Topic: Why Sonic Sucks: An Introspective

[MukiDA]

Notes: I apologize if this is a tl;dr. I don't hate Sonic, and I'm not even that big a fan of Mario (tho I am a Yoshi fan, take that as you will). I make the Mario comparison a LOT, not because Sonic needs to become a slow platformer, but mainly because it's essentially the only other pure platformer on the market (Wratchet's half-shooter, and even that only brings us to three. There have been more 2D fighting game franchises released in the last couple of years, ffs.) Also, I'm pretty sure I pulled most of the foul language out, save for the occasional acronym, but if anything isn't kosher, I'll change it immediately.


Thrice now during this console generation, Sega has tried to reboot sonic. Thrice. First with the 2006 "Sonic The Hedgehog", a standard reboot title much like "Prince of Persia" in 2008. Then they tried it again with "Sonic Unleashed", featuring the "Hedgehog Engine", and now they're attempting to do it again, in the same 5-year-period, with "Project Needlemouse".
Every time Sega releases a new Sonic game, every Sonic fan in a three mile radius can be heard collectively sighing, and the same tired comment comes out, which was seemingly birthed at around the time of Sonic Adventure 2's release (or, arguably, with Knuckles Chaotix on the 32X, but I can count on a single finger how many people I know that every actually owned a 32x).

"Dear God, Sega, please don't include any more of Sonic's crappy friends".

There's a strange sentiment around Sonic fans, that Sonic's forestful of playable, colorful critters is what's ruined the franchise for the past ten some odd years, and I think it's about time we killed that myth right off. The problem with the Sonic franchise isn't that they add friends to each subsequent release.

No, the problem with the Sonic franchise is that Sonic team will not let go of a bad idea.

They'll bandage it, they're cover it up, they'll try to ignore it's a problem, but they will never outright let go of a bad idea, and this isn't anything new with them. In fact, there's a pretty easy example to go by from Sonic 2 (That's Genesis Sonic 2, not the 3D or GBA one). Sonic 2 brought us Tails, one of Sonic Team's best ideas. He was, essentially, a 100% completely optional co-op player. Someone could hop right in and play as him, but, unlike the beat-'em-ups of that era (Final Fight, TMNT), if they decided to leave the room, you wouldn't be stuck with an on-screen friend prevent you from progressing into the game. Tails being on-screen was not a requirement, and him going idle simply resulted in the CPU re-taking control of his actions (which was essentially a time-delayed mirror of whatever Sonic did). Tails was a co-op friend who was nearly always helpful (it's nice to have someone around who could attack but not die in any meaningful way, especially against a boss), and it was nearly impossible for him to become a hindrance.

Of course, this came with one exception. In underwater levels, Tails could grab an air bubble. While underwater areas had a slightly higher risk than land areas for Tails (he couldn't "fly" into water in Sonic 2, so his death meant waiting for Sonic to surface), it still lead to situations where it could get Sonic killed (2 seconds away from death, the bubbles are on a 3-4-second interval, and Tails steals your bubble), whether controlled by the CPU or a friend.

Now, in all honesty, Tails really didn't need to run the risk of drowning in the first place. It did nothing to improve the fun or challenge of the game. If Tails couldn't drown, but Sonic could, the player would still need to manage the air supply to continue into the game, and it would be in keeping with the concept of Tails, and the player wouldn't have to actively think about him being around. Tails grabbing air bubbles or drowning is a feature that Sonic Team really should have removed from the game entirely.

But instead, they bandaged it. Instead of an air bubble coming out of the ground in Sonic 3, two did, one clearly designated for Tails.

Moving beyond this overly-digressed example, we walk directly into Sonic Adventure, Sonic's first 3D foray. I'm not entirely sure why, but Sonic Team essentially skipped an entire console lifespan (the Saturn) with which to continue the legacy of their most popular franchise (I know exactly 2 other people who have ever played PSO). My guess is that they spent 3-5 years on and off trying to figure out how to make Sonic work in 3D. Their final result was a horrific failure, but to explain why, we have to inevitably bring up Sonic's primary competitor in his hey-day, Mario.

