Wayhey! Apologies for starting this review in such an exuberant manner, but I’m in somewhat of a jolly mood. You see, it’s somewhat of a relief to be typing this review to you on good terms. The last time I (or most people who love Sega’s spikey blue mascot) will have sampled Sonic would have been in this year’s disastrous Xbox 360 effort; a game so poor that it made me want to curl up in a ball and rocket spin myself into a wall. Repeatedly. It was so bad, in fact, that I was ready at Sonic’s door with the coffin and nails ready to put the poor bugger out of his misery.

Thankfully for all, Sonic’s latest offering bases itself on the classic formula of dashing from left to right as quickly as possible in some beautiful two-dimensional environments. There’s much more to it than that, granted, but shorn of the annoyances of random button presses seeing you falling to your doom ad-infinitum and inane supporting characters cluttering left, right and centre, Rush Adventure turns out pretty darn well.

Having crash-landed on a beach following a rather unfortunate storm that sees their little red biplane come a cropper mid-flight, Sonic and his less popular chum Tails meet up with Marine, a strangely excited racoon with a rather stereotypical Australian dialect, having been washed-up on the beaches of Southern Island. From here, the crew must hop from one island to the next in order to pick up materials to rebuild their plane and hopefully head home. As you’d expect, things twist and turn along the way and eventually the crew end up in a much trickier situation.

Island-hopping? Isn’t this all a bit Wind Waker? Well no, not really. From the main hub on Southern Island your task is to journey to the surrounding islands via your water-based transport, be it a jetski, a hovercraft and the like, in order to collect materials for Tails to fashion into new modes of transport or items. Reaching a new island will prod the storyline along, whilst also giving you the vital materials needed to allow for expanded travel distances and the like.

The great thing about Rush Adventure is just how well this all hangs together. Travelling between islands sees you having to scribble a route out on a map, and then when underway having to control your chosen vehicle in order to collect rings, do stunts and barge or shoot enemies for points. As an enjoyable aside to the main platform-dashing it works beautifully, and at no point does it ever outstay its welcome and last any longer than being an enjoyable bite-sized chunk of mini-gaming.

Once you arrive at the islands you are given the much more familiar task of guiding Sonic through a couple of levels based on the surroundings of the particular location, as well as having to defeat a boss character too. The classic two-dimensional platforming feels as instinctive and blindingly quick as ever, with the Tension Gauge feature making a welcome return and encouraging you to perform tricks mid-air in return for a short period of super-boost. The levels themselves range from tropical forests to factories and ghost ships, each with their own superbly colourful and attractive backgrounds and scenery throughout their multiple paths.

The real boon, however, is that this time around you are actively encouraged to replay levels and find new paths. Completing each of the three sections of the islands will see you being awarded specific materials, but you’ll soon come to realise that one run through the trio of levels won’t yield enough material for Tails to do the business, so you’ll have to go back and repeat a stage or two. Doing so will see you being able to put your experience to good use, with paths you missed first time being less of a surprise and hence much more easy to reach. Whereas previous Sonic games always had you buzzing through a particular level on a particular path and then have no reason to return to find another route, Rush Adventure actually makes doing this a necessity, which makes it rather fortunate that each level offers enough routes to make it an enjoyable task.

Equally enjoyable are the boss battles, which take place in the 3D and see Sonic having to perform a range of battling techniques, from using himself as a blue cue ball by jumping into dangling mechanical baubles to cause them to gain momentum and swing into a floating robot right the way through having to battle a crazed skeleton with a suspiciously glowing stomach. Each encounter is unique and packed full of imaginative takes on the usual boss battle formula, leaving a sweet aftertaste to a couple of levels of platform fun.

Ah, the f-word. As I was saying much earlier, it’s beautiful to be able to use fun instead of a certain other f-word that appropriately summed up my feelings on Sonic 360. It goes to show that Sonic does work in 3D, but only in small portions. Having the main part of the game set as the classic 2D dash-for-cash and setting it alongside the 3D injections in the form of boss battling and travelling works beautifully. It’s safe to say that this is the best Sonic game for over a decade, and considering the fact that the Game Boy Advance and previous DS Sonic titles were pretty handy themselves, that’s no small praise.

It’ll last you, too. The main quest itself isn’t exactly long, but is supplemented by a number of side quests, such as jetski racing for Chaos Emeralds or undertaking various missions set across the islands’ levels such as getting a required number of rings, or completing the level under a certain time. Heck, exploring the map and finding new islands is half the fun, and often leads to uncovering new levels and items for use. There’s even the option to take things online with a time trial leaderboard and one-on-one battles to collect the most rings over a certain level.

What issues there are with Rush Adenture are few, but they are worth mentioning obviously. There's still the odd placement of the nightmarish 'Pit of Doom', which sees you fall to your death without really knowing too much about it. Thankfully this has been lessened somewhat this time around, but you'll still find it happening on occasion. As mentioned above, the main quest is rather short and will probably only require five hours of play to complete, which is a little disappointing and would be more of an issue but for the side missions.

So it’s with a hearty slap on the back that I push Sonic forward once more as a viable option for people who don’t enjoy cack games. With his pointy red boots dipped in both his 2D past and a new, better 3D current, the future suddenly doesn’t seem to bad after all. Perhaps Sonic Team need to take notice of the success of the side-scrolling handheld games and rework their main console offerings to match, as if they did then we’d be on for something pretty swell indeed.