This has got to be the most beautiful game on the 360, and that's including titles like Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, Naruto: The Broken Bond, and Idolmaster. Too bad the game itself is so horrendous.

First of all, we'll start small with Sonic's gameplay. My biggest miff is the terrible button placement. For almost a decade now we've been using the left face button to light speed dash and the bottom (jump) button to use a homing attack. The homing attack is a ****ing jump action, so why the hell would they use two different buttons? How about, I dunno, pressing A while in the air does a homing attack? Like how it's been done since a homing attack (or even air dash, back in StH3) was introduced to the series, and how any other secondary jump action is performed in any other game that even has jumping (excluding sport titles, smart asses). And again, pressing Y to using the light speed dash is also uncomfortable and goes against what we've been naturally doing for years in these games. I understand that they ****ed around with the controls in favour of using the speed dash, a move that's been in the Sonic Rush and Sonic Rivals games (neither of which use the light speed dash), but why couldn't that be a shoulder button? Neither the L or R shoulder buttons are used, and both of them would be extremely easy to hold.

Sonic sucks at turning, and I mean when he's walking. I have no idea why they decided to make turning Sonic so freaking difficult. It's mostly a pain in the ass in the shorter, challenging stages and in town, especially when you're trying to collect the rings surrounding an hourglass or positioning Sonic so he can do a wall jump (something which is also difficult to get started since you have to jump at the wall within a 40-50 degree angle, otherwise he just hits it). On top of that, why is Sonic completely nerfed in the standard town stages? Why did they force Sonic to walk about slowly and remove all of his abilities outside of his basic jump and later earned air dash? It's bad enough that most of the cities in this game are nothing but a bunch of narrow alleyways which are a pain in the ass to walk through. Even in Sonic The Hedgehog 06 Sonic was able to use any of his abilities anywhere and could walk or run naturally without any speed limits or wonky turning.

Werehog moves about a lot more naturally, you know, like a platforming action character. There are a lot fewer issues with him than normal Sonic. First off, his double jump (which surprisingly isn't performed by pressing A then by pressing X while in the air. Hmm, makes sense!) is weak. The second jump barely moves him a quarter of the distance his normal jump does, making it absolutely useless except for in jumps where you're half an inch away from reaching your target location. The problem is, Werehog Sonic can only grab onto grapplable objects when he's a certain distance below them. You can't jump straight at an object to grab onto it, because Sonic won't be allowed to grab onto it until he falls because the object has to be above him, most of the time resulting in him falling to his death unless you rapidly hit the B button because the lock on curser will only appear for a split second as he accelerates from falling since you jumped too high. And once you're actually grabbing the object (specifically vertical poles), he can't jump off of it until you pause. This is frustrating later when those objects you're holding onto are designed to fall/break after holding onto them for more than two seconds because Werehog can't jump off of them until he's rested for at least a second.

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Werehog, also, is supposed to be about raw power. So why the bloody **** is he so significantly weaker than regular Sonic? Sonic can destroy any enemy in this game with one hit with any of his attacks. Werehog usually has to dish out three to TWENTY-FOUR hits to take out enemies with standard attacks, two to eighteen with charged up attacks, and then one to twelve with the Unleashed mode. I've got to tell you, I've spent the majority of my time leveling up Werehog's attack, Unleashed, and especially his strength stats and I have seen significantly no changes in how long it takes to destroy enemies whatsoever. For being the most expensive stat to level up, Strength sure does **** all.

Also, experience. Experience is crucial unless you want to be struggling with level one stats for the entire game (though you'll probably be struggling even with maxed out stats). However, for whatever reason, experience doesn't automatically come to Werehog. Why not? It automatically goes to Sonic, but no, when you're playing as Werehog experience pops up after an enemy has fallen (By the way; Once an enemy has no more HP, stop hitting it, because every enemy has a dying animation that lasts between two to twelve seconds and if they're hit, they have to restart the entire dying animation before disappearing) and experience pops up, you have a very limited amount of time to pick it up before it disappears. On top of that, if an enemy is knocked over an edge (or even dies close enough to an edge), you'll get no experience as it will also go over the edge. Very smooth, Sonic Team.

