Okay, or ALRIGHT! as Sonic would put it.

I've spent about three hours with Sonic The Hedgehog and I feel confident enough to write a few paragraphs of essentially what I'm thinking right now.

Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog were both honest attempts at good games from someone somewhere, and the only reason the relative crappyness of those didn't quite taint Sonic is that they weren't *really* Sonic games. Or if they were, you sort of let them slide conveniently into Luigi's Mansion style "spinoff" folders in the Sonic history cabinet.

Well this is it then. THE it. Sonic THE Hedgehog. There's no hiding now - no excuses.

Three hours in I'm hardly qualified to write a review, so I don't want you to take anything I say right now as a definite statement on whether the game is good or bad.

It starts off reasonably well, without explaining too much about why Sonic is in a Kingdom of whatever. From what I can tell this is just where he lives now, he doesn't seem transported to another world or anything as speculated pre-release by some. You're immediately dropped off in a "town stage" (think Sonic Adventure 1) and it's striking how incredibly bland the place looks. It's sort of like a Crazy Taxi 1 district without the people and the cars and the driving and the fun.

Anyway, you figure out you need the light dash thingy, and you need to buy it from a shop, so you accept a mission from one of the townsfolk to jump through some red rings, presumably as part of some basic movement training. Ka-ching, you got 100 rings for the mission and you're ready to acquire the dash to reach the first real action stage - the Emerald Coast lookalike.

The game plays exactly like the demo. Some people were pissed that you couldn't do the homing attack really fast in succession, and you can't here either. From what I understand there might be something you can do with the on screen gauge that fills up when you destroy enemies, or perhaps you can buy upgrades or summat. At this point I don't know, but don't expect that to be a "bug" that's fixed. It's simply how it plays, and I'm fine with it.

At one point in the stage, Sonic grabs on to the fin of a whale and tells Tails (say that fast!) to push a switch to close a gate, so that the whale doesn't take Sonic with him out to sea! Suddenly you control Tails briefly, and you get to direct him to said switch and take out some enemies along the way. This is a very small portion of the stage, but I'm really thrilled how they managed to use different characters without forcing them on you too much. Of course all the other extra characters apart from Silver and Shadow are presumably handled the same, and I think that's fantastic.

Speaking of Silver and Shadow; the episodes are separated. For those of you lying sleepless at night, worried you'll get the other two hedgehogs shoved down your throat during your personal Sonic time - you can stop that. The extra "campaigns" are there for you to pick once you've *unlocked* them, Sonic Adventure 1 style.

Oh and I haven't seen much of Silver yet, but he's REALLY cool.

Graphically the action stages look pretty great. I played a desert stage (carrying Elise actually, which doesn't look as awkward as you'd think) and the lighting looked absolutely fantastic. I don't say that in comparison to something like Gears - which I haven't played yet - I'm saying that in relation to how it looks. How Sonic looks, and what kind of signals my brain are recieving. It's warm, colourful, and you just want to fondle him - particularly in cutscenes. Her I mean. Obviously. Ahem. (She's like 16, so it's creepy anyway!)

That's the action stages though. In the town (more sections open up as you go) things are gray, drab, choppy and boring. People look really weird, the draw distance on shadows and some objects is absolutely laughable, and the physics look stupid a great deal more than they look good. Walking into a bunch of apples (after breaking a barrel or something) usually kicks them right out into space. Weirdly - even though it looks absolutely blandtastic, the framerate has real trouble being steady. It's just a mess.

It would be easy to disregard of said blandness if the game didn't insist on having "missions" set in town, too. This makes it a REAL mystery why more effort wansn't poured into making it half appealing. Usually you walk up to someone and this someone says "argh, my cat's gone missing!" or something to that effect, and asked whether you want to accept you get to answer yes or no. You'll be answering no a lot. Not because the missions themselves are particularly difficult, but because the game needs to slap a loading screen onto your face twice - once for loading the guy explaining the "mission" in detail and one for the actual mission. It's just a damn hassle and no fun whatsoever.

Wrapping up this mess of a write-up, I'm not sure whether I like it or not yet. I'm just completely neutral, because for each thing that's awesome (the high speed bits of some stages are nuts! :O) there's something about it that slaps you right on the testicles. Nothing game breaking - mind. This is certainly not a Shadow or Heroes level of badness by any stretch, and it could really come out on top after all is said and done - but it's enough to remain sceptical.

I'll return with more thoughts as they strike.

At the end of the day what you have here is an increasingly appealing story coupled with spots of really impressive visuals, and what's easily the best playing 3D Sonic to date, marred by the sloppiest brand of design flaws and lack of a soul. Ironically, the things even Sonic Heroes did right - wrapping everything in a likeable presentation, with colourful and memorable levels - this game stumbles on, ultimately rendering the thought and care that went into the core action and combat practically useless.

Sonic The Hedgehog harbors a pretty good game in there somewhere, so what you really gotta ask yourself is if you like Sonic enough to find it.