Playing Mario 64, you'll note a large abundance of changes Nintendo made to the gameplay formula, and you'll also note that the entire premise behind all of them were to make platforming work in 3D. It's a variety of fixes that, sadly, other developers don't seem to have learned. (Though it helps that the market for 3D platforming is nearly nonexistent, aside from Wratchet, which is also half-shooter)

First off is the ever-present issue that jumping from platform A to platform B in 3D is HARD for a player. You're going to overshoot or undershoot a LOT of the times. This is a genre where a missed jump often leads to death. And Super Mario 64 had SEVERAL fixes for this.

1. Mario leaves a shadow DIRECTLY BELOW HIM at all times, regardless of light source. This has nothing to with the graphical capabilities of the console he's on, as it's been the case in Sunshine and Galaxy as well. This is a situation where gameplay is more important than graphics, as it allows you to track where Mario will land.

2. Mario has a new move, the butt stomp, that allows him to IMMEDIATELY cut off a jump arc and go straight down. Combined with #2, it makes it very easy to avoid over-shooting a jump, especially when jumping onto smaller platforms. Once you see the shadow where you want to land, you just butt-stomp.

3. If Mario misses a platform by a hair, he'll auto-grab the ledge. He'll also do this if he slips off of a ledge. This is a ridiculously important feature, and it's the biggest criticism I have for nearly every 3D platformer on the market. (Seriously, try the Sonic 2006 demo on the Xbox 360. Try to NOT accidentally fall off a ledge to your death. ) It really comes down to this, to any developers of 3D platformers reading: NINTENDO didn't figure out a better solution for barely-missed jumps than to auto-grab ledges. Who the HELL do you think YOU are, that your game doesn't have this feature? Yes, Tim, I'm talking to you.

I could go on for hours, but this isn't a 3D Mario introspective. However, in addition to the various movement enhancements (Mario up until 64 had 3 jumps at best: Jump, Full-Sprint-Jump, and Starman Flip. Mario in 64 has a jump, triple jump, wall jump, sideways jump, and a backflip), Nintendo realized that even they didn't have the resources to make level design identical to the 2D days. In a 3D game, you can't just make 40-60 some odd levels in full 3D. There's too many issues in terms of balanced design and collision issues (there's a LOT of testing that has to be done in a game to make sure players don't fall through the floor, or get stuck). Your options are to either add depth to the few levels you can make (hence the multiple-objective approach in the series since), or to essentially make a platformer on rails, ala Crash Bandicoot. After long delays in development, Nintendo made the first approach work.

Yuji Naka made a platformer on rails.

There's a major problem with a platformer on rails. It's the same problem that light-gun shooters have, it's the same problem Starfox had, it's essentially the same problem that every on-rails game has.

They're REALLY short.

Sonic Adventure was fun, I won't contest that. But Sonic Adventure was 3 hours long, at best. The biggest problem Nintendo had during the N64's launch period was that in the two weeks that followed the release of Mario 64, they had a lot of folks returning their games (and sometimes consoles) because they'd already beaten it.

Sonic Adventure had that problem on day one.

Being a platformer on rails was a problem, and part of the problem was that it wasn't Sonic. Sure, everyone who remembers Sonic on the Genesis, especially given the marketing campaign, remembers the running. But Sonic also had a LARGE degree of solid platforming. Especially in the first one, before the implementation of the spin dash, there were large stretches between running downhill and through loopty-loops where Sonic would pick up coins, take out enemies, and look for power-ups. There was the lava level, where between sections of running from pouring magma, Sonic would actually spend a great deal of time moving slowly through a level whose floor was near-instant-death, much like some of the "Bowser's Castle" levels in Super Mario 3 'n World. Sonic was a platformer. Faster than most, and clearly more linear than the direction Mario took (e.g. no overworld map), but still a platformer.

