Sonic Links

After the test run was done and dusted, we sat there, waiting for the punchline, staring blankly at the screen, 'like a dog that's just been shown a card trick', as Bill Hicks put it. Sonic Links started out dull, then slid downhill from there. There's nothing especially bad about it from a technical or numerical perspective, as such, It's just the theme, features, and gameplay combination is completely devoid of creativity or any kind of spark. We dug deep to find a compliment to pad out the feedback section with, but nothing came to mind. There is little noteworthy about Sonic Links, with the exception of a fairly banging tune. From the tiresome fruit theme use to the equally tiresome features, the conclusion is best summed up by a question - what was the point? Sonic Links is like the opposite of a passion project. It's the type of game a development team cobbles together on a Friday afternoon, so they've got something to hand in on Monday morning. Where the only condition management put in place was that the game had to have a Link & Win feature and pack a 5,000x top prize. Besides those stipulations, the crew were free to fill in the blanks with their imagination. Except not really, because there is nothing imaginative to be found in Sonic Links. It's similar to the sort of mediocrity Just For The Win was occasionally mired in during the early days before pulling away to make more playable slots. Well, that mediocrity appears to have dragged them back for a reunion. There may well be players into this predictable style of gaming, and we could not be happier for them. For us, though, Sonic Links was so uninspiring; playing it was like teetering on the event horizon of a creative black hole that was busy sucking the passion, innovation, and joy out of game design.