Lately I’ve taken notice that the "masterminds" behind the Sonic franchise have taken a break in their efforts. In fact, after Sonic Adventure the series has taken a turn for the worst.

However, despite all this, and my horribly dull experiences with "Sonic the Hedgehog" on the 360, I assumed that maybe the Wii had a fairly decent one. I had always been told that Secret Rings is better than the majority of them recently, and so I tried it.

To help some of you understand this review, first I have to tell you about something else. Upon renting Secret Rings, I also rented "Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity", curious of how a Sonic Wii Racer would come off. I could not stand ZG despite how generous I was. The biggest problems were, for starters, the game told you almost nothing about what you were suppose to do. It told you WHAT to do rather than how to do it, and after the initial ’brief’ instruction, it wouldn’t tell you anymore.

But the issue with ZG that is relevant to Secret Rings... is the control-system. ZG has a strange system where your character is required to constantly move forward, the only way to stop is hold your brake, and you can’t effectively travel backwards. Secret Rings has the exact same control system, as well as requiring the Wii-Mote to be titled on its side just like ZG. You always move forward unless you hold brake, you CANNOT turn around (at all, you only do a very slow backwards walk.) This makes it impossible to grab items that you missed, and in order to get them, you have to re-run the entire stage afterwards. If you miss it again... that’s right, repeat the stage.

The jump system is also very poor. It is often unresponsive or jumps when you don’t want it to, and in a game like Sonic, especially Secret Rings, you don’t want that. There are two kinds of jumps. Small Jump, and Large Jump. I don’t think those are the official names, but you’ll know what I mean. Small Jump is just when you jump like normal, a quick, sudden jump with a small reach that has almost no practical use. Large Jump requires you to charge the jump, and then release it at the right moment to get some distance.

There’s also a straight-shot in the air you can use where you thrust the Wii-Mote forward. You have to do this to kill enemies, and only when the cursor on them turns red. To get it to turn red, you have to be positioned just right so that a straight-dash towards them will hit a weak-point, and even then they can sometimes counter you.