In all honesty, after Sonic Adventure they really should have just dropped the on-rails aspect and fleshed out the world Sonic moved around in.

However, that requires time and research that Sonic Team probably didn't have the budget for (It probably didn't help that Dreamcast sales started plummeting a year in and Sega really didn't have the time for Sonic Team to build something like this). Instead, they bandaged the hell out of Sonic Adventure's short play-through problem. That's where all the current hatred of the franchise comes from.

Think back to Sonic Adventure 2. Was the inclusion of Knuckles and Tails (and, of course, Shadow/Rouge/Robotnik) really the problem? Was it honestly Shadow the Hedgehog that people didn't like? No. God no. And sadly, to explain this, I have to go back to that Italian plumber nobody wants to hear about anymore.

Nintendo's made modifications on Mario's gameplay before. Super Mario Bros. 2 (US) featured 3 extra playable characters. Toad could pick enemies up faster, Luigi could jump higher with a bit more difficulty over control, and Peach could float for short periods of time. Super Mario Bros. 2 (Japan) also featured a Luigi that could jump higher but was slightly harder to control, and that's become a running theme for the character. Super Mario World featured Yoshi, who could eat and insta-stomp-kill small enemies, and even walk on things that were otherwise dangerous for Mario alone to walk on. Not to mention all of Super Mario Bros. 3's power-ups.

The thing is, all of these changes either made the game slightly easier or were a trade-off. They never made any changes to the fundamental nature of the game, and they never made the game substantially harder (not more difficult, but harder, and more frustrating) for no discernible reason. And they were nearly always optional.

Let's go back to Sonic Adventure 2 and point-nobody-liked number one. So you start a level, and you have to play as Tails. Fine, no big deal. Suddenly you're in a large bipedal mech. This mech is SLOW. This mech gets ONE JUMP. And very often, you're going to DIE because you missed said jump.

Let's go back for a moment to Mario. Imagine if, in Super Mario World, Yoshi moved a LOT slower than Mario. Also he couldn't jump as high. Also, you started the level on him, and you couldn't get off until you finished said level. Really clear now, right?

The problem wasn't that they added Tails as a playable character. It's that HE COULD JUMP OUT OF THE MECH AND DO A BETTER JOB (yes, I am shouting). Only that wasn't an option. Sonic Adventure was too short a game, and rather than make levels that didn't revolve around going from point A to point B (which was really the problem), they simply made going from point A to point B a lot slower. And the "Tails Levels" were a requirement. It's not even that the levels were required that made them annoying; calling them "Tails Levels" is really disingenuous. They were "Slow mech that doesn't in any way resemble the game you bought" levels. A lot of people didn't like Raiden supplanting Snake in Metal Gear Solid 2 or The Arbiter doing the same to Master Chief in Halo 2. Now imagine if Raiden spent the game in a wheelchair or if The Arbiter walked on all fours and couldn't aim his shots (e.g. you had to walk him in the direction he shot in). Much like these theoretical scenarios, you'd grow to hate the concept of "Not playing as the main character" rather than realizing that what you really didn't like was "Playing a game that in no way resembles the game I thought I bought". It's like if, halfway into Bust-a-Move, the bubbles stopped sticking, little pegs showed up in the well, and suddenly it's Peggle. Nobody walked into Halo 3 or MGS3 (and the latter even had a completely different main character) dreading that they'd be playing as someone other than the main character. Doesn't that tell you something?

This leads us to the second largest mistake Sonic Team's made: Alternate (let alone forced) playable characters that control nothing like Sonic.

