Screenshots from Game Spot

Year released: 2004 (Gamecube, Playstation 2, and X-Box)

Number of Players: 1 for story, 2 can race

Sonic and a bunch of others head out to stop Eggman once again.

Graphics: Smooth. Everything looks wonderful. You get sunny beaches, sunrise on cliffs, and stormy skies. Main characters are colorful little creatures. Enemies are somewhat plain. Not much to say, really.

Play control: (for Gamecube version) Pretty good. You can move characters around with the joystick, as usual. There are four teams, each having three types of characters: speed, fly, and power. All can jump with the A button. However, press it again in midair as a speed character to throw the character forward or lock onto a nearby enemy for attack, as a flying type to fly into the air, and as a power type to glide downward. As a speed type, press B on the ground to somersault forward quickly (attack), as a flying to shoot your two teammates forward at enemies (your teammates will lock onto enemies if your aim is close enough), and as a power to punch. In midair, press B as a speed type to spin around in a circle (an attack, but also activates some devices), as a flying type to shoot teammates in the same fashion as above, or as a power type to throw your enemies (this has more power than a flying type's throw). There's other stuff I could explain, but those give you a good idea of the gameplay. At first, it's a bit awkward to switch between characters (X and Y to choose which character you want to lead the group, can be done any time during gameplay) and use their different techniques, and it stays that way for a while. However, after going through one or two of the four team's stories completely, you get the hang of it, and are able to switch on the fly to do whatever you please.

Sound: The music is slightly peppy and somewhat techno, following in the vein of Sonic Adventure. Sound effects are mostly wooshes and BAM!s.

Challenge: There are numerous enemy-based and landscape-based challenges. At several points in a stage, the game will stop you and force you to take out a bunch of enemies before you can move on. As for landscape challenges, there are a lot of things thrown at you that you don't expect, and you run into them because the game forces you to move fast. At first these come off as cheap and impossible to avoid, but you just have to learn to roll with the punches.
After you beat everything, in order to really complete the game, you have to reach every last goal. This means doing so well on every stage that your score is an A--A being the best score for a stage, B second best, then C, then D, and finally E being the worst score. Your score comes from how fast you get through a stage, how many rings you have, and the tricks you pulled off. There are different ways to perform tricks (passing through certain big rings, for example), but most come from destroying so many enemies without stopping. For example, using the midair A button attack for a speed type to hop from enemy to enemy, destroying each one along the way and not touching the ground, earns you some bonus points. Oh, yeah, and if you destroy enough stuff and get enough rings, you can earn the right to perform a Team Attack, destroying everything on the screen at once.

Gameplay: Has the same ring-collecting engine as all Sonic games. Get a ring, you're protected from hits, get hit, you drop all rings.
This game is really not what it is at first glance. It starts off as a cumbersome platformer. However, as you get better, you learn to switch between the three characters and make gameplay smoother, enabling you to score more points through tricks and more fluid enemy destruction. You basically have to take something clumsy and manage to link it all together fluidly in one spectacular performance to get a high score--a performance that should remind players of Sonic Adventure 2 and NiGHTS.

Bottom line: It will really take you a while to get the hang of this thing... but once you do, it's interesting. Oh, yeah, one team in the game revolves more around exploring--collecting stuff being their goal (for example, one stage makes them find ten keys). You take a normal linear platforming stage, and then make the characters find hidden rooms. So while you're busy gluing everything together for a bonus point-filled performance, you're keeping your eyes peeled for signs of different stuff. It's much more linear than the emerald-hunting stages from the Sonic Adventure games (not a giant room you can go all over the place in--it's a normal platforming stage, just with collectables put all over the place), and comes off much better than the emerald hunting stages.

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