Sonic and the Black Knight Review

BY Sathya M. | POSTED: 31 May 2009

Killing two Stories with one Sonic.



Sonic and the Black Knight is the second installment of the Sonic Storybook series, the first being Sonic and the Secret Rings. Basically the idea here is: Sonic + Classic Children’s Story = $$$... right? Well the actual equation is Sonic + Classic Story + garbage Gameplay = bad review. The last installment of the Storybook series was an off-shoot of the Arabian Nights, and this one is of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. So naturally Sonic has to wield a sword… great lets completely change the style of play that has defined Sonic for over a decade, that will surely yield great results! Well at least the game is still fast paced for the most part.



You are introduced to Merlina (granddaughter of Merlin… love the creative name huh?), who is surrounded by a bunch of goons and a dark armored figure on a horse, we are told that he is King Arthur. I’m already scratching my head here because that guy CLEARLY looks like a bad guy. Oh wait it is… take one of the most celebrated heroes of all time and make him a villain… great idea! (Please sense my sarcasm) Merlina then instantaneously summons our lovable hedgehog from the sky to protect her, who lands with a thud, who then franticly ping pongs around to save his two chili-cheese dogs from meeting their demise in the dirt. After eating one of them, he tosses the other in the air, wipes out all the goons except for King Arthur, and catches it before it lands. Merlina then explains that the power of Excalibur has corrupted the king so he is ruling his kingdom using armies from the underworld (Lich king anyone?) Then as Sonic attempts to go after the king, Merlina stops him saying that the game doesn’t end 5 minutes from the opening no matter how much you want it to, no wait I lied… she says something about King Arthur’s invulnerability due to Excalibur’s scabbard etc.  This all took place in a beautiful cut scene; I was actually impressed and thought that no matter how bad the game was at least I could have my pretty cut scenes. Well, sad news is, that’s the ONLY damned cut scene in almost the whole friggin’ game, all other modes of storytelling while progressing are some form of animated storyboard garbage where their lips don’t even move.

But the voice acting is great and Sonic still sounds like the lovable arrogant douche from the other games. However the dialogue is so corny and the one-liners don’t even hit me at first because they aren’t even recognizable as one-liners (That’s showing how bad they are, not how dumb I am ). The game later introduces you to your sword, Caliburn (he also talks by the way, with a heavy accent to boot), and you are to master using him in order to defeat the three knights of Arthur and eventually face King Arthur himself. Now get this, Knuckles is Sir Gawain, and Shadow is Sir Lancelot, two of the three knights you are to defeat. They are also wearing medieval helmets and have armor and swords. They look stupid, very stupid, but it was somewhat amusing. I love how this game not only butchers Sonic lore but also the Arthurian one.

This is the most linear game I have ever played, even compared to Mario on the SNES. You know why?  At least in Mario you can face backwards. One of the first things that struck me was… “Hey, I can’t turn around.” Then you start to notice that there is no camera control, which can only mean one things… there is no reason to adjust the camera. Then I realized there is only one directional for almost the whole game, forward tilt. Sonic performs hairpin turns, loops, and other crazy stunts all by simply pressing forward. There is not much gameplay left in a game to redeem itself from such a terrible design. Also, sonic only has sword attacks this time around, and sword maneuvers are performed by moving the Wii-mote. Now you may think that swinging it horizontally will make a sweep and vertical would be a direct slash, I sure was, but then I realized it doesn’t matter HOW you move the Wii-mote, you will always slash and destroy things in your path by blindly flailing the Wii-mote. There is also a jump move which has no real use other than scaling objects, and a Soul Surge move which uses up an energy bar that allows you to perfectly hit enemies, but flailing wildly does the job just fine so this ability has no real use except for a boss fight. Speaking of Boss fights… WOW did they do a TERRIBLE absolutely HORRENDOUS job of designing boss fights. Not to mention that all of the knights were EXACTLY the same type of fight. I will go through my first encounter (not like any later encounter was different) with a boss knight to more effectively articulate how bad they are. You start out face to face with a Knight, since I had no idea what this encounter had in store for me, I just charged in while flailing the Wii-mote. Now get this, before the enemy finished talking I had already won. I was almost certain that I had somehow glitched the game or my random flailing must have accidently unlocked the hidden combo or something, so I immediately restarted the fight. Second time through, I did the same thing, and I won within seconds. The next two knights are EXACTLY the same, I even tried closing my eyes one time and I think I did better.



There are two boss fights left after these, which actually are boss fights but are not anything extraordinary. (How can they be with three buttons as your arsenal?) The other instances of Wii-mote specific actions are also extremely lackluster. On one occasion you are to use the Wii-pointer to reflect light, using your sword, into a rock to free a civilian by shattering it with light. (Makes complete sense I know, I got an A in physics…) It is nice to know that the Sonic Team wants me to practice my pointing skills in case I wanted to work for the weather station. There are also prompts to shake your Wii-mote when parrying a boss (only King Arthur really) to get more attacks in, but these prompts are badly timed.  I kept dying to King Arthur only to figure out the timing of the prompt was wrong and that was why I was failing.

The extras in the game are irritating and pointless. As you go through levels you get items such as helmets flowers and tomes.  I think this is Sonic Team’s attempt at trying to make sonic into some type of RPG that medieval is often associated with, but none of the items are equipable nor do they have any sort of value, other than trading it to friends online. Multiplayer for such a thoughtless game is also not even worth mentioning, although there are a lot of multiplayer modes, along with an online ranking of scores from the single player mode. However if you are above the age of 10 and spend time perfecting your scores for such a bad game’s online ranking, you have severe problems. The game from start to finish can be done in one night, it is a very short game, and you will be thankful for that.