Sonic and the Secret Rings | The Completionist

yes hey everyone and welcome back to the brainy episode of the completionist I am so glad to be back in my office no construction right here with you guys today to launch our themed month that we do in the month of February last year we had superhero month here before that we had month of sequels the prequels and then we had month of sequels the month of love and blah blah blah blah blah this month however we are doing disappointing games huh that's right we're gonna be playing a lot of games that by most standards are bad I'm gonna use the nice word disappointing you take that with what you will but that said let's start off the first game of the month and that is Sonic The Seeker rings [Music] is it time for another Sonic game already at this point I am well aware that I'm gonna get burned every time I dip into this pool but I just can't seem to stop myself I mean what can I say at heart I am still a Sonic fan and The Shining ray of hope that is Sonic mania is getting closer and closer plus I've already played sonic boom I am now impervious to pain believe it or not Sonic and the secret Rings wasn't even supposed to exist at first Sega actually wanted their first Sonic game on the then new and exciting week console to be a port of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 but porting it would have taken way too long so they decided to build a new game from the ground up I guess they've really dodged a bullet there didn't they from the get-go secret rings was designed with the we motion technology in mind but you have to understand that this was very early in Louie's lifecycle no one was yet fully aware of the Pandora's box that was waggle technology used properly kind of be fun but when done wrong waggle tech can ruin games shatter friendships and March I'll dudes Sega clearly was not ready to wield that kind of power and secret rings was the evidence of that despite its lofty goals of going back to Sonics basics and it's respectable visuals secret rings received middling reviews due to its awful camera and crippling controls now don't be fooled by the fact that this game technically got a sequel in Sonic and the Black Knight no one liked that game either that's a fight for another day and to add insult to injury Sega actually delisted secret rings and all other Sonic games that fail to reach a minimum Metacritic score back in 2010 they were apparently attempting to maintain the value of their brand but we - you Sega we know what you've done and we'll never forget that being said suturing should be a swell time completing this game won't be as simple as beating it a few times and calling you today Sika rinks has its own in-game achievements list called awards that you get for accomplishing tasks and performing feats that are about as demanding as legitimate achievements and trophies some of these awards are rather benign such as beating a particular boss and using one of Sonic's skills 50 times but others will undoubtedly tack on several extra hours of playtime but getting to level 99 we're playing for a total of 24 hours now that last one doesn't seem that bad but playing this game for 24 hours makes me want to puke but you know aren't we lucky secret rings also contains a slew of Wiimote centred mini-games known as party mode which is about as blatant of a mario party ripoff as you can get and I've played Kingdom Hearts birth by Sleep there are plenty of awards tied to party mode making these minigames unavoidable like the lima beans on your dinner plate okay I just can't ignore them I'm just gonna have to try and save him for last shove them all in my mouth before my tongue knows what's going on and wash it all down with some Snapple this is what being an adult is all about folks tricking yourself into doing work it'll happen to you too kids [Music] everybody had their favorite bedtime stories growing up right well sonic in the secret ring is like a bedtime storybook but if your mom or dad pulled it off the shelf to read to you and gladly tell them to get that out of your face it's got some nice visuals and a pretty decent soundtrack but its story is savagely mediocre things kick off with sonic taking a nap in front of a cozy looking fireplace that I guess he owns wait is this supposed to be Sonic's house does sonic own a house is sonic homeless nope there's no time that train of thought will never end when Sonic wakes up he reaches out for his alarm clock but accidentally grabs the mystical ring that he apparently had no idea was on his table upon touching the ring a genie named Shara is released she claims that her storybook world of the Arabian Nights is slowly being erased by another bigger badder genie named a razor Djinn yes that's actually his name a razors been using his immense power to slowly escape from the book and cross over into the real world and if he's fully released he'll not only destroy all the stories in the book who also unleash hordes of evil spirits and monsters into the real world what a dick Shara implores Sonic to help and since he's got nothing better to do he and his new Genie pal leap into the pages of Ray B and mites like Blue's Clues but soon after arriving they run into a razor himself he drops a min of exposition explaining that he's after the seven powerful artifacts known as world rings and when a razor fires are burning arrow right at Shara's heart Sonic heroically or stupidly depending on how you feel about it takes the shot for her lodged deep into his chest the arrow is slowly making sonic soul burn slow and when it extinguishes Sonic's gonna kick the bucket but a ranger promises to remove the curse if Sonic tracks down and retrieves all seven world ranks with that Sonic sent out to gather the Rings take down a razor and somehow save both the real and the world of Arabian Nights so there's nothing inherently bad about Zika rings as premise the story is perfectly average it's just that the entire story could function just as well even if it had nothing to do with Sonic in a completely unnecessary move many of the stories key players are replaced with members of Sonic's regular cast of characters but tails isn't tails he's Alibaba and Knuckles isn't knuckles he's Sinbad it's not like these are actually Sonic's pals and they're just acting or something they're completely different people who don't know Sonic at all which means that I don't care about them at all it's just a cheap way to shoehorn in familiar faces into a story that has nothing to do with them it's truly unfortunate that secret rings feature so many settings and characters that I honestly couldn't give a crap about you just know that none of these characters will ever show up again and you know that sonic won't grow or change it all as a character sonic will end up saving the day and move on to the next adventure never mentioning these events again it somehow ends up feeling like Sonic the Hedgehog filler I didn't even know that was possible but that being said the story book motif is actually a nice touch almost all of the game's cutscenes are told in the picture book style and if I've got to look at the cutscenes they may as well be somewhat unique the themes of the Arabian Nights also permeate pretty much throughout the entire game from the sages to the enemies to even the music