Sonic and the Black Night (Wii) Review

Sound holds up much better in this game. The game is basically completely voice acted and none of the voice acting stands out as being particularly poor. Sound effects are about what one would expect from this game. Music is also above average, though it does not reach the standards that some earlier Sonic games have set. Overall the game’s sound is one of its greatest attributes.

Two years after 2007’s Sonic and the Secret Rings, the first part of the Sonic Storybook series, a followup called Sonic and the Black Knight was released. Both games play somewhat similarly, with Sonic and the Black Knight‘s only major addition being Sonic’s sword. This review will judge Sonic and the Black Knight on its own merits.

The gameplay of Sonic and the Black Knight is unfortunately its weakest aspect. It is split up into two parts, the single player and the multiplayer. Players control Sonic as he runs through linear paths where the player can control slight horizontal movement and make Sonic do classic moves like the homing attack and swing the sword introduced in this game. The Nunchuk is required for this game, and it is essentially exclusively to control Sonic’s extremely limited movement. The gameplay’s biggest problem is how overwhelming simple it is. The sword is simply controlled by swinging the Wii Remote, with combos being achieved by repeatedly swinging the Wii Remote. Enemies are hardly distinguishable besides how they look, as almost all are defeated by simply swinging the Wii Remote. Level design essentially never varies, as the gameplay style allows for very little variation. The game overall feels like a mobile game, which is not good for a full priced console release. The game does score based on the players performance and there are various items to collect, which adds some incentive to get better at what is generally an extremely easy game. The multiplayer is also rather shallow but it does at least add a sizable amount of replay value.

Sound holds up much better in this game. The game is basically completely voice acted and none of the voice acting stands out as being particularly poor. Sound effects are about what one would expect from this game. Music is also above average, though it does not reach the standards that some earlier Sonic games have set. Overall the game’s sound is one of its greatest attributes.

Technically the game is mostly impressive. There are a surprisingly large variety of unique assets and areas have impressive graphical fidelity for a Wii game. There are also many fantastic looking CGI cutscenes that are extremely prevalent in Sonic games from this era. Unfortunately the game does not run at 60 FPS, as so many Sonic games had done before, but this is generally not a problem and is understandable considering the graphical fidelity. Where the framerate becomes unacceptable, though, is in parts where the game plays in slow-motion. During these sections, rather than the game running at half speed at 30 FPS, the framerate drops significantly and its seems like many frames are skipped. The game generally only plays in slow-motion during quick time events, which makes them particularly frustrating. This is also not helped by the significant delay between swinging the Wii Remote and Sonic doing something on screen. Overall the game is well made technically besides that one glaring flaw.

The story and world of Sonic and the Black Knight is not particularly noteworthy. It basically feels like an episode of a cartoon. The writing is surprisingly consistent, with no glaringly bad moments, but it is not particularly good either. The story is generally uninteresting, and the medieval world is not elaborated on much. Overall the game is written well enough, but the story and world disappoint.

Overall Sonic and the Black Knight is a bit expensive for the amount of content it provides. Though there are many unlockables, rankings, and an entire multiplayer mode, the amount of playtime most players get is not worth the game’s full price. Most of this content is stretched very thin and rather shallow, too. Still, fans of Sonic games may want to check it out at a heavily discounted price.

Overall the reviewer would give the game a 6 out of 10.

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