At this year's E3, Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog broke even. His PS3 videogame played horribly, but his Nintendo Wii adventure, Sonic Wild Fire, excelled in just about every category, making it one of the most anticipated games for the system. Plus, judging by the control scheme, it appears that Sega's onto something, a play style that may rescue our little blue friend (Viagra pill excluded) from sucking so much.

The two biggest problems with 3D Sonic games are the controls and the camera. Yuji Naka and his "crew" have continuously dropped the ball in creating games that provide us with accurate controls and a good view of the action, and result of Sonic Team's botched efforts are plenty unnecessary deaths and other mistakes. But with Sonic Wild Fire, the developers have seemingly scratched off those faults by making the controls incredibly simple and, most importantly, creating an on-rails adventure that almost guarantees that the camera will remain fixed on Sonic at all times.

Because the game is on-rails, it's akin to being on a roller coaster, except with the freedom to slow down and speed up at will. Sonic has been programmed to follow a specific path, except you have the option to increase his speed, boost, jump, move from left to right, and bash enemies. It's quite simplistic when compared to the Sonic Adventure games, yet at the same time the game is still challenging, what with multiple enemies, spikes, and traps that make life difficult.

So here's how the controls work. To play the game, you hold the Wii's remote horizontally like a regular controller. Tilting it left or right moves Sonic in that specific direction, and to make him jump, you press the 2 button. That's really all you need to know in order to play Sonic Wild Fire, though there's certainly a bit more that'll enhance the gameplay experience. To hit enemies, all you have to do is flick the controller (repeatedly flick it to bounce from one bad guy to the other), so perform a super jump, press and hold the 2 button, and finally, if you managed to collect these fire icons littered about the maps, you can boost by quickly flicking the controller towards the screen. Once the boost is initiated, Sonic kicks things up a notch and crazily zips about the terrain.

The demo that I played was a mixture of different speeds. The majority of the time was spent blazing down ramps, leaping off jump pads, and dodging falling pillars, but then I came to a section where the game slowed to a crawl and I had to inch my way along a ledge, paying attention to spikes that jut from the walls and then momentarily retracted.

Normally, I'm against this style of play because I've always believed that Sonic games begin to suck when he's forced to slow down (or swim), but in this case (and for this very short demo), it works extremely well. Sega made sure to focus more on the exciting parts while peppering in these much slower challenges, and the result is an imbalanced mix where the majority of the time is spent doing what Sonic was built to do, which is move at ludicrous speeds and cause all sorts of havoc.

Not to keep bashing PS3's Sonic (even though it deserves it), but Sonic Wild Fire, at least at this point in its development, is a much better looking game. The PS3 title does look impressive, but it's also plagued by some jaggies and plain looking environments. But Wild Fire is absolutely gorgeous. It's set in the Arabian Nights stories, so the architecture is indicative of the time period, Sonic looks fantastic, and the water is also quite impressive. Hopefully, its visuals will continue to improve.

The only disappointing thing about this game, other than Sega only having one level to display, is its mysterious release date. A Sega representative informed me that it won't be a launch title and may slip to 2007 which would actually suck. I want this game for launch, especially since Nintendo has gone on record as saying that Super Mario Galaxy may also miss the launch date as well. But I suppose the anticipation is exactly what Sega needs. It's been a long time since I've been genuinely looking forward to an upcoming Sega title, and that's good news for a publisher that's in need of some more hits. I love the control, I love the Arabian setting, and I love Sonic. Sega, let's do this!