This is a hard game to talk about.  On one hand it's a creative and fun hack of a beloved game.  And on the other hand it's extremely irritating and goes against what makes sonic games sonic.  Before I talk about the game I should talk about what makes sonic games Sonic.  Sonic has always been the anti Mario.  He's fast, he's cool, he doesn't save princesses.  His music is always awesome except for 2 games, which is rather amazing when you think about it.  From the classic genesis era tunes, to Crush 40's great songs in the adventure games, to orchestral modern Sonic games.  Sonic has had some rough points, particularly right before the transition to 3d and the infamous 06 disaster.  But it's a testament to the games that Sonic has survived as long as he did.  Some people may say that Sonic has never been good but the fact that to this day he's still around disproves that.  Sonic is a fast paced platforming game with awesome music.  This game is not sonic.  Allow me to explain.

     Graphics (8):  The graphics look really good, blending well together so it looks just like normal sonic.  They put the spin-dash and super peel out abilities in here so that's rather impressive.  The only thing that doesn't really look good are explosions.  There's really not much else to talk about here, the graphics look nice.  Moving on.

     Music (9):  Like regular Sonic, the music is really catch.  How catchy?  catchy enough that I actually played the game with the sound on.  This says a lot about the music as I usually just mute it and play something else.  You might get a little tired of the music after a few minutes of hearing it (and yes, that will happen) and this is the only thing holding it back from a 10.

     Addictiveness (3):  And here's where it begins to fall off.  I beat the game without skipping anything, and now I'm done.  I'll talk about the factors that hold it back later, but to put it simply, the game's really a one time thing.  I beat it, and have no reason to go through again.  In the end there's nothing bringing me back.

      Story (5):  I honestly don't know how to rate this.  At the end of each level you get some text explaining what happened, but story still is rather confusing.  The text is rather comedic at times but doesn't really explain what's going on.  Now since the game is really short and it's funny at times I don't mind the somewhat confusing story but the original story was in my opinion better.  Evil scientist turns animals into robots, stop him.  Simple and to the point.

      Depth (3):  OK, now remember in the sonic games where you could go into bonus stages and collect the Chaos Emeralds.  It would give you a better ending but was completely optional.  Well this game also has chaos emeralds.  But it's mandatory to get them (in rather tedious stages but that's another matter).  After you beat the game you can unlock basically your super form as a permanent feature, but that's rely not enough to bring you back.  After you beat the game there's not much else you can do.  This game has less depth than the original.

      Difficulty (9):  9, easy 9.  This game is really hard.  You should notice the difficulty mostly in the special stages, the ruins, and stage 8.  Also the final boss uses arguably the hardest Eggman fight from the series, because of the instant-kill crushes.  Remember labyrinth zone, well don't worry, even through it's in this game you won't die to drowning as much as you will to killer cameras.  An interesting feature of this game is that you can't game over, a feature that keeps this game from being a 10.  Instead you have a death counter that counts up.  So does that mean that 1ups are useless?  No, they instead lower your death counter.  What does the death counter do besides mock you?  I have no clue.  No some parts are actually well designed difficulty.  But some parts are just needlessly tough.  Now again the game does give you an out.  At the beginning of each tough area you can use a skip device that will take you to the end of the area but you will lose any power-ups and rings you have.  However you have to play through the special stages.  I did not use any of these because I'm not a cheater.  You also have a double jump, spindash, peel out, and ground pound to help you.  But because you can't use any of these in the really difficult areas it doesn't help any.  You have an infinite jump in your super form but it's needlessly complex to use.  The bosses aren't that hard, and they have a life meter (unless your in your super form or fighting the final boss) so that makes things easier.

     Overall (7):  This game is not bad, but it's also not sonic.  In certain areas you actually feel like you're playing a sonic game, like level 1, and 7.  I don't mind difficulty, especially since you can bypass most of the really tedious parts.  The game has some interesting mechanics to it, the graphics are nice and the music is great.  I can ignore the poor story, and the lack of depth.   But I can't ignore that the game doesn't feel like Sonic.  A lot of the time it's a slow paced trial by error.  People don't like Labyrinth Zone because it slowed the game down, and this game spends a lot of time in that sort of situation.  If this wasn't a Sonic game I might like it more but in the end, I just don't feel the speed that I love about Sonic.  You may like this game, it has some clever ideas and mechanics to it.  But don't play it expecting a Sonic game.  It's an OK game, not great, but not terrible either.

That was a nice review my friend. I loved your introduction about what makes a Sonic game. I actually never thought about it.

You could have gone into a little more details (like compare graphics and music to other Sonic games or games from that era), but it is still worthy of a 4.

janus : I really do agree with you on the intro lol.
But yes this is a very detailed review and I do like your spin on the intro. I have never touched this game in my life. But I might give it a try even though you think its just a average game.