The plot is campy gold, the soundtrack is quintessential video game listening, and any Sonic game with a Chao Garden is going to get a free bump up the list. At its best, Sonic Adventure 2 packs in a dense action-platformer that still feels far punchier than many of Sonic’s later titles. Eggman stages that feel utterly antithetical to Sonic’s design. Yet that’s what Sonic Team did, and now every Sonic Adventure 2 playthrough comes with a bunch of shoddy Tails and Dr. How any team of creatives could look at the gameplay of E-102 Gamma from Sonic Adventure and think, “yeah, we should double down on that,” I will never understand. Sonic Adventure 2 suffers from the exact same problem as Sonic Unleashed, diverting the player's attention far too frequently to alternative gameplay styles that take up way more time and keep you from enjoying some truly great 3D Sonic (or Shadow) stages. If you love Sonic 1 and Sonic CD, you'll love this one. Personally, I had a great time with this, but put it this way: I'm also a big fan of Sonic CD's awkward pace-killing design, and Superstars is another game by the man who directed Sonic CD. Yet its half-baked powers, its philosophically challenged approach to a four-player Sonic experience, and a few moments where the platforming leans a little to close to the original Sonic 1's design make it an awkward one to recommend to even classic fans of the series. At its core, this feels in many ways as honest and solid a follow-up to Sonic's 2D legacy as Sonic Mania, filled with tricky platforming and some occasionally great level design. I mean this with all due affection for the game - it's just a little all over the place. If you can put up with its rubbish physics, do yourself a favor - make the best of those Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 1 trophies and try and unlock 'Untouchable.' The boss rush mode at the end is easily the best part of the game, and you'll actually feel something when you manage to grab this one.Īs someone who has collected all of those Sonic Superstars trophies, let me tell you: this one is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. Leaving aside the nonchalant sacrilege of Sega’s title choice, it does bear mentioning that Sonic 4 isn’t a downright terrible game - it’s slight, ugly, and jank as all hell, but not terrible. Then Sega of America slapped the name Sonic the Hedgehog 4 on a third-party mobile phone title with gimmick-riddled gyroscopic controls, and that bright future was quickly snuffed out. For many, it seemed a harbinger of positive change for the future of classic mascot heroes after years of trendy reboots and reimaginings that saw Sonic get tall and Bomberman turned into a gritty, edgy post-apocalyptic version of itself in Act Zero. In 2008, Mega Man 9 was released on Nintendo’s WiiWare channel and was a bitesize return to glory for Capcom’s long-stagnant mascot - one that thrived purely for having brought Mega Man back to its basics. ![]() If you played and enjoyed this one, I really recommend checking out every single game above this on the list. Instead we get hyper-short linear levels, a generic mish-mash of visual elements, and three playable characters who all feel tangible worse to control than any previous Sonic game ever did. ![]() Where once Sonic games offered the player alternate paths, skill-based platforming challenges, or even just some genuine moments of player agency, Sonic Forces takes it all away. ![]() The worst thing you can say about Sonic Forces is that it shows a fundamental lack of understanding on every conceivable level regarding what Sonic games are or why people play them. The best thing you can say about Sonic Forces is that its story, peppered generously with moments of Sonic characters bathing your mute freak of a custom character in undeserved praise, is that it’s constantly hilarious. By comparison, Sonic Forces plays things very safe, right down to borrowing assets from past games, and yet it still plays like an utter mess. ![]() Say what you want about Sonic '06 and its failure to deliver on even one of its riskier game design aspirations at least it had aspirations. Had the famously awful Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) been eligible for this list ( we're only ranking games with trophy lists), I can promise you one thing - it would have outranked Sonic Forces.
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