Terminator Salvation

Rating: T

Score: 7.0/10

What’s this, another Sonic game? Yep, and you know how that poor hedgehog’s been doing lately (badly, to say the least). At least this time he doesn’t transform into a “Werehog” or something absurd like that. Oh wait...he’s a knight this time, loosely based off of King Arthur. High expectations? I think not. This game is exclusive to the Nintendo Wii.

The first thing you’ll notice, even before you play the game, is how Sega has really been struggling to make a good, or even somewhat-good, Sonic game. They tried slowing him down (Sonic and the Secret Rings), transforming him (Sonic Unleashed), and now they’re turning the hedgehog into a knight. What happened to the old Sonic on the Genesis system we all loved? Is it so hard to make a linear yet fast-paced Sonic game? Obviously not, they accomplished it in the Sonic levels in Sonic Unleashed.

The gameplay, as you might have expected, is not very fun. You’ll run for a very short period of time, then stop to fight enemies. Oh, but let me tell you how fighting enemies works. You swing the Wii remote around to swing your sword, and slightly after you swing, Sonic will actually swing his sword. This delay makes the game seem incomplete. Once you fight the handful of enemies, then you start running again. You’ll quickly stop again to fight more enemies, and this cycle continues. For a game series about speed, this hardly seems correct. This kind of “stop-and-go” gameplay would be seen in an action game or an arcade-style fighting game, not Sonic. Think of it being like every 10 seconds into a Football game, I come over to pause the video and demand you swing your hand violently for me to un-pause it.

The story is told through comic book-like cutscenes, like in Sonic and the Secret Rings. There are full motion cutscenes, but they’re few and far between. Those cutscenes look great, so do the gameplay graphics. The comic book-style ones are so-so. Thankfully, there’s voice acting, so the cutscenes aren’t lifeless.

The aforementioned story is loosely based on the legend of King Arthur. You’re Sonic, and you must pull a sacred sword from a stone. This sword, which talks I should add, must be used to protect a mysterious sorcerer who has summoned Sonic to kill the “Black Knight”. You’ll met Tails, Shadow, Knuckles, and other Sonic characters throughout the story.

It also should be mentioned that the courses are unbelievably linear and simple to get through. You can’t go backwards, or even get lost. The only real reason to die is if the sword swinging lagged too much, and never actually seems like a human error.

Will Sega ever get back on their feet? It seems like they can’t seem to understand that all we all want a Sonic game with speed, speed, and more speed. It’s even in his catchphrase “Sonic’s the name, speed’s my game”. Let’s hope Sega can get back in the game before gamers lose all hope for their favourite hedgehog.