and that kind of non gameplay stuff is where secret rain shines brightest the visuals are easy on the eyes and the soundtrack is pretty damn good even though it does have a bit of a dual identity half the time the music is Arabian themed and the rest of the time it's the kind of metal that's become associated with modern Sonic but the music is at its best when the two styles are blended together creating tracks that are truly you now this is the kind of stuff I can't get enough up and I think it's safe to say that the secret rings the soundtrack is by far the game's best feature good job but the soundtrack isn't always unique the song seven rings in hand would be just fine if it weren't played after every single mission you hear it so often while playing that you begin to dread turning on the console it bores its way into your mind even right now I can still hear the same four seconds repeated endlessly someone make it stop and for God's sakes if you're going to get a band to do the theme song for the game get the ones been doing it for the past three or four crush 40 is great their rendition of seven rings in the hand is even better than this one the story book that is secret rings has got some pretty illustrations and a nice cover but the actual story inside is nothing to write home about and it's poor narrative doesn't even come close to the worst aspects of the game at least the soundtrack is tight can we hear some of it right now die damn it I should have know better I should have been more specific I deserve this play anything that's not seven rings in hand please anything thank you [Music] even after the many hours I've spent with it I still feel like I haven't really played Sonic and the secret Rings this whole time it's felt like I've been playing some horrible minigame or like someone changed my controls to alternative mode without telling me and now I can't figure out how to change it back but this isn't a minigame this is the game and these motion controls are not optional they're all we've got going on at its core secret rings is a glorified endless runner sonic moves along an automatic rail and it's up to you to collect the stuff you want avoid the stuff you don't want and defeat any enemies in your way your ultimate goal is to either reach the finish line in one piece or fulfill that mission specific requirements I know that all sounds simple but even the most straightforward tasks are turned into an utter show when the game first instructed me to hold the Wiimote horizontally like a traditional controller a faint glimmer of hope was ignited in my soul but that hope was instantly stomped out by the unrelenting combat boots of reality in order to make sonic move to either side you have to tilt the Wiimote to the left or right and yes it's just as janky and unresponsive as you'd expect oftentimes you'll swear that you tilted the controller enough to avoid that pillar but no I guess not you want to perform Sonic's patented homing attack then you're gonna have to jerk that we move forward in an unnatural and goofy fashion on top of that you can't even manually select what you're targeting with the homing attack since we're not using the d-pad to move Sonic you think we'll be able to use it for targeting but no let's just have sonic go wherever the hell he wants to and let's not forget all of the level-specific mechanics that also require you to convulse while playing swinging jumping catapulting none of them show up that often and each one of them could have provided some much-needed oases of traditional control but now gotta push that flag attack the controls were the only gimmick that Sega tried to force into secret ranks this game also has a few RPG elements - it completes experience points and leveling up you gain experience by collecting items meeting bad guys and generally performing well during missions if you collect enough you will level up earning more abilities for Sonic so what kind of abilities well in this game they're referred to as skills and they're a buttload of them these skills behave like little equippable buffs that you can combine in different ways to make sonic play slightly differently while some skills give sonic drastically dynamic abilities others are predominantly passive in nature and their effects are only somewhat noticeable these include skills that increase Sonic's top speed ones that let him dodge left and right faster and once it increased the range of his homing attack but two of the more extreme skills are sonic speed brake and Sonic's time break the speed break is a massive burst of hyper speed whereas the time brake slows down time allowing Sonic to more easily navigate around hazards both of these techniques are governed by Sonic soul gauge which is basically his super meter these moves may sound cool but there's a big problem neither of these skills is any fun to use it may seem like a blast it's happened to the speed Forks with Sonic but it turns out that he's totally vulnerable to all damaged during the speed breaks meaning that you'll probably run right into any threats along your way this skill is basically a rendered counterproductive unless you're on a very clear straightaway and the time brake while useful just is not fun whoever suggested a mechanic that drastically slows things down in a Sonic the Hedgehog game has got some stones man even the game's level structure is baffling there are seven worlds to play through with each containing several short missions but each time you complete one you're forced back to the mission select screen regardless of how short that mission was and let me tell you some of them are really short I understand the developers intent to compartmentalize the various objectives they designed for the player but they didn't have to go to these extremes they could have tied several these mini missions together into a handful of bigger missions drastically reducing the amount of time spent a loading into and out of levels and the time spent listening to that god damn song again aside from the usual rings there are a couple of other collectables and secret rings there's pearls which are common items that refill Sonic's soul gauge and then there are the fire souls which are hidden relics that are found in most missions most of them are easily obtainable but some of them can be kind of hard to reach all of the games as enemies are variations of the same theme of dark genie spirit thing unfortunately they don't offer much of a challenge and they don't offer much gameplay variety either most of them just float in midair acting more as platform aids than enemies and when you do interact with them all they really end up doing is slow down the momentum even more some of those bad guys do have more involvement Anax such as the bosses but even during those fights the game's focus is literally on combat fighting seems like an afterthought here as opposed to a secondary feature I mean all the boss fights can be summed up with avoid their attacks until you're close enough to do a homing attack wash rinse repeat wash rinse repeat a bit to brain-dead for my tastes but I'll tell you what isn't brain-dead getting gold medals on every mission that's right this game grades you based on how fast you complete levels which for completionists turns the entire game into a series of