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How Sega Ruined Sonic the Hedgehog
The always entertaining RetroGaming with Racketboy has a long post up railing against Sega for ruining Sonic the Hedgehog. The blue, spikey hero has had a rough time of it of late. Outings from the series like Shadow the Hedgehog, and even the next-gen title simply named Sonic the Hedgehog, have gotten simply terrible reviews. He longs for a return to simple, fun, not-creepy play. From the article: "As the new generation of platforms emerged, Sega used Sonic as a way to show off their newest graphical technologies. There is no doubt that the new Sonic the Hedgehog for the XBox 360 looks nice, but as the abysmal reviews indicate, graphics are not everything. In order to push its cutting-edge graphics to the limit, Sega, in their infinite wisdom, felt the need to bring Sonic and his friends into a more realistic world, filled with life-like humans. As you can see from this video, there is something creepy about some giant hedgehogs interacting with humans. My point is that Sega doesn't seem to know what it wants to do with Sonic. It seems like Sega assigns various quick-and-dirty development projects in order to see what ideas sticks with consumers. Unfortunately, Sega fans have had to suffer through this process."
Clearly, she was praying to Shenlong. Sonic, surrounded by glowing orbs, is brought back to life and immediately goes Super Saiyan.
They are making 2d-esque games (Sonic Rush, for example) and those are still pretty good
I'd go further than that - Sonic Rush is the Sonic game all these people have been waiting for. It's amazing to me that so many people complain about the current Sonic games and hardly any of these people have bothered playing Sonic Rush. It's rarely even mentioned in any of the talk about recent series entrants.
Sonic Rush is a much more natural evolution of the Sonic series than any of the recent 3D games on home systems. Ironically, Sonic Rush is 3D, in the same way the Klonoa series is - the graphics are mostly cel-shaded 3D, the gameplay basically 2D. This lets the old-school gameplay that Sonic fans want shine through, while still adding some new 3D elements and the fully 3D boss battles.
One of the big sites - it was either GameSpot or GameSpy - called this game the "most significant" Sonic game in many years. I would agree with that if only more people had played it. It is an example of what Sonic games can be in the modern age, although unfortunately for all concerned, it didn't sell particularly well. What lesson does Sega take from that?
If you want good Sonic games, buy the good Sonic games. If you don't buy them, Sega won't make them. And that's what's happening now; Sega is unsuccessfully searching for a new formula, having apparently been convinced that the original formula no longer works in the marketplace.