Okay here's my COMPLETE review. Please read!
Posted by That guy with the hat

SONIC SHUFFLE:The opening movie and most of the mini-games were okay...but
nothing else was.


This game is bad. It is a board game type "party" game with so much wrong with it.
Most importantly, it has almost nothing to do with Sonic.

Story: This game falls under the "huh?" heading.
I give the game's story a big thumbs down. Its really just confusing. S(sonic),
T(tails), K(knuckles), and A(amy) are transported to Maginaryworld, a land of
dreams, and I thought rightaway, "Why not Nightopia?". They meet a Ms."Lumina
Flowlight"(Why not NiGHTS?) who tells you that Maginaryworld is in danger
because Void, a thuroughly confusing and badly pulled off character(I'll get to that),
is apparently in the business of destroying the precioustones(why not Dream
Energy Spheres?) which hold the dream world together. So she wants them to help.
They agree of course. You then wonder, "Why are people dreaming about giant
board games?". Oh! I forgot to mention. There's another character named Illumina
and she's the guardian angel of Maginaryworld, but she doesn't really do a whole
lot of Guardian-ing. Actually she doesn't really do anything at all. She looks vaguely
like Lumina so I'm wondering if there's a connection or not. I haven't quite finished
the game yet(I lost all patience with it and started playing the ever-so-perfect
Shenmue) so I'm not sure. Void aint' too great. He's very confusing. He doesn't
seem to understand that he's destroying stuff, but then it seems like he does.
Sometimes he seems to know what's going on, and then he seems totally out of it.
There isn't any hint as to where he or Lumina came from(maybe there is at the end
but I don't know). Lumina tries to talk Void down in between levels, Void says
something about not having destroyed anything and then always seems to revert
back to talking about "this land of dreams... my dreams". Lumina tried to get my
character(in my case K) to try to tell him off, but all Knux did was confuse me. He
said something about Void not being able to get away with this and that he must
protect it from him. What's he talking about? He doesn't specify between the master
emerald or the Precioustone(s? I don't know if there'r a bunch of them and one
main one, or one that busted apart). In one of them, Void tried to mess with
Knuckles' head, I think... well he messed with my head anyway. This sort of scene
takes place only "kinda'" between levels and they don't really fit in anywhere. It
doesn't help that no one ever refers to them later. Also in these scenes, Void is just
standing there, but no one tries to get him...why not? There's also Temple Of Light
that Void is headed for(apparently very slowly cause' otherwise he would have
beaten you to it by a larger margin) which is where the big Precioustone is. As I said
before in those parentheses somewher up there, I don't know if there are a bunch of
Pstones and a main one, or just one main one split apart and Void is trying to
destroy them all. Illumina lives in the Temple, I think, but in the Void battle game she
is not present. And can she not move since Void came? She seems incapable of
movement. Odd. I'd like to move on to how bad the dialoug is, but there's the issue
of Eggman. Why is he there? The manual said he followed the others in, but how?
Lumina chose the Good guy squad herself and had them dream about saving the
place. Eggman could scarcely have followed them unless he, by coincidence, was
dreaming about being their at the same time. He couldn't have phisically followed
them into a dream. Either way, he could just as easily have been left out. The
dialoug is preachy and dopey and predictable and unimaginative and, in the case of
Void, confusing. It seems like this game should have been a NiGHTS crossover, but
as it stands seems more like a ripoff. Even if they had made it a NiGHTS crossover it
still wouldn't work. Fortunately, the blame doesn't fall on the Sonic Team because
they didn't make this game. Whew! 
Story gets a big F

