Graphics:
They suck. Just take a look at Shadow and Sonic on the upper left there. Do they even look that cool? They look like plastic/rubbery characters. Shadow doesn't even look that mean. Whatever happened to the cool Shadow on the bottom left? He sure looks pretty evil, sinister, and sweet all at the same time. And I don't see rubbery qualities to him. He looks like he's got fur. The in-game graphics are just terrible in general. Just check out that backround behind Sonic and Shadow. See how blurry that is? The entire game's enviornment lacks detail. In fact, the game's graphics are so poor, that you could easily mistake this as a Dreamcast port. In fact, I could even argue that Sonic Adventure 2 from Dreamcast looks better than this game. In fact, I already kind of did by comparing those screenshots.

The explosions are neat looking - I guess. The scenery is pretty bland. In fact, imagine how cool shooting a giant warship would be. Imagine all the panels exploding off everytime you fire, on fire, the ship turns all charred and black, and erupts into a giant explosion. Pretty cool sounding, isn't it? Too bad the game doesn't do that. Instead, when you shoot a giant Warship, it blinks. The entire ship blinks. And then it just kind of falls apart and all of the debri falls through the ground like it doesn't exist. The only thing left as far as graphics go are the menu screens. These screens are all scratchy and "extreme" looking, because apparently you can't play a Sonic game and have fun unless it's all hip and gangsta' like. But they can't even seem to find a balance to the style of the game because you still run into characters like Charmy the bee and Tails the fox who talk in the most annoying voices and say things like, "Shadow, you're so cool" and "This is way too much fun!"

Sound:
It sucks. Apparently Sonic Team forgot how awesome some of Shadow's music from Sonic Adventure 2 was. It was a really sweet dark Techno style. So instead of making Shadow's game full of sweet Techno beats that really pump you through the level - they settle back on a darker version of Sonic's old songs. If you've ever heard Sonic's terrible 80's style rock songs, you're not missing a whole lot. So they decided, "Let's have Crush40 do another lame rock song - but have it be darker". What you end up with is an easily forgettable theme song. The first level has some decent rock music to it, but it's far too soft to really hear, and you can't feel pumped from it in the process. Eventually the music just goes from bad to worse. There's a few boss fights that use a redone version of SA2's boss fight theme but 10x lamer. You'd think they'd pump it up and make it all rocked-out, but they decided to make it softer. In fact, one of the last levels you play through has you running through a military base - blasting up mech robots while listening to.... elevator music? WTF? I looked at Matt and said, "do you hear that music?" (which was already quiet enough) and all he did was nod his head and look disgusted. It was really simple guitar strumming and had no energy to it at all. For a last level. Goodness.

Did I mention that they changed some of the characters voices? Yeah, now they're even worse. What happened, Knuckles?

Gameplay:
It Sucks. The other 3D sonic games weren't perfect in their gameplay design. But the were certainly a rush to blaze through. Sonic levels were always the best - giving you great adrenaline rush levels with crazy jumps and breakneck speeds. So what they decide to do in this one is give you similar level designs where you're suppose to run really fast, but they also expect you to stop every two seconds to fight certain kinds of enemies. How am I suppose to run fast when I'm forced to stop and do really intricate fighting?

Before the enemies were placed in such a way that killing them allowed you to keep moving forward - in some ways killing the robots made you go faster and take shortcuts. The enemies in Shadow are like constant road blocks, and they ALL HAVE LIFE BARS. There's nothing more annoying then jumping on an enemy only to find out that you've got to jump on him three more times before he dies. And in later levels, it takes you a good 10 jumps or so on the bigger but just as common enemies. So basically your jump attack becomes completely useless and you're forced to use guns to shoot at the enemies. Perhaps maybe they force you to use guns because they're more enjoyable?

