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Sonic and the Black Knight is a Knightmare







Posted on October 14, 2022




Sonic and the Black Knight is a Knightmare


And it is one that you won’t forget.


It would be an understatement to say that Sonic and the Black Knight is a promising experiment gone terribly wrong. Since the spring of this year, I have gotten back around to keeping up with the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. After the disaster of Sonic Origins, that SEGA so graciously released one update patch for insofar, I decided to cut my losses and see what was up with Sonic Frontiers. The game looks like it’s coming along fine (great in fact), and I am thoroughly convinced that SEGA pulled a “had you all in the first half” scheme with their marketing which is why the game looked like an unreal engine tech demo made by a university student when it was first shown. Something that caught my eye with frontiers are the graphics and aesthetic of the game. The realism reminded me of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 a lot. But it also reminded me of another game. And that game was Sonic and the Black Knight.


Section I: A Little Bit of a Backstory


See, back when Sonic and the Black Knight released, the industry was still reeling from the catastrophic event that was Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. Sonic was in his “dark days” so to speak. Unlike the 360 and PS3, the Wii never got such a terrible game. But unfortunately, in the stead of a 2006 Wii port, we were blessed by the SEGA gods with two terribly crafted games that basically went to the opposite extreme of Sonic 2006. Forget somewhat proper controls, world exploration, and being able to actually MOVE in 3D without feeling like you’re on a dog leash. Sonic and the Secret Rings was its own garbage can of shit that I cannot afford to get into right now since we are talking about Sonic and the Black Knight. But it should be known that in the past two years or so, every single search engine on the internet has started to have this incredibly odd bias of bringing up mountains of defense media for Sonic and the Black Knight. The game got panned pretty hard on release, but all of a sudden over a decade later, people are playing this game up like it was the next coming of Christ. I kid you not. So, I figured “Okay well maybe these people are right. Perhaps I have a bad memory and should play this game again and maybe it isn’t actually all that bad.” Right? Wrong.


Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (Top Image) and Sonic and the Black Knight (Bottom Image)


I could not have been ever more so wrong. I grabbed by wiimote, the game, and sat down to see what Sonic and the Black Knight was like over a decade later and...oh-my-god I cannot even begin to explain just how much of a train wreck this game was. The intro played and I was like “Okay there is a decent video intro and main theme, Knight of the Wind is a banger. Nice!” before the intro then cut short and I did not even get to hear the full song. I was like “uh that’s kind of odd but okay” and was at the title screen where the same cut-short version of the song played. I went on ahead and setup my profile. Little did I know that the menu interface design was about to go to absolute shit after the name entry screen. But we will get into that later in the review.


Notice not only the heavy skew in opinions for both of the Sonic storybook games that came out on the Wii but also look at how Sonic and the Secret Rings, a game sporting an even worse formula than Black Knight, has almost double the score of its successor from critics.


Section II: The Review


Before we get into the meat of the review, I should explain how I am going to be grading this game. There will be six categories to this review which are: Writing, Gameplay, Controls, Sound design, Graphics, and User Interface design. Every category will be scored out of ten and then the mean of those scores will be calculated out of ten, giving the game a final review score.


Writing (2/10) – A Masterclass in Murdering a Classic Tale


Warning: There are story spoilers since this covers the whole plot from beginning to end. You have been properly warned. Do not complain later.




The story of Sonic and the Black Knight reads like an improv script run amok and severely lacks in the department of creativity and earnest writing. The game opens up in the world of Camelot that exists within the book of “King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table” (no this is not a joke) where we see Merlin’s granddaughter, Merlina (which yes that is actually her name) attempting to run away from the black knight (a fancy name for King Arthur) as he makes random cuts in the very fabric of the story book’s space-time reality (or so one is left to assume) and summons his demonic minions that look like some stock fantasy MMORPG enemies. The minions surround Merlina who then performs a summoning ritual which brings (you guessed it) Sonic to her world. It literally plays out like one of those horrible anime isekai shows that everyone loves to clown on (and trust me, they get clowned on for a very good reason). Sonic, clearly confused as to what the hell is going on, drops face first into the dirt while attempting to catch some falling chili dogs that he brought with him. Despite his clear confusion, he does what Sonic does best, and acts impulsively, defeating King Arthur’s stock asset minions.