time trials and some of these missions are downright crushing with their criteria for gold some medals are virtually impossible to obtain unless you've equipped some of Sonic's more powerful speed boosting skills and despite their lack of fun factor time break and speed break are often crucial to shaving off the seconds necessary to beat the clock once again there was no way around replaying missions over and over until I had the muscle memory needed to simply get good at them all and let's not forget that secret rings is technically an RPG which means that there are levels to reach 99 of them to be exact and even after beating the game and earning all of the gold medals I still had of grinding to do just imagine replaying the same experience rich stages over and over and over until Sonic isn't capable of growing anymore until Sonic is incapable of growing anymore he might just be at that point you guys but I hope that Sonic mania proves me wrong I am with you Sonic I was from the beginning I'm here now I have faith and Drive and belief in you and after all of that after all of the hard work of finishing Sonic's adventure mode waiting for me was a party mode you guys know the deal you and up to three of your friends shake rattle and roll your way through dozens of uninspired minigames now full disclosure these minigames aren't bad but they're not great either at least when you open up party mode you know that you're in for a waggle fest if you're bored morbidly curious and happen to have some compliance buddies around then party mode might just be the most fun thing about Sonic and the secret ranks and after searching very hard I can't say that there's much to enjoy about playing Sonic and the secret rings and that's the most supporting thing about the game even the most terrible games have something entertaining about them or something noteworthy but not secret race here there's nothing but a wasteland of mediocrity and it's not like things weren't salvageable with this game they could have included the actual characters that we know and love instead of fact similes they could have focused on having mechanics and a UI that maintain momentum instead of constantly interrupting the action and while it's too much to wish for them to have completely dropped the motion controls we could have let the game cook for a bit longer before releasing it maybe then the waggle tech would have felt better or at least spit is bearable outside of the party mode dear god the party mode really was the best part these might be the end of times you guys there's a little bit of a silver lining when it comes to completing Sonic and the secret Rings as you've been racing collecting and grinding away you've also been unlocking quite a lot of bonus material and it's all kept track of in the handy dandy special book it's like a gallery where you can view all of your spoils of war including concept art music and cutscenes all of those fire soul you've been collecting also happened to unlock some bonuses in party mode the more you gather the more hidden characters you unlock for use in party mode such as blaze the cat creamed the rabbit and both shadow and silver the Hedgehog's those same fire souls will also gradually unlock even more minigames for you to trick your friends into play even secret rings the signature brand of achievements known as awards are accounted for in the secret book oh and it also lets you know how many times you've run into big the cat yeah I forgot to mention that big the cats in this game - and that dopamine is making a cameo as a character than the Arabian Nights he's just big the cat you can run into him in 15 specific missions but he's pretty well hidden so hunting him down with the guide is recommended over trying to find his big ass on your own if you manage to find him all 15 times all the pages of his travel diary will be filled out in your special book allowing you to read all about his fishing and his obsession over froggy and the sad fact that he should never be allowed out of the house by himself so what does filling up your entire special book gets you not a damn thing but at least it feels good to know that as you play you are unlocking things along the way it would just be nice if the game acknowledged you for going the distance I wouldn't even be that sore about it if seeker rings hadn't thrown time trials and level grinding at me now instead of walking away from yet another disappointing modern era sonic game I'm actually presenting secret rings God did and things they could have been so simple you guys they could have been so simple while completing Sonic and the secret rings there were 78 deaths 32 hours of total playtime 100 six fire souls found 110 golden medals earned 225 pages unlocked in the special book 99 levels reached with Sonic and one copy of the single 7 rings in hand ordered off Amazon so I can personally burn it in effigy guys I have been a personal positive beacon of Sonic in its community for many years and as much as I love Sonic it's hard for me to even recommend trying this game even for novelties sake just getting through the basics in earlier missions is a slog thanks to the terrible controls and if you're still thinking about completing it only do it if you've got a lot of money riding on it like no less than a few grand only a fool would complete this game for free wait I genuinely don't know what makes me more mad the fact that Sonic o 6 was right here and it came out to be a piece of crap and then in development they said you know what let's go ahead and take some of these teammates here and move over here to Sonic and Sega rings or a we launch released window and that game turned out to be just as bad now these from a graphical standpoint the game turned out to be pretty cohesive and ok from playing the game to really getting down to the innards of it this game is just a train wreck across the board the fact that you have no real control over Sonic in your force to run straight the entire time with the waggle motion control is very very upsetting you should be able to control Sonic at least at this point in the 3d realm with the 3d with the joysticks we have the nunchuck plug that bad boy in and now you have Sonic and move in a full 360 environment why make the gamer and the player whatever you want to call it just go straight down and miss collectibles and miss things and constantly get it over and over and over again when you created this luscious world that we want to explore I cannot say anything more than that how can he actually visibly upset so with that in mind guys I give this game my completionist reading of donated don't it that's all time here for today guys so please as always let me just in about today's episode somewhere on the internet if you liked today's episode do me a favor give me a thumbs up give me a comment and you know I'm actually responding in the comments so I read a lot of the bad thing to say about me Brian from Wyoming thanks man you're the best appreciate the nice words bro this prides a dick that's why he has to learn he can't get away with this BES you Brian be nice man I'm watching now if you excuse me let's go ahead and look at some more glorious multiplayer action use the lamp that's that's the cooking sensation smells of wonderfully crafted Sega multiplayer [Music]

