The saddest thing is that these are some of the game's highlights. Side quests, which often star additional secondary characters like Tails or Knuckles, are even more pathetic, unpolished, and sometimes laughable. Find a lost dog or chase down some kids. Whoopee. Even better: Silver travels back in time to kill the person responsible for his era's woes, and the first thing he does is collect apples? At least, he does once you figure it out - the game's instructions on how to do it are inaccurate.

The world is a cookie-cutter RPG kingdom (complete with countless random conversations), and the plot is the same Eggman-wants-jewel retread we've heard countless times before, except more complex and cluttered than ever before. If anything remotely cool is going on, odds are you're not even controlling Sonic at the time. And don't get us started on the insane story events near the game's climax, when it finally does go where no Sonic game has gone before. Just... don't.

Sonic also lacks the production values of an alleged triple-A title. The graphics are limp and lifeless: Objects constantly pop up that should have already been visible, animations are limited, and the hedgehogs appear to be made of clay. Sonic 's music seems more fitting for a Cracker Barrel restaurant than a supposed action-packed video game. Plus, tough as it is to understand on a system with a hard drive, load times are inexcusably long. Why must we wait over 30 seconds to play in the same environment we were already in?