Sega may be back on the rebound with it’s latest Sonic The Hedgehog title.

With recent releases of Sonic games including Sonic Unleashed being relatively mediocre it’s nice to see the genre trying to improve upon itself.  Sonic and the Black Knight puts our favorite blue hedgehog in medieval times during the fantastical reign of King Arthur.  Sonic is summoned by Merlina, the daughter of Merlin, to assist in taking down the immortal and equally evil King Arthur and his loyal Knights of the Round Table.

The game consists of the same fast-paced 3-D racing seen in Sonic and the Secret Rings, instead of using the Wii-mote to control Sonic’s back and forth movement, you use the nunchuck.  With your left hand controlling his forward, backward and side to side movement your right hand is left with the Wii-mote to “sword fight”.  The game actually pulls off the sword fighting quite well, though the pace of the game can be slowed down quite a bit while engaging in battle.  The controlling of Sonic is rather straight forward and seamless.

Within the game you are able to level your character and add items to his reportoire which don’t seem to make much difference in the way the game plays.  What is also nice is that my 6 year old son is able to play and control with some of his dad’s coaching.  He even commented that “this is the best game ever”.

Sonic and the Black Knight is not without it’s frustrating moments, it can be unclear at times what your objective is within each race.  You can also do harm to towns-people who happen to be roaming around the world you are racing in.  Thankfully the game is without the very slow “talk to this person” aspect that Sonic Unleashed had incorporated.

With the removal of the Werehog gameplay and the lack of having to use the Wii-mote to control all of Sonic’s movement I definitely enjoyed playing this game much more than the last 2 Sonic games I have played.

Rating: 3 of 5 Knights of the Round!