Sonic the Hedgehog

Meanwhile, the snowboarding presents another broken part of the game with control that is cumbersome and a mix of flawed camera and design that means the end of the level can't come soon enough. These areas look nice, but it takes way too much getting used to for little payback.

In the vein of Sonic Adventure, levels are joined with role-playing 'town' based areas, which include perhaps the most flawed parts of the game. We thought we'd be the only ones struggling to work out how to open up the first level, but it seems many players spent in excess of half an hour figuring out that only by speaking to the guy represented in blue do you get to buy the item from the shop needed to progress towards the first level.

This area early in game requires you to squeeze through a 'gap underneath a wall', a gap that you should quite easily be able to spin under based on logic, but needs an item from the shop, even though at this particular point of town, there's another supposed clue - a soccer ball - that suggests maybe doing something 'smart' might be in order. You soon learn to take a hint when given.

In the town areas, there are a handful of repeated NPC inhabitants who communicate with you via text boxes. Town areas are not as polished as the proper levels, but they do let you head into various side missions, ranging from dull (find a dog somewhere) to appalling (Three Musketeers) to actually quite fun (find six kids running around through the town inside the time limit). There's rarely a useful reward though, and the loading time programming with the missions is an ABSOLUTE DISGRACE.

There's no new environment or anything to load in - the only change is the mission parameters and different music and some text to be displayed. It doesn't require countless sets of ten-second loading time, and it's particularly annoying if you want to retry a mission straight away, you have to go through several load screens for nothing, skipping text each time. It's just inexcusable, farcical. Even we could fix the code up to correct this problem. Seriously. Here is a video that perfectly demonstrates the problem.

It's also no fun to spend a lot of time in a town area collecting hidden bonus items and points and mission successes, only to enter the next level, die, and restart WAY early before you'd done the hard work. Entering a new level should automatically save your town progress (since the option to do this manually is there), but no. Losing an hour's worth of progress and achievements is nobody's idea of fun - and you never want to do them twice.

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Video Coverage (Latest Videos & Video FAQ)
PLEASE DO NOT DIRECT LINK TO ANY MEDIA FILE ON KIKIZO
Description	Dur.	Size	Details
Sonic the Hedgehog Sonic Gameplay, direct audio, 60fps (normal quality)	1:46	63MB	DFA, ED, 16:9 856x480p60 5.0Mbps
Sonic the Hedgehog Intro sequence, direct audio, 60fps (normal quality)	1:07	38MB	DFA, ED, 16:9 856x480p60 5.0Mbps
Sonic the Hedgehog Latest trailer (normal quality)	1:16	16MB	DF, SD, 16:9 640x480p30 1.7Mbps
Sonic the Hedgehog Direct feed gameplay extended   (PS3, X360 - Sega)	02:19	86MB	DF, ED, 16:9 852x480p60 5.2Mbps
Sonic the Hedgehog Direct feed trailer extended   (PS3, X360 - Sega)	02:04	32MB	DF, SD, 16:9 640x360p30 2.3Mbps
Sonic the Hedgehog Direct feed gameplay short   (PS3, X360 - Sega)	00:35	17MB	DF, ED, 16:9 852x480p60 4.2Mbps
Sonic the Hedgehog Realtime in-game gameplay footage demonstrated by Yuji Naka (hi quality)	5.08m	140MB	HD, 60 800x448 4Mbps
Sonic the Hedgehog As above, normal quality	5.08m	70MB	SD, 30 640x360 2Mbps
Sonic the Hedgehog The full trailer (hi quality)	2.22m	64MB	HD, 60 800x448 4Mbps
Sonic the Hedgehog As above, normal quality	2.22m	64MB	SD, 30 640x360 2Mbps