A Monologue About a Hedgehog (part 2)

 (I'm largely paraphrasing again, just to remind you all)
 
After Sonic Heroes, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who had mixed feelings on where Sonic was running. We got our answer in late 2005 when another game was released, only this time featuring Shadow, the anti-hero introduced in Adventure 2. There was a spoken popularity trend for the black hedgehog, so I guess this was sort of predictable, and there were some unanswered questions left at the end of Adventure 2. That's not really what matters though. Did the game hold up to the now-present standards of the previous Sonic games, complete with interesting platforming and speedy levels?

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: Hell no.

Longest answer: Why? Why would you do this kind of shit to us, your loyal fans? What were you thinking? How does this make any sense? Is this some kind of a joke? Did you think we would like this? Hell no!

This is where I lost sight of Sonic the Hedgehog. It's one thing to make a game about another character in the Sonic universe (which doesn't have to be bad, but more on that later), but to take such a drastic turn and pull off some of the stuff they did is just horrifying for long-time fans. How on earth did they get motorcycles, cussing, and especially guns through the editing department without one single soul saying, "Uh, guys? Why does our semi-popular offshoot character suddenly use guns, ride motorcycles, and throw swearing around like its cool?". Up until this point, people had always viewed Sonic as not only a character for all ages, but a type of game franchise that smaller kids could get into easily and have some fun. I can only imagine what types of reactions were had when this piece of crap was announced.

As a tangent here, my opinion on Sonic and his literal truckload of friends is that they are fine existing as NPCs, but not as wholly playable characters. The focus should be on Sonic and maybe 1-2 sidekicks like Tails and Knuckles, and that's it. I'm sure that there could be some leeway there about who could be playable, and I'm sure that a perfectly fine game could be made about another one of his friends, but if you're going to pick the good guy that is the literal anti-Sonic, then you don't have to go so far as to make an anti-game with things that you would never find in a Sonic game. To be completely honest, even though Shadow is pretty popular and I do kind of like him myself, he isn't all that great of a doppleganger, anti-hero sort of guy. All I've seen him do is taunt Sonic and lose to him before becoming a good guy, and then...nothing.

Anyway, things only got worse from then on. I personally did not play any Sonic game for the next 6 years from having been disgusted and let down by Shadow the Hedgehog, so I can't really say a whole lot about the next few games other than the general tone that I heard coming from fans. This post is already getting long too, so I'm going to skim a little bit. I don't think any of you will mind. Trust me.

A few more handheld titles appeared in the next year or so on the Nintendo DS and PSP. The PSP games were battle games that were largely forgettable, but the DS games were pretty good and kept true to the handheld tradition of Sonic games that had been around since Sega had their own handheld system, the Game Gear.

Sonic the Hedgehog, released on the Xbox in 2006, is largely regarded as where Sonic hit rock bottom. Rushed to the release date like there was no tomorrow, it was ridden with bugs and terrible platforming that made the game simply not fun to play. The story had nearly nothing to do with previous Sonic games and for those brave enough to last through to the ending, they were rewarded with probably the stupidest thing to happen since Sonic was given a race car to drive back in 1994.

Ugh...moving right along...a couple of games where Sonic was flung into random storybook tales were released, including Sonic and the Secret Rings (Arabian Nights) and Sonic and the Black Knight (King Arthur). They didn't feature anything worth noting other than some of his random friends being turned into characters in the stories and none of the humanoid characters ever questioning what the talking anthropomorphic hedgehog was or why their comrades were suddenly turned into anthropomorphic talking animals.

Somewhere along the way, a new racing series where Sonic, yet even more new rivals turned friends, and the rest of the crew took to hoverboards and raced around futuristic cities. They happened. Three times now.

In 2008, Sonic Unleashed had our at-one-time-popular hedgehog become a werewolf, or if you insist, a werehog, whenever day turned to night. Daytime levels (normal Sonic) were of average quality, while night levels had Kratos from God of War shaking his head and stabbing himself in the eyes as to how pointless and slow Sonic had become with the inclusion of a stretchy-armed joke of a werewolf.

After so many diversions and flat-out thoughtless things being thrown out as Sonic games, many believed the blue blur to have kicked the bucket. Popularity was the only thing he had to keep him alive from shitty game to shitty game. After such a long time of random bullcrap, you'd probably think that Sonic Team was even tired of it just by judging what they were pulling out of their asses. Anyone you walked up to just thought that Sonic should just live in the past.

Then something else happened.

Sonic the Hedgehog, long thought dead, had a spark of hope emerge from his gimmick-ridden corpse. A spark that today, is reviving him and rocketing him into what he once was 20 years ago.

(to be concluded in part 3)