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Until now, it was very simple. 2D Sonic games were on the whole fantastic and 3D Sonic games were generally awful. In the late 90s before retro was cool again, Sega had no choice but to buckle under the pressure from consumers for all ‘modern’ games to be built from polygons, and their principal series suffered immeasurably.
Early Sonic games were defined by fluid, flowing gameplay and, of course, blinding speed. When Sonic Adventure appeared in 1998, giving the player a camera to control and a third dimension to explore, suddenly Sega’s mascot felt clunky, awkward and even a little slow.
‘On-rails’ is an unfashionable term now and is rarely used as a compliment, but in essence the early Sonic games were predominantly on-rails. You could leap about as you wished, taking different routes and backtracking, but the real joy came in accelerating into a path that whisked you through loop-the-loops and tunnels across the levels in an instant.
Thankfully, it appears that Sega has finally realised this as Sonic and the Secret Rings is a bold and welcome return to on-rails gaming. With the camera firmly fixed behind our favourite hedgehog as he tears through each level, suddenly Sonic is fast again; really fast. Each level is in many ways like a course from SSX Tricky or a track from a kart racing game, vastly extended and filled with huge gaps, gravity defying loops and scattered platforms. Occasionally the camera pulls away to track Sonic as he performs a hairpin turn on a vertical wall or similar stunt, but not once in my hands-on with the final build did it interfere with the gameplay. The best news is that this camera system really does work.
The basic premise of collecting rings and shaving seconds off the clock will be familiar to almost every gamer of the last twenty years, but what will be completely new are the controls and the setting.
Bar the odd self-referential bumper, gone are the well-trodden slopes of the Emerald Forest, replaced by a world direct from the pages of Arabian Nights. Upon receiving a copy of the classic literary work with the last three pages missing, Sonic is transported into the book by a genie. This excellent choice of location is filled with glistening waterfalls and crumbling desert palaces, and provides the Wii with perhaps its most beautiful looking game yet.
Above all that has been said before, what is most important is how the controls work and if they are up to the job. Around E3 time last year various demos were causing concern but, thankfully, plenty of tweaking seems to have taken place. Like any Wii game, Secret Rings takes a little getting used to and at times the difficulty is set fairly high, but the controls are rarely at fault. Any worries about the Wii remote not working for this return to Sonic’s roots will be completely quashed after half-an-hour’s play.
Holding the Wii-mote like a NES pad, tilting it left and right steers Sonic accordingly, and rolling it back reverses him slowly. The 1 and 2 buttons are used to jump and brake, and when in the air jolting the controller towards the screen thrusts Sonic forward. When in mid-air enemy lock-on is automatic, allowing Sonic to power into his foes with a well-timed jerk of the remote.
Hidden bonuses grant Sonic numerous subtle power-ups, which can be selected before entering a level, and ‘Wild Fire Orbs’ placed across the various worlds can be gathered to provide an enormous boost but, like its Mega Drive bound ancestors, Secret Rings is traditionally simple in concept. It is also fairly large, reasonably varied and certainly feels like one of the most complete titles on the Wii, compared to the various novelties and mini-game compilations currently available for the system.
Of course, mini-games are included, as seems to be the prerequisite of Wii development, and the 40 on offer are the usual mixture of a few diamonds and a bit of rough. The standouts in the selection include a hilarious canoeing contest, a tense target shooting challenge and an inexplicably addictive game involving rapidly swiping magic carpets from a stack defended by a clumsy guard..
There are criticisms but in most cases fixing them would break the best parts of the game. It is painfully frustrating to miss a bonus and be unable to return to it without restarting the level. On one occasion there was slow-down and some boss battles are insanely hard, but on the whole it is looking like Sega has finally cracked the 3D Sonic conundrum.
