Poor Sonic Team. They've been reduced to making games that have absolutely no content. There's no gameplay, no difficulty, and certainly no fun.

Remember when Sonic games were good? In the early 1990s, Sonic completely dominated the 2D-platform genre. The Sonic games alone were responsible for a large portion of the Genesis' success. Then Sega slowly died... they discouraged their loyan fans by releasing, but not supporting, a series of expensive hardware devices. By the time the Dreamcast came out, nobody cared how great it was - if a Sega fan considered buying one, he'd just look at his Genesis with his Sega CD ($300) and 32X ($150) attached, then turn to his Saturn ($400) that's missing a number of promised hit games, and consider something else.

In a desperate move to reclaim their fans' loyalty, Sega started releasing a bunch of bad Sonic games for the Dreamcast. They didn't resemble the original 16-bit series at all - they were just a series of quick speed-through levels that required little more than holding down the "forward" button.

I decided to give Sega another chance and try the new Sonic Heroes game for the Xbox. It's supposedly from the original Sonic Team. It must be good, right?

Nope.

The great majority of the gameplay is just like the other post-16-bit Sonic games: rushing through loops, ramps, curves, and other non-interactive elements. I don't feel like I'm playing the game, because I don't really need to do very much - it seems more like I'm just holding "fast forward" while watching a movie.

This will probably be the last new Sonic game I try.

Difficulty

It's difficult to stay awake.

Replay Value

The levels are completely linear, with very few alternate paths available. The game offers absolutely no reason to play the same level twice.

Graphics

Acceptable, but not what you'd expect from a modern console in the mature stage of its lifecycle.

Sound

I actually considered modifying my database to allow me to put a negative value here. The sound is easily the worst aspect of the game - you're bombarded by annoying speech messages from the characters to "help" you along. The music is uninspiring, and most important sound effects have been taken from the 16-bit games. Come on, this is 2004.

Overall

Awful. There's no reason to play this game. It's definitely not a Sonic game at all - it's a tech demo of something else, possibly a bad racing game, with Sonic characters pasted into it.