Sonic and the Black Knight
Year: 2009
Rating: E10+
Time Played: ~3.5 hours
I’ll admit that playing Sonic Dash was enough to get me interested in the Wii game, Sonic and the Black Knight. I had seen these familiar characters put in the traditional roles of the Knights of the Round Table, and that seemed like an interesting enough concept to me that I wanted to play it. After purchasing the game on eBay, I finally had the chance to experience this Sonic game that I had missed years ago. Unfortunately, the gameplay itself was quite lacking, despite having an interesting premise.
For a game as short as it is, Sonic and the Black Knight has a lot of cut-scenes. I understand there’s a sort of mini-sub series of Sonic games where the settings are almost storybook in nature, but at that point the Sonic developers just needed to either make an animated movie or a graphic novel (considering the fully voice-acted cut-scenes aren’t really animated, per se). And if you thought the talking sword in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was annoying, you haven’t met Caliburn yet. I’m just glad he doesn’t really play into much of the gameplay, as limited as it is.
While I’ve been used to different styles of 3D Sonic, I can’t say I’m a fan of whatever this is. Sonic is known for speed, so each of the levels is fairly short as you blast through them in a straight path. The trouble is that sometimes you can’t react fast enough to dodge the hazards. The reason for this is because the movement is based on the motion controls of the Wiimote, and they aren’t very precise (this becomes even more obvious during the final boss fight). Ultimately, if I had known the game was going to be this, I would have passed on it.
A mess of a game that’s fortunately very short, I give Sonic and the Black Knight 1.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