Sonic then attempts to charge King Arthur and put a beat down on him but Merlina (who has been standing around doing literally nothing this whole time) somehow has the speed to latch onto his arm before he can fly forward towards the king and has the strength to literally hold Sonic in place while he’s still running. She pulls him back and does some vague magic spell casting gesture before both her and Sonic are whisked away from the vicinity of King Arthur and his trusty steed (which when considered together look and behave like a cheaply re-skinned version of Ocarina of Time’s Phantom Ganon). King Arthur then glides across the ground and trots into the sky to park himself by a cliff where Sir Percival, Sir Gawain, and Sir Lancelot (who are obviously Blaze, Knuckles, and Shadow, but the developers didn’t want to call them Blaze, Knuckles, and Shadow because Sonic’s friends are now written into a historical fairy tale book world thingy) are standing around and waiting for the King to say some mundane shit to them about going after Sonic to kill him and his damsel in distress. The King does so and then the story switches back to Merlina and Sonic in an awful cut-scene style that looks like a fancy Microsoft Power Point. I understand they were trying to do this whole “storybook” aesthetic, but surely, they could have opted for smooth hand drawn animations amidst a page of words or something. Quite literally anything would be better. So Sonic presses Merlina for answers about who the king figure was and she tells him that it was the Black Knight. Apparently, the Black Knight used to be King Arthur, but he is now corrupted and has immortal life because he has the scabbard of Excalibur or something. And the scabbard turned his sword into something called “Deathcalibur” (yeah you can really tell that the writing team was putting their best foot forward with this franchise entry).


Sonic’s friends get all geared up to go to comic-con together.


So, with “Deathcalibur” in his possession and the scabbard of Excalibur, King Arthur, now the Black Knight rules the world in an evil manner because…he just does. Don’t question it because I already have. Since the plot does not allow for Sonic to put a beat down on King Arthur with own bare hands and speed, Merlina has to train him in swordsmanship because clearly this wouldn’t be a medieval game if swords were not involved in some way. So, Sonic takes up a rusty sword and Merlina gives him the run down of handling a blade. After completing the tutorial segment of the plot, Merlina explains that King Arthur is evil because the scabbard gave him immortality. Why immortality alone would make someone evil is beyond me, but the writers sure were thinking hard about this one. Sonic then has to go and pull a talking sword out of a rock (clearly the writers didn’t learn from Super Mario Sunshine’s FLUDD) known as “Caliburn” which is, unsurprisingly, just another name for Excalibur. So, you basically have two swords in the game that share the same exact name, just said in different languages. Again, the writers were really breaking their backs with these unparalleled creative strides.


At this rate I am surprised that Amy WASN’T written in as the primary villain by the team.


Without questioning Amy’s sketchy behavior, he runs off to steal Blaze’s shit, which he does so successfully. Blaze’s world view is shattered upon defeat, and she tries to commit suicide just like Knuckles, but instead of killing herself with her own weapon, she opts for something a bit fancier and dramatically walks backwards off a cliff and falls into a pool of lava. Or well she would have fallen into the lava if it wasn’t for Sonic jumping down after her and doing some risky gymnastics to catch her before she landed in the boiling pot. An awkward cut-scene then ensues between Blaze, Sonic, and Caliburn which would make even the most prolific middle-school-aged fanfic writer want to curl up in a ball and die upon witnessing it.


The awkward pacing makes moments like these even harder to sit through.


