After playing Sonic Unleashed and the dreadful Sonic and the Secret Rings, we were less than enthused to pick up the hedgehog's latest video game, Sonic and the Black Knight. No matter how bad his games look, however, we're always ready to give Sonic another chance, and surprisingly, we had fun with it, thanks to a wonderful presentation, lots of hidden items and plenty of sword fighting.
This time, Sonic winds up in Camelot, home of King Arthur. After a powerful force corrupts the noble king and his fellow Knights of the Round Table, the blue blur nabs an enchanted sword named Caliburn and sets off to make things right. Sega does a nice job telling the story through impressive 3-D cut scenes and 2-D sketches to help bring this medieval theme to life. This carries over to the in-game visuals, as Sonic charges through dark forests and castles while battling evil knights and a dragon.
In designing the game, Sega borrowed concepts from both Secret Rings and Unleashed to create an experience that always forces you down a path but encourages limited exploration. Tilting the nunchuk's analog stick instructs Sonic to move forward and pick up speed, but you may also put on the breaks and jump backwards/move left and right within the plane to collect things you missed; although you cannot rotate Sonic 360 degrees. While not the best control scheme, it's simple enough for anyone to get the hang of.
Combat works entirely through the Wii Remote and relies on constant waggling. Haphazardly shaking the controller instructs Sonic to swing his sword in random directions, and you can score combos/bounce off enemies by pressing the B button to activate a Soul Surge (you can also repel attacks for a limited time with the Z button). We've seen this basic stuff before, but at the same time, we kind of enjoyed mindlessly shaking the remote. That said, Sega missed the opportunity to enhance the game with Nintendo's upcoming MotionPlus add-on, which might make the swinging more accurate.
Black Knight's biggest issue is its difficulty, or lack thereof. Players with just a limited amount of video game experience should easily breeze through most of the levels. In addition, the forced exploration robs us of Sonic's trademark speed; there aren't enough ramps, loops and hills. Despite these criticisms, however, the game remains somewhat enjoyable, in large part because of the combat and hidden content. As you play, you'll unlock the soundtrack, character profiles, unusable items from the game world (spongy bread, swords) and cut scenes.
Finally, the game comes with limited offline multiplayer modes and online features. Battle Mode lets you and three other players duke it out across 10 different types of matches. For example, Ring Battle challenges players to snag more rings than their opponents, while Evasion Battle forces you to dodge the Grim Reaper. While a neat concept, we couldn't get into it in large part because there's very little strategy to these games; you just waggle and hope for the best.
In addition, you can upload scores from completed missions to an online leaderboard, and send presents (acquired items) to friends via Wi-Fi (Friend Codes required). Again, it's a novel idea, but we fail to see the point in sending someone spongy bread they cannot use. Great, a friend mailed us digital bread?
With Sonic and the Black Knight, Sega continues its annoying trend of replacing Sonic's trademark speed with strange gimmicks. While not a terrible video game, the repetitive combat, easy missions and limited controls keep it from greatness. That said, it's still worth a rental, thanks to its attractive presentation, decent combat and bonus content.
Reader Comments (4)
i think this game is good but as said before, its not the picture of perfection. it is better then sonic unleashed and the oh-so-terible secret rings, but none of the new games have that... apeal that the games for dreamcast or gamecube offered. the thing i liked most about this game was the change in combat. in most of the old games and secret rings, you just hurled yourself at enemies. of course, the addition of fighting sequences (EX. knuckle/rouge stages in sonic adventure 2 battle and ***ht stages in unleashed) made the game a little more to my taste, but i quickly found myself trying to avoid those stages as much as possible. but when i played this game, it was more fun than doing the constant hit, hit, throw stuff in unleashed, since it combines both sonic's speed and his strength. but another thing i would like to see brought back is the final boss super sonic fights. *spoiler* at least unleashed brought that back, and secret rings had some kind of stage like that, but its not truely the super sonic stages i liked.
seeing this game makes me wonder where sonic team is going with sonic...i mean come on the first game that started the chain was shadow the hedgehog i mean sonic heroes wasnt GREAT but it wasnt that bad then after shadows long ass having to go down every path to get every endings not having the tolerence to finish the game load of bull they called a game they came out with i believe sonic the hedgehog which i thought was gonna be great....but of course IT WAS AWFUL horrible graphics horrible movement i mean they destroyed the sonic franchise with that game...then came the olympics and all im saying 2 that is wow really? and then their was unleashed where u get to fight with sonic.....i don't no about ne1 else but i was fine with using a homing attack.....secret rings was *** but i wasn't surprised... this game seems good and interesting and hopefully it will pull it back up a little from these last few disgraces.....all i have 2 say to Sega team is all u have 2 do is take the games and make them how you made in my opinion the best sonic game ever sonic adventure battle 2 thats it that game was the **** i still have/play it their is really nothing wrong with it and also remake shadow the hedgehog...please? i was so so so dissapointed when it came out just remake it...the idea is good but the game u made was bad.....he doesnt need 2 drive nething.....but u can keep the guns those r awesome
I've played this a little ways and it is not a bad game. I actually like it. What I don't like is the fact that Sonic hasn't done anything "Sonic-Worthy" lately. We'd have to almost assume that Sonic Team is just a bunch of retards who can't put a game together the way the original Sonic Team did. You know, those guys with the talent? This game isn't terrible, but far from what is considered to be excellent.
:S SEGA needs to rethink the Sonic franchise. Even if the game is fun or offers a little innovation. Sonic is a beloved character and to me its not cool what they have done with him lately (olympics, medival...).