I won't even go into the Knuckles levels, in which Sega decided to get rid of the rails in exchange for a gameplay concept that could BARELY functioned as a mini-game, and proceeded to stretch out the gameplay length and shrink the windows for success as the game progressed. They essentially built a third of the game on trial-and-error gameplay mechanics, something that would get any other game returned on day one. (unless, of course, the entire game consisted of hand-drawn animation)

Sonic Adventure 2 was atrocious because, rather than drop the concept of a "platformer on rails" (which isn't even really a platformer), they decided to "fix" the short play-length problem by turning it into a game, for over 2/3 of the experience, that was as far removed from a Sonic title as one could manage. Sonic 3 also had Tails and Knuckles as playable characters, and nobody hated that game. Why? Because they could do the same *basic* things that made a game a Sonic title (Jump reasonably high, run, spin-dash), and on TOP, had their own special abilities (flying, climbing walls). 

The saddest thing? Both of those sets of skills would have made for a great, traditional, 3D platformer. Super Mario 64 got re-released on the DS with 4 seperate playable characters, and even they had nowhere near the level of flexibility in capability that the Sonic trio did. Imagine the level design that allows only characters that can fly or glide to reach certain areas, or sections that are too high to fly to (Tails had a tendency to get tired after several seconds of flight), but with nearby walls to climb (and of course, some sort of speed-up to Knuckles's climbing ability to avoid tedium, such as being able to jump straight up mid-climb). Or even areas that Sonic Adventure hinted at where a series of flying enemies could be placed that sonic could homing-attack his way through (that were too long for flying and gliding). 

Almost none of which Sonic Team could do with a platformer on rails.

Sonic Heroes almost had the right idea, but by not dropping the rails, level design really didn't offer much between the 3 gameplay styles, and felt ridiculously contrived as a result. 

Sonic Unleashed traded friends for a werehog form, but problem #2 was still there: you weren't playing a platformer for well over half the game. And once again, the "on-rails" segments, not a great idea in the first place, went by way too quickly.

Even the 2D title, Sonic Rush, failed the concept in its second iteration. Once again, we go back to the "Nintendo doesn't dare do this and they're the market leader"(New Super Mario Bros. has sold 10 million copies in two months' time) reasoning. Think back to every Mario title you've ever played. Think back to the portion of the game where you play something that's substantially different than the rest of the game. In Super Mario Bros. 1 & 3 it was swimming. In Super Mario Land it was the submarine. In World it was the "balloon" special stage. Or auto-scrolling stages. How many levels are in each of these games? Approx. 30-70, depending on the title. How many levels featured these substantially different gameplay mechanics? Right, somewhere between 3 and 5. We're talking less than 10% of the game as a whole. In Sonic Rush 2, the "mini-game" levels have to be done at least once every time you go to a new pair of stages. Since Sonic went 3D, the stages where you don't play as anything that even vaguely resembles a Sonic game tends to account for over half of your play time. Sometimes over two-thirds.

I won't even touch upon the "bonus stages" much. In a Mario title, getting a "full game completion" required a higher order of skills in the game you were playing. In Sonic games, it has traditionally required a higher order of skills in a completely different style of game.

In the final "Nintendo doesn't dare do this" example, I'd like to point out that they're not above releasing entire games with substantially different gameplay concepts, featuring Mario characters. Yoshi's Island and Wario Land even featured Mario in their SUB-titles to get them off the ground as spin-offs, and cut it off after both of their initial forays (both of which played FAR closer to the Mario formula than their sequels did, especially for Wario). However, in the one "Mario" game to not feature any platforming whatsoever, Luigi's Mansion, even Nintendo didn't have the balls to even include the word "Mario" in the title.

I could go on for hours, as I haven't even skimmed across the Wii Sonic Games, which are far closer to being "on-rails" than even the Sonic Adventure series, or the PSP games, which essentially turned Sonic 2's versus multiplayer into a "full" game.

I conclude all of this with a great degree of skepticism for Project Needlemouse. It being a "Sonic-Only" game is not a good sign, in the slightest. If Sonic team had the ambition to make a true 3D Sonic game, there's no way they'd leave Tails and Knuckles out of it. Something with exploration, real platforming, and even the simplest of puzzles (scavenger hunts aren't puzzles) would benefit substantially from characters with slight modifications to the main character's abilities. It's a direction they'll probably never head in, and if they stick to the platformer on rails, their only real options are to either make the game a 0-day GameStop return or find some new way to bludgeon Sonic's only real differentiating feature: He moves really fast.

