Sonic the Hedgehog (Xbox 360)

It's gotten to the point where I shed a single tear every time a new 3D Sonic game is announced. Just like the commercial - it's the single piece of trash thrown from the car, I'm the Indian up on the hill. The original franchise had spunk, great graphics, clever level design; the games were a true pleasure to play. On the other hand 3D has not been kind: Sonic Adventure (and its sequel) on the Dreamcast treated gamers to a sudden and serious case of franchise erectile dysfunction. Sonic was there, the graphic capability was there, the very idea of moving in any direction was initially arousing everyones' interest...and yet the games simply hung there, flaccid and lifeless. Gamers everywhere end up with a pair of blue hedgehogs and no real release in sight.

I got two posts in before using a dick joke - that might be a new personal best.

I did hope against hope that the 360 version might somehow be different. That the power of next generation hardware could somehow overwhelm and erase any suck the development team might accidentally - or intentionally - bring to the table. Trust me, I am well aware that it's a blind hope; if THAT'S how things worked the Playstation 3 would be selling like hotcakes and Sony wouldn't be looking like a jock in his Mustang that just tore his transmission out down-shifting from fourth to first trying to impress the ladies in the Cabriolet one lane over. I was even stupid enough to keep hoping a tiny bit that the game would work out after playing the awful demo. I couldn't even get off the small starting island, the controls were so terrible I would shoot off into the void and fall to my death repeatedly. After two or three tries I said fuck it and moved on, and yet...and yet...once I had my GameFly subscription I simply couldn't help myself. Sonic got added and moved relatively high up in the queue, and it wasn't long before it arrived.

I opened the envelope with just a touch of dread, because I knew that there was simply no way it would be any better than the demo. I pressed ahead anyway. The game started, the cutscenes played, and all I could think about afterwards is how outright creepy it is to consider Sonic hooking up with a human princess. Furries for the mainstream. How would that even work? I know some girls scream faster, but...alright, that's a joke I don't need to make. So I end up with control and I'm in a town, and while I find the interactions and dialogs to be very silly on the whole the experience wasn't too bad. I made the distinct mistake of relaxing just a bit, and finally managed to find my way to the first real level.

Again, the initial experience was...surprisingly not too bad. It wasn't anything that made me smile, but I was running around collecting rings and moving forward with a bit more control than the Sonic Adventure games, so I relaxed a bit more. Finally, the game struck like a cobra. Within minutes I reached a spot that I simply could not control properly, and I died. Over and over and over. It wasn't a matter of getting a little further each time or just barely missing the move, it was a metaphorical brick wall a mile thick that stopped me dead. After the fourth or fifth identical death I silently stood up, ejected the disc, wrapped it back up in the GameFly packaging, and walked it out to the mailbox.

My final analysis? The graphics are alright, the audio not too bad, the premise is creepier than the offer of candy in a white full-conversion van, and the controls are so fucking sloppy it's completely unplayable. I think the only positive aspect of the entire experience is that it may have sold so poorly Sega might put poor Sonic to rest, at least in the 3D realm.