Regardless of these issues both characters have, the majority of the time the issues come from level design. This is proven when some levels, such as Sonic's main Holoska and Werehog's main Apotos stages, run as smooth as silk while others, such as Eggmanland, are a ****ing nightmare to get through. It's as if the designers knew in advance how bad (though they probably called it "challenging") they were since they would have a One Up directly after many check points, sometimes as many as four! This has also got to be the first Sonic game I've seen where One Ups respawn every time you die, and the first game that needs it. You WILL find yourself dying a lot in this game simply because of a lack of direction/information on where you're supposed to go or what you're supposed to do. Additionally, most of Werehog's levels just flat out suck since they consist of nothing more than, "Start the level, beat all of the enemies in the room, go to the next room, beat all of the enemies in the room, go to the next room, beat all of the enemies in the room, go to the next room, beat all of the enemies in the room, go to the next room, beat all of the enemies in the room, go to the next room, pull a switch, beat all of the enemies in the room, go to the next room, beat all of the enemies in the room, go to the next room, beat all of the enemies in the room, go to the next room, beat a miniboss, beat all of the enemies in the room, go to goal ring/boss key." Senseless punching enemies who have a lot of health and large, seemingly endlessly spawning groups is NOT fun. It's TEDIOUS.

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Case sensitive button segments are the worst thing to happen to the gaming industry. It's an immensely cheap ass, easy to design segment that creates a forced sense of urgency which usually just ends up frustrating the player, and this game is loaded with them. They are ****ing everywhere. If you thought Spider-man 3 was bad you have no freaking idea what you are getting into here. They're in most boss fights, most levels as part of the stage, they're used to defeat most enemies as Werehog Sonic (otherwise you'll be spending a lot of time just widdling down enemies' health with normal attacks), it's awful. Remember how Sonic sometimes jumps against walls and objects, and you have to press the jump button to propel himself off the surface onto the next one, in Sonic Adventure and Sonic The Hedgehog 06? Well, now you have to press one of six buttons with a split second's notice to prevent Sonic from falling to his death. I remember in trailers, designers of the game said in case you failed to perform the right button combinations, Sonic would simply fall to a safe, yet not as quick route. That's true for maybe the first two or three levels, but after that if you fail, you die. I ca understand this for the final boss fight, but to have that for any of the standard levels is just ridiculous, especially when it goes up to NINE buttons you have to quickly press within the time limit.

The boss battles are all fantastic in this game, with a lot of variety, excitement, and strategy... except for two. The first one being a repeat of the first boss of the game, however this time, the stage itself is completely different and the majority of the attacks have changed. The problem is, for about a third of the battle is fought with Sonic running along a wall and the camera pans to the side. With absolutely no guidance, this portion of the fight requires a lot of trial and error before you figure out how to even navigate it. On top of that, every time the stage cycles, the boss's attacks are completely different the next time you run along that wall, so again you have to go through a lot of trial and error before you can get through that part of the fight. As epic as the fight is, it gets very tiring to watch the same intro again and again every time you die. The second problem is the final boss fight, which is especially bad in comparison to the incredible battle you had right before it against Robotnik (The first time I did it the game glitched, resulting in Werehog Sonic and Chip repeating the same three quotes NONSTOP. None of the normal dialogue played due to the glitch, and I had to endure "I'm so glad we landed safely!" (or whatever) over and over and over and over without pause). You control a Colossus Chip created with the seven emerald shrines and seemingly slowly approach Dark Gaia (really, you're traveling at a fairly extreme speed, but the distance between you and Dark Gaia is phenomenal plus you're both such an incredible size that it seems like you're moving at a snail's pace). You have to reach Dark Gaia without dying just to endure yet another button sensitive segment before Dark Gaia grapples Chip's Colossus so Sonic can run along the behemoth's arm and attack one of Dark Gaia's eyes. It's okay, but not very climatic at all and controlling the Colossus just feels as unnatural as anything ever could in a Sonic game. I really have to just sit down an reflect, "What the hell does this have to do with Sonic?"

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Luckily, Perfect Dark Gaia (despite the camera) is a fantastic final boss, a quality in which many people probably hoped to play in Sonic The Hedgehog 06 (but as we all know, the entire last chapter of that game was done on such short notice that they even had to use old CGI models of most of the Sonic characters). But after I beat the game, I felt immensely unfulfilled and unsatisfied. All previous Sonic games, even Sonic Heroes' cheesy ass ending, left you with a feeling of accomplishment. This game didn't. I guess having to go through two levels, three boss fights, and over an hour of cutscenes inbetween it all didn't help. Honestly; There is no pause inbetween the last selectable level and the game's credits. It just kept going and I found myself frequently wondering when the hell it was going to end already.