[KDR_11k]

I'll just quote what I mailed to Sean Malstrom when he made a comment about Sega not being willing to let go of 3D (guess he doesn't play modern Sonic and who can fault him?)

I don't think it was 3D that killed Sonic and I don't think Sega refuses to make 2D Sonic games either, as far as I know Sonic Unleashed featured 2D Sonic gameplay. What did hurt Unleashed however were the nighttime levels that the developer admitted were added merely to pad the game length. They said that since Sonic moves so fast it's hard to make enough level for him to run though without having the game end up only 2-3 hours long. Of course a game you're done with in 2-3 hours is unacceptable.

Now I was a C64 and SNES kid back in the day so I only experienced Sonic in retro collections released many years later but from what I understand the main pulls of the series are the speed and the vast levels with many pathes through them. The speed sections are so fast moving that you have to know what's ahead of you through experience if you wish to influence them, otherwise you can only watch Sonic race through the default path. What both of these things require is replaying the same levels many times. In the old pre-save days it was natural to replay most of the game to get back to where you were but that died when battery saves became common. Sonic's peak is generally considered 2 which had no save function. Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles were originally planned to be one game but the content took too long to develop and it had to be split into two games. Sonic 3 also introduced the battery save. I think those two facts may be connected, to get a Sonic game that saves and still has a good length you need to invest way too much work. Also recent Sonic games have a tendency to force the player to go back and replay levels he has already beaten but that comes off as unnatural too.

What I think Sega devs are indeed unwilling to do is drop the ability to save. Sonic's design does not fit into a lengthy adventure with saves, unlike Mario whose games don't require replaying the levels often to get the most out of it. 3D is unlikely to be the true killer of Sonic as the series started to decline with 3 and even later 2D Sonic games failed to revive it.

By the way, modern 2D Sonic has the same problem that Mega Man 9 does, instadeath traps. What I find notable in that context is that the Sonic 1 manual mentioned that bottomless pits will kill you even if you don't have rings but the manuals for Sonic 2 and 3 don't. They also reduced the frequency of instadeaths to near zero, almost takes effort to hit an instant death trap in Sonic 2. Now if we look at the Mega Man games that preceded 9 there is Mega Man X8 which has a similar obsession with spikes and a lack of proper enemies. Both game series are suffering from bad level design for quite a while already.

[Peachylala]

Sonic X-Treme says hi. Retro Mag did an three page article about it. X-Cult has the articles.
 
Wonder why 3d Sonic games suck? Thank Yuji Naka and Sega of Japan.
 
EDIT: Guess X-Cult hates direct linking.

[Caterkiller]

This rant looks familiar. But you wont get much of a response here. I think almost everyone here could care less for Sonic at the moment. And I think we've all read these kinds of posts a million times over. I do agree with most everything though except the on rails issue.

Just going from point A to point B is what made Star Fox so great, the Sonic stages in Adventure 1 and 2 good, and the "Secret of" stages in Sunshine so fun. Even in Galaxy, most of the tasks are just point A to point B with a few wide open areas for Mario to really explore. But the way the games were set up, especially in Adventure 2, they could have been really expanded upon with really well done controls. And if they entire game was like that, then the game would have been much better received. Star Fox 64 was in no way too short, yes you have to complete the story without every stage in one sit through, but going through the different paths again and again to find secrets and get better was a thrilling and satisfying part of it. And the fact that that aspect was completely taken away in Assault really made that particular game feel short.

Sonic Heroes had super long tracks, some stages went over the 15 minute mark. So If there were just 20-30 stages of even just half of that I think many people would be very satisfied if the reply value was high enough. Adding in a way to keep moving if you want to, and exploring if you want to, it can make for a very good Sonic game. SA2 tried doing these things, but certain control issues, camera and really narrow stages didn't make this ideal.

