Sonic The Hedgehog for the 360

Now I am no Sonic hater. Infact I grew up playing Sonic in the playground back when I was in Primary School. The idea of running really fast was great and the games were just as good as the idea..... Well the Sega Mega Drive ones anyway. My first console I owned (which was a Playstation) didn't have any Sonic games so I missed out all his 3D games till Sonic Heroes. Now I look back and I am happy that happened. Sure, I wish I got an N64 instead of a Playstation but thats not the point. The point is I wasnt going to be dissapointed by the dodgy camara and bad controls of 3D Sonic games and Sonic the Hedgehog Next Gen for the 360 doesn't change a thing. Infact its very much like Sonic Adventure.

1. The first level is on a beach and at a point a big killer whale chases you.

2. A hub world which is so damn confusing which will have you running in circles

3. A Snowboarding level very much like the one in SA

4. A creature who has many different forms getting stronger and stronger. Very much like Chaos.

5. Adds to the ever growing rooster of un used Sonic Characters. For Instance I doubt we will be Sliver again.

And to make matters worse it also adds something which is so bad it would make Iblis (The new Chaos like creature but this time fire instead of water) go crying to his mummy. Thats right, the dreaded loading screen. Now if there was one way Sega could ruin Sonic is this. A fast paced action platformer is now broken up into 5 minute sections with reallly long loading times. It got to a point where I would read a book while waiting for it to load. Thats not right! Especally a Sonic game.

The storyline (as with most 3D Sonic games these days) is stupidlly deep and confusing. You think Final Fantasy is bad? You haven't seen nothing yet. It all involves Eggman wanting to take over the world using a firey god called Iblis. Then theres a Sliver hedgehog (Called Sliver believe it or not) who is from the furture and with Blaze the Cat (Yes the emo cat from Sonic Rush who is from a parreall Diamention..... Well not according to Sonic Next Gen anyway) wanting to go back in time and stop the Iblis Trigger. Now if ya confused already I can safely tell you it gets worse.

The graphics are pretty good and can easily fool you into thinking this game could be worth your money. Well its not. I know it deffently fooled me.

I am so happy I just borrowed it from Mark.

Now you guys out there may think I have been a little to harsh on the blue 'hog. Well once you've fallen to your death a thousend times when its not your fault and is because of shody controls and a bad camara you'll know what I mean.

So take my warning. If you are a Sonic fanboy rent the game out. Otherwise dont even look in this games general direction. Its good graphics may hypnotise you into buying it.

Rating: D

Second Opinion

I'm one of those people who really liked Sonic growing up, I remember going to my uncles loads to play on Sonic on his mega-drive. I was pleased when Sonic made his jump to 3-D and really enjoyed Sonic Adventure it had a unique storyline, fun levels and awesome bosses. I never got Sonic adventure 2 so i don't know what that was like. But basically i was on Sonic's Side in the Mario vs Sonic debate (Sonic won by the way =D) I've liked the 3-D sonic games for Xbox though.

I thought Sonic next gen was good at first, Sonic running around, being awesome as normal. The Storyline itself is kinda bogus and full of plotholes though. I also thought parts were stolen from Sonic adventure 1. But otherwise controls were okay for a 360 game. I did notice the game had loads of loading screens and got annoying fast. It also added Silver, who i thought was kinda annoying and it took me ages to work out who he was, what he was doing, and why Sega would let me down like this :(

I also noticed a few annoying glitches, like when i was fighting a boss and i flipped through the floor and got stuck in some black world where the boss could still hurt me >:(

Overall i think Sega have had better 3-D games (Sonic heroes). I'd say if you wanted a 3D sonic game, wait for Sonic Unleashed, that looks good (Don't blame me if its bad though!)

Second Opinion Rating: B

pictures from gamershell.com and sega-universe.de