As most of you know, I got a 360 and Sonic Next for Xmas. The 360 is pretty damn cool, although it tends to overheat with the amount of time my parents are playing that damn golf game on it.
Moving on, Sonic Next, in all it's shiny double-boxed glory, was unwrapped along with the console to play it on. I had been hearing a lot of bad things about the game, and I was itching to know whether it was true.
After playing it for an hour or so, I came to the conclusion that the reviews were wrong. It's a badass game. It has a glitch here and there, but it's awesome. The gameplay's fast and a lot more enjoyable than the last few games. It revitalises the meaning of speed in the games, the levels keep you moving. The town levels are enjoyable too, and some of the odd jobs people have you doing can be fun and a decent break from all the running around.
The graphics are amazing compared to anything before it. Everything flows in movement, although the characters are a little stiff.
I loved the music. It was a good variety of songs, and really felt fitting to the level.
Silver's levels were challenging and original. Despite him being a lot slowler than Sonic, the gameplay is just as fast paced. There are a lot more puzzles, some of which are frustrating. Shadow's gameplay lands you in vehicles most of the time, but they're not particularly needed most of the time. Shadow has a lot more power than Sonic, and is slightly slower than him, but still fast. His levels are based around finding things or destroying things to open doors, although he also has similar levels to Sonic at times.
The buyable powerups are a neat feature. I had a lot of fun slowing my surroundings and pulling off Matrix-like moves, or shrinking and jumping around.
The voice acting was pretty good. Silver's voice is annoying at times, but is still fitting to his character. Although everyone using the same voice samples when spoken to can get annoying.
To sum things up, this is a very good game, despite what most reviewers have stated that were expecting "Sonic going back to his roots." and being anal about anything other than Sonic on his own running through Green Hill Zone again. The new concepts are good, and Sonic's gameplay IS a lot closer to how it was in Sonic Adventure and possibly before that. Running, killing enemies. No secret Keys, guns, Chao Drives or animals, just plain running through the levels at breakneck speeds, killing enemies and collecting rings. How further to his roots do you want to get?
For most reviews I've read, people say they played the first level as Sonic and decided it sucked balls. You need to play it more than that, and not be snobby about it. I played it normally, I'm just writing this because all this "I won't go near Sonic Next 'cause the reviewers said it's BAAAAAAD. Sega's going downhill =( =( =(" was getting on my nerves. It's a good game, And I enjoyed it. People can have their opinion on it, but TRY the game first, instead of relying on reviewers to make decisions for you. So it's not the best thing since sliced Mega Drive, but it's close. It's a very enjoyable game if you want to enjoy it, unlike most people NOT wanting to enjoy it and picking at everything until the eventual slew of 5/10s. I don't give a damn about what "IGN's official opinion" gave it. It's their opinion, not yours. If they said "I think Coca Cola sucks and gets a 2/10" would you never drink Coca Cola again? I don't think so. So why be like that with games?
I'm just going in circles now due to tiredness and the though-train derailing, but I got my point across.
This has been an opinion by Sho. Have a nice day.
