded like some sort of chav ghetto alligator, which was disturbing. Thankfully they’re not involved in many levels, but in one level I nearly went insane as Vector continually went "you have to find the main computer room." This seems to be another problem with the sounds in this game, they do like to repeat the same thing over and over again, even though it’s pretty bloody obvious what you have to do, There was my example above, as well one fight against Eggman where every two seconds he goes "the more the merrier," that seriously pissed me off.

A positive point concerning the sound in this game is that Sonic Team seemed to have learned from their mistakes in Heroes, and there are hardly as many corny lines as we got in heroes. The only line that seems to occur every ending is Shadow going "THIS IS WHO I AM!" which is pretty tacky but is much better than "let’s show them the real meaning of team work," which was just plain cringe worthy.

Overall 7/10

Graphics:

The graphics in this game are spot on, and everything within a level seems to fit into place. As I said earlier, the layout of each level has been carefully considered and some of the CG videos throughout the game are amazingly well detailed and thought out. The only exception to this rule is the actual guns. For some strange, unknown reason, Sonic Team thought it looked natural to make the guns about 5 times the size of Shadow. This just looks bloody odd, and as many a gamer has already said, if this was real life Shadow would probably just fall over backwards whenever he tried to carry one of these stupidly large guns. I think this was just a silly mistake from Sonic Team, and doesn’t really take anything away from the game itself, as many reviewers seem to think.

Overall 9/10

Lastability:

With ten different endings, plus one final story to wrap things up, this game has a lot of lastability, if you can put up with the minor flaws in the game and actually take the time to try and complete each ending. The endings do seem very similar in places, but having completed 5 of them I am determined when I next have the time to try and complete the entire game. There are also 326 different paths to try and complete within the game, and many hardcore sonic fans will probably be determined to try and get all 326 paths. With this game I can also see many gamers going back to try and complete it again at a later date to try and make sure they fully understand Shadow’s real past and story.

Overall 8/10

Conclusion:

As I said earlier this game does have it’s faults, but any true gamer would be able to at least look past some of them and try and enjoy what is on the whole a halfway decent game. Many gamers and reviewers just set out to destroy and criticise this game right from the beginning without giving it a decent chance, and many people were just against this game as it took on a new format for Sonic games, and destroyed many of the fundamental aspects of what made up a Sonic game. I personally feel that the Sonic games will never be as good as they were in the past, but gamers are just going to have to learn to live with this, and realise the fact that games are always evolving to take on new formats, and on the whole this game was a great improvement on Heroes.

Overall I would give this game 7 out of 10