Caliburn finally decides to start showing Sonic some basic respect since he rescued a handful of people from committing suicide and gives him the title “Knight of the Wind” because Sonic declared, before his fight with Blaze, that he has no master but the wind or something along the lines of that. Merlina finally steps back into the picture where she says that she has been watching Sonic do all the heavy lifting from her reflecting pool. She then tells Sonic that King Arthur is on Faraway Avalon, an island that sits out in the sea far away from the mainland (yeah, these writers really had some genius brainstorming sessions when it came to names). Sonic and his sentient sword head to Faraway Avalon where they battle King Arthur for the last time and witness as the Wii hardware goes toe to toe with the Sonic and the Black Knight software to see who can make the game the most unplayable. The two heroes, combined with the might of the three sacred swords and controller desync issues, manage to slay King Arthur. Not wanting to be a part of a subpar narrative written by third graders anymore, King Arthur turns into black water vapor and leaves Sonic posing with Caliburn for the camera before the credits roll. But after the credits roll, Sonic learns that there is actually an entire second half to the game left. So, there are fake credits, but they are not fake credits, because unlike Donkey Kong Country’s fake credits, these credits list the developers and everything. This was undoubtedly a giant missed opportunity for the writers to make a joke or something, but perhaps they figured they could save development time by injecting the normal credits twice. Blaze, Shadow, and Knuckles, all somehow find Merlina and confront her with…who knows what considering the fact that Sonic stole their shit. So, they are standing around making empty threats before Sonic drops in with Caliburn and asks Merlina why King Arthur decided to become Black-Ice vape juice upon exiting the plot-line. Merlina then reveals to everyone (except Tails and Amy who are nothing more than NPCs) that King Arthur was an illusion conjured by her grandfather, Merlin. In a Pixar twist villain move, Merlina takes Excalibur’s scabbard from Sonic and becomes all-powerful so that she can be a queen. This entire scenario makes zero sense for a multitude of reasons. Not only do we have zero idea what happened to her parents, but we also have no information on how or why her grandfather’s illusion would be subjected to a curse that came from an item that came from who knows where, and somehow was obtained by Amy (if not literally manufactured by her) to then put it in the hands of said illusion so that the illusion could be evil and then…deliver the scabbard to this grandfather’s granddaughter through the quest of a hero that was summoned from another world. Merlina turns into a queen figure, goes apeshit, and then the kingdom is back in danger again. Who would have guessed. Sonic and his friends run away from Camelot Castle as it collapses and with Amy’s guidance, begin searching for monuments where they will place the sacred swords in an effort to put up a barrier around the kingdom which does…quite literally nothing. Sonic tells Merlina to quit her bullshit, but Merlina doesn’t want to return the book to the library to avoid fines and insists that the kingdom of King Arthur must be made to last forever. Why? I have no idea. And I also have no idea why the kingdom is disappearing, where it came from, and how its existence or the lack thereof is important whatsoever.


On a more serious note, Caliburn really took one for the team...but don’t worry he doesn’t remain dead and the value of his sacrifice in battle gets undone a couple of minutes later.


Sonic tries to stop Merlina, but Caliburn ends up getting his whole being snapped clean in half (talk about painful) after a losing fight in which Sonic also takes his own fair share of beatings. Amy, Shadow, Blaze, and Knuckles tell Sonic to get the hell out of the mix before he dies, but Sonic, through sheer will power, causes some hocus pocus magic to kick in which sees the sacred swords and his will power repair Caliburn. Soon thereafter Sonic and his witty sword friend transform into super versions of themselves (known as Excalibur Sonic and True Excalibur), challenging Merlina who has now evolved into a monstrous creature (much like this game) known as the “Dark Queen” which they must defeat. The pair defeat Merlina, she continues babbling about the state of the kingdom, and then Sonic gives her a flower while telling her to get over it via some cheesy inspirational dialogue about living life to the fullest (and yet everyone loves to make fun of Sonic Heroes when it preaches about the “real power” of teamwork). Shadow then tells everyone that the party is over since Merlin’s illusionary King Arthur decided to leave the show early. However, Caliburn reminds everyone that he is the one who chooses the next king (which is literally never established at any other point in the story or even in the story’s backstory). So, everyone recovers from retroactive amnesia and Sonic is dubbed the “true” King Arthur (whatever that’s supposed to mean). The credits then roll for a second time and Sonic is somehow taken back to his world with no explanation. He explains his futile adventure to the real Amy Rose (so not that Lady of the Lake nonsense), and she complains that he is making shit up simply because he forgot about their date (I mean you can’t really blame her). She becomes understandably annoyed with Sonic’s assertions and proceeds to attack him with her hammer. The game then ends, showing the book of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table having its titled changed to Sonic and the Black Knight (oh how Sonic Team has murdered a classic) just like in the previous game that was equally as terrible known as Sonic and the Secret Rings. And in addition to a subpar plot was subpar dialogue with awful lines.


We all wish we knew Caliburn...we all wish we knew...


