Sonic and the Secret Rings

Original Platform: Wii
Original release: 20th February 2007
Available to buy: No

A Sonic game with a unique control scheme. In Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic automatically moves forward and you make him move left/right by tilting the Wii Remote. Holding the jump button will make Sonic slow down and charge up a jump while you can move backwards while twisting the Wii Remote towards you. The latter is not explained by the game well at all, as the on-screen description implies you just move it so its facing towards you, when you actually have to flip the whole Wii Remote upside down. Once you discover that, the controls are still a bit odd, but functional.

You will progress throughout a series of levels that take place in the world of Arabian Nights, starting with the desert level you would expect from a setting. The other levels, however, definitely take a lot of liberties, such as a jungle with dinosaurs, pirate ships, a floating city on top of a giant manta ray and a fiery factory. Each level is fun to play, with some great music throughout, and even with the fairly poor (for today’s standards) graphics, still have a nice visual style.

Unfortunately, the game’s structure really lets it down. When you beat a level, you’ll get a cutscene (in a nice hand drawn style), where Sonic will indicate heading to the next level…but you can’t access the next level. Instead, you have to progress through a ton of challenges. Some of these are fun, but others are just repetitive as you play through the same parts of a level collecting rings, or killing enemies, or not killing enemies. Some of these are required to progress through the game, while others are optional…except the game gives no indication of which ones are which, so you’ll go through a lot of them anyway until one of them moves you on. When you unlock a new mission, the screen will just state a new mission unlocked and won’t even tell you which level its in.

What doesn’t help is the main song, Seven Rings in Hand. I enjoy this song (especially the Crush 40 version), but it will drive you crazy throughout Sonic and the Secret Rings as it’s on a constant loop throughout all the menus, and the ranking screen plays a smaller snippet of it. You’ll hear it so much that it will annoy you pretty quickly.

Another big issue with Secret Rings is how Sonic is at the start. The game has a levelling up system, where you will unlock new skills and assign them (you can have four different layouts), so as you approach the end, it gets significantly better, but really all of the speed ones should have been default as it really does give a bad first impression.

I really like Sonic and the Secret Rings. Despite its flaws, there is a lot of charm to the game, with some really enjoyable levels. I would love a “Storybook Collection” remake with some more traditional controls as an option, as I think it really does deserve another chance.