"There's no such thing as an arrow through your dreams." That lyric must have been written on the board at every meeting SEGA held while working on Sonic and the Secret Rings. It's in the main theme song. Sonic says it when you finish a level. The developers must have clung to the notion that the dream of a good 3D Sonic hasn't died yet.

But it really, really has.

Sonic and the Secret Rings marks the Hedgehog's first outing on the Nintendo Wii. Long before its release, buzz around the game had been building as a result of wild speculation around the use of the Wii's unique controls. How would the motion sensor come into play? Would the pointer be part of boss fights? Nun-chuck or no nun-chuck? Secret Rings had the potential to turn the Sonic franchise on its head and to finally produce a 3D hit. It had the potential, yes, but a long list of missed opportunities, awkward presentation and an absolutely abhorrent soundtrack take the wind out of this one's sails.

SEGA promised Wii owners a "back to the roots" Sonic the Hedgehog game with Secret Rings. Sonic would run on set paths, constantly moving forward. The idea being to attempt to emulate the pace of the old 2D games from the Genesis era, and to have raw speed as the focus for this fresh new look at Sonic. In essence, this is a great idea. Too much necessary exploration hampered the Sonic games on the Dreamcast and robbed the game of any feeling of speed, which is the core of any good Sonic game. With this idea, players would be sent barreling down pathways and would have to react to the environment and enemies with lightning speed if they wanted to see the end of the level. Just like the good old days, right? Turns out, not so much.

The seemingly simple overhaul that SEGA decided to give 3D Sonic - the "on rails" gameplay - is bogged down by ridiculous design choices. In nearly every one of the seven worlds, you'll run into this scenario: Sonic needs to get from point A to point B. Fine, that's easy. Sonic needs to clear a canyon or something else that is perilous is order to get to point B. Okay, it's still standard fare. To do this, Sonic needs to hit a spring, just like any other Sonic, to get enough speed and height to clear this canyon. That's cool, but the unique bit to Secret Rings comes into play here. In order to make that spring appear—that's right, it's not just there already, as part of the level design—Sonic's going to have to run overtop of a switch that will make the spring appear when it is activated. That wouldn't be so bad if the switch wasn't in front of the springboard. Sonic has to back up after pressing the switch to hit the spring. The constant forward movement of the game makes that very difficult. You'll have to pull the controller back towards yourself and deal with the fact that the camera won't reposition itself to help you do so. This means you're moving backwards, slowly, while trying to guess where that spring might have appeared. The pace of the game takes a real kick in the groin when these things crop up. If it were once or twice in the whole game that would have been forgivable, but instead these sorts of situations are commonplace and leave you thinking "another one of these dumb things?" after you've seen the first few.

A neat idea that the developers tried out was adding an RPG element to the Hedgehog's arsenal. There are one hundred upgrades available to the spiky little guy that range from better attacks to being able to plain out just run that much faster. Some of them are also fancy little things like being able to attract rings to Sonic, slow down time (time break) and speed up Sonic to a ridiculous extent for short period of time (speed break). These last two become particularly essential to finishing some of the more difficult sections of the game, few as they are. The trouble, however, with these new techniques is that they just weren't given very much care. Activate time break and you'll see how choppy the "time is slowing down" effect looks. Things should look extra fluid and graceful while moving in slow motion, not choppy and jumpy. Speed break is just as bad. It speeds Sonic up so much that his entire surroundings become a blur and enemies can't hit him. It's useful, sure, to use speed break to skip over an enemy infested area, but it comes across as the developers giving the player a way out of a lame part of the game. You don't control Sonic while speed breaking, you just watch him do mach five. There's nothing to it: it's just a "skip this section" function.

I thought I would leave the story and music break-downs for last. They're two of the funkiest (not in a good way) choices I've seen in any game for a long time. Anyone who has stuck it out and played the previous 3D Sonic games knows that overly energetic 80's pop-rock has become the norm for the franchise. Knowing this, imagine every level having its own sort of theme song fully fleshed out with lyrics about the kind of things in the level. The Dinosaur Jungle stage's lyrics repeat with much gusto "There's dinos, It's a jungle," in case the player hadn't realized they were running past dinosaurs in a jungle.

But wait, why is Sonic running through a dinosaur infested jungle in the first place? How did that work its way into the story? Well, in the case of the Secret Rings, there are several stories. Sonic is thrown into the book of Arabian Nights, a collection of stories (including Aladdin and the Genie's Lamp, which is actually referenced in the opening cutscene) that is being erased by an evil genie who lives in the book. This bad dude's name is Erazor, and he seems to be voice acted by Phil in accounting. Laughable bad guy at best. The genie that implores Sonic to help save the stories in the book is named Shara, and she serves as your guide and as an annoying pest throughout the course of your adventure. Her exchanges with Sonic repeat almost every level, and she rarely says anything that the forced tutorial at the start of the game didn't teach you already. Tails, Knuckles and Dr. Eggman all make appearances in cutscenes, though as characters from Arabian nights. I had trouble not tuning out the cutscenes after Tails told me that "My name isn't Tails, it's Ali Baba." Awesome. My very own Ali Baba Tails. Just what I wanted, SEGA: thanks.

To top it all off, Secret Rings gives players some unlockable party games. Honestly, the less said about these games the better. They were developed from an entirely separate team to that which together the single player and they are, for all intents and purposes, a different game in and of themselves. There are long load times between the games, the controls are even less responsive than they are in single player, and finally, the entire enterprise reeks of an attempt at a Mario Party rip-off. It is very discouraging to see SEGA attempt this kind of piggyback success in the first place, but it is even worse that they failed.

I was very excited about Sonic and the Secret Rings. It held a lot of promise, and I've been waiting for a good Sonic game for a home console - any home console - since about 1993. The developers told press in interviews before the game's release that Prince of Persia, God of War and Shadow of the Colossus had all been influences in the development of Secret Rings. It seems that none of the success of these influences was theirs to be had. Sorry Sonic, but it's about time you wrap it up. Pack up and I'll see you when you're back in 2D.