Gameplay (4/10) – Just Watch a Movie Instead


Alright it’s time to be as frank as possible. The gameplay is absolute garbage. Anyone playing this game for more than a few hours will soon realize that the substance of the gameplay is little more than waggling the Wii remote relentlessly and trying to ensure that the finicky controls do not start fighting against both you and the game at the same time. There is no freedom of movement like the kind found in Sonic Heroes, Sonic Adventure, or Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. You are locked to a long line of hallways that are automated in their entirety outside of a few obnoxious quick time events and tiresome platforming sections that grind the game to a halt. The most that you will be doing is holding the joystick upwards on your nun-chuck while you are busy breaking your wrist waggling the Wii remote in an attempt to crawl your way through waves of generic enemies that take zero strategy unless you really want to waste your time standing around doing guard combos which makes the game arguably even worse. It is already bad that there is not a whole lot for the player to do in terms of freedom, but it is even worse if every five seconds you are stopping just to waggle your Wii remote after holding down the guard button for enemies. There is very little variation to the combos, and I assume you can beat the entire game just based on memorizing the most basic patterns known to mankind, abusing the Soul Gauge, and waggling your Wii remote like a fucking moron for minutes on end.


If you put on blindfolds and imagine it, this game is absolutely brilliant!


The game takes you through a tutorial where you are taught the basic mechanics of the game which consist of waggling your waggling your Wii remote to swing your sword, using the A button to jump, and using the B button to invoke special moves (which you will not be introduced to until Camelot Castle). The biggest problem is that despite the game having features like an air dash (by pressing A while in the air), a homing attack (via the Soul Gauge special moves), and quick leaping, the gameplay itself is so restricted and buggy that you will be finding yourself opting to avoid enemies at every turn and constantly rolling the joystick in an attempt to make sure that you are actually moving Sonic forward in unison with the pre-determined camera angles. Fighting enemies come down to waggle, waggle, and waggle some more at the end of the day. The most complex of strategies you might find yourself doing is spamming the air dash and waggling the Wii remote, clearing entire rooms of enemies with Sonic’s aerial assault move. The problem with the camera and perspective shifts in this game is so much worse however.


Even early N64 platforming games with balance beam sections weren’t this bad.


There will be times where the game will try to shift to a dynamic perspective or go completely 2D and the movement will break completely. This is because the game still treats the player’s character as if they are on a Z axis still instead of an X axis. This means that you will find yourself running into the invisible walls of the foreground and background of the 2D sections rather than running left to right. This makes navigation unbelievably painful and the 2D platforming sections become some of the worst in the game. There are other segments, such as the dragon rails in Dragon’s Lair (one of the last levels of the game) where your player is running along a thunder dragon’s body (it is a moving trail of electricity) as it changes directions. Unfortunately the game’s camera does not properly keep up with the thunder dragon’s body rail as it moves around and you will regularly find your character getting stuck and eventually falling off. This is only one of the many examples however of how messing with the controls during the vast amount of scripted segments will break the game in some of the most jarring ways. Unfortunately this bias for scripted segments means that the ability for basic movement is severely limited. The most that the player is allowed to do is awkwardly move left to right and jump forward and backward at distances that they cannot control. For the majority of the time that you will be playing this game, the game will be playing itself and you will either be holding up on your nun-chuck's joystick or not pressing anything at all as the level scenes (basically level material that is more or less something you watch rather than play) roll on by. This over reliance on scripted gameplay segments and encouraging the player to not touch the controls out of fear of breaking it, results in a bunch of levels going by extremely fast and ending the whole game in a mere three hours. The player gains the ability to play with Blaze, Knuckles, and Shadow half way through the game, but the entire campaign can easily be cleared with Sonic alone since he has the most fluid move-set out of them. There is are also options to change your “style” and equip items in the blacksmith shop. While the other three characters that were mentioned can equip different swords, Sonic cannot. He is stuck with Caliburn and Caliburn only.


Our poor pal Tails got relegated to being an NPC along with Amy.


There are some optional items you can equip but none of them are serious game changers. They just give you more rings when you restart a level or give you immunity to an enemy attack that you might see once or twice throughout the entire game. What is even funnier is that most enemy encounters can outright be skipped over by the player, which probably highlights the fact that even the developers knew how tedious and unrewarding the combat was. And outside of the main story gameplay, there is only a handful of multiplayer modes that range from mediocre to downright laughably bad. You would have been better off playing something like Mario Party 9 with your friends back in the day when this game was still on the market. Characters move as slowly as an intoxicated sloth and as stiff as a red brick. It makes the main story gameplay look like a work of Vincent van Gogh by comparison.


