Sonic Shuffle

THE BAD:
story mode, voice acting, impossible AI even on Easy!

SUMMARY:
I had heard the comparisons made to Nintendo's Mario Party series, and I figured that if friends came over, we could pop in something different. Enter Sonic Shuffle. Sonic Shuffle follows your friendly neighborhood heroes -- Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, and Amy -- on a quest to restore Maginaryworld, a land of enchanted dreams, after an evil threat has threatened its safety. In the story mode, Sonic and the gang feature through five different levels, collecting Precious Stones, defeating monsters, and eventually restoring peace. There's also a Versus mode in which you and up to three of your buddies can compete with one another. The rings you collect on each stage serve as currency, for shops featured in each level and to unlock bonus pictures, stills, and characters between stages. You'll be instantly drawn in by the vibrant gaming stages. Colors are rich and crisp and environments seem to take on a life of their own. The game alternates between thick cell shading and abundant 3D design, easily captivating viewers. Gameplay follows the Mario Party theme a little too well, with appropriate changes, of course. There are several (predictable) kinds of spaces: rings (both add and subtract), battles, shops, and minigames/events. Some character use specialized personal spaces to take short cuts across the boards. Other nifty squares include air bubbles (to use while you're underwater in the first stage), natural environment spaces (on the back of a crocodile, triggers a crane to lift you onto the next level), accident squares (which pop up randomly), shops, and the infamous Precious Stone monsters. Instead of jumping into a floating die, the game randomly deals out a set of cards to your players, labelled one through six. Characters play cards to move a particular number of spaces on the board; in battle, these cards serve an "attacking" function. Specialty cards include S cards, which toggles one through seven on the game boards, and Eggman cards which curse other players (losing rings, altering the game board, or skipping turns). You can choose whatever is in your own hard or play off of someone else's -- just keep an eye of what's already been played. At the end of each stage, players are given medals. You earn medals for the number of Precious Stones collected in stage, for having the most rings, getting in the most duels and defeating the most monsters, as well as placing first in the "end" game for each stage. The player will the most medals wins the stage. Though the game leaves some room for strategy, it becomes fairly difficult to maintain for two reasons. Players may grow quickly bored with the repetitive gameplay. The mini-games are somewhat entertaining, but after you play through the first board, you've pretty much played them all. The game makes a couple of stage-specific games --dodging a vindictive sun or hopping through rings of fire -- but they lose their punch. The most asinine feature of this game has to be the opponents' AI. Even on Easy mode, these characters make few, if any, errors. They always seem to have the right cards to reach the Precious Stones first. And unless your character places first on the stage, you can't advance to the next one. I made it to the last stage, but the 5th Dimension layout was so complicated (though beautiful), I just gave up on the title. I got tired of losing. I also got tired of Tails' whimpering, "Sonic..." when he loses a battle, or Amy's grossly enthusiastic cheer after she beats an enemy. Though the voice acting suffered in Sonic Adventure 2, it is downright annoying in this game. Sonic Shuffle would be the kind of game I would invite three buddies to play, and for kicks, insist that we all drink heavily while occupied with it. Like I said, it's better to lose to your buddies and have fun than to wrestle with AI that seems almost impossible to contend with.