I do have some hope for the Needle Mouse though, with unleashed I thought the Sonic levels were decent and pretty fun. And for once the game wasn't buggy as all hell. But I refused to complete it due to the dang ware hog.  My only problems were the too many zippers, where it's hard to just stop and look around if you wanted, and the auto super sonic attack that just blasts through enemies. If Sonic wasn't so fast now'a days then it would be easier to control and stop if need be. If needlemouse can expand upon the 2D stuff in unleashed 10 fold and just make it nothing but that I would be very happy. Along with classic enemies no buddies that shoot or drive vehicles and a hint at momentum being an actual use in this game, I do have higher hopes than I ever had be for for a sonic game.

[MukiDA]

The one thing I was going to go into, but felt that it was straying too far off on a tangent, was that Star Fox 64 did a really good job of dealing with the shortness of a rails design by
1. Including branching paths.
2. Including an easily quantifiable replay system where killing a certain number of enemies would "complete" a stage, and doing so to the system as a whole would unlock, essentially, an alternate game (and doing so in the alternate and main games would also unlock a new gameplay type in multiplayer)
The Adventure series, AFAIK, didn't including any of #1, and the replay system in them is nearly impossible for players to keep track of mid-level. In Starfox 64, if I haven't killed X number of enemies halfway into a level on my 3rd playthrough I know I haven't done enough to get the reward and I can restart then (especially given that there are obvious clusters that you know the count of and can easily tell if you took out enough of them), but I can't tell if my time's low enough to get an S ranking, never mind that the number of cheap traps sprinkled throughout a level are going to do nothing but frustrate a player if they're going for a higher ranking in the first place.


Oddly enough, I enjoyed the Starfox series more when they were on rails. I couldn't get into the DS version, partially because of the "sudden genre switch" with the strategy portion, and partially because the actual "levels" were really bland and sparse. And repetitive, but not the oft-used version where you're taking out waves of the same enemy types, real repetitive, where you were going through the exact same levels multiple times.
I never got into the GameCube game(s?), but I think it had some of the same problems that hit Sonic Adventure 2, and more closely, Rogue Squadron 2 (3?), in that they introduced entirely new gameplay styles that came abruptly and where nowhere nearly as well thought out as the "main" style of play, on top of being mandatory.
You can make a good nonlinear 3D Sonic game. There's a balancing act where you have to hide slow sections of the game by making sure people don't find them tedious, but that requires a lot of playtesting and research, a lot of throwing away entire levels, which is probably beyond Sonic Team's capabilities and mantra.
And in all honesty, I wasn't expecting "a response". I expected some degree of discussion; the knee-jerk response is something I was actually scared about (what little experiences I've had with game discussion has been on IGN or GameFAQs, or any other news site's comments section). The responses I've gotten here have been thoughtful, something that I very much appreciate. The only real anger in that article/rant is about the common response to a Sonic title being "I'm tired of Sonic's friends", which goes in a completely different direction than the real problems the series has had since going 3D. The issues it had back in the 2D era (cheap traps/kills) often get glossed over by that type of thinking, and it really does the franchise a disservice.
Of course, three responses in, it's clear that "that type of thinking" probably isn't prevalent here.

[Caterkiller]

I see, but what I meant as a response was that, most of us users on this site will not even look at this topic. It's just a sonic thing I suppose, but you will rarely see an IGN state of affairs on these boards thats for sure.

[broodwars]

3D Sonic sucks because Sonic has always sucked regardless of what dimension he's presented in, and as noted previously they keep trying to add even more crappy elements onto the series formula with each new game.  I might be a bit jaded because I never played a Sonic game until the collection on the GameCube, but I've never really understood the love for that franchise.  He's a character that relies upon speed, yet the only way to enjoy that aspect of the character is to memorize the levels so you know what's about to hit you ahead of time.  So basically you have a character that runs really fast that you have to explore stages with first Mario-style to memorize the route, but because he's so speedy he's slippery and doesn't handle basic platforming well.  There's fun to be had with the franchise, but it pretty much requires stripping the experience down to a spectacle-filled time trial obstacle course series, and Sega doesn't want to do that.  They'd rather have Werehogs.  That's my 2 cents, anyway.

