Each of the main stories are separated into three different gameplay types: Speed, using Sonic or Shadow, “Shooter” using Tails or Eggman in their walkers and Treasure Hunting with Rouge or Knuckles, these generally mean hunting for Master Emerald shards or keys. Really though the hunting levels feel like filler, something thrown in to extend the time of the game seeing as all you do is fly about a stage praying for the detector at the bottom of the screen to bleep so you can get this done quickly. There are monitors that can either be helpful or not varying on the clues it gives you.

Sonic: Still groovier than a groovy thing...

Needless to say the Speed stages aren’t without fault either, most of the time the homing attack won’t register, the camera might flick around away from where you’re heading at some point but all in all I adore these stages, the sense of speed is there while you run, jump and grind your way to the goal. Sometimes they can give off a nauseating feeling in a good way. This is true for Final Rush/Chase, where you run and climb higher/lower along debris as you look down and see well the Earth for one. A handy feature in all this is when Shadow or Sonic grab onto a ledge to stop themselves from falling off.

Finally, the shooter levels are standard shoot, jump and hover to get through to the end of the level, you can lock-on to a various amount of enemies within a time frame before that combo is null and void. The more you lock onto the higher the combo, though it’s a risky move. I have no quarrels with this at all.

The level designs are varied, the locations lush yet somehow familiar...

In the last story everyone of the character (excluding Shadow) come together in order to reach the cannons core, as soon as that’s over we get a boss fight with the Biolizard using Shadow. This is where the difficulty spikes upwards, even though I knew what to do, I died countless times. Sometimes the homing attack didn’t work; sometimes I would be hit while jumping. I can say I’ve lost so many lives on this one boss alone I think this is probably the hardest boss I’ve faced in any console Sonic game.

Unfortunately this leads me to call Ram the Dragon, as we chatted about it and while I made poor taste jokes about Shadow till I actually had beaten the thing (not that I have anything against Shadow you understand.)

Finally, once I did you face the Biolizard again (Final Hazard) as Super Sonic and Super Shadow, and now the difficulty drops like a bowling ball out of the window. I expected a bit of resistance from the final boss, but it’s not that bad.

The game manages to have a good lifespan with the extra missions for emblems, and these emblems add more stuff to the Black Market in Chao World. After you’ve done all the missions you can gain access via the level select screen, the animals and machine parts you collect during missions can be taken there if you grab the key. Once you hit the end goal you’re automatically transported there and are free to give them or leave them for another time.

Other features of the Chao World include karate and racing. As well as taking them to a lesson. Other features are the Boss mode and Kart Racing, also the battle mode but due to there only being one person and one controller I haven’t had any chances to see this.

Moving onto sound, I’m so glad for the subtitles in this because the background music tends to go over the voices and to my knowledge there isn’t a way to turn that down. You get the typical rock tracks along with some other rap/instrumental tracks, though those don’t really catch my attention much.