Game #939: Sonic and the Black Knight

  Am I.... am I to become a Sonic apologist?

 One day everything was fine, and the next it felt as if I had woken up in an alternate dimension where nothing made sense. Case in point, Sonic and the Black Knight is considered another 3-D Sonic mess.... but I liked it. Look, while growing up I was a Nintendo kid, and I always gave Sonic chances, I gave it so many chances, and I never really liked it.... Until this bizarro-year hit anyways.

 So, of course, amazing soundtrack and a brilliant, catchy theme song, as per usual with 3-D Sonic games. The game starts with an awesome pre-rendered cutscene showing how Sonic gets summoned into King Arthur's world only for the game to then rely mostly on conservatively animated cutouts. At least they are well drawn. Like Naruto Dragon Blade before it, Black Knight arms Sonic and his friends with new cool armored designs and blades. No, really, I love this armored look everyone gets, I'm an edgy boy, sue me! Tails and Amy don't get armored redesigns, but at least they are redesigned, since everyone in this world takes up after an Arthurian character, for example, Knuckles is Percival and Amy is the Lady in the Lake. Oh, and despite it being an E for Everyone game.... Knuckles tries to kill himself. I'm not kidding.

 The gameplay is very unusual for a Sonic game. Rings aren't really rings, but rather, you get 'rings' by grabbing fairies or breaking stuff, and if you get hit, they don't fall to the ground, you just get a certain amount substracted from your total. It's also super linear, Sonic runs forward, and if you want to go backwards Sonic will slowly walk backwards, although you can help him by jumping backwards. So in a way, it's like a runner game. You hold up on the analog stick and watch Sonic follow a predetermined road, while moving from side to side, jumping around or... slashing with your sword. There's no homing attack and no spin dash, Sonic's only means of offence is his sword. It's not your average Sonic game, that's for sure.

 Alright, so first point of contention.... Waggle is the name of the game. In order to attack, you have to waggle the controller. There's no need for precision in this game, so it's not too bad, and your inputs are read quite well I think. I played the game in one sitting, about 4:30 hours in all, and my arm got a bit tired by the end. Speaking of this.... boss battles against Sonic's buddies are stupidly easy, just waggle waggle waggle until you win. The other two big bosses, however.... they are a pain in the butt, requiring good reflexes. I won't lie, I gave up on the true final boss because I'm 90% sure I was waggling with the right timing but the game was pulling my leg. And that's fine, I had seen everything in the game but the ending, for which I could simply rely on Youtube, so no skin off my back.

 The game is made up of multiple short missions, like super short, a 'lengthy' stage in the game means 3 minutes long. While that's a design I prefer on handheld games, I think it works well in this game. On that note, the get to the goal and slaughtering enemies missions are fine, but the ring-giving missions are so boring and there were a few too many of those. You have to be careful not to scare a civilian, you also have to be careful to arrive with at last 20 rings, and then you have to correctly perform a Simon Says minigame to give them rings. It's so dumb and boring. The game is at its best when its dumb and flashy. Through most of the story mode you play as Sonic, but eventually you can unlock Shadow/Lancelot, Knuckles/Gawain and Blaze/Percival. I would've liked Silver to be playable in Adventure mode, but hey, at least you can unlock his Knight form for the Battle multiplayer mode, so not too shabby. And yes, there's a simple battle mode that can be played with up to four players, not only is it not a bad extra, but there's a good amount of characters you can unlock.

 Unexpectedly, the game looks REALLY good. The environments are quite pretty to look at, the framerate is pretty stable and there are some nice details, like being able to cut down grass with your sword if you swing when standing around grass strands.  

 I can understand why this game was so poorly received, I really can. The gameplay is shallow and repetitive, and the fact that you move on rails makes it feel almost like it plays itself. So I get it, I understand why 'professional critics' hated it, they wanted a deep narrative or somethin'. But just as much as I enjoy games with a deep narrative, like Phoenix Wright, or games with tons of gameplay depth, like Devil May Cry.... I also enjoy my flashy style-over-substance Arcade-like games, and that's what this game is. The shortness of the stages, the simple pick-up-and-play mechanics that keep you constantly on the move, the gimmicky waggling... I had a lot of fun with this game. It's a game I where can simply turn off my brain and have fun slashing things around while moving at high speeds and enjoying the     of speed.

 Yeah, it's not a game for everyone, not even necessarily for Sonic fans considering how different it plays to 'real' Sonic games. But for someone who adores Arcade-like games? This one was just up my alley. There were a few poorly designed stages in the 'Crystal Caves' world, and I'd ax the ring-giving missions, but otherwise, most of the time I spent with the game was well worth it. I think I'm gonna try to get my hands on Sonic 2006 just so that I can speak ill of Sonic again. I hate saying good things about it.

 6.0