Sega Nerds

Review: Sonic and the Secret Rings

Posted by Nathan. Filed under Nathan, Nintendo Wii, Review, Sonic. Tagged with Sonic and the Secret Rings.

Sonic and the Secret Rings, the latest entry in the venerable Sonic the Hedgehog game series, attempts to retool a formula that has become bogged down with unnecessary features, by amputating large chunks of the glut. The most recent Sonic the Hedgehog for Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 was almost universally criticized for failing to repair what previous efforts had also gotten wrong: Excessive alternate characters, annoying control issues, and hindering level design. With Secret Rings‘ release for Nintendo Wii it seems that, at least on the surface, Sega has taken notice of the complaints. Sonic himself is the only playable character in the main game, and the Wii remote offers a radically new method of control. Does the end result live up to the promise?

Sonic and the Secret Rings
Developer: Sonic Team
Publisher: SEGA
Release: 02/20/07
Platform: Nintendo Wii
Players: 1, 1-4

Sonic’s mission is to save the Arabian Nights from the evil Erazor Djinn. He receives help from Shahra the Ring Genie, and along the way meets up with Tails and Knuckles, who fill the roles of Ali Baba and Sinbad. Um, yeah. Who gives a shit?

The most drastic change to the Sonic blueprint is the new control scheme. Instead of the traditional analog stick, Sonic is steered with Wii remote gestures. The remote is held horizontally with two hands and tilted to aim Sonic left and right as he runs forward automatically. Pressing the 1 button causes Sonic to brake, and holding the 2 button down charges a jump. Flick the remote forward when Sonic is in the air, and he’ll perform a fancy dash straight ahead or towards a nearby targeted enemy or object. The new controls work nicely, for the most part. The learning curve is shallow and gamers should generally be able to jump straight into the action with few problems.

However, the game intermittently suffers from lapses of unresponsiveness, and in a game so focused on speed and precision this usually leads to harm or an efficient death. The worst offense comes when Sonic needs to back up. Reversing is tedious because the camera never changes perspective, forcing you to reverse blindly. In missions to destroy all enemies or drop eggs in nests (not kidding), this can become absolutely maddening due to the amount of reversing required. I’m not even going to fault the controls so much for this, because if the level design were better, reversing wouldn’t even be necessary.

I dislike the new charged jump a lot. The charge, slide, and jump work well enough once you’ve grown accustomed to its eccentricities, but the level design itself is more of the issue here. Enemies are placed around corners or in locations where adequate reaction time is almost never provided. It would have been just as easy to implement a jump that corresponds height to the amount of time the button is held down.

There are seven worlds for Sonic to explore, each with numerous missions to conquer. Unfortunately, the majority of these missions are more frustrating than fun. While the game is generous in that there are no “lives” in the traditional gaming sense (Sonic will quickly re-appear on the course not too far away after falling), failing a mission forces starting from the beginning. This is especially annoying in certain missions, where something as trivial as colliding with a pot or accidentally attacking an enemy results in immediate failure. Other missions, such as races against a swift opponent or objective fetching, are equally aggravating. The most fun missions are the ones that allow Sonic to do what he does best: Run fast. While the game succeeds strongly in these missions, it’s sad that they are overshadowed by all the other bullshit.

Secret Rings features a cool experience and equipment system that adds greatly to the game. Sonic earns experience depending on how well he performs in stages, and that experience goes towards leveling him up. Leveling up earns him new abilities and more slots to equip these abilities in. There are a large number of various abilities that affect Sonic in different ways (speed, movement, attack, etc), and the game offers the ability to configure four separate “equipment builds” at a time for easy switching. The whole process of gaining experience, leveling up, and equipping new abilities is fun and rewarding. The downside is Sonic starts out pretty barebones, and actually kind of slow. This is a bit frustrating at first, but the further you progress the more powerful Sonic becomes. It’s a cool system and customizing Sonic is fun, but it is definitely a drawback that he starts out practically powerless, and a bit of playing to level him up is necessary before he starts performing more like Sonic.

The graphics are nothing to write home about. While sufficient for what the game aims to accomplish, they’re somewhat unimpressive compared to Sonic 2006, due to the Wii’s comparative lack of power. The environments usually speed by so fast that this really isn’t even an issue, though.

Musically, this game features some of the worst cheese rock in any Sonic game to date. The rap number that plays on all menus is nigh unbearable, but at least the in-game music is more standard upbeat Sonic fare. The voice acting is terrible as always, but the option to change the voices to Japanese is a cool inclusion. Kudos to Sega for that.

The multi-player mode is largely forgettable, with boring or unintuitive mini-games. There are several different styles of play, and to be honest the multi-player mode is pretty well-featured. There just aren’t any fun mini-games to play, at least as far as my friends and I tried.

Plenty of unlockable art and movies and other various goodies round out the package. Pretty cool for completionists and Sonic enthusiasts.

Most people think Sonic the Hedgehog games are all about speed. I’m here to tell you they’re wrong. Sonic games are about flow: The ability to keep Sonic moving fluidly through stages despite their obstacles. Secret Rings is impressive because its unique control scheme lends itself so strongly to flow, which is why it is devastating that the stage and mission design itself works utterly against this fluidity. If the developers had spent more time designing more stages that were conducive to flow, rather than placing seemingly random stops and enemies in the most obstructing locales, this would have been one of the most amazing game experiences this year. As it stands, what we’re left with is the potential that wasn’t lived up to.

Overall, Secret Rings is a solid effort and a more fun game than Sonic 2006. However, it’s far from perfect and has plenty of flaws. I’m only so hard on it because I love Sonic so much, but the fact is Secret Rings features equal parts entertainment and frustration. Despite this, Sonic and the Secret Rings is recommend for Sega nerds and video gamers alike.

Rating: 7/10