Being a huge Sega fan, and an even bigger fan of Sonic the Hedgehog I decided to purchase Sonic' s latest game. And trust me, I tried really hard to like it but holy hell is this game bad. It' s one of the worst programmed games I' ve ever come across. Bad camera, terrible glitches everywhere, endless load times, and unforgiving slowdown. I' m not trying to write a review because I believe enough has been said about how bad this game is.

At a different forum I had my own little beef to say about PSU. Even I' m quite surprised how far Sega has fallen just in the past couple years. Where are the beautiful games like JSRF, Gunvalkyrie, or Panzer Dragoon Orta? Hell even Shinobi had more going for it than Sega' s latest games.

But when I really thought about it, should I blame Sega as a whole, or one of the biggest branch of Sega that won' t stop phucking up - Sonic Team. After all, some of the Sega' s other development teams seem to be doing fine. Granted Sega hasn' t released a triple A must have in quite some time, releases like Chromehounds was well received by gamers. Virtua Fighter 5 looks amazing as does there new Monkey Ball game. Yakuza was well recieved too, and the Hockey/Soccer Manager games have been hovering around 80-90% on gamerankings.com. Plus Sega did publish (not develop) some pretty good titles recently. So it' s not as if Sega as a whole is screwing up so I feel it' s only fair to pinpoint the main problem.

Compare Sonic Team' s latest releases to the rest of Sega' s games. Does anyone else get the impression that Sonic Team is still using the same game engines developed on the Dreamcast? Seriously, look at the evolution of the Sonic games - they haven' t evolved. The same glitches that appeared in ' 99 are still in the freakin' series! The camera has yet to be fixed, only slightly improved, and even though the graphics are shoddy there' s still horrible slowdown.

Speaking of the graphics, while Sonic Team has never been know for having the best artists, Sonic 360 looks incredibly outdated. The textures are flat and often just one color. Look at Knuckles backside when he runs, you can' t really see any textures at all besides one basic color - red. The shadows are horrible, and in general the lighting effects are nothing to write about. The only good thing about the graphics are some of the character models and with the added power of the 360 the colors are more vibrant and in HD.

But it' s obvious the game was not designed from the ground up to take advantage of the 360 (or any nextgen hardware). I can' t say with 100% confidence Sonic Team still uses the same engine from the Dreamcast days, but all signs point to the fact Sonic Team probably hasn' t truly updated it in years. So all Sonic Team' s hype of a " nextgen Sonic" was a blatant lie. A Sonic game built for the 360 would have far better textures and less slowdown. I refuse to believe Kameo can have countless enemies on the screen at once but it' s impossible for Sonic Team to manage four enemies on the screen and an exploding box without slowdown. To me it' s just a sign Sonic Team tried making a game using outdated technology slightly enhanced by the power of the 360 but not truly using the power of the 360. And comparing the Sonic games from the past couple hardware generations, the Sonic games only look " slightly" better but no real visual leap has occured. Not like the visual leap of going from Halo 1 to Halo 2, without the added benefit of HD Sonic 360 would not look much better than Sonic Heroes on the original Xbox.

And then you have Phantasy Star Universe, a game I already ripped apart in the link above. Considering the original PSO was released over five years ago most would expect a bigger leap in gameplay and graphics, but once again that is definitely not the case. PSU also feels like it was created using archaic technology. Well, considering PSU was designed for the PS2 then yeah I guess that is archaic technology, but then check out Final Fantasy 11, also designed for the PS2. It looks and plays (from a technical standpoint) way better than PSU and was released two years ago! Even with a two year headstart Sonic Team is still producing visually underwhelming and outdated games.

Now I realize Sega as a whole hasn' t been doing great, but Sonic Team truly puts a black eye on Sega because it' s Sonic Team that is developing Sega' s " flagship" games. I think Sega should really cut Sonic Team loose, take the money from developing/marketing Sonic Team' s games and use the extra cash to to better enhance some of their other titles and stop letting Naka hog the spotlight. Until Sonic Team can make a game worth buying Sega should force them to stick to making Nintendo DS games. They seem to be good at that.