Graphics:Void looks good...too bad he was wasted...and cell-shaded
Graphics didn't come to the rescue. Cell-shading, although marvelous in Jet Grind
Radio, are nothing more than out of place here. I didn't like the idea of cell-shading
in this game when I first heard of it because for one thing, if Sonic is venturing into a
new genre(which I think he's gonna' venture right back out of), don't give us an
art-style totally unfamiliar to Sonic. The backgrounds aren't good either. They aren't
cell-shaded to match the characters except sometimes when they are. Really, they
just seem to be underdetailed and all the levels have that same ugly space
background in there somewhere. The beach-type level is also part ice level, the
firebird would never stay in the air(too clunky) the forest looks like a garden, the riot
train keeps passing by tiny mesas and the 4th dimension aint' half bad actually.
Animation, could stand to have been better. Lumina and Void fly about in a stiff
manner and Void doesn't move at all when he's standing still... oh sure, standing
still is one thing, but perfectly still... hmmm.
Were not done with Eggman yet either. If he has his Egg Typhoon, why doesn't he
fly instead of using, apparently, his Inviso Belt? Seriously, he has to flash in and
out. It flies a couple of times in mini-games, but not much.The ol' Typhoon doesn't
have much animation itself. Every time he uses a punishment on you or changes
the ring size for the, oh... 39th time its always that same ray! The other thing it does
is drop a 16ton weight...over and over again, couldn't they think of a few other
things for him to do to add some variety? Eggman looks positively goofy because
whenever he's in his ride, he has to wave his arms around. They try to get a lot of
milage out of it too. When he throws bombs or something in a mini-game, they just
have him wave his arms once and make a bomb pop out. When out of his "air
jalopy" he looks silly too as its all old animation... but much, much stiffer. Also, let's
just say cell-shading does not become him. Character animation for the other guys
is generally alright, but they could use more. Their winning and losing animations
for pretty much anything that isn't moving or attacking. This seriously drains Sonic
and the other's tude'. Land on a +ring space=win animation; -ring space= lose
animation; emblem tally in versus mode and you miss one=lose; win=win;... get to
have the giant robo-pants(don't ask)=win. Something in a mini-event that should
have a totally different response=win/lose, etc. Its an animation crisis! Next point.
The mini-game/mini-event graphics. The backgrounds in the mini-games are... not
too bad. They do also have that same indecision about cell-shading that the other
backgrounds have. For most of the mini-games though(except the "accident" ones)
I wonder why we're not on the board or anywhere that looks remotely closs to it.
They do have stage-specific mini-games or, "Accidents", but I just wonder why
we're not on our spaces. Its hardly an accident if you have to run over to it to call it
one. Anyway mini-events have that same problem and more. The action is in the
frame and very well-drawn, yet here you are, outside of the frame, in the same
cell-shading, participating in what's going on in there. Ahdunowbowtyoo, but this
makes me feel totally outside of the action. As I said before they're well drawn, but
also drawn awfully un-Sonicy(note that two of the events are almost exactly the
same, Grab Bag and Lottery). There are FMV segments at the ends of levels and
they look way ahead of the rest of the game, but they're not crisp. They look kinda'
fuzzy and its not just my TV. Battle animation is poor. Characters lurch up and
attack very too quickly(that was not a typo), and then SNAP back to where they
were with no animation in between! AAAuuuggghhh! Your enemies are totally
unimaginative by the way(one of them is completely rigid and hasn't any mass. It's
as flat as paper!). Most of them are just cute. And that brings me to my next point.
ITS ALL TOO CUTE! I had heard at one point tha the Mario Part guys were working
on this game, I can't confirm that rumor, but you'd think they had what with
everything being so sacchariney sweet. From Lumina's entire self in every way, to
that little log trolley with the cute bird face on it, to the lost little star with the face, to
the fish with ice-skates, to the first Pstone guardian in every level, to the fake bullets
that *pop*, to the palm tree with eyes and a fishing pole, to the toy store, and back to
that stupid trolley with the bird face! I hate that thing! It never helps anyway! You'd
think the game was made for the little ones, but it couldn't be because of everything
being too dang complicated for them(look for this line later in the review,"there's
always a catch"). With everything so cute, the main characters look out of place!
(upon arriving in Sonic Shuffle)
Knuckles:Hey! What's all this about!

Amy: It's all so...cute!...?

Tails:This isn't right! Where's the action?! The badnik bashin'?!

Sonic:I can't believe I've been saving up tude' for this! That's it! When's SA2?!

Anyway, what isn't cute is just not Sonicy. It seems like it's supposed to be in a
different game. The only part of this game that has any kind of sonic feel is battling
the robo-bee on the firebird. Oh I forgot. The mouth animation is mind-bending. All
their mouths are too high on their faces and too small! It ends up looking... well...
you'd have to see it yourself. You might fall over laughing though.
Graphics get a big D


Sound: "Deflector shields were up so communication was kind of garbelled."

To start off, the music. The music is at times, positively primative(i.e. title screen &
sonic room) and is also totally non-soniclike except for one or two tracks(Fun Fun
Sonic being one of them). They use the same music for way too many different
mini-games, the battle theme only changes when you fight a big boss. The in-level
music is pretty much all bad(never have I heard music so dreadfully mismatched as
in Firebird) and equally as cute as the rest of the game. However, listen closely in
Emerald Coast and you can here a little of Lava Reef Act 1 and in the opening movie
I distinctly heard some of "Walkin'" from Knuckles' Chaotix. In the end, there are
very few tracks I liked. Fun Fun Sonic, Manic Maze, Ring Lasso, Sonic Surfing, and
Ring of Fire, but that's about it. Voice acting is purely bad. It's a jumble of old clips
from SA and new voice actors who are significantly worse at delivering lines. They
only have one voice track per character for winning so it suddenly applies to as little
as just pleasant surprises. K wins a mini-game,"Is that all you've got?". Knuckles
gets the big pants,"Is that all you've got?"...was he expecting something more from
his big robo-pants? Perhaps an extra leg? The big question though is... why does
Eggman's voice echo? Similarly, why is he yelling? Why does he yell, "Oh Yeah?!"
When he throws... anything? Meanwhile the sound FX aren't bad.
Sound gets a C. "Is that all you've got?"

