Sonic 3D Blast (Wii)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 2.0 stars Mediocre
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 4.0 (2.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Austin Shau
• Reviewed on: 12/12/2007
• Released on: 11/19/2007
• Originally published on GameSpot: Sonic 3D Blast (Wii) Review

Sonic 3D Blast is entirely misleading. It doesn't have true three-dimensional gameplay, it barely plays like a true Sonic the Hedgehog game, and it most certainly isn't a blast to play. Instead, it's a mishmash of elements that completely work against one another and a frustrating, repetitive experience. The shiny prerendered graphics and familiar ring-collecting chimes may lure you into downloading this Genesis game from the Virtual Console service, but looking past Sonic 3D Blast's shiny surface should help you avoid that mistake.

At first, Sonic 3D Blast looks and sounds like a true Sonic game. Everything has been shifted from a side-scrolling two-dimensional view to an isometric view, but Sonic, his enemies, and his environments still look familiar, appearing more rounded thanks to prerendered sprites. The eight zones are reflective of the typical grassy, lava-ridden, and Vegas-like affairs you'd find in other Sonic games, and the music likewise bears resemblance both thematically and instrumentally. When you're hit by an enemy, the resulting clatter of rings might just make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Yet, one of the game's largest failings is how it forces the speedy Sonic into its awkward, isometric view. Instead of bounding across platforms and rolling over enemies with precision, you have to intricately plan every jump and carefully aim your spin attack in one of multiple directions without the benefit of analog control. There are zigzagging slopes and loop-the-loops sparingly scattered across the zones, but the majority of the game world is wide open and flat. With such a deliberate play style, certain levels--such as one with springboards clumped together, causing you to rocket skyward with every other step--quickly become irritating.

This plodding style might be tolerable if it weren't for the touchy controls. Sonic's momentum-based physics worked in the side-scrolling games because the challenge was in knowing when to contain him or let him loose, in only one of two directions. However, those same physics completely clash with the gameplay here, and now that Sonic's free to move in eight directions, he ends up slipping and sliding about his environments like a timid child on ice skates. Much of your play time is spent with your thumbs tap-dancing on the D pad just to get Sonic in the right places to jump for rings or on enemies, and that's just no fun.

Continue reading

Compare prices for Sonic 3D Blast

This product is currently not in stock at any of our online merchants.

Email me when this product is available