Sonic has quietly become videogaming's biggest celebrity train wreck: In his prime, he competed with Mario for game-of-the-year limelight, but these days he's a far cry from the mascot A-list. His waning stardom isn't the result of some explosive Mel Gibson–esque meltdown, but rather a steady decline into near-irrelevance. Sure, the kiddies and loyal fans stick with him through the rough spots (Shadow the Hedgehog comes to mind), but savvy consumers avoid his releases like the latest Michael Jackson record. Recently, Sonic's handlers promised a stunning reinvention with his eponymous Xbox 360/PS3 effort...but that slapdash 3D platformer crashed his 15th birthday with a disappointing thud, continuing a post–Sonic Adventure downward spiral. Luckily, we won't have to stick around to witness a rock-bottom career burnout -- Sonic and the Secret Rings shows a hedgehog who's definitely on the mend.


[Click the image above to check out all Secret Rings screens.]

Secret Rings isn't exactly a triumph, but it's still a clear cut above most of the stuff we've seen on Wii. In the wake of all the recent PS2, PSP, and DS ports, it's encouraging to see that a from-the-ground-up Wii game can look really hot. From a purely technical viewpoint, the textures, polygons, and effects here demonstrate the Wii's step-up-from-GameCube graphical muscle. While nothing here looks like Gears of War or MotorStorm, some stages approach Resident Evil 4–level artistry, thanks to wise aesthetic decisions. Choosing to blanket the entire adventure in an Arabian Nights theme firmly cements the game's setting, lending the stages a cohesive look. You'll be pleasantly surprised, especially by the gorgeous final level. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the vocal-drenched soundtrack, seemingly performed by a local Winger cover band. Actually, had the composer simply stuck to cheesy butt rock it might have been more successful -- instead, each stage attempts a wildly different musical genre, butchering them all equally.

Perhaps all the singing (and we're talking every stage) is forgivable in lieu of the fact that Secret Rings is more fun than any other Sonic in years. The radically deconstructed gameplay has you steering the 'hog by holding the Wii Remote horizontally and tilting it right and left. Sonic's homing attack serves as your main offense, delivered via locking on and thrusting the Wii-mote forward. The controls feel a tad reckless at first -- Sonic's momentum takes some getting used to, and trying to go in reverse is a pain -- but become more natural and fluid as you get acclimated to the fast-paced, twitchy action. It's almost as if you combined a surreal, motion-controlled racing game with the tricky, pinpoint platforming of Super Mario Sunshine. Once you've crested that learning curve, the game's true design shines through: Expert play allows you to pull off long combo strings that send you hurtling through stages at breakneck speed...it's immensely satisfying, breathtaking stuff.


[Click the image above to check out all Secret Rings screens.

While none of the "normal" stages offer a daunting challenge, many of the game's other missions impose nasty criteria (finish with no rings, without killing any enemies, or without dying) that will surely test your patience. Some of these challenges are purely optional, but many are not...and the epic difficulty spikes they present may weed out the less dedicated players. Stick with it, though: You'll actually want to play through them to unlock a plethora of bonus content, and even the least forgiving challenges become easier once you've spent a few hours steering Sonic with the Wii-mote.

Although Sega deserves praise for Secret Rings' innovative single-player adventure, the less said about the four-player party mode, the better. It's another low-budget Mario Party rip-off that stretches out a few weak gameplay concepts into multiple multiplayer contests. Seriously, the haphazard canoeing mechanic barely works -- why make four different variations of it? A few bright spots (a clever violin-playing contest, catching fruit on skewers) don't make up for the poorly executed whole. Stick with the main game -- you can surely do multiplayer Wii-waggling better elsewhere.

Wait, what?
Sonic?
Wii?

Sonic and the Secret Rings delivers an excellent sense of speed and plenty of depth, and what's just as impressive is that it makes Sonic fun again.
The Good: Nice graphics and great level design; excellent sense of speed; varied challenges keep the game interesting; dozens of multiplayer minigames.
The Bad: Controls can be extremely frustrating.

After a slew of disappointing and downright bad games, Sega's speedy hedgehog has finally returned in a game worthy of the Sonic legacy. Sonic and the Secret Rings for the Wii takes the game back to its high speed roots. While you can technically move in three dimensions, you're almost always moving forward whether you want to or not, and lateral movement is limited to taking one or two steps in either direction as you involuntarily sprint down a narrow path. Confined as it may be, Sonic and the Secret Rings works because it lets you run at breakneck speeds through great-looking, fantastical stages. The game is not without its share of frustrations, but Sonic and the Secret Rings is certainly worth playing.


Spiked balls are the natural enemy of the hedgehog.

