Now that we’ve had some extended hands on time with Sonic’s latest outing we thought we’d let you know whether Sega are deserving of your hard earned cash. First and foremost this isn’t Sonic as you’ve known him before, this is essentially just a 3rd person infinite runner in the vein of Temple Run with a Sonic flavour. Whilst the game doesn’t offer anything remarkably different from other runners out there it certainly does do the infinite runner gameplay very solidly.

After the recent Rayman Run showed just how well a 2D runner can work on touch screen devices it is slightly dissapointing that Sonic has abandoned his two dimensional routes in favour of a 3D approach, however the game features some nice 3D visuals and all of the Sonic trademarks are present and accounted for; lush green scenery, golden rings, power up boxes, mechanical villains and the fantastic Sonic music of old, if you haven’t played a Sonic game since the Mega Drive (we don’t blame you!) then you’re sure to get a nostalgic kick out of it at the very least. You control Sonic by swiping left and right to move him into one of 3 lanes, up to jump, and down to roll in a ball, allowing the player to collect rings, avoid obstacles and destroy enemies. Collected coins can be spent on power ups to help you land the ever elusive high score, whilst red rings (awarded for achieving certain challenges) can be spent on slightly more exciting things such as new characters including everyone’s favourite two tailed fox and red echidna, giving players something to aim for when playing.

The controls are tight and responsive, and thankfully there are no tilt controls in play as Lord knows how many times I’ve fallen to death on Temple Run due to a bumpy morning commute on the train, however Sonic’s lane changing ability is uncharacteristically a tad slow which can lead to some equally frustrating deaths.

Hopefully there will be updates as we’d like to see a bit more speed added (particularly to Sonic’s change of directions), more zones (we’ve experienced 2 so far, but maybe we just aren’t good enough yet to get to any more), more unlockable characters (theres a plethora available), more power ups and maybe some random boss style battles with Robotnik, as it is the game is a very solid starting point for a mobile Sonic game with room for improvement, hopefully Sega will continue to build upon it to really make it stand out from the crowd. This is a fun way to kill some time and will fill your mobile Sonic fix, however if you aren’t a fan of the blue blur at $1.99 this probably isn’t the game to convert you.

3/5