They definitely made this part of the game last and gave it the least amount of resources.


So, between rocky gameplay of the main mode and dollar store worthy gameplay of the side modes, the whole experience just falls terribly flat all around. And the controls really were not doing this game any favors, which we will discuss in the upcoming section.


Controls (2/10) - Motion Controls for the Sake of It


If there was one lesson that everyone learned from the Wii, was that adding motion controls to the game for the sake of having motion controls was a god awful idea. Motion controls without careful thought and purpose become a burden and can weigh down a game in some horrible ways. Unfortunately Sonic and the Black Knight falls prey to this issue. You see, the gameplay of Sonic and the Black Knight doesn’t actually NEED motion controls. Everything can be done without the nuances of motion because the gameplay is too basic as it is. Hell, you don’t even need the Wii censor bar in order to play this game properly. Take for instance sword swinging. When you swing your sword in the game, it does not matter which way you waggle your Wii remote. You could jerk it left to right, throw it out or window at full force, or drop it down the steps, but you will always get the same action out of Sonic. He swings. He doesn’t swing in a specific direction or perform a specific move depending on how you swing or which way you swing. This means that the entire process of Sonic swinging his sword could literally be assigned to a single button on a digital game controller and be completed in the same fashion. So the game ends up destroying your wrists for no reason as it throws piles of generic enemy herds at you. You will probably find yourself having to take a break every level or two because your hands, arms, and shoulders will begin aching. And moves such as jumping, guarding, or moving right to left are handled by buttons on the Wii remote and its accompanying nun-chuck. Not to mention that there is no option to use a GameCube controller, Classic controller, or any of the other controller peripherals that the Wii is compatible with. Sonic Team was determined to force the player to suffer through the game at the expense of their wrist. What is even more depressing is that there is so much potential for gameplay with the motion controls, but Sonic Team was just like “This should meet the bare minimum motion control requirements from Nintendo’s board” in the process of making them.


Sonic Forces you (get it?) to play with Motion Controls whether you like it or not...


They could have added special techniques like counter dodge attacks, aerial guard combos, side step circle maneuvers, flurry attacks, parries, heavy lunge, spacing attacks, and so much more that would have made this game something truly amazing. And it would have been even better if the landscape was not restricted to a roller coaster track, so that the player could efficiently move around and explore their surroundings without having to fight the controls themselves every step of the way and feel like they are on a dog leash for all of eternity. However what makes this all so much worse is the fact that trying to move around in a majority of the game’s levels results in the controls completely bugging out. This is because the controls end up fighting the both the automated segments and the player at the same time, which results in the game desperately trying to figure out which system of input it should be prioritizing. Not to mention that the oversimplification of controls means that you are unable to measure your jump height or distance. This makes platforming sections nearly unplayable. And if that wasn’t bad enough, sometimes the Wii remote will read your non-motion inputs as motion inputs since you might accidentally move the Wii remote a tiny bit when pressing something. This leads to a lot of accidental and frustrating deaths that could easily have been fixed if they changed the range of values for motion. But by far, the one thing hurting the gameplay experience the most is the controls.


Sound Design (9/10) - A Rocking Soundtrack for a Medieval Fantasy Adventure


The sound design for Sonic and the Black Knight is fine. It’s clear, sharp, and everything is accompanied by sounds that make sense. But the soundtrack is what takes the sound design to another level. From the main theme to the level themes to the menu themes, Sonic and the Black Knight has a rich soundtrack with fitting vibes. The gameplay might be subpar, but the soundtrack is everything opposite of subpar. This is all thanks to Crush 40, a band who has worked on various Sonic titles since as early as the first Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast. The main theme fits right at home with Sonic’s attitude and is an absolute banger that will hype you up to play the game. But unfortunately then the game turns out to be what it is, and then you’re left with just a great musical impression and a terrible sight. But if you ever get the chance, be sure to check out the sound track of this game, because it is stellar, just like the soundtracks of so many other Sonic games.