Exactly who designed these worthless aliens?
(click for a larger image)

Guns:
Hell no they aren't. They suck. They're pathetic. They all use ammo, including swords (?!), and attacking enemies with them is a continuous trial and error process. It pretty much fires at whatever's closest to you. So if you have a friend closer to you and an enemy slightly farther behind them, you'll end up shooting your own teammate instead. The bullets also move pretty slow, so if you try to shoot anything that's moving around, you'll probably miss. What results is the game forces you to get really close to enemies just to shoot them with a gun, and you'll usually get hit by them anyways. It's frustrating as heck - especially when you start getting "cooler" guns.

For instance, what would be better? A pistol or a bazooka? You'd think a bazooka would be cooler but it hardly does any damage and takes forever to fire. What results is that rapid firing a pistol kills enemies quicker than firing "powerful" bazooka blasts. Weapons also feel like paper, since holding a gattling gun four times your size seems to let you whiz it around in the air faster than a frickin' broomstick. Hmm, maybe using vehicles would be cooler?

Riding this motorcylce is suppose to be fun. Especially with wheels that aren't even round.
(click for a larger image)

Vehicles:
Nope, still no dice. They suck. The vehicles are generally slower than you are, are terrible to control, and let you fire your own weapon while riding them. So why am I riding a vehicle at all then? In fact, the vehicles don't even look cool. There was a Camaro I jumped into (which was apparently mini-Camaro sized perfectly for a hedgehog) which has the most bland texturing I've ever seen. There was pretty much no definition to the brake lights. Okay, if a vehicle is slower than running, and harder to control, then at least make it "look" cool. At least that way I would have some purpose at all for jumping into it. Oh wait there is one purpose, apparently cars can drive over deathly green liquid-goo that's flooded the city streets (?!?!)

There's a few points where you can jump into a turret. Sweet right? Nope. They suck. My God. Basically the turret has no recoil to it at all. When you fire it, it remains completely still in your first-person view. It fires completly slow with bland sound effects too. It's utterly useless. Didn't someone realize that they made so many items to use that there's no quality to any of them? Quality vs. Quantity. Have we learned nothing from past video games?

Story:
Sucks. The only cool thing about the story - honestly - are the computer graphic cutscenes which are few and far between. They are the sweetest looking CG cutscenes I have ever seen in a Sonic video game, which explains why trailors for this game are composed of about 95% CG cutscenes from the game.

But as far as the story goes, this game is made to branch off. Basically by completing certain missions during each level, you choose whether to be good or bad. And depending on what you chose to do, your ending is only 1 of 10 endings in the game. All of which are under 2 minutes long, all of which are mostly slight alterations of other endings (a different character will be next to you when you say the same line, for instance) and all of which come to different conclusions. Exactly how does choosing to be good or bad explain a completely different story about your past?

The story involves this alien race called "The Black Arms" that fall from the sky and start destroying the Earth. Apparently the bad dude wants to get all the Chaos Emeralds (didn't see that one coming) so that he can activate the laser cannon from the floating space station called "The Ark" (which first appeared in SA2). Okay, exactly how do you plan on taking over a planet as your own by blowing it up so that it doesn't exist? So the President gets in on all of this, some army general with freaked out eyes gets involved, and Sonic friends and Robotnik (or the stupid nickname of Eggman, which seems to be official that I never got to vote on) are in on this whole mess. It's pretty much the bad aliens vs. the good humans.

The CG cutscenes are amazing though. At least they got one thing right. I'd show you a cooler image from one of them, but Google kind of failed to help me do that.

So if you get to choose between good and evil, where does this put Dr. Robotnik? He's the bad guy, but he's also a human. So you can understand my frustration when sometimes doing the good thing is helping Robotnik and the bad thing is helping Robotnik. What results is some good endings have you fighting Robotnik because he's bad, but some bad endings having you fight Robotnik because he's good. (?!?!)

