Sega

As a critic, I don't like to admit that I'm wrong but I can, and do. Still, that doesn't mean I like it. Naturally, I try to be wrong as little as possible—but today, I need to 'fess up big-time. See, I used to think Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg was a bad Sega game, but that was only until I played Sonic Heroes. Now, I see lil' Billy as a virtual masterpiece by comparison, practically the digital equivalent of a Guernica, or Starry Night. Why? Because Sonic Heroes has so much wrong with it, that three lefts couldn't make it right.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Mild Fantasy Violence

Although this Sonic update has good ideas, they are sadly bogged down by the game's implementation, which features a wonky camera, faulty collision detection and questionable physics. I felt like the developers started out with a vision or goal for the game, but got lost along the way.

Game Description: Sonic Heroes takes you blazing through a world of great adventure! Use multiple teams and formations to conquer the ultimate hero, once and for all.

Game Description: ESPN NHL Hockey emphasizes ESPN style of presentation to make you experience reality. The visuals and audio feature the same music cues, overlays, box scores, and other distinctive elements that help set ESPN apart from other networks sports coverage. ESPN NHL Hockey brings you authentic box scores, overlays, stats and more fully capturing the atmosphere of an ESPN NHL broadcast; Pushing the hardware to new limits, player models and faces, environmental effects, arenas, cut scenes, uniforms and more are meticulously detailed raising realism to a new level; Manage all aspects of your franchise from key trades to scouting talent in the minors and abroad with an easy to navigate 3D front office menu system.

Hockey is a game of speed, finesse, grit and grind. Injury is commonplace, and the ability to shirk pain is viewed as a right of passage. Yet where actual players incur very real bumps and gashes, the pain I experienced while playing ESPN NHL Hockey was strictly metaphorical—a bruised ego.

I think Gene is being a little pejorative by hanging that 8.5 on Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution. He labels it "user-nasty," then bemoans the fact that he had to spend time in the training mode—"slogging through command list after command list"—in order to reaquaint himself with the controls.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Suggestive Themes, Violence

That torturous, fickle experience I just alluded to combines with a lack of engaging play mechanics to create Billy Hatcher And The Giant Egg. A simplistic, by-the-numbers 3D platformer with inspiration taken from Sonic The Hedgehog, Billy Hatcher ends up lagging behind the genre's top games by a wide margin despite its novel concept.