Review: Sonic and the Black Knight

I've never read the Legend of King Arthur, but I'm pretty sure it didn't involve King Arthur getting turned into a demon who then wants to open up the darkworld, and through some miraculous twist of fate a mysterious blue Hedgehog drops in from nowhere with two chili dogs and he saves the day. If that was what actually happened in the Legend of King Arthur, I'm sure less people would care about it. Funny how that also works its way into a video game with the exact same storyline.

It's hard to talk about Sonic and the Black Knight without talking about every single moment that made me hang my head in shame and sigh. So I'm not going to avoid it! Things about Sonic and the Black Knight that make me upset include, but are not limited to: Merlin is actually a "cute" teen girl named Merlina; the knights of the round table are Sonic's retarded friends, Shadow, Knuckles, and Blaze the Cat; an intelligent talking sword and a craaaazzzy guy with tons of 'tude. If none of those have turned you off from Sonic and the Black Knight, please, let me continue.

Sonic and the Black Knight is the next game in Sonic's Storybook series for the Wii, the first title being Sonic and the Secret Rings. The Storybook series takes famous and well loved legends and tales and twists them into a weird anthromorphic fanfiction that only partially resembles the original story. They're also incredibly shallow experiences that don't offer much reason to partake in the first place.

Platforming is all but gone in Black Knight. The camera is constantly behind the player, and you can only go forward along a straight path, with left and right dodging. That's it. Any platform you need to jump on is as simple as jumping once while wildly flying forward; failure is only met with another path to follow. There is absolutely no punishment for any of your actions while running around.

The biggest gimmick in Sonic and the Black Knight is that Sonic now has a talking sword to attack the enemies with. If you didn't guess from every other Wii game that involves a sword/staff/wand/ect, you waggle the Wii Remote to attack. A lot. Most of your game will consist of "run run waggle waggle run waggle waggle run jump waggle." You could literally beat half of these levels with your eyes closed. If you couldn't tell, it's pretty boring.

The best part about Sonic and the Black Knight is that it's incredibly short. If you felt like torturing yourself, you could probably finish it in a few hours. After that, you unlock a few characters for the horrible, tacked-on multiplayer modes. Then, you don't have to ever touch the game again. Sonic and the Black Knight is a pretty bad game by Sonic standards, and the addition of the sword just goes to show that they don't quite know where they want to be.

Stay away. Stay very far away...unless you're an eight-year-old boy, that is. Several times throughout the game I got the feeling that if I was fifteen years younger I'd be having an absolute blast. Because man, Sonic's hip and he's got a sword and I'm like flying everywhere and jumping and stuff. Unfortunately, I need a bit more from my character driven mascot games. Looks like it's back to Super Mario Galaxy for me.