Another large problem with the game is exactly what they advertise as being the neatest aspect: Going through a different story flow based on your own actions from previous levels. But because there's so many different ways of branching - often times you really get the feeling that they "had" to make a certain cutscene just to make some kind of sense as to why you're now in this new level. And often times - objectives you complete won't match up to the cutscene you see after it. Two examples on this one: 1. You help Robotnik, only to fight him as a boss immediately following. 2. You destroy the transport that the President's in so that the nation will be in termoil, yet he safely arrives at his destination in a perfectly intact plane.

I have to let you in on a little bit of the final ending of the game, because it's so stupid. So .. spoiler alert: Sonic and friends become frozen in their place (in really ackward looking poses) from oderless/invisible toxic gas that paralyses. Then these little suction cup things move underneath the characters - while making sucking noises - as Sonic and friends scream while they can't move. WTF.

At about that time, Shadow tries to stop Black Doom, but can't because Black Doom says, "Your blood is the same as mine - so I can control you." If you could control Shadow, then why the frick did you spend the entire time asking him to do things for you and letting him make his own choices? But five minutes later says, "Looks like you're now immune to my control," Which Shadow replies, "No one tells me what to do". WTF.

Don't get confused by this screenshot. What it's showing you isn't actually fun. And see that roadblock sign? What is that even doing there?
(click for a larger image)

Story and Gamplay Combination:
It really, really sucks. Imagine for a moment how cool it would be to choose to be good or bad for each level. Yep. Pretty sweet. Now understand that it isn't fun in this game.

With every level you have a good guy following you around telling you what to do, like say, "Kill all the aliens in the level". Well that sounds simple. Except you have to kill the exact amount of aliens in the level, and if you miss a single one, you'll have to go back to the beginning and comb through the entire level again. I even had times where I was suppose to be looking for a few specific things, and the good character would be giving me hints of, "I think I hear it in this room". Well that's helpful.... except it was a bug in the game and I had already gotten them from that room, and the game just wanted to say all the phrases it's suppose to say when you enter into that specific room, whether or not it's really still there.

Even more frustrating, is that even though you choose to be good or bad by pausing the game and selecting it (which the game fails to explain even that much) the game will randomly switch you over to the other side for no apparent reason other than "well you've been on the good side for so long in this level - you must want to go bad."

This game has continuously branching paths. In fact, there was one level that started out with a fork in the road - going one way helped you complete the hero mission, and the other helped you complete the bad mission. But it never told me that - and I went running around in circles forever trying to figure out where to go, when the whole time I had simple gone the wrong way from the very start.

Each level is a gigantic warzone - with aliens and humans both shooting at each other - with a million annoying obstacles in the way that don't even serve any purpose but to keep you from going fast. God forbid Shadow run fast. So yes, it's like a human versus alien war, but don't be deceived, because they aren't actually shooting at eachother at all. Eventually you start to notice that humans aren't actually shooting at anything (unless they're trying to hit the wall) while there isn't a single alien in sight. And are you ready for the most frustrating part in the entire game? Here it comes:

Everyone shoots you, no matter what side you say you're on.

No matter what - no matter how many good guys you've kept alive - no matter how loyal to one side you're being - you'll still get shot by anything and everyone. And when you accidentally shoot your "friend" who's already shooting at you, Sonic will say, "why are you shooting at our own guys?" What's even more frustrating is that just walking into your "teammates" causes you to get hurt.

And you want to know what the icing on the cake is? Sometimes you have to advance by going through locked doors, and the only way to get the door to unlock is to kill the people guarding it - which are on your own team (?!?!) So I kill my own people who are guarding the door - it unlocks - and then Sonic says, "why are you shooting at our own guys?" It's at about this point I let go of the controller, held by hands up, and flipped off the TV.

This game shows everything that's wrong with Sonic games. I have to pull a quote off the GameSpy review which pretty much said it perfectly:

There's taking a traditional series in a new direction
and then there's losing touch with your fans entirely.

Eventually, when I finally beat the game completely, I put it back in its case where it will forever remain, and right before I put it in its alphabetical order on the shelf, I actually thought about throwing it in the trash can. How's that for a summary?

Verdict: It sucks.