Reviews// Sonic the Hedgehog (PS3)

In terms of sound, SEGA's offering is bland but inoffensive. The ambient music's entirely forgettable to the point where I simply can't remember how it goes. As was mentioned above, the voice acting's not exactly strong, but for a game like Sonic, powerful performances aren't really expected. What is a bit annoying is the bizarre “Heeyyyii” noise that precedes non-cut-scene dialogue. Again, it's not a problem unique to Sonic, but it's enough for a swift press of the 'mute' button.

Average sound and poor graphics could both be forgiven along with shaky set-up and plotting, however, if actually playing the game wasn't so damn annoying.

The worst offender in terms of gameplay is the camera angle. It floats around at unwieldly angles that constantly leave the player unable to see what's going on. It's a killer, literally. Many lives can be lost thanks to the camera pointing in the wrong direction, and baddies or nasty drops presenting themselves as if from nowhere. I actually found myself playing using the small radar rather than trying to follow the action on the main display in some cases.

The camera also has a habit of jarring on objects as you try to rotate it manually using the right analogue stick. There's one point in Crisis City where you simply can't get the camera to show where you are, resulting in a blind leap and a high chance of death.

The load times and cut scenes are also endlessly annoying. You'll probably spend as much time staring at maps of Sonic's central city hub as you will running round it. The game will often set you up for a challenge, make you wait for a scene to load, have an NPC tell you something they just said again then make you wait through another load.

Once you've waded through all the city cut-scenes and load times the proper levels are a disappointment, too. You'll spend ages blasting your way through overly easy sections before hitting a point that's infuriating enough to make you long to walk away. The most annoying thing is that they're often difficult not because they're meant to be, but because of one of the game's glitches or poor level design.

A good example is an early encounter with Tails. While Sonic hangs off a killer whale's dorsal fin (don't ask why, because I don't know) you must play as Tails to try and shut the compound it's in to prevent an escape. While 'follow the rings' is a good rule of thumb for navigating levels in any Sonic game, the trail dries up in this section. After proceeding in a linear fashion for a couple of minutes you suddenly find yourself on an overly-busy island. Assuming the way to find the switch was to keep pressing forward, I missed the switch a couple of times before finally realising it was obscurely placed on a butt of rock above me.

Playing with the game's other spiky protagonists, Silver and Shadow, does provide some nice variation. Silver's telekinetic abilities, in particular, are a nice gameplay feature. They're not enough, however, to save Sonic the Hedgehog from the adjectives 'infuriating' and 'nob'.

SPOnG Score: 40%

SEGA's next-gen attempt at Sonic the Hedgehog is annoying to say the very, very least. SEGA seems to have got confused about what a Sonic game should be, and done nothing to redeem itself in terms of gameplay. The various glitches are almost unforgivable and scream out the words 'rush' and 'job,' probably in that order.