Earlier this year the third Sonic the Hedgehog Movie hit the cinema and introduced to the non gaming audience one of the franchise’s best and more complex characters in Shadow the Hedgehog. Admittedly he’s also a character that many people get wrong as just being an emo loner. So today let’s look at the game which that movie drew the main parts of its plot from.

The second game of what is considered the Modern Era of Sonic, and for many one of the best. You get two options when starting the game, play the Hero story, or play the Villain story. You need to beat both to then unlock the final ending so it’s really which do you want to do first.

Hero story has you play as Sonic, Knuckles and Tails, and opens with Sonic arrested by the Guardian Units of Nations aka G.U.N. Sonic breaks out of the helicopter rides and races through a city and escapes pursuit of a giant truck leading into a boss fight with a G.U.N mech. It’s after that when things get interesting as a strange black and red hedgehog wielding a Chaos Emerald defeats Sonic resulting in his recapture. Elsewhere after a confrontation between Knuckles and a thief called Rouge the Bat ( a character the movie did not include for amusing reasons) over the Master Emerald results in it being shattered when Eggman tries to steal it. Tails is introduced arriving on Prison Island transforming his Bi-plane into a small mech. Amy is also there.

Choosing the Villain story has the plot starting much earlier with you controlling Eggman, who is also in a small mech, breaking into a G.U.N facility following information found in his grandfather Gerald Robotnik’s journal. He instead finds the ultimate life form created by his grandfather, Shadow the Hedgehog. Rouge also joins them for her own reasons.

Both stories have 3 types of play. Sonic and Shadow have the more Classic Sonic type levels called Speed Levels where you race through a level with platforming to reach the end goal. Knuckles and Rouge have Treasure finding levels which have you hunt down 3 items hidden in the level through clues and a hot and cold tracker system. Eggman and Tails finally have a sort of Blaster level, moving about and blowing up many enemies ranking up points. Speed levels are classics and are the most well loved and memorable levels. The Blaster levels work fine and you can get through without much difficulty. Treasure hunting though… are boring.. so very very boring and outside of music tracks that may make you chuckle, you just want them to be over.

All 3 types of level will grade you upon completion depending on how well you do, such as how fast, how many rings, your score from blowing stuff up. These are more for completionism sake as you can do additional challenges on completed levels each with a completion rank for some rewards that can be used in the Chao Garden or to go for all max clear if you want 100%

The Chao Garden lets you raise the cute little blue blobby things and have them take part in mini games for more items for rewards for them. So once again all optional, but there is a fair bit you can do if you want to. Your Chaos’ appearance will be affected by who is raising them and how they are raised as well. One raised by Shadow will have some features from the best character.

Since this is the GameCube port there is also a multi player mode, they fit into these 3 game modes.  There are 2 additional characters for each mode such as Amy and Metal Sonic for the races and each character gains Super Moves by collecting rings, which usually ends in a time freeze against your opponent. Honestly not really worth your time as it’s just tacked on and unlike the  other side content, it has no rewards.

Treasure Hunting missions aside the game are very enjoyable and there are a good number of things to do in the game to keep yourself busy. You have a decent story with more than a few plot twists that ends in a memorable finale that the franchise has often tried to reach again even though this is one of the few Sonic games that doesn’t have you fight some deity-like creature.

So I say if you can find this game, or perhaps they eventually put it up on the GameCube player on the Switch 2, I say give it a shot. You will get annoyed by the surprisingly low amount of levels that let you play as Shadow. But you will get why the character became so popular that despite he was meant to be die at the end of this game, he came back which would be continued in Sonic Heroes and finish in his own game Shadow the Hedgehog. This is the game the “live and learn” came from for those that wondered what the importance of that track they used in the movie was.

Rating: 🎮🎮🎮