Will this one be as good as the MegaDrive games we know and love? In short no, it won’t be. But then, were you really expecting it to be? What, even after the demo that went up on Marketplace? Admittedly, it is a lot better than what you might have played on that, if you downloaded it, but sadly, there are still a lot of things wrong with Sonic’s latest adventure.

The main problem is that Sega still hasn’t found a successful way of making 3D Sonic work; with the extra dimension there are too many variables that can cause much frustration. Take the Dusty Desert levels, for example. Surrounding Sonic on each side of the main path is sand; land in this and Sonic loses a life. It’s not much of a problem when you’re just running past it but once enemies appear and you start the whole rigmarole of bouncing off their heads to kill them, you’ll get ricocheted off the main path, land on the sand and slowly sink to your death. These sort of inexplicable deaths never happened when all you had to do was press right on the D-pad.

Another major grumble we have is the amount of pop-up going on in some levels. We’re playing on an Xbox 360 and crates, buildings and other bits of scenery are being drawn in at almost the last second. While this doesn’t matter so much when you’re playing as some of the other characters because they run pretty slowly, it matters a hell of lot when your racing about as Sonic himself. As we all know, Sonic’s ‘thing’ is to run faster than anything in the world ever – even faster than the game can cope with apparently, which makes for a confusing and frustrating time.

This might not seem the biggest problem in the world, but when it starts to effect enemies as well, then it just becomes a real pain. In most levels, especially in the hubs, there will be certain missions where you have to destroy all the enemies in a location before moving on. Not something to worry about in most games, but in Sonic The Hedgehog sometimes you can’t even find your enemies because they haven’t even popped up into existence yet. You can stand at a crossroads desperately looking for the next set of robots to bounce Sonic off, but when you can’t see them you end up running about like a blue-arsed fly (or hedgehog) checking every corner and side street hoping that they will eventually appear. Meanwhile the clock is ticking and if you don’t find them you’ll have to restart the mission.

The radar in the top right-hand corner is not much help either since it doesn’t display the enemies or other useful marks and locations until they are on screen. All of this running around hoping that you’re going in the right direction isn’t what a Sonic The Hedgehog game should be about. Where’s the simple joy of running really fast like you used to as a child?

And another thing! Why does it take so long to load anything? Even the tiniest, most simple of in-game engine cut-scenes takes an annoyingly noticeable length of time to load and when that’s over it has to load the actual game screen back again. Which means there’s a hell of a lot of waiting going on even though the whole concept of Sonic is his speed.

At least there are all the other characters to play with. Tails can fly, Knuckles can punch, Shadow returns with all his guns and new character Silver has all sorts of telekinetic powers – he’s from the future, you see. There are a few more cameos from some of the more famous sidekicks in the series, but also Blaze the Cat from the DS game Sonic Rush makes an appearance. No Big the Cat though, unfortunately. That was a shame.

Having vented our spleens on the game’s shortcomings there is still a quite enjoyable adventure to be had. Collecting rings is not just about preventing yourself from dying, as they can now be used to level up the characters by buying things in shops. You’ve got three different adventures to complete with the three main characters and if you can put up with the loading times, learn where the enemies will appear and where the correct route is on each level, then you do actually start to have some fun. It’s just that getting to that stage is a long, slow slog and for much of the time we just wished that all we had to do was press right and occasionally tap the jump button.

Tim Empey