I decided to check out the demo on the XBOX Live Marketplace for Sonic the Hedgehog. It was a 350MB download. That was good news since I had less that 1GB free on my XBOX 360 hard drive.

I thought my XBOX 360 had locked up once I loaded the game. I was stuck at a black screen for about 20 seconds. During that time, the controller was not responsive. That had me cringing. The last time that happened, I was out $130 and had to send my XBOX 360 back to Microsoft.

Once in the game, I noticed a slick UI. The loading screen and splash screens looked vivid and crisp in 720p.

I hopped into the first level and noticed the graphics. They were last-gen HD in my opinion. They looked good, as good as Sonic has ever looked, but these graphics aren’t pushing the 360. Still, it was great playing Sonic on a Microsoft console.

This game is played from the 3rd person perspective. The camera can orbit around Sonic. This at times got messy as the camera didn’t always point where I wanted it to point. The game tried to assume where I’d want to look. However, this at times had me looking at walls or off the edges of a map. I noticed I really only had this problem when I was moving slow. I mean, this is Sonic. Run! When running the camera really wasn’t a problem.

I could move the camera around with my bumper buttons or one of the analog sticks. This at times was a must. The demo level has you hanging over a huge canyon. If you fall, you die. I jumped off the edge of the map several times because I didn’t have a good camera angle.

The controls were simple: run or jump. Double jumping does a “homing attack” which kills/damages anything Sonic “homes” into. It seems way too easy to kill the mini boss characters spread throughout the levels. Just jump in front of them, press the jump button again and sit back. That boss is gonna’ die.

The “homing attack” is also useful in getting to extreme places on the map. As a matter of fact, the game requires you to do a “homing attack” to advance to other parts of the map. In one case you have to “home” into a rope that slings you high above the map. Miss the rope and you’ll be falling for a few seconds until you die.

The demo was enough to convince me that I shouldn’t buy this game as is. I’m a big Sonic fan. I played the SEGA Genesis three times as much as I’ve played a Nintendo system. I never really like the 3D Sonic format. I’ve always been a fan of the 2D side-scrolling format. I wish Sonic was more like the New Super Mario Brothers for DS game – a classic game with 3D side-scrolling. The same thing happened just after the Mario/Mario World games when 3D with a floating camera. I lost interest. However, I bought a new DS Lite just for the purpose of playing the New Super Mario Brothers game. I enjoy many 3D games. I don’t enjoy the floating camera (3rd person camera) though.