Like everyone else, I have to admit, Sonic the Hedgehog has been going down hill. Honestly though, I’ve still been a fan of his: I’ve quite enjoyed Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog, even though the general public pretty much pooped on them. True that they don’t compare to his 2-D games, but recreating such perfection now a days is simply hard! I think what really gets people are these promises that “Sonic is going to return to his roots” that the Sonic Team always promises before every new game: people then get their hopes up just to get disappointed. I avoid this by not getting too excited for a game (not since Super Mario Sunshine anyways), so when I get around to it, anything is good. But, even with this defence system, I found myself booing Sonic after playing Sonic and the Secret Rings.

Now, before I start, let me just tell you how much I’ve wanted to do this to this game. Originally, I wanted to get a camera and video record myself playing and reviewing it, much like the Angry Video Game Nerd. But, due to my laziness and lack of motivation thanks to the Irate Gamer (AVGN doesn’t need another copy cat), I never got around to it. Still, while playing the game I continued to get angry and talked about this will fellow torture victim Bob/Zippo. Finally, we come to this point, where I am going to try my best to explain to you, using only the words I can write, how this game made me feel. And so, I will now proceed to tear this game apart. By the way, I’ll do this by tearing my review into three parts.

Seriously it was rather hard to decide where to start off, but I figured I’d do it with the first thing to really piss me off. Well, upon starting a game, the music sucks ass and is incredibly annoying, the graphics and effects (the burning of pages) get on your nerves really quickly, but what really sent me ranting was the story itself. Now, normally stories in Sonic games are simple and we love it that way: “Eggman’s being bad!” “I’ll run and jump on him!” “Yay! Sonic saved the day! Wait, no he hasn’t…” “I got the 7 Chaos Emeralds!” “Ok, NOW he saved the day, YAY!” Like I said, simple, probably overdone, but we loved it. As long as they made different enemies for us to jump on and different stages to run across, we’d be quite happy. But this game isn’t like that, which was kind of slapping every Sonic fan across the face. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) came out around the same time for the Xbox 360 and PS3, so my best theory behind what happened was that all their concentration went to that, then they just went “Let’s slap together something quickly and make it different so we can use the Wii-mote more” (actually, that’s pretty much what I got from Nintendo Power). Well let’s just start off at the beginning.

And we really don’t need to go far! Honestly, the first screen had me already asking questions. We see him inside a house, with a book on his face and near a fire place. Questions that come to mind: Is this his house? When did he get a house? Where is this house? Does this mean the others have houses too? Is Sonic reading? I honestly didn’t know he could read. Where did he get the book and how did he pay for it? Sitting alone at home reading? Why does the game start with this when most others he’s outside running around with his friends when stuff happens? Well, we don’t get answers for these questions, so were left to assume that he’s in his house SOMEWHERE reading (which he could always do?) a book he got from SOMEWHERE and he’s not running around like usual BECAUSE. Let’s just get past the first frame now…

Ok, so stuff starts happening and I get shot through the heart again by something that isn’t even technically the plot: it’s the way it’s presented. Instead of having 3D animated cut scenes like every other Sonic game, we’re “treated” to 2D drawing kind of moving about in tiny squares that are hard to fit anything in. Seriously, everything looks crammed cause they have like 3 to 6 panels per shot. So, this just makes following and watching the story a pain in the neck, but I guess with the effort they probably put into the story, cardboard cut-outs is highly appropriate.

Ok, ok, I’ll get to the actual story. Anyways, Sonic is asleep with this book on his face when suddenly he hears a voice. For some reason he randomly grabs at things on his table. What was he looking for anyways? An Alarm clock? Does he own an alarm clock? Would he have electricity for it? Sorry, more questions… Anyways, upon grabbing it, a floating woman appears. At this point, all I can think of is “great, another character”: instead of sticking to classic plots and working with their old characters (and maybe recycling a few forgotten ones, like Team Chaotix), they just keep making MORE! Well we learn that she’s a genie, named Shahra, from the Arabian Nights book that Sonic was reading and that an evil genie, the Erazor Djinn, is trying to destroy the stories, and once he’s done in there, he’ll naturally move out into our world. Sonic is given a ring by the genie (an actual finger ring, not a gold ring like you normally see in most Sonic games), he rubs it and the genie appears under his command. WAIT, I though genies couldn’t get out unless the object they were stored in was rubbed first, but here she actually gave the object to Sonic, seemed to go back inside it and then came out again? Never mind! Anyways, Sonic goes on to being a smartass and not taking the situation seriously (which I always loved about him) by wishing he had a tissue because of a cold he got the night before. A cold that he showed no signs of before or after. That’s a really dumb reason for a really stupid joke. Anyways, both Sonic and Shahra go into the book.

