I Don't Remember Seeing a Blue Hedgehog in Arabian Knights.

I don't know why, but I always try out the new sonic games. After playing them I am always disappointed and complain to all of my friends. I'm not sure why I chose to play Sonic and the Secret Rings on the Wii; maybe it was just the fact that its possible that they could have made the series fun again. Surprisingly, they actually did make this game fun, but its pretty low on content.

Story
Sonic randomly one day finds himself in the book Arabian Nights. A genie tells him that the final pages of the book have gone blank and he needs to collect seven magical rings to kill a giant beast named Erazor and to restore the final pages of the book. The story could have been a decent one, but they really ruined it by not explaining what the heck was going on. In one scene Sonic was being chased down by dinosaurs in the jungle, which I'm pretty sure did not exist during this time period, and in the next he was in a giant foundry filled with giant robots, which also did not exist. Instead of giving you some major information they give you scenes that could have easily been cut. Many of them try to take themselves seriously but are laughable, one in particular has the genie upset because she is frightened by the robots and Sonic and her have a semi-romantic scene where he pinky promises that they will be alright.

Gameplay
Think of Sonic and the Seven Rings as Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam meets Running Wild. Sonic runs down a steep hill and you have to control his movements from left to right and jump over obstacles. There isn't much more than that to the gameplay. Its fairly shallow, but its pretty fun. The levels feel like the sections that made Sonic Adventure fun. As the game goes on, the levels fill up with more bad guys and harder challenges. The levels get steeper and Sonic gets faster, so the game ends up getting pretty hectic at the end.

You play the game only as Sonic and travel to seven fantasy worlds (plus one tutorial world). You'll travel to a dinosaur world, a floating castle, a pirate level, and a few more. The back of the case boasts that the game includes over ninety-nine challenges, but what it doesn't tell you is that there are only seven worlds which equate to seven levels, and one tutorial world. The tutorial world alone uses over twenty challenges, taking a good chunk of the game up. The game has an odd pacing to it. When you pick one of the seven worlds it will throw you right into the action. The first level is a blast and will usually takes about twenty minutes to complete. There are tons of different sections to the level, and depending on the world, you will be grinding rails, running from dinosaurs, riding logs down streams like skateboards, and various other cool neat fast paced sections. It gets you pumped up for the rest of the world! When you get to the next mission of the world you're going to be disappointed. There are about twenty levels per world and all of them are just sections of the first level of that world. They just take a part of the first level and give you an objective. The objective may be something like “Destroy 20 enemies,” or “Collect 99 rings and get to the finish,” or “Finish without killing any enemies.” The missions are constantly repeated throughout the game and they never are never anything unique; they feel more like chores the game threw in because they were too lazy to add new levels in the game. It doesn't follow the story either; “Sonic, you just beat this level, now I want you to do it again, only this time I want you to break fifteen pots!” The levels are primarily in the trial and error format, so it will generally take you about two tries before you get the challenges done perfectly. Its not like the levels are really hard, its just the enemies, cliffs, and spikes seem to just pop out at random usually messing you up in some way. It doesn't feel like the developers put the levels in the trial and error format to be a challenge, it feels like the developers put it like this so that the game wasn't shorter than the six hours it takes to beat the game!

Surprisingly, this game has a level up system. As you play through the game you collect scrolls that act as skills for Sonic. You have four rings, and you can only equip one at a time. You can add these skills to any of the rings. Each ring levels up as you do, letting you to equip more skills. Quite a few basic Sonic additions like a speed boost or a smoother turning radius can be found here.

The game's controls take a little getting used to, but they aren't too complex. Hold the Wiimote horizontally and tilt the it forward to make Sonic start running and tilt it side to side to move him in whatever direction you want him to go in. The jumping skill is a little strange in this one because it slows you down. The longer you hold the button down, the higher the jump, but if you want a really high jump, you'll have to have Sonic be at a complete stop. Oddly enough, this one doesn't include the Sonic dash. The combat system in this is really weak. When your enemy turns red you must shake the Wiimote up and down and Sonic will lunge at the enemy. This form of combat is poor, and it really makes every battle, including bosses, virtually skill-less The game borrows some of the gameplay mechanics from Sonic Riders, as you will grinding rails and jumping into speed boosts in the air. In a few worlds you will be drifting down a river on top of a log, which feels like you are riding a skateboard.

So what have we learned about multiplayer on the Wii? Well, it seems like every game now is doing minigames. This game is no different. There is nothing really unique about the minigames found here, so if you've played Super Monkey Ball or even Open Season, you know what to expect. The minigames in this involve you doing just various sportsy tasks as quickly as you can. Minigames like chopping wood, paddling a canoe, shooting balloons, skydiving, and a few dozen more are here. The minigames, like most on the Wii, tend to be fun the first few times, and then lose their flavor.

Graphics
This Sonic doesn't look bad, but it doesn't look particularly good. Sonic's visuals really haven't been upgraded much since Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast. The game itself, like what feels like seemingly every game on the Wii, looks very cartoony. The character models have fairly pixelated outlines, but look decent. What stands out about this game are the levels. The first level of every world is huge and looks great. Each world looks completely different than the rest because they rarely ever reuse many textures in two worlds. The basic enemy is recycled between levels, but they generally add some too. Some levels will have giant enemies like dinosaurs and robots, giving the game a feel of being being a small hedgehog in a giant world. The game does suffer from some frame rate problems, but it is generally never anything serious, and only happens when there is a ton of things happening on the screen.

Sound
The sound in Sonic is horrible. I remember going insane on some of the songs of Sonic adventure, but those songs generally took hours to set into your mind and destroy it from the inside out. The music in this tries to make Sonic look “extreme” by putting in rock music. They are rock songs about Sonic played by what sounds like an high school rock band rehearsing their songs for the first time, only they switched up their normal instruments. This is some of the worst rock music I have ever heard in my life. Aside from the music, the game only has a few sound effects. You have the noise of the Sonic collecting rings and a few combat noises. The sound effects are fairly muffled and sound like they were recycled from the Dreamcast version. Why can't Sega get good voice actors these games? The voice acting is horrible. I'm going to have to say that it is even worse than any of the other Sonic games. The characters are overzealous and never believable. Sometimes you can hear them chuckling as they speak, even if it is a serious moment. Major voice delay is here as well making this sound even worse. “Jump!” Wait five seconds. “Okay!”

Suitability for kids
Sonic and the Secret Rings is rated Everyone for comic violence. The violence is very mild and generally is beating up robot violence.

Should you buy the game?
So this game may not be the deepest game, but its always a ton of fun running through levels at breakneck speed trying to avoid obstacles. Its a decent game, but the only par ts that are really that fun are the first levels of every world. Its not really fun enduring over ninety levels to play seven good ones. So they haven't completely figured out what made Sonic fun, but they're getting warmer! If they would have just spent more time adding levels this game would have been a hit!