I've been playing all the old Sonic games lately. This was partly for nostalgia, partly because I never got the chance to finish some of them. Let me tell you now, it's been quite a wild ride! Sonic Heroes has become more appealing to me for its sheer wacky charm. Sonic 06 is pretty cool with how ambitious it is and how it was basically a last stand before Sonic would devolve into Sonic Unleashed. But what of Shadow the Hedgehog?!? Well, it's actually a lot less remarkable than you'd think. We all know the memes. Edgy hedgehog with a glock killing anyone who looks at him funny. Sure, I do enjoy the stupidity of it all, but the gimmick can only go so far.

The story has an interesting concept since Shadow has been somewhat of a mystery. However, the failure lies in the execution. What was originally a neat way to provide depth to a cool character from Sonic Adventure 2 results in the equivalent of a politician answering a hard question. All we get are vague story events that say more about what you've done than who Shadow really is. You make decisions on whether or not Shadow is good or bad and the story causes Shadow to come to different conclusions of his existence. It doesn't even make sense in the fact that a Chaos Emerald appears in every level despite there only being 5 emeralds and 21 branching levels after accounting for the fact that Shadow gets two of them in the first level. Essentially, the emeralds locations are determined by where Shadow goes. (This is somewhat a nitpicky point, but whatever) To add onto that, the story felt like a bad Sonic Adventure 2 fan fiction. It was written so abysmally that I'm not surprised that the scenario writer for Sonic Adventure 2, Shiro Maekawa was not part of the writing team for this game. The game's story is never referenced again in future games and is a shit smear on the legacy of Sonic Adventure 2. It's quite sad really that this game was the final piece of continuity of the Sonic Adventure 2 world. (I don't really see a world continuity between Adventure 1 and 2) I say that because this game directly references events from Adventure 2 in clear and related statements. After that, we don't really hear much about the ARK or have anything that really evokes the world created by Adventure 2. It's quite unfortunate in some sense that this trainwreck of a game would be the last work to really have this continuity. I found it quite funny that the game reuses music from Adventure 2 to evoke memories of the past. (Like when the space takeoff music appears prior to flying into space.)

Along with that, let me just say this now, I love Black DOOM. He's so edgy and ridiculous that he's magnetic. It really wish there was more of him. The voice actor, Sean Schemmel really did an excellent job voicing this edge god. It's too bad Black Doom isn't even that competent. Too bad the rest of the cast has lost all their charm. They've become lifeless husks of their former selves and do nothing but remind you of what once was. Sonic is now some incompetent sidekick who is powerless against the edgehog. There are ridiculous cutscenes sprinkled throughout and I enjoyed them for their stupidity. I just found that it wasn't nearly enough to justify having to beat the game ten times. (I actually messed up on one of the endings and did an accidental, unfixable repeat, which forced me to play all six levels over again) It is even worse due to the fact that each of the five final levels has a good and a bad route that must also be beaten. To put the cherry on top, there's no level select that drops you into the timeline. (I know you can play any level you've beaten, but that won't let you continue to the next level after that to unlock an ending) As a result of all this, you need to beat the same levels twice in order to get the endings. Of course you can zigzag through the levels in any order to mix things up, but why would you? It would take far more effort. Essentially, my optimal strategy to finishing the game as soon as possible was to zoom through as many neutral level endings as I could. (Aka reach the Chaos Emerald) The dark and good level endings typically required more careful searching due to needing to kill X number of "Black Creatures' for example or "Fascist Pigs" aka cops.

Often times, I'd have to teleport back to the beginning of the level and repeat the same sections until I found every missing object of choice. It's all very repetitive and unrewarding gameplay. I did find it pretty funny that the cast had to call the aliens "Black Creatures". It sounds like a racist euphemism. The story is pretty much hot garbo. Shadow is stupid and goofy most of the time. His conclusions feel ignorant and in great need of analysis. I found him to be a lot dumber than how he was back in Sonic Adventure 2. Also, A M N E S I A! It's all so contrived...

The guns are passable sometimes, but the auto aim is awful. I enjoy shooting, but I wish the game would actually teach the shooting mechanics better. I didn't find out until the last 2 hours of the game about the R button's ability to allow Shadow to shoot forward and shittily strafe. The game also doesn't teach how ammo can be stacked by picking up more of the same gun. The challenges are so uneven as well. If I play the first level as a hero and I want to keep going as a hero, passing the second stage as a hero is pretty darn hard for a beginner. I can do it easily nowadays, but it's because I know the ins and outs of controlling Shadow, maintaining/maximizing ammo, aiming the gun while chasing the so called "tank", and the general flow of that level. Comparing that to just reaching the finish line in most neutral level choices, the game is super imbalanced in terms of difficulty. It's all just so jank. I do love when Shadow meets up with Team Chaotix and he just hacks into a computer by karate chopping it or whatever. Or when he takes a Chaos Emerald powering the spaceship while comparing it to taking candy from a baby. Then an alarm rings, like it's the punchline to a joke or something. It's all so wacky and dumb.

