Has anybody noticed that after Sonic Adventure 2: Battle came out, all the other Sonic
games havn't been all that great. They just havn't had that sonic feel. I know that Sega has
been trying new things with their Sonic the Hedgehog franchise but it's all been down hill.
I think they just need to cut back into the original Sonic games. What are your thoughts
about this? Has there been a game after SA2B that you have enjoyed? I have to say that a
decent one would be Shadow the Hedgehog although, it's not really about sonic it probably
was one of the closest to the original games to have come out after SA2B. Apart from the
use of guns and weapons that is.

I'm moving this to Franchises.

Kage Negra : I haven't played those two games yet, I'm hoping to soon

Sonic definitely went downhill, but has made a rebound. Sega has struggled a lot with trying to make Sonic work in 3D. They really didn't have a good formula. Even the Adventure games, which I did enjoy, still felt very off when playing as Sonic himself (other characters worked fine). Heroes was incredibly glitchy, Sonic 2006 was a mess... they had a hard time really getting in touch with what a 3D Sonic game should be. I think they finally started to figure it out with Colors and Generations and Ep4 continue to be solid entries. At this point, Sonic is recovering as Sega finally figure out how to do Sonic right in 3D. The only sad thing is that they seem to be ditching all his friends in order to do it. To be honest, I liked a lot of the other characters better than Sonic himself and preferred playing them.

Now the games in that time period that were NOT 3D (Advance series, Rush, Rush Adventure) were excellent entries into the series. They were every bit as fun for me as the original Genesis set (some more). Sega has always known how to make Sonic work in 2D (and they transitioned well enough to 2.5D) but just had that struggle with 3D for a about 5 years or so.

True, it has been pretty bad lately, but Sonic Generations may bring them out of that slump

I think it is going down hill. I was never really a Sonic fan, but I liked the old ones. It is the same thing every time and they should change it up.

I say Sega makes a game structured like the non-sidescrolling ones..with cutscenes and saving after levels and such but make the gameplay sidescrolling. And release it for 3DS. And make it bigger than Generations. Now that is a recipie for gold.

I wouldn't say downhill, so much as a divot they got stuck in for a while. I say the spin off games (e.g. Secret Rings), were just not very good. Sonic 06 was really the only bad one, but because of the hype (in sonic fans), great trailer cinematic, and overall crap that ensued within generated a great backlash that would forever scar Sonic Team forever. (Redundancy for greater effect.) The GBA sonic advance and DS Sonic Rush games we're great, and Sonic Unleashed marked the start of the return of the blue hedgehog. Personally, I think people criticize the concepts and not the game-play. All because they made romantic connection between Hedgehog and Human.

Yes, it went downhill. But when Generations came out and I loved it. I think Sega can do 3-D. But like Generations should still stick to their roots. But Generations was an anniversary thing so they may never do that again. Who knows! Maybe it will last a year or a century?

I loved Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. Great game to play with friends. For me, I think it was the only good 3D Sonic game.
After that, the next 3D games were horrid.
I haven't had the chance for Generations yet but I hope I do when it comes out or if it is. I have no idea if it is or not.

What I really don't get, is when after Jason Griffith started voicing Sonic, his games went really down hill. (Shadow the hedgehog, Sonic 06, Sonic and the Secret rings, some of Sonic Unleashed) and all that.

Well, I would rather like to say that it's going uphill. The series took a large drop with Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, the GameBoy Advance games, and such, but it's been really going upwards since they released Sonic 4 Episode 1. Even though it's episodic, it's really a great game, and every Sonic since then, including and especially Sonic Generations, have been spectacular.

Here's a chart on how I feel it went.






Image upload: 488x355 totaling 8 KB's.

Yeah sonic adventure 2 was the calm before the storm. We all thought the wii games would be better, but those were absolutely terrible and so have all the other games.

3 of the Wii games were good. Sonic Colors, Sonic Unleashed, and Sonic 4 Episode 1.

Yea sonic just isn't the same any more, the sonic games for the game cube are the newest ones I like. I would like to see another game like knuckles chaotix.

While I haven't played a sonic game since the wii, I haven't enjoyed any of the newer ones I've tried. But in all fairness, I didn't like the Wii at all. Still, I haven't liked a Sonic game since the Genesis.

I do agree that the franchise was going downhill but I thought that 4 was a step in the right direction.

The thing is that studios are hesitant to make a TRUE 2D sprite based game because they think that the market wont support it. Look at games like the remake/rehash of games like Bionic Commando, Rocket Knight Adventures, etc. Very few of these big developers have gone "all in" in this regard. One of the few that I can think of are the MegaMan sequels that Capcom came out with a few years ago.