Hey look, it's our very first PlayStation 3 preview and it's a dandy. Today we're going to look at a little game called Sonic the Hedgehog, the much-hyped re-invention of Sega's popular mascot character. We've seen the graphics in magazines and the video on the internet, but today I finally had a chance to play the game for an extended amount of time.

For all the talk about how different this Sonic was going to be I have to say I was a tad disappointed. While the graphics and enemies seemed different, the overall tone of the game felt a lot like Sonic Adventure. The 3D still feels awkward in this Sonic game, though there were a few things that gave me hope that it would turn out to be better than the Sonic Adventure (and Sonic Heroes) games. I'm not willing to say this will be the next big thing, but the potential is certainly there.

The E3 demo allowed you to play as either Sonic or a new character, Silver the Hedgehog. Silver? Are we running out of Sonic characters or something?? After Shadow I didn't think we could get much worse, but here we are with Silver. It's not that Silver was bad, but it just felt like this was another wholly unneeded character for a game that should be all about Sonic the Hedgehog.

Sonic himself has a few new tricks up his sleeve, for example you are now able to fight with your hands and feet, which ends up looking a lot like Sonic the Breakdancer. Of course, you will be able to do all of the attacks you did in Sonic Adventures, including jumping into the air and bouncing on one enemy after another. You will also be sliding on rails, jumping off of large trampoline things, and much more. At the end of the day it was the same old Sonic we are used to.

But How Good is It? Actually, no it wasn't. I hate to say this, but I actually didn't care much for this new Sonic. It looks great (especially in the high def), but it just doesn't have the game play to back it up. Perhaps Sega will make this a much deeper experience than what we saw on the show floor, but this demo seemed pretty shallow on the surface. But what made this even more frustrating were the loose controls and the quick speed. Obviously Sega needs to make Sonic fast, but it seemed entirely too easy to fall off the side of the level because he went too fast and the controls weren't precise enough. Even if Sega manages to tighten up the controls it still doesn't change the fact that Sonic has struggled in the 3D world. Will this one be better? Maybe, but so far it just seemed like another Sonic Adventure sequel.