The game's worth playing for the stupidity, but you're going to have to put up with some shit. I would only suggest playing it if you're a Sonic maniac craving some stupidity in your life. Finally, I love using the egg vacuum to suck up those fucking cops. Hilarious.

Cool ideas, but not executed all that well. Love the Amy scenes. I think Jennifer Douillard's execution of Amy's cheesy lines is spot-on. Basically, this is peak Amy Rose. This is capped off by Team Rose's theme, "Follow Me". Easily the best song in the game in my book. It's a bold statement piece that is has a strangely echoes Sonic Adventure 1's "Believe in Myself" as it's another song hyper focused on Sonic. Also, Charmy Bee is hilarious. I love his crazy energy. However, it seems like everyone else's lines feel a bit phoned in. They lack the spirit of the past games.

Here's some Wikipedia context that I find important for why Sonic Heroes is the way it is: "The majority of the development team had worked on previous Sonic games. Iizuka did not want to make a sequel to Sonic Adventure 2 (2001), as he worried it would only appeal to Sonic fans. Interested in returning to gameplay similar to the Genesis games, Sonic Team decided to design Sonic Heroes so casual players not familiar with Sonic could adapt. Iizuka said the development period of Sonic Heroes was the most stressful of his career because of deadlines and Sega management. A fellow designer became ill, so he worked relentlessly, lost 22 pounds, and suffered from insomnia."

It seems that the lead designer wanted to deviate from the Sonic Adventure formula in order to appeal to a larger fanbase. This was a fine idea, but in terms of sheer execution, it opened the game up to compare unfavorably to its predecessor. Sonic Heroes dumbs down the story and style for a child's version of Sonic. The tone is super wacky and unappealing for fans of the Sonic Adventure titles that had many interesting dramatic moments. In Sonic Heroes, all we get is characters being goofy and the good guys being good all the time. Eggman is back to just being a simple goon man and for a fan of Sonic Adventure 2, I can't help but find that this game is a clear regression from what they had going for them prior.

Gameplay comes in the form of a melding of three different forms: Speed, Flying, and Power. However, I found that Speed was a mostly useless formation. It was most likely to cause death and lacked the sheer functionality of the latter formations. The levels are decently varied, but having to play them four times each made them quite a chore by the end of the game. It doesn't help that its a game you beat on easy, normal, hard, and chaotix difficulties. Such a grind that was not nearly as interesting as the Adventure games.

The story is repeated through the course of four different campaigns. Nothing of note happens between any of the campaigns besides maybe the end of team Chaotix. It's mostly just flavor dialogue to show off the personalities of the huge Sonic cast. I admit, Charmy Bee is badass. I love when he pollinates the flowers and I'm not afraid to admit it. As mentioned before, Amy Rose's voice actor is pretty much perfect and it's sad that after this game, she lost the role. Sonic and co don't really stand out besides Tails. The kid has really become a kid. It's disappointing in two ways. Tails's voice actor from the Adventure games was great. The way he delivered the lines was iconic and in Sonic Heroes, Tails has become a dumb child. No longer is he the smart kid from prior titles, but a babbling buffoon of a character. A regression through and through.

The level select sucks too. You can only select the start of each pair of levels. And getting chaos emeralds requires you to beat the 2nd level of each pair while having a key. (If you take damage while holding a key, you lose it) Of course, there are ways to mitigate the suffering such as playing Team Rose to get the keys. However, you have to beat the first level of each pair if you are just going through the level select. Why did they do this? It's terrible padding. I didn't even mention that once you take the key to the end of the level, you get a chance at getting the chaos emerald. You chase it in this slippery bonus stage. (My suggestion is to get the star bonuses and hold down the dash button. I mistakenly kept pressing the dash button and it didn't work nearly as well.)

Finally, the Metal Sonic angle was pretty neat. I do like the reasoning for why it did what it did, but it wasn't fleshed out due to the structure of the game. Overall, Heroes is a big disappointment of a game, but I have to admit that I did have my fun with it. The dialogue is pretty funny in an iconic way. For example, "THOSE WERE THE EASY ONES." or when Rouge starts talking about knowing what those Chaotix creeps want. The gameplay was strangely fun to master in the sense that the jank was something to learn how to deal with. And once you get the hang of it, everything is manageable, though pretty messy. I think it's a fun game, just not very good. I mainly recommend this to Sonic diehards. Others can try it, but it's really another Sonic game that you really have to try to enjoy.

