Sonic Shuffle Releases in US, Gets Mixed Reviews

SEGA's answer to Mario Party, Sonic Shuffle, has just been released in the US. We still have to wait for the game to come out in the UK, so until it does we can only look across the virtual pond and see what the opinions are like. And... well... it's a mixed bag.

IGNDC has torn the game to pieces, scoring it a 4.7 out of 10. While the reviewer acknowledged the 'excellent' sound, graphics and overall presentation, the opinion of the gameplay was savage. Mini-games were far and few between, the card system (instead of a 'roll the dice' system) didn't seem as intuitive compared to Mario Party, and the whole experience is apparently "frustrating". Ouch.

Sonic Shuffle also suffered a similar fate on SegaWeb, the Dreamcast arm of GamerWeb. There, it received a score of 4.5 out of 10. "Pre-loading [the] mini-games, and doing away with all of the Forcejewel non-sense and unnecessary complications, would have made this title a real winner," the reviewer writes. "Unfortunately the game attempts too much, while delivering far too little."

Finally, Daily Radar was a little more positive on the game, with a HIT rating (the second-to-highest score on the site). "Even if not every aspect of the game makes a ton of sense, it should serve well to pass the hours in mindless but compelling living-room competition," the review states, noting that the game really should only be played in multiplayer.

So it's all gone a bit Marmite, then. You'll either love it or hate it. Hopefully we'll be able to inform you ourselves, when the game releases in the UK. If it ever releases in the UK...