"With it's obvious similarities, they should have just called it Sonic Party."

Sonic Shuffle is one of those games which you can't deny the similarity to another game. In this case, the Mario Party series. Mario Party was made on the Nintendo 64, and got two sequels to the first one (Also released on the Nintendo 64) which changed some aspects, and added new games.. You know, the general ''Sequel but more a remake'' routine. After the success of Mario Party, the Playstation got Crash Bash, and Dreamcast got Sonic Shuffle. Ripoffs all around. How wonderful..

What intelligent person came up with *THIS* storyline..

Sonic Shuffle's attempt for a storyline involves a ''mystical'' land (I don't believe it was ever named..) requesting help from Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy. In this land, crystals creatively called ''Precioustones'' keep the lands from harm. Or something along that line. So, the stones get broken by some little dark elf, and Sonic&Co have to go get them back. So of course, rather than just walking over to the Precioustones and claiming them, they turn the cry of help into a game. They make up a few rules, and decide, ''Hey. Let's take turns.'' Tails pulls out half a deck of cards, shuffles 'em out, everyone looks their cards over, and the rest of the time is spent marching around some circles that someone creatively left on the worlds.

Go play Mario Party. Now.

The game works like Mario Party to a major extent, if you've ever played on of the games in that series. If you haven't.. The way it works is that all four players (If you don't have four people or controllers, the remainders are substituted in with computer players) march around the board spaces. Each space has either a symbol, or a color on it. When you land on a blue one, you gain rings (Different amount depending on if you've hit several beforehand, etc) which can be used to purchase pictures, which ultimately unlock various options and hidden characters. The way you choose how many spaces you go, is from the cards you get. At the beginning of the game, everyone is delt the same amount of cards. Most are numbers, some are wildcards (Sort of) and one is a card with Robotnik (I refuse to say Eggman. Sounds stupid. Not like Robotnik doesn't, but hey..)on it, which usually hurts you. The cards with numbers choose how many spaces you go. So you choose a 5 card, you move 5 spaces ahead, behind.. Whatever way you wanna go. To get the Precioustones, you have to get to a certain space. When you get there, you'll have to battle a boss to get it. You battle by choosing a card. The boss has a number over his head, indicating how much health he has. You choose the card, and you have to stop a spinning card with numbers from one through the number you picked. If the number you stop it on is over or the same as the boss's number, you beat him and get the Precioustone piece.

Jet Set Radio!! Uhm, wait a second.. You switched disks on me, didn't you? Couldn't tell at first.

The graphics in the game are more of ''Revenge of the Cel-shading''. Shows even more how lazy the developers were in making the game. They can't come up with a new game idea, let alone make a 3D Sonic. Nope, gotta Cel-Shade 'em. It was cool in Jet Grind Radio. But jeez. We don't need it in every game. I mean, it all looks the same. I don't mind it for some games, but I'd just assume have 3D figures for most games. All the characters are Cel-shaded, all the backgrounds, level design, etc is 3D.

Of all the things they reused from something else.. Why couldn't they have reused Sonic Boom?!

The music in the game is nothing memorable. Which is rather disappointing. I've usually enjoyed the music in a Sonic game more than most games. And what happens with this one? Bland, repetitive music. Not anything that you want to remember. Of course, they couldn't have just used one of the best songs ever from Sonic, Sonic Boom.. (Which comes from Sonic CD, if I remember correct)

How often is it when your friend actually screams because you *lost* to him?

Most of the time when you're doing multiplayer with a friend, you usually don't care when your friend loses to a computer, etc. (Unless he's on your team) But this.. This is a different experience. Totally different. You have to have a lot of patience to be able to play this game. Even on the easiest difficulty setting, you're bound to lose many times. Why? The AI is way off. You're allowed to choose other player's (Human and computer's) cards. Although, you can't see them. (Exceptions occur, such as your cards being shown from choosing the Robotnik card) But the computer frequently knows which cards to pick. Of it's, and yours for that matter. Whenever it will help the computer get where it needs to be, it will frequently choose out of your pile, leaving you guessing at the cards you can't see. Another problem is the computer is almost totally accurate. Somehow, it will almost always know to choose this card from you, or that card from another computer player.. And get exactly where it needs to be, while you're back about 15 spaces away, either guessing or yelling expletives because it took the cards you needed to get there in two moves to get there itself. The computer is next to impossible to beat most the time in the minigames as well, exceptions for a few, where it plays like an old granny. So much, in fact, that it frequently won't win even if you lose before it. But for the most part, it's far too difficult to beat those, too.

Think of a game of ''Barrel of Monkeys''. Then think the total opposite. You've got Sonic Shuffle.

After playing the game for awhile, you won't think it's so bad. Just a slight bit difficult. After you've gone thirty minutes, you'll think ''It's just doing good this round''. Three rounds later you'll be cringing your fingers, considering breaking the disk in half. The game is pretty cool when you have four human players and controllers. Then it's not that bad. But trying to beat one player is Hell. Nothing more I can say but that.

It's not over till the fat lady sings. Sing already, woman.

The loading periods in the game are extremely obnoxious. It always takes forever to load a minigame, battle, minievent.. And then after it's over (About thirty seconds later) you have to wait for it to load the main map again! This is really just stupid waiting so long for everything. I usually am patient with load times (You don't know the meaning of patient until you've played Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace on PS1) but this is at the point of unbearably stupid load times.

''It all breaks down..''
Story: 4
Graphics: 6
Music: 4
Fun: 4 (If you do 4 Player Multi, it's much higher)
Replay: 7
Overall: 5

The game's only good if you have four buddies whom are willing to play it with you. Otherwise, prepare to break a few controllers, a few TV screens, and that ugly wall with the stain on it behind the TV. If you want something like this that the average person can win without a Gameshark, get the first Mario Party, or maybe the second.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/30/02, Updated 03/30/02