"Why Do They All Fall Down?"

We only expect the best from developers and publishers of Video Games. Despite this, you can obviously see the decline of certain series.

One obvious example is the Sonic the Hedgehog Series.

When he bursted on the scene in the early '90s, he was an instant hit. Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, 3, Sonic and Knuckles, and Sonic CD were immensly popular. He became Sega's new mascot, almost beating out Nintendo's Mario as the universal Video Game mascot. Things could only go up from here... Right?


Wrong.

On the Dreamcast, he blasted into 3D with a duo of great games with obvious flaws. Sonic Adventure was his first true 3D game. It featured a great sense of speed, beautiful graphics (for the time) and an actual stab at a plot. The game added a couple of new characters, which were pretty much forgetable and had no real affect on the plot as a whole. The camera angles, although good at times, would get you killed plently of times, and the game was pretty buggy. The follow-up, Sonic Adventure 2, was a step in the right direction. It added new characters that actually affected the plot, and more variety. This game too was brought down by bugs and bad camera angles, but it is still arguablly the best 3D Sonic game.

After Sonic Heroes (which was also in that same realm of 3D games), Sega decided to take a... Shall we say... Different route. We were treated with Shadow the Hedgehog, a game that lost it's sense of speed for guns. Yeah, you heard me, guns. This game steered away from almost everything that made Sonic, Sonic.

After Shadow the Hedgehog, Sega gave us... Sonic the Hedgehog '06. This is the bottom of the pit for the series. The game was extremely slow, it was extremely buggy, and the plot made absolutely NO sense what-so-ever.

After a few more horrible games, Sonic Unleashed was released. This is the turning point of the series. They tried taking a few good leaps out of the pit with original genuine Sonic platformming at it's finest, but brought it down with a beat-em-up section. Without that section, the game would have been perfect.

With the announcement of Sonic the Hedgehog 4, Sega might be getting out of the pit this time. But only time will tell.

/end rant