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 963,482

Keywords: Sonic And The Secret Rings (Video Game), sonic review, sonic and the secret rings review, secret rings review, Sonic The Hedgehog (Video Game Series), Sega (Video Game Developer), Sonic The Hedgehog (character), Video Game (Industry), Racing Video Game (Video Game Genre), Wii (Video Game Platform), Sonic The Hedgehog (Film Character), completionist sonic, review, TOVG, Completionist, thatonevideogamer, jirard, bad sonic game, disappointing games month, disappointing sonic game

Id: hj_djU0Lrbc

Length: 25min 4sec (1504 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 03 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Bedsidecargo]

Actual conversation between friend and I,

Me: Oh hes doing another themed month this February

Friend: So is it a sonic month?

Me: No its disappointing games month.... so yeah sonic games.

[u/TheGamingTurret]

You know, it's far from perfect. Dat Waifu bait tho...

Nothing sub par or disappointing about that. (she does have SOME character, I mean...more than most sonic characters do) If I had to be stuck with some genie the rest of my life, would rather have it be a pretty girl :P

[u/danger098]

Oh man... I just watched the video and I have got to say, yeah this game was rough. I think it was given to me as a gift at some point when I was still playing wii games, and I don't think I was ever able to progress that far into the story; partially because I was young and partially because the games controls were just garbage.

That being said though, the mini games were by far my favorite part of this game. They were probably the only fun to be had in the whole game in my opinion...but yeah, other then the multiplayer this game was quite forgettable and brutal.

[u/Gamer_ely]

He must be getting over a cold, his nose is all cruddy.

[u/[deleted]]

This game was alright. Black Knight though... it took the worst of Secret Rings (trying to slow down and fight) and made that the focus. It's definitely way worse.