You can’t keep a good hedgehog down, it seems.  Even if that same hedgehog has appeared in some questionable 3D games of late.  Well, it looks like Sega and Nintendo might have addressed that problem with Sonic’s first Wii outing.

Sonic and the Secret Rings is a first for several reasons.  It’s the first original Sonic game to appear on the Wii and it’s the first time Sonic has appeared in 3D without a large cast of playable characters.  Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Eggman are all missing from this adventure (though there are some characters in the game that look disturbingly like them – all deliberate).  You’ll only get to play as Sonic himself, which is no bad thing, it turns out.  Fans of Tails et al will be pleased to hear that you can still see them in action in the minigames, but we’ll come to that later.

The idea here seems to have been to take Sonic back to his roots, in that he runs very fast through the landscape and you control jumps, dodges and bouncing in to enemies to kill them.  Only this time it’s all in 3D.  The way this works is by having pre-determined paths, which may feel a bit strange to anyone used to nice free-roaming sandbox games, but it really does work for Sonic.  As you play through the levels, the game gets faster and you’ll need either lightning fast reactions or several plays to dodge all the falling pillars, enemies and other perils waiting for you. 

The controls use the Wii Remote, placed sideways like in a driving game, to turn Sonic left and right and to jump at enemies.  It takes a bit of practice (which means an overlong set of training levels) but once you’re zooming through the game it’ll all be worth it.  Even the most sceptical gamer will feel that this is the best way to get a 3D Sonic game to work. 

There are a few issues with the main game, mostly over the controls.  Sometimes you’re going too fast to react to an enemy in time and it’s very hard to go back when you’re pelting along.  This is fine in the first stage of each level, but once you unlock the next stages things become more difficult.  Aside from getting through the levels in a certain time, each level has set things to do which unlock bonus items or are required to get further in the game.  Things such as getting a certain amount of rings will take a few goes and a certain amount of swearing before you get them right, thanks to the control issues.  If you could just go backwards easier, then it wouldn’t be so bad.  However, this is a minor issue and as you improve you’ll find it easier to complete these.

Aside from the main game, there are plenty of mini games to play.  These involve all the Sonic Characters from previous games, including the cute little Chaos.  You can either play all the minigames you’ve unlocked so far (there are loads to start off with as well) or there’s a neat little Mario party style tournament mode that pits you against computer and human players to reach the top of the castle.

Just like in Super Monkey Ball, some mini-games work better than others, but when I sat down with the wife to play them, they kept us amused for a good 3 hours and we keep coming back to them.  Trying to play the violin, skydive past thunderstorms and drive mine-carts is just priceless and it’s a great addition to the game that’ll add loads of replay value.

Overall, with the hyper-fast main game and the (mostly) great minigames, Sonic and the Secret Rings works better than any other 3D sonic game before.  It’s not perfect, but it’s still great fun.  Scorewise, I’d give it 7/10.