Yeah, that’s right, the book. Now, I just want to take a little time to wonder if it was really that wise to base this on a book. Who is the target audience for this game? Mostly teenagers, kids and people who, either have or are verging on, ADHD. Are they going to care that this is based on a series of books? NNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOO! One more reason why they should have just gone with their standard plot and have a bunch of robots in it. I think the reasoning for this is they wanted to do something more original, but they didn’t do that either: they used a pre-existing book series, which means it’s not original. They fail either way.

Ok, so back to the plot. After entering the book you go through the training stage and after THAT you meet Erazor Djinn. Now, as you’ve seen before, I normally rip on the Sonic Team for creating a new character, but actually, that’s not the case for this guy: according to a few sites, Erazor is actually the genie from Aladdin who is now free after fulfilling his punishment. They just gave him a name (Erazor= Eraser + Razor) and a new look, which both kick-ass, so he passes. Anyways, he wants to destroy the world and move on to ours (as I’ve said) and to do that he needs the Seven Secret Rings... Ok, new paragraph for this one…

Seven Secret Rings? Seriously? Once again they avoid their regular plot by making a cheap rip off. What is wrong with having the Chaos Emeralds in here? They’re MAGIC! They could have had them in the book: either they magically got in, they were written in the story or every parallel universe has a set. This reminds me of the Sol Emeralds from Sonic Rush, but worse since they’re NOT EVEN EMERALDS! At this point I’m starting to think I should just let go of the old plot and just realise that this is its own game, but it’s hard since its Sonic.

So Erazor confronts Sonic and asks him nicely to collect the Seven Secret Rings by jabbing a flaming arrow in his chest. He says that the arrow will kill him if he doesn’t collect them for him quick enough… which doesn’t make sense, cause if he kills him while he’s collecting the rings he won’t get them… Stupid. It also doesn’t add a real time limit since the only time it seems to effect sonic is in the cut scenes. So, really the arrow doesn’t do anything but looks kind of cool and adds a bit of drama to the story. It doesn’t even incite Sonic to find them; he just finds them coincidentally while running and trying to find Erazor. Speaking of which, Shahra suggests seeing King Shahryar, which Sonic goes along with since he doesn’t have any better ideas nor knows his way around. He beats a level and finds the King… Who looks… just like Eggman…

WHAT THE HELL?! Ok, so instead of using the classic plot and characters, they make new characters and take characters from the Arabian Nights (that all they had to do was make a new form for) and put them old characters bodies! THIS. DOESN’T. MAKE. SENSE! The only character that escapes this is Erazor, which as I said, kicks ass. But Shahra is a new character, King Shahryar is an Arabian Nights character given the body of Dr.Eggman. Seriously, why not give him an original body? It would make TONS more sense! You might think I’m over reacting over this, but I got good reason to. First off, Eggman is awesome! I hope I’m as cool as he is when I’m his age; he builds entire robot armies for Pete’s sake and they just keep coming. But in recent games he’s put on the back burner to other enemies (GUN, Metal Sonic, the Dark Eye dude…) and made into what seems like a joke. This game puts in that tone with him having no army (which being a king, he should have) and getting kidnapped by a pterodactyl. All we see him do afterwards is swing his arms around ridiculously. The other reason this pissed me off so much is they didn’t stop at Eggman! Later on you meet Ali Baba and Sinbad and you can guess who they look like (Tails and Knuckles in case you can’t). Once again, classic Sonic characters made into characters from the Arabian Nights, bastardizing BOTH of them! At least there are some good jokes within this, like how Sinbad had some wisdom and Sonic acknowledged that Knuckles would never be that smart. And there’s the one that… Ok, maybe there aren’t some good jokes, just the one. Seriously though, are we supposed to believe that the Arabian Nights included a two tailed fox and a red echidna? No, therefore we assume that it’s Sonic’s mind that put them in there. I haven’t gotten to the true ending (after you collect the Seven Rings) but I can already picture Sonic waking up, seeing Tails, Knuckles and Eggman around him and going “I just had the most wonderful dream; and you were there, and you were there and… Eggman, what are you doing in my house?” Eggman’s only reply would be “Since when have you had a house?” (Yeah, I’m still on that.)

The rest of the story doesn’t even matter: Sonic runs around, collects the stupid rings meeting a bunch of bosses pulled from the Arabian Nights and gets to Erazor. All you need to get is that it’s unoriginal, no matter how much it claims to be, it ruins classic Sonic and it adds things when not needed but doesn’t add things that are needed. The only part I really liked was Erazor, but for this reason he sticks out and seems awkwardly put in (don’t worry, we’ll probably NEVER see him again). I think if this wasn’t a Sonic game and something original like “Journey through the Arabian Nights” it would be an ok game. Maybe not one people would rush to pick up, since it wouldn’t be tied to a series like Sonic, but at least it wouldn’t be hated for crapping on the series! I give the story 2 out of 10.

Now I have to torture myself with two more reviews of this game…