Sonic and the Secret Rings (It Came From...The Bargain Bin) mini-review

It Came From... The Bargain Bin

Sonic and the Secret Rings (a.k.a. Sonic Wildfire) for Wii

This is a difficult game to review, mainly because I've struggled with trying to get even the smallest sense of enjoyment out of Sonic the Hedgehog for the Xbox 360.

In fact, in order to give a better idea as to what S&SR does right, I'll have to spend a bit of time ranting about what Sonic 360/PS3 did wrong. I wanted to like that game, I REALLY did, because it's one of the few Japanese games on the system with a recognized brand. However, abysmal collision detection and boundary issues caused me plummeting to my death from what appeared to be solid ground...not to mention the glitchy camera, incessant load times, and poor level design issues (pressing a button to run over poorly placed pits of sand without sinking, mere milliseconds after hitting a speed booster? No thanks.) that caused me to utter many an expletive in distaste at Sonic Team's disgustingly bad QA in an attempt to release the game for the holiday season last year. The worst offender of the collision detection and bad level designs are the "mach speed" sections of the game, which play like poorly laid out racing levels. Sonic races along (all too fast) and if you hit an obstacle or enemy, you die. Simple as that. The problem is, Sonic moves too quickly, and the "wide, expansive" environments make it somewhat difficult to figure out where you're supposed to go next. Furthermore, the design of these sections feels almost random. I found myself continuously fighting the game trying to figure out what the developers WOULDN'T PLAN on a player doing, so I wouldn't fall victim to unnecessary death-by-bug. Sadly, I still ran into bugs over and over again while keeping this in mind, and never wanted to press through to obtain even one single achievement award.

All that being said, Sonic and the Secret Rings for the Wii does just about everything right that Sonic 360/PS3 does wrong. It plays like the 360's mach-speed sections with better designed environments, less bugs/camera problems, and controls that don't suck. The graphics in the environments are clearly some of the best on Wii (pre Mario Galaxy, of course), with lighting and particle effects clearly beyond what the Gamecube was capable of. Using the Wiimote to control the game feels awkward at first, and admittedly it takes a while to adjust to the new control scheme before the game takes off and begins to feel "Sonic-esque." One problem I ran into (with both this game and in the mach-speed sections of the highly inferior next-gen Sonic) is that if you lose momentum and have to dodge an obstacle or enemy right in front of you, you may end up hitting it multiple times, usually killing you. Losing momentum can be lethal. This problem is avoided by learning the courses, but admittedly, the controls will cause a few cheap deaths - ESPECIALLY at first when learning the courses. There are seven courses in all (plus a tutorial level). Each course contains many sub-missions, a lot of which are required to unlock more courses and advance through the game. Sadly, some of these missions end up being exercises in frustration, taking objectives such as "Don't get hit", "Collect 99 rings", etc., and turning you loose in modified versions of the main courses to try your luck at achieving those objectives. Naturally, these "modified mini-courses" for each mission have been custom-tailored to make it more difficult to achieve your goal. For example, a mission set in the desert course with the objective "survive until the end" will have less rings available, and stick extra cacti right in your running path to throw you off/kill you. There are a lot of variations to the maps, and all of them appear as though they're meant to screw you over. It's more of an annoyance than a flaw, though, because there is definitely a sense of reward that goes along with beating the harder missions. As you complete these missions, you gain experience (!!! yes, experience), and new abilities. The abilities you learn make the more difficult missions easier to clear. Some examples of these abilities include running faster, adding elements to your attacks, extra rings, speeding up or slowing down time, etc...

A lot of reviewers complain about the cheesy music and voices, but they don't really bother me. I play the game in Japanese, so I don't even hear the campy English voice acting, and the music actually fits the game well. The multiplayer mode is tacked on and is definitely not worth much mentioning.So far I've only unlocked 3 of the 8 courses (tutorial, Sand Oasis, and Dinosaur Jungle), but I'm extremely surprised at how well this game turned out for Sonic Team. And at the price it's available at right now, it's difficult to justify not picking it up.