Oh yeah, Espio is a massive weeb lol

Honestly, it's not as bad as people make it out to be. Having played almost all the 3D Sonic games at this point, I have to say that Secret Rings has a very cool vibe. Along with that, the story is pretty fun to watch. Of course the motion controls are a pain, but I still enjoyed it for what it was. The gameplay never became so much of a chore like it is in Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, or Sonic Unleashed. (I know that last one is a controversial opinion)

The levels get recycled for these arbitrary objectives yes, but I did enjoy the RPG mechanics at play. Some of the bosses suck, but others were pretty enjoyable. (Especially the Erazor fights)

The game has its moments. Waggling sucks sometimes. The music was sick. The Night Palace is a bad ass level. The steering is inconsistent. The jumping is weird. The homing attack has bad detection. Not a fan of racing Uhu, but it wasn't all bad. I hated rescuing Knuckles. The entirety of the dinosaur level sucks. There are annoying sections that could've really benefited from button based controls like sidling on a ledge. It's not super clear which levels are necessary to complete. But with all those issues, I still enjoyed the game a lot for its vibes. A classic Sonic game in my book.

I enjoyed the story! The gameplay is hit or miss depending on the level. I feel that the later levels were a pain due to them being timed and some levels didn't fit well with all characters. (Used Knuckles in the cave with the lightning and it was a trainwreck) The two sword boss fights were of good quality, but the timing was quite challenging. Also, I wish the black knight boss was explained better. (Need a lot of red meter before making contact with him or you instantly lose) Regardless, still worth playing, though I have to admit that it is quite a janky, poorly paced experience. (On a level design/gameplay basis)

Chip is like a Looney Tunes character. Why is he here?!? The story here sucks. It's nowhere near as engaging as a lot of past Sonic stories. Barely anything of note happens besides weird Chip/Sonic bro moments. Everything else feels like a kiddie version of Sonic. Why do we have to traverse the "villages' of people across continents? Why do we have to scour the land for the next level to play? Why do we have to play so carefully to find all the sun/moon medals to progress in the game?
I also hate the racist depictions in the game. It's too stereotypical and shallow. It also does the whole Africans as savages living in huts thing. Hope I don't lose gamer cred for talking bout politics!!!
The daytime gameplay is too fast for my liking, other people might like it, but it was really not for me. The nighttime levels are either boring or frustrating. I hate the stupid balancing werehog sections where you have to walk across beams in platforming challenges. There was also a dumb nighttime level glitch that just wasted a bunch of time. Finally, I find it really hard to enjoy such a quick time event laden game. It's disgusting. Oh yeah, it's got some of the worst music in any Sonic game ever.

All these years, I thought this game was supposedly one of the good ones only for me to find out it might be one of the worst ones. I do like Sonic 06 though, so think what you will lol.

It's like mediocre, but I don't hate it like Unleashed. The story is dumb and Eggman is an angry slave owner that controls his POC with a kazoo. Cool stuff bro

So the Zeti are evil. When Sonic frees them, it's one of the worst possible things that can happen. Thus, freeing slaves becomes a bad thing or at least a nuanced thing.

Fighting Zavok sucks (all the time, just him) and the game tries to do a bunch of gimmicks in a way that doesn't satisfy much at all. The homing attack is used in annoying and unintuitive ways too. You just gotta know when to press the A+X vs. A+A jumping attacks. It's not great. Also the music's pretty cool sometimes!

It's clear to me now. This game is badass! Don't believe the haters, try it out for yourself with an open mind and you will find a great Sonic game. In fact, it's easily one of my favorite Sonic games.

Story-wise, its a return to a Sonic tale that I can actually take seriously again. I still regard the Adventure games to have the best storytelling in the series, but I greatly enjoyed the silly, serious mix that this game has to offer. I also enjoyed the callbacks to the past as it felt like an acknowledgement of the lineage that the games have built up over the years.

Mechanically, the open world bollocks is tempered by the sheer joy of going lightning speeds as the blue blur. I like going fast and I enjoyed the variety that the open world was able to provide me. Traversal was really enjoyable despite being janky and inconsistent at times. I wish more hills functioned less like walls and more like actual hills. There were some that acted like ramps that let you speed off them to do sick tricks, while others would prevent you from traversing them altogether. I'm tired of writing for now, but I think I've made my point. Sonic Frontiers is B A D A S S. Don't miss it!