Sonic Labyrinth

I remember the discourse surrounding this game in the Late 2000s/Early 2010s. It was by far the most popular game to dislike in an era where Sonic '06 was fairly recent. You'd often find Sonic Labyrinth in the top TWO of every Worst List. Some even comparing it to the likes of that Famicom Transformers Game which was practically nothing but cheap deaths! I'm not here to say people were "Wrong" for disliking it, but I think its insignificance mighta been blown outta the water back in the day.

The main point of contention with this game is Sonic the Hedgehog-you know, the "GOTTA GO FAST" guy-doesn't really DO a lot of Fast Going in this game. His shoes have been replaced with Heavy ones, so the story goes, and now he must slowly trek his way through mazes to find keys for the exit, while frequently engaging with enemies by rolling around the area like a pinball or something. The lack of speed is gonna raise a few eyebrows from people but IF you can look past that, I do think the devs TRIED to make this idea work.

I imagine making an isometric platformer similar to "3D Blast" might've been difficult to manage on an 8-Bit handheld at the time, so probably the next best thing was to make the levels play out like a dungeon in the Legend of Zelda games, and I can kinda see this idea working... The controls are a bit awkward to get used to due to the slow nature of the game (you'll do mostly rolling around to get to places faster, and there can be weird collision detection with the doors sometimes) but they're still pretty manageable, and the levels seem to have been made with this control scheme in mind. You can even find the speedy shoes power-up which makes Sonic move like butter! Man I wish this was the normal way he controlled sometimes...

I was surprised by the general presentation honestly. This game... Looks GOOD! I like the general art style, it lends itself pretty well to the simplistic color scheme. The enemy designs are very distinct yet still feel like something from a Sonic game. The music is nice too. I do wish every level had its own theme rather than cycling through the same bunch on repeat, but this is still one of the catchier 8-Bit Sonic OST's. I might even go back and listen to the Final Boss theme honestly.

Now before I start to come off like some sort of contrarian, I still think Sonic Labyrinth has other issues beyond its weird premise. This game is EASY. Like... Too Easy for its own good... Even for a Sonic Game. You can basically plow through every level with next to no opposition. Occasionally enemies will knock Sonic's keys away (just like the rings in other games) but they just stay in place rather than bounce around, and you have to pick them up again because they're "mandatory" which is time consuming. I was gonna say having a time limit doesn't really mix well with a game about a Slow Sonic, but honestly I forgot that was even a Thing for a while. I finished most of the levels with over a minute to spare. And the bosses are PATHETIC! Just find a place to roll back and forth while they're in range, and they'll go down without a fight.

The only time where this game put up ANY sort of challenge is the Very last level before you face Robotnik, and even then, once you figure out where you're supposed to go it becomes more tedious than anything else, really. There's also that ONE Bonus door you gotta find if you wanna get the true ending... And when you DO get in, you'll be wondering if you even did the special stage right considering they don't even TELL YOU you got the Emerald until right at the end credits!

Sonic Labyrinth isn't the worst Sonic Game I've ever played, but it's probably the most Mid. It's the kind of game you pop in if you're desperate for a Sonic game you haven't played before/in a while, or if you're waiting for your chicken nuggets to be done in like 10 minutes. And for a game about Sonic that goes against his main gimmick and doesn't do enough after that to make it a gratifying experience... Yeah, it's no surprise this was ridiculed to heck and back, but for my money the Hedgehog's had bigger pratfalls even on the same system.

5/10