Functional (and somewhat fun!) but ultimately unmemorable for a Sonic game. It’s interesting seeing a Boost game with far smoother turning and less hallway-like design, but in turn lacks a lot of the cinematography and impact of the Boost games, or momentum-based fun and endearing worlds of the Adventure games.

It doesn’t do much aside from providing some fun bitesized Sonic gameplay - which is excellent for an Apple Arcade title, but it always feels like it’s reaching for something a bit more. It feels like Apple gave them a good amount of budget to put into creating these really nicely designed models and level environments, but the general interface and storybook panel cutscenes feel really low budget - which causes it to sit on a weird in-between plane between substantial experience and Cotton Candy Fluff Of A Game. Nothing bad, nothing offensive, but also not much to stick your teeth into.

Such an absolute joy - manages to be so consistently creative and fun and so fast paced throughout it's runtime. If a game like 3D World takes the elements of 2D Mario and expands it upon the 3rd dimension - Wonder feels like it takes the creative joy of 3D Mario games (especially Galaxy 2) and flattens it down into a super fast, accessible 2D format.

The animations really sell the whole game for me - it looks so stylistically adorable and provides so much flavour to every character and enemy. Mario seems like he's actually... having fun? And has a personality? He feels so dynamic when he's moving and they did an excellent job in making the 3D models fit seamlessly in a 2D perspective (which is an issue I feel like some other 2D platformers - especially the New Super Mario series, really struggle with). Also the backgrounds are gorgeous! Just a stellar and fun game all around that I had a blast breezing through.