Oh, and the camera is pretty awful, specifically during Werehog's gameplay. It constantly pans out until Werehog is the size of an ant on your screen, forces itself to lock into awkward positions around corners so you can't see your character to make critical actions, and when you pull back to look up, the camera sort of hovers two feet above the ground to give a very undesirable view of your surroundings, making it useless.

As I already mentioned, the town segments suck. I'd rather have the giant, empty field in Sonic 06 than the narrow alleyways of Spagonia. They look absolutely beautiful and are so highly detailed, but they're pointless. Town missions in this game require you to pretty much remember the names of 80+ human NPCs, especially when it comes to missions involving going from one continent to another. The majority of the time no ones repeats crucial information. For example, a man gave me a gift to give to someone. The inventory doesn't give me any information about the gift and talking to the guy again he doesn't tell me who it's for. Critical error, and it's nothing more than the writers' fault. Also, in interviews and previews, it was clearly stated that you would be able to do missions in towns as Sonic's friends. The ONLY time you do ANYTHING with ANYONE who isn't Sonic and Chip is Tails' two Tornado levels, which are nothing but button sensitive rail shooters. You don't even control the ****ing Tornado. You just tap A, B, X, or Y within the time limit as they appear on screen. What the ****!? Mind you, I have absolutely no issues with Sonic, Tails, Amy, and Robotnik being the only returning characters in this game. Everyone doesn't have to be in every game (Lord I'd hate that), but we were promised optional town missions with Sonic's friends. Maybe in their minds, Chip following you around and Tails telling you to find and talk to some forgettable NPC early in the game is sufficient enough to be plural on both "friends" and "missions." Also, I truly hate the character designs. Sonic, Tails, Amy, Chip, and Robotnik all look fantastic, better than most CGI cutscenes in video games from not even six or seven years ago. They are so well designed and animated that it puts pretty much every other game this generation to ****ing shame, yet all of the NPCs in this game look like ass. They look like Pixar rejects with DK Mode turned on. I swear, Pickle's assistant is the guy from Ratatouille with a larger head. If people had a hard time swallowing the realistic designs the humans had in StH06, then how is the drastic opposite any better? It's worse! Can't these fools find some sort of happy medium? The humans from Sonic X worked perfectly (ignoring how the characters themselves being obnoxious and pointless). They were cartoony, were original designs, and they fit with the Sonic characters and Robotnik's unique figure.

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Mission rankings are completely whack. I'm personally struggling to get anything higher than a B rank with Sonic, even in the introductory level. Meanwhile, I could die in seemingly any level with Werehog after the last check point, beat up a few enemies directly before the goal ring, and still get an A rank. There is absolutely no consistency in difficulty on getting an S rank with Sonic and getting an S Rank with Werehog. It's completely unbalanced. Note, I was getting A ranks with Werehog before leveling him up and I'm still getting Ds and Cs regularly with Sonic almost completely leveled up. Speaking of leveling up...

My last issue comes with collecting. There is too much pointless **** in this game to collect. Having to find and/or buy the music and cutscenes in the game? The concept art I can understand, but music and cutscenes have always been a given in every Sonic game. It's just a ****ty attempt to add extra replay value which ironically doesn't make me want to complete the entire game at all. On top of that, the Sun and Moon Medallions; Why are they crucial to continuing? I had absolutely no ****ing idea you HAD to collect them until I reached the second last area of the game and Chip informed me I needed ten more Sun Medals to gain access to the level. On top of that, why are Moon Medals more frequent for Sonic and Sun Medals more plentiful for Werehog Sonic? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Even though Werehog Sonic is far easier to control than Sonic, his levels are still unenjoyable in comparison, and it's stupid that I have to play them again until I collect enough Sun Medals to play Sonic's last selectable level. Souvenirs are useless, food gives such poor experience that they're not worth purchasing, and what's with all of the items you find around the towns, such as the porcelain doll and jars of tea? Are they for some inane town mission with some random NPC who I don't give a **** about? I'd rather wait through three 16 second loading screens to do the town missions in Sonic 06. Regardless of the ridiculous waiting time to actually play them, the missions in that game were at least fun and unique for the most part. All you do here is run back and forth between NPCs listening to BS.