"For those who want a Sonic game better than Sonic 3 & Knuckles, well here it finally is."

Well, some thought Sonic Team would finally have a turn for the better (like they have now) and kept buying the new games to see for themselves. And others thought that the good days were over, and became self-proclaimed haters of the newer games. So after giving us a great series of games, a gap, and then a good one and three poor to mediocre games, they FINALLY decide to cut the crap and get back to the good old gameplay. No more stupid convex curves from Advance 3, no more unavoidable bottomless pits and speed traps from Advance 2, and FINALLY - for the first time since the Genesis era (not counting the 3D games) - no more not-being-able-to-go-quickly-until-you-get-to-a-loop-ness. Which isn't a word, but oh well. Thanks to the Boost Gauge (known to the manual as the Tension Gauge), they fixed that. Oh, and did I mention the Special Stages? For once you can actually control where Sonic goes - by using the stylus of course! They could have done a bit better on the bosses though; it's a shame that we've still not gotten back that good old Genesis-style "just jump at the boss 8 times" gameplay - this is the only part of the game that is WORSE than the Advance series - although they DID put them in 3D. As such, they can take up to about three-four minutes even for an experienced player to play, simply due to the amount of waiting involved.

Gameplay: Wait, I already typed out my entire gameplay section above. Oh well, 10/10 for that (yes, we'll even forgive them for the bosses).

Graphics: Now that nothing apart from the level itself (and the menus of course) is in 2D, there's no more messing about with the discrepancies that are the inevitable results of using animated sprites. In other words, there's no restriction on how good they can make it look - and without that restriction, they've made it look perfect. 10/10.

Music and Sound: Hmm, a few bad tracks here and there, mainly the zones in the middle of the game, but overall they're great. The lyrics don't really have much meaning (the common joke in the SR boards right now is that the track "Wrapped in Black" is someone complaining about their coffee), but they're there and they complement the songs. But the real let-down is the voices. They decided to use the Sonic X voice actors instead of the people who voiced Sonic Adventure 2 - and apart from the case of Eggman, that was a bad idea. But since sound isn't really that important compared to the music, 9/10.

Storyline: AAAAAAH, finally, we have a game with NO MORE THAN TWO CHARACTERS! And for storyline purposes! Wow! So, Eggman goes and disrupts the space-time continuum somehow (by sitting on it, perhaps? [/lame joke]), and Sonic and Blaze now have to get the Chaos and Sol Emeralds respectively (although Blaze doesn't have special stages, but she just gets one every time you beat a boss with her, which kinda sucks) in order to save the world from total and utter annihiliation. 10/10.

Overall: 9.75/10, but we'll round it up to 10.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 02/06/06