When I was a kid, I remember seeing the trailer for the new Sonic game. I really wanted to play it, and while I was visiting my cousin around 8 years ago? (it was pre-Mania I can say that) I was able to play it for a little bit, and got halfway through Frozen Factory. When I was a kid, I loved this game, but now, that doesn’t hold true. I have so many issues here that I honestly don’t even know where to start. The gameplay honestly isn’t the worst, but it feels awkward at times, especially turning. However, we should get the elephant out of the room: Having to hold a button to immediately reach Sonic’s top speed is absolutely ridiculous. The Adventure formula allows for lots of free movement and exploration where you earn those top speeds by utilizing the skills you have. The Boost formula requires you to collect rings, perform tricks, collect White Wisp Capsules, or a combination of those in order to either continuously speed through levels as long as you can (Unleashed, Generations) or save it sparingly for moments where you’re able to reach your best speeds (Colors). This game instead takes the approach of holding down a singular button to immediately reach top speed. While this could be said is similar to the Boost formula, at least the Boost formula not only let you earn those top speeds, but actually incorporates the Boost formula into its levels well. By making Sonic immediately reach top speed, inclines and hills feel awkward and slow, and as a result makes the platforming feel really stiff, especially in 2D. The 2D in Colors and Generations wasn’t my favourite, but it definitely felt playable. Some of the 2D segments in this game feel absolutely abysmal since there’s no momentum meaning that you immediately lose speed when you double jump for example. Not only that, but the parkour elements they implemented don’t really get a chance to shine at all. There’s only a few segments where you could actually try parkour and even then it can usually be skipped, like how the penultimate level skips an entire parkour segment by letting you use the Hover Wisp. Speaking of, why are the Wisps back? The end of Colors established that the Wisps went back to their home planet, but the Lost Hex couldn’t possibly be it because weren’t the planets in Colors their main planets? What happened to Planet Wisp for instance? As for how the Wisps are used in game, they’re absolutely horrid. All of the returning Wisps play about the same except Rocket which is better than in Colors and Generations, but like the other three, it has a very niche use for a level or two. Laser appears more often, but you could genuinely never use this Wisp and nothing would change. As for the new Wisps, they all suck. Indigo Asteroid is the same as Violet Void from Sonic Colors DS but controls worse, Crimson Eagle I didn’t even know existed until Sky Road (the sixth world) and it’s just a copy of Hover, Magenta Rhythm took a bit to understand and by the time I did, it was gone, and Black Bomb and Grey Quake I didn’t even encounter once, mainly because the former is a reward in item capsule form, and the latter is exclusive to the two player race mode. Icing on the cake is I can count how many times I used all the new Wisps on one hand. It genuinely feels like they retconned the end of Colors just to make levels have a gimmick since they didn’t know what to do with their level design. Speaking of designs, every single level theme is a copy of the New Super Mario Bros. formula: Grass - Desert - Beach - Snow - Forest - Sky - Lava. This game genuinely feels like they’re trying so hard to be Mario, but it doesn’t work at all, especially since the concept is just Super Mario Galaxy but worse. One thing I love about every other Sonic game, from the good to the bad (except Sonic 4 Episode I) is that they tried to make unique Zones and level themes that you couldn’t find anywhere else. This is the same series with such unique areas like Chemical Plant, Hydrocity, City Escape, even areas based off of countries like Sonic Unleashed with the World Map. This game feels like it’s so devoid of creativity and it’s such a shame because Sonic Unleashed, Colors, and Generations were so good and you’d think they’d continue to be unique but they ultimately failed to do so. They don’t even end up following the themes most of the time, since Silent Forest has an ice level, Frozen Factory has a casino level, Desert Ruins has Honeycomb Highway AND a dessert themed level, etc. Funnily enough, I don’t even think that’s the worst part of the game. The worst part is easily the absolutely revolting excuse for a story I’ve ever seen in not just a Sonic game, but any game in general. The run down is that Sonic and Tails need to team up with Eggman because Sonic was careless and threw away Eggman’s control of the Deadly Six. The further this game goes, the more tonal shifts there are, with each character getting more and more angry at one another and resetting the status quo by the next cutscene. It honestly starts to feel edgy, but not in the funny bad way that Shadow the Hedgehog presents itself. Instead, you’re left with terrible moments like Sonic making a cold pun in the ice level’s cutscene, to Eggman ruthlessly insulting the Zeti (Deadly Six’s other name) saying he’ll strangle them alive (and this takes place in the same cutscene!). The worst part has to be Eggman’s betrayal at the end, because it’s been shown that Eggman is pretty loyal to those he teams up with, like how he teams up with Sonic and co. during Cannon’s Core of Sonic Adventure 2, or even just Dark Story in general. All of the so called drama the game sets up feels so artificial and it makes it more of a pain to sit through cutscenes to the point where I had to skip some. The Deadly Six are also very uninteresting characters, since all of them are supposed to represent one of the Seven Deadly Sins (including Eggman for some reason), but they end up coming off as characters with one punchline that get really annoying fast, especially since you hear them taunt Sonic during the second and fourth levels of each world. Speaking of annoying, this game requires you to grind a bit if you don’t defeat enough enemies or open enough capsules, since the last level of each area is locked behind a certain number of animals you need to rescue to open the level. My review of Sonic Rush Adventure described how I absolutely despised the idea of needing to grind in a Sonic game, so you can only imagine how I felt when I didn’t have enough animals rescued in Frozen Factory, Silent Forest, Sky Road, AND Lava Mountain. I had to constantly replay Honeycomb Highway since it was the only level where I can easily get a large sum of animals quickly. While I actually like that level and it was the only level I’d be okay with replaying, having to fight Zomom each time was tedious. Apparently the Zelda and Yoshi DLC’s help for getting animals and lives, but these aren’t available on PC without mods. All of the bosses can be defeated in two hits since you can charge up your homing attack, and as a result these become more boring than hard or anything else. The worst part is that after beating Lava Mountain Act 3, they play the cutscene for the final boss, but I didn’t even have enough animals saved, so instead of going directly to the fight, I had to replay Honeycomb Highway once again. If I was actually immersed in this game, that would’ve completely shattered that, but honestly this game sucks too much for me to actually feel anything but relief when it was over. Honestly, there isn’t much I can say that’s good. I can sum it up in three points: The graphics were nice, the game is polished, and the music is good. However, this doesn’t say much when Sonic games usually look nice, are usually polished, and usually have good music, the sole exception for all of these being Sonic 4 Episode I, but what Episode I has that say, Shadow the Hedgehog, and this game don’t is that it’s so short that you can numb your brain for an hour and be done with it. The other three are extremely long because you need to replay each time with a different character, but this game tries to extend it’s game time with levels locked behind animal count. I think it’s safe for me to say that this is easily the WORST 3D Sonic game where he is the only playable character, which makes this so much more disappointing. Overall, I would say unless you’re really interested in trying it for yourself, I would say you could make much better use of your time by playing something actually worth playing instead of this pitiful wasted potential of a game.