Hands-On: Sonic & the Secret Rings

[Melf]

Sega-16 follows each of the stars who made their debut on the Genesis, no matter where time and new technology may take them. No star in Sega's line up is brighter than Sonic The Hedgehog, and the wiley little mammal has had more than his fair share of disappointments since making the transition to 3D. The good news is that Sonic & the Secret Rings on the Nintendo Wii may change all that. Read our complete hands-on review and learn why you can't keep a good hedgehog down.

[GEN ESIS GAMER]

I must disagree with sonic adventure 2 being a bad 3D game which the reivew makes it look like i played it several people have reivewed it had to be the best 3D sonic game by reivew of most.

[wayne919]

i agree with your thoughts on sonic and the secret rings its good game and with a little more work from sega a sequel could easily be amazing. even still this is a step in the right direction

[Joe Redifer]

Sonic and the Secret Rings is a game that I truly regret buying. It's crap. I do not like games with lots of customizable equipment that do a whole bunch of different stuff depending on the combination of stuff you select (including Jewel Master). If it were as simple as "Speed Ring" "Jump Ring" and there were only four of that type of ring with maybe two being equipped simultaneously, then it would be fine. But extreme customization turns me off big time.

But that's not really the main reason why I dislike the game. Mostly it's just not very fun. Sonic should be a "pick up and play" game, which this is certainly not. Instead you must first unlock tons upon tons upon tons of crap just to get to the point where Sonic is actually playable. In the beginning he is slow and unresponsive. I also hate turning the Wii Remote like a steering wheel. And if I want to back up, I must rotate it towards me... then Sonic slowly backs up and it feels like some extreme amount of gravity is still trying to pull him forward as I do so. This game is crap. I should have bought Hanna Montana or whatever it is for the DS instead. I'm sure that's better than this game by a factor of about a billion. OK OK, maybe a billion is exaggerating just a little too much. But at least several hundred thousand times better. Sonic the Hedgehog can burn in hell. His day is done. He's over. Sega needs to let him die and get rid of Sonic Team as they really are good for nothing.

[nat]

While I haven't played Secret Rings, I'll agreee that the best thing Sonic Team has done lately is release the collections on GameCube/PS2 of the classics. Even those collections were flawed, requiring you to play the available games hundreds of times in order to unlock the "secret" games.

Unless Secret Rings has got something up it's sleeve to blow me away, I'm afraid it'll be forgotten (at least by me) like the rest of the more recent (3D) titles.

[Zebbe]

The three .PNG (Pong?) pics don't work when clicked at. The .gif one works, though.

[Melf]

Fixed! Thanks for pointing that out. I forgot to link the thumbnails.

[InternalPrimate]

Sonic and the Secret Rings is a game that I truly regret buying. It's crap. I do not like games with lots of customizable equipment that do a whole bunch of different stuff depending on the combination of stuff you select (including Jewel Master). If it were as simple as "Speed Ring" "Jump Ring" and there were only four of that type of ring with maybe two being equipped simultaneously, then it would be fine. But extreme customization turns me off big time.

But that's not really the main reason why I dislike the game. Mostly it's just not very fun. Sonic should be a "pick up and play" game, which this is certainly not. Instead you must first unlock tons upon tons upon tons of crap just to get to the point where Sonic is actually playable. In the beginning he is slow and unresponsive. I also hate turning the Wii Remote like a steering wheel. And if I want to back up, I must rotate it towards me... then Sonic slowly backs up and it feels like some extreme amount of gravity is still trying to pull him forward as I do so. This game is crap. I should have bought Hanna Montana or whatever it is for the DS instead. I'm sure that's better than this game by a factor of about a billion. OK OK, maybe a billion is exaggerating just a little too much. But at least several hundred thousand times better. Sonic the Hedgehog can burn in hell. His day is done. He's over. Sega needs to let him die and get rid of Sonic Team as they really are good for nothing.

I completely agree with your complaints towards early customizations, but I'd argue that many gamers - myself included - prefer a little of added depth. Having fewer and fewer experience points later in the game allows for some serious strategy.

Yes, Sonic has always been a pick-up-and-play series, but it just doesn't seem to work in 3D. I applaud Sega for attempting to move the series forward.

As always, everything said was entirely based on my opinion. I found Sonic and the Secret Rings to be a good game. Not great, but good. I'd even go as far to say that it's one of the top third party games thus far, next to Sega's own Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz.

I most certainly hope that Sonic doesn't "die"

[ary incorparated]

I hate this game to it looks damn slick beutifull graphics evrything beutiful except the controls blow.

[Joe Redifer]

I most certainly hope that Sonic doesn't "die"

Me too. He needs to be alive as he burns in Hell.

Sonic is like that hot girlfriend you used to have. You broke up and the years passed. You meet up with her again and now she is a fat disgusting slob of a person. And just seeing her like that destroys what good memories you used to have of her.

[David J.]

Me too. He needs to be alive as he burns in Hell.

Sonic is like that hot girlfriend you used to have. You broke up and the years passed. You meet up with her again and now she is a fat disgusting slob of a person. And just seeing her like that destroys what good memories you used to have of her.

Years? What if it was less than a year? I dated some good looking chick, and when we... err.. I had a fall out with her, she got all slob. Oh wait! She was a slob and I never noticed until the last date, as I found out she was a hick on the last date we went on.

[kinkyfriend85]

Both sonic and Mario should stick to sidescrolling platformer type of gaming. 3D doesn't have to be bad, can be very good. But the problem lies in that some games cannot be made to open-3D considering its speed and such things, which is the problem with Sonic in 3D. Mario became so much more boring after the open environment setting. New Sonic, ey? Like they did with New Super Mario Bros.. That'd be cool.

[Rodger]

still haven't gotten a chance to play this new Sonic. The rental store is always out, and I'm still very weary of dropping $50.00 on this game.

And kinkyfriend85, yeah, new super mario bros for the DS was a great return to form for everyone's favorite plumber (finally breaking free from all the offbeat party and sports titles). Sonic Rush on the DS might be the nearest thing we have to the old sonic formula, but one can always dream for more

[Joe Redifer]

Sonic Rush would have been great if (as I've probably said 9,382 times by now) it wasn't for the near-infinite amount of bottomless pits. Also does Sonic really need hip-hop and/or top40 music? I prefer actual melodies which we haven't had since Sonic Adventure 2... I think.

[j_factor]

I loved Sonic Rush, the only thing I hated about it was the overuse of voice samples. Once you get good at the tricks, Sonic's "hey! woah! yeah!" shit is just a constant noise that drowns out the excellent soundtrack. I still don't get why people say it has too many bottomless pits; I only had such a problem in one single level of the game.