C64_Critic wrote:Typo: "Batant" should be "Blatant".
It's about time a GOOD, modern Sonic (like) came out. How long has Sega allowed that franchise to suffer and languish with various attempts to try and do new and different - and bad - things with it, rather than just get it back to it's roots?
I'm in the opposite camp: I'd argue Sonic hasn't tried to be ambitious enough during the decade, even though there were more good than bad (there just wasn't a lot).
And the reason why they've stopped being ambitious has to do with overblowing the negatives out of proportions though and overlooking the actual good games (or good elements), almost none of the criticised games are as bad as a lot of critics make them out to be. I believe out of the post-2000s games, only Forces and Sonic 4 EP 1 are worse than how they've been rated (it's saying something when Lost World is the most ambitious and original game we've gotten out of a lot that has been mostly tired regurgitation/nostalgia pandering, yes, even Mania).
As a result: Sega chickened out and killed the Adventure style gameplay because of Sonic 06, even though it was a proven formula and entirely their fault and not Sonic Team's why Sonic 06 turned out so unfinished.
But for stuff like Unleashed for example: it was slammed at release by critics, but reevaluation happened rather recently, and a lot of players came to terms with the Werehog as both concept & execution, some even liking them better than the day stages. For having played the game for the first time like a year ago on 360, I'm personally on that boat; the night stages have legitimately good platforming and combat imo, and aside from the length and the music track frequently changing when going from "calm" to "fighting", I don't think there's anything wrong about these levels.
Even if it had been all that bad, it's still flavour that this particular title possesses and that most of the 2010s games sorely lack. The day stages were seen as "good" so they were kept, but the night stages were killed due to rather vitriolic and reactionary criticism in retrospect.
Unpolished? Yeah, but even the classics had some very chaotic & conflicting game design in parts, and themselves were all about trying to be ambitious and throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks, they're not so different in essence.
Sonic 1's a good game, but it doesn't exploit the idea of a momentum/physics based platformer at all outside of Green Hill Zone and snippets of Star Light & Spring Yard (there are even a bunch of moments where you just wait around in Marble/Spring Yard/Labyrinth/Scrap Brain), even though it was supposed to be the concept it was built on, heck a bunch of new players would even argue that Sonic 1 & CD aren't good for those reasons (and CD has very messy level design).
Which makes perfect sense for Sonic 1, cause Yuji Naka admitted that they've spent half a year on Green Hill alone and the rest didn't receive as much work. I think it's good, but it's in spite of not using its potential.
On the topic of overlooked games, I'm still shocked that almost no one seems to remember the Sonic Advance & Rush/Colours DS games while tons of guys are swooning over Mania and claiming how there seemingly hasn't been a good 2D Sonic game since 1994.
They might be "old", but two of those games are more recent than Sonic 2006, which is almost 14 years old already, and yet there are people who still won't shut up about how broken and unfinished it is.
I'm honestly chalking it up to people just having very selective memory when it comes to Sonic games.
And while I ramble on how unoriginal most of the decade has been, Colours & Generations are still at least very good games, Lost World's divisive but the consensus is more on "decent/goodish" than "bad" (the tutorials are terrible though), and afterwards... there just has been 2 big games released in the 2010s: Mania & Forces, unless you count the Boom games which aren't made by Sega (and the phone games, which you shouldn't).
It wasn't a very big decade in terms of quantity at all.
(also PS: Freedom Planet's been around since 2014)