The story in Secret Rings is a slight departure from the usual Sonic the Hedgehog setup. One day while Sonic is sleeping, a genie visits him. The genie is from the book Arabian Nights, which is being destroyed by an evil genie known as Erazor. Apparently, if Erazor amasses enough power, he'll be able to leave the book and come to life to terrorize Sonic's world. Sonic has to put a stop to Erazor's plans by visiting seven different fantasy worlds to collect magic rings that can be used to restore Arabian Nights.

You play the game as Sonic and travel to seven fantasy worlds (plus one tutorial world). You'll travel to a dinosaur world, a floating ruin, a pirate level, and more. Each level has several different challenges for you to complete. The first challenge is simply to run from the beginning of the level to the end, but you'll eventually unlock much more interesting challenges. Some challenges require you to collect a certain number of rings, finish a level before a timer runs out, make it through a stage without killing a single enemy, or just kill a boss enemy. These different challenges add a lot of variety to the game, so even though you'll play each level 10 times or more, you'll find a unique experience each time.

The controls in Sonic and the Secret Rings are simple enough to pick up, but they can also be incredibly frustrating at times. You hold the Wii Remote sideways and tilt it left and right to move Sonic side to side. The 1 button makes Sonic stop and the 2 button makes him jump. With such simple controls, you'd think it would be a piece of cake to guide the hedgehog through each level. The problem is that most of the time you don't have direct control of Sonic's forward movement. Sonic automatically runs as fast as he can, and it's your job to make him jump and weave over and between obstacles. With all that forward momentum, the trick is to time your jumps and sidesteps just right to avoid the hazards in your path. That isn't easy, because the game moves so fast that you'll rarely have time to react during your first run through a level. After you've died and retried a dozen times and have the layout of the level memorized, you might be able to survive. The amount of trial and error required for most of the challenges is a bit extreme, and it will definitely try your patience.

In addition to running, jumping, and grinding on rails, Sonic can attack enemies by jumping in the air and homing in on them. When you jump, you'll automatically target the nearest enemy, and while you're in the air, you can quickly move the Wii Remote forward to home in on the enemy and kill it. You can chain these kills together to clear large gaps or wipe out large groups of enemies without ever touching the ground. The homing attack does make combat extremely easy, but it's used primarily as a way to get from one point to another anyway, so enemies could just as well be springboards or floating platforms instead.

As you complete challenges, you earn experience points and unlock new skills. These special skills do everything from increasing your maximum speed to giving you bonus rings. Before each challenge, you can equip these skills to your skill ring. You can only equip a certain number of skills, though, depending on how many skill points you have. You can have multiple skill rings set up so that you can adapt your skill set to fit any challenge. Usually though, you never have to bother with skills. A few of the skills are useful, but most of them are pointless. After all, you don't need to equip any skills to run fast and jump, which is just about all you ever need to do in this game.

The single-player game feels pretty sizable, although you could easily finish it in a weekend. There is a multiplayer game here, as well, which, as you might have guessed if you've played any other Wii game, involves playing dozens of different minigames that make creative use of the Wii Remote. This portion of the game lets you play against three friends or computer players in a series of minigames. The minigames each put the Wii Remote to use in ways different than the main game. You'll have to paddle a canoe, spear fruit with a sword, swing a large ball on a chain, shoot balloons, chop wood, and perform many, many more gestures with the remote. Most of the minigames are fun for at least the first couple of times you play them, but they aren't very different from the plethora of minigames found in other Wii titles.


Some of the worlds in this game look great, like this floating ruin.

The graphics are great in Sonic and the Secret Rings. Each level is large and has a great sense of scale, with huge dinosaurs, pirate ships, corkscrews, loops, and other structures to run on. The visuals are sharp and colorful, and you'll have a great time just watching Sonic run because the game provides the same thrilling sense of speed that made the Sonic games appealing in the first place. Impressively, the game keeps pace just fine as you fly through each level, without any slowdown throughout the game. Each level has a specific, usually high-energy theme that fits the action well. The tunes are so incredibly cheesy that they are funny, and they seem to be a perfect match for Sonic's early-'90s sense of style. The English voice acting during the lengthy cutscenes is awful, but at least there's an option to listen to the Japanese voices instead.

Whether you remember the glory days of Sega's mascot or are just looking for a new Wii game to bring home, Sonic and the Secret Rings is a solid choice. The gameplay is simple but challenging, and there's something incredibly satisfying about running really, really fast. The minigames aren't anything special, but together with the single-player game, they round out the package nicely. If you're looking for a game that provides a lot of thrills and enough depth to sustain them, you can't go wrong with Sonic and the Secret Rings.