Graphics (9/10) - Who Knew That the World of King Arthur Was So Visually Appetizing


If there is anything that this game got right, it has to be the music and the graphics. The graphics of the game are just phenomenal and might be some of the best that the Nintendo Wii has ever seen. Even a decade plus later, the graphics still hold up amazingly well and illustrate some beautiful landscapes and environments that make you want to run around them and explore them. But unfortunately you can’t explore them since the game has you chained down to a set of train tracks while everything passes you by. I would argue that the graphics of this game even super-cede its contemporaries such as Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 and Sonic Colors. Everything is highly detailed, the lighting is well done, and the models are quite clean. Whether it’s the Titanic Plain, Molten Mine, Great Megalith, or any other level, you will be treated to some tasty visual eye candy that will make you beg SEGA to just remake this game into something of a more traditional 3D Sonic title.


This game seriously gives Sonic Colors a run for its money in the graphics department!


User Interface Design (5/10) - Functional for the Most Part but Aesthetically Confusing


The user interface of Sonic and the Black Knight is fine. It is mediocre. It is not revolutionary nor does it fit the game like a glove, but it isn’t broken or extremely hard to use. You have a main menu that feels a bit bloated in terms of space (you have to scroll up and down with lengthy animations in between to get to options) and a design aesthetic that feels at home with a game like guitar hero rather than a medieval high fantasy game. I know that the Sonic franchise has a relationship with rock music and all (what Crush 40 specializes in) but the menu aesthetic feels so flat and cheap that I cannot help but feel disdain for it (especially as a professional designer myself). Compared to the glorious graphics of the game, the user interface feels tacked on. In order to equip items, you have to go to the blacksmith. You cannot equip items on the fly, change styles in a character selection menu, or any of that. Most of the options are tucked away in the blacksmith’s shop which is odd. And unfortunately this is a big opportunity missed by Sonic Team (once again) in terms of world building. They could have made a hub world or a split hub world where the player can access things such as cosmetic shops, blacksmiths, guild posts, and more. This would allow for the player to put together different outfits (that have actual application), get various weapons crafted (other than blades), take on special missions, and just overall have a richer game experience. But instead, special missions (called special challenges) are just randomly generated on the world map for the player to do and any alternative options that there are, are given a home with Tails at the blacksmith shop. It doesn’t help that the world map is incredibly lazy in design that has an even more pitiful setup for sub areas. When you select a location on the world map, it will take you to a screen where a magnifying glass is over the map and shows dots that sit against a piece of the map that has...less detail...despite being zoomed in on it apparently? Yeah it makes no sense and just screams lazy. But for whatever reason all Sonic Team decided to leave us with is a very drab over-world map, crappy sub-area maps, no inventory on the fly, and a lot of missed opportunities to enhance the gameplay.


I can really see more detail of what I am looking at here. Thanks magnifying glass!


Overall Review Score (5/10) - This Really Wasn’t a Sonic Adventure Worth Experiencing


So, what is the final verdict here? Well, the game sucks (as if you could not already figure). It is a bad game with great graphics and amazing music. I mean perhaps this is the secret cousin of Mega Man 8 or something. While everyone clowns on IGN for their Sonic reviews, this is one of the few games where I have to give it to IGN. I think 3.9/10 is pretty steep of a low score all things considered (after all there are other characters you can play as, a slew of multiplayer modes, and a terribly boring but relatively bug-free main game) and I think this game earned its middle of the road score fair and square Clearly there was some effort to make this game into SOMETHING in the wake of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, but the great graphics and music are held back by a weak story, janky gameplay, messy controls, and a mediocre user interface. All of which could have been so much more if SEGA just gave the game the time it deserved. And unfortunately, the almost mobile game-esque gameplay leads to a very short play time of just around 3 hours in total. The disappointing core fundamentals of the game makes everything ranging from boss fights to special challenges very tedious or downright bizarre (some of the bosses you can literally one shot by mindlessly waggling your Wii remote). Anyways, that’s going to be all for this review folks. Remember to always question what search engines and algorithms feed back to you because most are extremely biased and don’t show a diverse sea of opinion and critical thought. If you enjoyed this review and found it helpful, be sure to check back soon for more from me!


Why did I even bother playing this game? Well to warn you of course.