less successful attempt like Mighty No. 9. So, I’m disappointed but not surprised to see that Balan Wonderworld, the latest 3D platformer from Sonic the Hedgehog co-creators Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima, is a fundamentally flawed shadow of its predecessors. Its character designs, cutscenes, and music are certainly charming, but charm alone isn’t enough to make this half-baked platformer any less boring to actually play.
When you’re hopping around Balan Wonderworld’s simultaneously imaginative yet bland stages, it doesn’t necessarily feel like a total trainwreck. Some of its barebones obstacle courses can occasionally produce hints of what I might call fun, and it’s not much more than a total bore the rest of the time. But when you take Balan Wonderworld as a whole, it sinks lower than the rudimentary platforming that barely props it up. From its misguided one-button control scheme, to its haphazard transforming costume mechanic and the levels that use them, to the half-hearted Chao Garden-like hub world between them, it gets a lot wrong – and very little of what it gets right helps to balance the scales.