Sonic and the Secret Rings

Because of their speedy nature, Sonic games really necessitate fresh surroundings, and especially in an on-rails game, different locales help to give the feeling that you’re actually progressing. Unfortunately, because of that these forced challenge levels work against the game, and that’s a shame, because otherwise Sonic and the Secret Rings may have very well been that comeback game Sonic has desperately needed.

With a variety of missions and many distinct worlds, Secret Rings provides the fairly solid Sonic game for which fans have been clamoring.

It uses the Wii’s main advantage, the controller, to decent effect – there needs to be a good bit of tightening up Sonic’s response, though.

Despite the backtracking issues, Secret Rings remains an altogether more satisfying platform game than many of its peers. [Apr 2007, p.116]

It's time to either do the right thing or say goodbye. [Apr 2007, p.43]

The missions provide plenty of challenge with a steep learning curve and little forgiveness. Even the multiplayer provides a decent demonstration of what the WiiMote can do. The only truly awful aspects come with the horrendously crafted controls and camera.

Sonic and the Secret Rings offers moments of greatness where I find myself caught up in the intensity of the experience and, oppositely, moments where I want to pull my hair out or throw the Wii remote down because of imprecise control or insulting design choices.

The control scheme could be improved upon, but as it stands, the motions are fairly intuitive and you won’t have a major problem with steering sensitivity.

The camera system remains unchanged and continues to show the action from the same focal point, even as you have to attempt to guide Sonic backwards. This becomes increasingly difficult and frustrating.

While Secret Rings does a decent job at stopping the bleeding caused by the recent 360/PS3/PSP Sonics, it's not quite there yet. [Apr 2007, p.76]

One of the first fun Sonic experiences in some time. The overall experience of navigating through Sonic and the Secret Rings doesn't manage to bring the series back to glory, but at least it gives it some life.

We really do believe it’s a step in the right direction for the much-maligned franchise, and contains a lot of elements that feel like real ‘Sonic’ moments. However, it proves to be as frustrating as it is fun, with several flaws that interfere with one’s enjoyment of the game.

A few dozen mediocre party games let up to four friends compete in unimaginative tasks such as paddling boats or shooting balloons but add little depth to the package.

The control scheme is poor. While it “works” on a basic level, steering Sonic through levels like an Excite Truck vehicle while flicking the remote to attack enemies is, more often than not, a mess.

Sega delivers inaccurate Wii controls, ridiculous objectives and a bad guy named Erazor. On top of that, it somehow screws up fixed camera angles while attempting to convince the gaming public that a group of rampaging triceratops runs faster than Sonic.

Where Secret Rings really falls apart is in level design. Replicating the main mistake of Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Team has put too many obstacles in the way of Sonic as he attempts to zoom through a level at high speed.

For every good moment there's a handful of annoying ones, with everything from the Wii-mote controls to the game structure causing problems at some point or another.