Gameplay: *chirp-chirp* *chirp-chirp*
Not much. The boards are made up of spaces. Spaces for rings, spaces not for
rings, spaces for mini-games/mini-events that were stupidly put into spaces
together instead of separately so you'd know what you're getting, spaces too fight
for Pstones, transport spaces, character specific spaces, spaces for side-quests,
for regular battles, for turning you around, and spaces for possibly the dumbest
thing in the game:Cutting a deal with Void to steal a precioustone from someone
else. All this is horribly slow. That's a big problem here is the lack of speed. It takes
over an hour just for one board! How do you make a sonic game with no speed?
You don't. Case In Point. A major factor in the game's overall slowness is the
endless loading times. Really the only advantage to the giant loading times that
occur at every turn is that it gives you time to oh say, pop a Life Saver into your
mouth, wipe your hands, or, as you'll be mostinclined to do, just below AAUUGH!
Battles in this game are time wasting, card wasting, nonsense and should be
confined to Pstone battles. Before I continue, I must tell you about roulettes in this
game. Roulettes are everywhere. What will Robotnik use on you when you raw the
E card? Roulette to find out. Several force jewels use roulettes to determine who
they affect(and then for no reason some of them allow you to choose who to irritate
easily). The worst one, however, is the roulette in battle mode when you draw any
card except the E card. It comes up with a roulette that goes from one to the number
you actually chose! To use the card you wanted, you have to be impossibly precise.
If your not, you will likely end up losing a battle even though you had the card you
needed. It just wastes cards and the whole battle thing is a bust. Mini events aren't
much fun. You have little to no control(one of them is "So you want to be a
billionaire?" Its a game show where Eggman pretty much asks you how you're
doing.). They just kind of pass by either giving you a force jewel, rings, or losing
you rings and other stuff that leaves you scratching your head saying
"Ho-kaaaay...".
Meanwhile, why can't Eggman leave the ring spaces alone? Every time you turn
around he's changing the size of 'em. It doesn't cause fun because its just the same
2 things every time and it takes up useful time. You really can't skip enough stuff in
this game. And you almost can't pause anywhere! I guess I should explain the cards
and Forcejewels. To move around the board you get cards with different numbers
on them to indicate how many spaces can be traveled using that card or how many
damage points can be done with it in battle. The E card makes Eggman bother you
and the S card let's you go up to 7 spaces if you time the stupid roulette right. In
battle the E card makes you lose and the S card triggers your character's special
battle ability. The force jewels let you go more spaces in one turn or warp or affect
another player or harm YOU! Ya gotta' win them though. Multiplayer mode in this
game has a very dumb feature. The duel. If to guys land on the same space as
eachother. I still don't know what to do in duels. I just click the cards fast. Am I
supposed to take low cards or high cards? I notice that no matter what I do, I always
lose. This game is really only holding one S card. The mini-games! The majority of
them are a blast(my favorites are Bomb Relay, Ring Lasso, Fun Fun Sonic, and I
loooooove Sonic Live!)they're the only fast paced part of the game and the only
reason to play this game. Unfortunately they aren't all good. The 3 against 1 games
are only fun for the 1 and the 2on2 ones are only fun with 4 human players(except
bomb relay) and some aren't any fun at all(psychic Sonic, egg and the chicken and
a few others). There are also stage specific "Accident" MGs. Most of these are fine,
but Croc Attack requires you to press the A button at an inhuman
pace(Dr.BigRobotnik is a wizard at this MG though, but then, his thumb is fast,
abnormally fast. Its weird...). You win this game by collecting emblems which you
get for things like most PStones, most rings, side-quests, and whoever won the
level ending MG(but why not one for most MGs won?). They tally them up in a most
annoying manner. See it for yourself. Sometimes they try to annoy you on purpose
here. In versus mode they tally them up twice for no reason. One of your options at
the beginning of the game is sonic room. Here you will get extra features but you
have to get them by buying pictures in the scrapbook that cost rediculous amounts
of rings. You get rings from story mode and you have to finish an entire level to
even save your rings and although you get to keep rings if you lose, you can't just
quit and use the rings you got or get rings in versus mode. One special feature is
the toybox which lets you play any MGs you've encountered in Story mode. Just
use this once you get it and forget about the rest of the game(In this mode you
automatically get the secret characters). Now... a subject I don't like discussing... the
murderous AI! Any difficulty you choose will still result in 3 backstabbing, cheating,
murderous, competitors. They always win at MGs steal your Pstones the first
chance they get(they don't miss any roulette!), and since you can freely take
another player's card even though you can't see what it is(which makes me wonder
why they bothered to seperate the characters cards at all and just didn't let you see
any) you must remember that the computer knows exactly where your good cards
are and will take them immeadiately, whenever they get a choice for who to have a
FJ affect they ALWAYS choose you and they never miss a roulette ESPECIALLY in
battle mode where they still steal your good cards! They use every possible trick
they can to kill you and tear you apart. In short, its no fun. So remember, Only use
multiplayer and make sure you got 4 chums to play with, or else you have to fight
off an AI player.
Gameplay gets a D

That brings this game's overall total to....

A...big fat D!


So we can see clearly that "This can is not a winner. Please drink another beer."