[Peachylala]

Sonic 3 and Knuckles is where the series, IMHO, hit it's stride. After that, Sonic fell off the face of the Earth due to Executive Meddling and the ever horrible Sonic Syndrome.

[SixthAngel]

Sure, everyone who remembers Sonic on the Genesis, especially given the marketing campaign, remembers the running. But Sonic also had a LARGE degree of solid platforming. Especially in the first one, before the implementation of the spin dash, there were large stretches between running downhill and through loopty-loops where Sonic would pick up coins, take out enemies, and look for power-ups. There was the lava level, where between sections of running from pouring magma, Sonic would actually spend a great deal of time moving slowly through a level whose floor was near-instant-death, much like some of the "Bowser's Castle" levels in Super Mario 3 'n World. Sonic was a platformer. Faster than most, and clearly more linear than the direction Mario took (e.g. no overworld map), but still a platformer.

This is the problem I think Sonic has.  Everyone, including developers, has completely confused the marketing with the actual game.

Sonic simply didn't move superfast very much in the early games.  There was the occasional loop de loop but moving fast was something he could do, much like how Mario can run, but you don't actually do it all the time.  In Sonic 1 before the spin dash it was very hard to build up speed to move fast and the game actively discouraged you early on with a spring that would bounce you back when you ran into a wall.  Going really fast all the time in the first 3 was for advanced players, it opened new paths because you could make it through corkscrews or take a ramp high enough to reach a different area, it was not the way most people played.  It was a platformer with a slight increase of speed, slight.

I think Sonic Rush shows you this the best, the enire thing is a freaking roller coaster.  They gave sonic a boost move that kills enemies and makes him go at uncontrollable speeds and you hold it down pretty much the entire level.  I don't think I jumped on more than 2 or 3 enemies the entire time.  They eliminated almost all of the actual platforming and make the levels play themselves as you pretty much just blow by almost everything.

I don't think the on rails design in Adventure was a problem for the player, I really enjoyed them, it is only a problem for the developer because of the speed the levels are finished.  They need to find a way to make it cheaper or change it up like you said.  I really liked the Tails mech level of Adventure 2 though.  They were fun, short and were a nice break for me.  I always enjoy when a game changes it up a bit.  (Unlike your example I thought the Arbiter part of Halo 2 was by far the best part.  Master Chief was simply a typical faceless protagonist and you actually get to play as a bad ass alien then.  I don't understand the love for MC)  The Knuckles/Rogue levels were an abomination though.  One of these levels made me stop playing and I never finished.  I think if these were gone you would see very few complaints about Adventure 2 today.  I agree with you that his friends were never the problem.  Knuckles was excellent in Sonic and Knuckles so he wasn't the problem here.  I don't like Rush but the new character Blaze the catdid nothing to make it worse.

I think the best way to know that Project Needlemouse is going to be horrible is that they haven't changed it to a box release for the Wii yet.  As far as I know it is still a downloadable title.  For them to not try and ride Mario's coat tails shows that they have to have lead in the water or something.  Sonic is an extremely well known platformer, they obviously can sell very well on the Wii, and Sonic even has brand recognition with Mario since he was in both SSBB and the Olympics games.  I want Sonic to be a good game and do well but I can't even buy it if its download only since I don't have the wireless router to put my Wii on the internet anymore.  If a company is so stupid in this aspect I don't think they have the brains to actually make the game well and fix the previous problems.

[D_Average]

I've always felt the same as Broodwars. Going fast is fun but not when you have to memorize the level first. In Mario you can go somewhat fast the first time through a stage and totally nail it. Same goes for DKC.  That's where the fun is at.