Sonic in the 2010s.

Looking back at the 2010s overall its definitely the 'meh' era in my mind. Nothing besides Colors Gens and Mania really stands out as particularly horrible or amazing, its just a lot of stuff thats just ok.

I dont really know how it felt to be a big terminally online fan at the time since when I did love sonic i was a little kid who didnt really care about the internet culture around him beyond youtube animations, and by the time I was aware enough I had kinda just tapped out of sonic for the late 2010s early 2020s, nothing really excited me and i thought i had to be 'mature' and not into baby games so that didnt help lol. It wasnt until I saw trailers for movie 2 that I got me really really excited for the series again, after seeing stuff like the snowboard scene. It caused me to replay a ton of sonic games (generations in particular) and eventually sign up for this site!

 

Sonic in the 2010s was pretty cool. Not much else to say beyond that. Aside from Rise of Lyric/Shattered Crystal, there weren't any Sonic games I would call outright bad (Sonic 4, Lost World, and Forces are just kind of "eh" in my book), and I would call Colors, Generations, and Mania great. I could go more in depth but that's the gist of how I see it.

 

In terms of Sonic Team's output, Colors and Generations were a great way to kick off the decade but the drought of Lost World and Forces that follows to me is worse than the Heroes through '06 era because I guess I prefer a fascinating trainwreck to boring mediocrity. Except Mania also exists and is the best Sonic game (don't @ me). So… overall that averages out to pretty good, I guess. I'm just really happy that that period of Sonic Team's history seems to be over…

 

It's an interesting topic because I feel like it's emblematic of the series sanitizing itself and sanding off the edges that may have made it appealing to so many in the first place.

I was about 12 years old when Colours released, at the time I thought it was funny to see a Sonic game that was written strictly as a comedy. The 2010's saw a big push in "meta-humour" with media like Community, Deadpool and Rick & Morty. It was very in fashion to poke fun at yourself because it's an easy way to have your writing be seen as witty.

I liked Colours at the time and in many respects it's exactly what the series needed at the time (it can't be understated just how hated a lot of the grimdark edgy stuff was during the 2000's) but even back in 2010 I could still tell something was just missing.

I think the all-time low for me wasn't Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric (though it did suck), but was probably Lost World. To me that felt like a Sonic game that was just afraid to actually be a Sonic game and has nothing to offer, it's an approximation of a Mario game. Sonic fans want Sonic to be different from Mario, not a diet version of something that already exists in a better form.

I think the worst thing that can happen to a series is that it starts to sanitize itself too much and erases the aspects that made it unique or appealling to its core fanbase, just to chase a new audience that really weren't that interested to begin with.

Whatever they're doing now seems to be resonating with people. I don't think they'll ever take it to the extreme lows of the 2000's, I don't think Shadow will ever use a gun again, Sonic will never be a werehog again and the writing hopefully won't become extremely melodramatic like '06 again (though you could argue it kind of did in Frontiers).

I just want them to make Sonic games that appeal to actual fans, not people who weren't going to be interested to begin with. Embrace the aspects that make this franchise different and unique.

 

The 2010s weren't fun for me as a Sonic fan but SEGA and Sonic Team didn't actually have much to do with that. That was when I was in middle and high school, and I was a dumbass. I still think games like Lost World, Forces and even Rise of Lyric are better than people popularly give them credit for, but the way I dealt with criticism of them during that time was not healthy haha

The 2010s are maligned right now as "the meta era", a phrase I hate with all of my passion because unlike "Classic Sonic", "Adventure era" or even "Dark Age", it does not describe any tangible aspect of what actually defined the series at the time. The Classic era has 4 very solid and consistent platformers that all follow the same gameplay and design through-line. The early 2000s had these big branches out into bigger scopes and more gameplay experiments. The late 2000s saw the series' reputation outside of the fandom go into the gutter with SEGA blindly flailing around to find new gameplay concepts with games that felt completely alien from one to the next, and the 2010s had...some lame jokes, a cartoon and a few tweets? It just doesn't feel proportionate, and heavily relies on caring about stuff that doesn't actually include playing a video game. You're defining the era of the series with the least storytelling since 1997 by its storytelling?

As for the games themselves...they're okay. I always find myself comparing the four ST games from the 2010s with the four ST games from the second half of the 2000s, and...I find myself liking Colors, Generations, Lost World and Forces a lot more than 06, Secret Rings, Unleashed and Black Knight, what can I say. Unleashed and Black Knight both threaten to be games I enjoy, while Lost World and Forces have annoyances that drive them below the first two games of the decade, but I ultimately find the 2010s good for their purity. This was an era of platforming and little else for Sonic, and I think that's what the series needed. You can make fun of Forces, but it wasn't hated by the general public the way it was by fans here in 2017, dumb story or not. Lost World may have been undercooked in a lot of spots, but it wasn't falling apart at the seams the way 06 was. For a Sonic Team that was stuck with reduced costs and an order to fly safer, I think they did an okay job.

The stumbling block in all of this, unfortunately, was the side content. The 2000s had main games ranging from questionable to terrible, but the spinoffs were eating good. Sonic Advance 1 and 3 are still favorites of mine (and I guess the first 60% of Advance 2), I like both Rush games, and I...have mixed feelings on both Riders games from the time, but generally positive, I think. But the 2010s brought the final great DIMPS game in the form of Colors DS, which is undermined by failing to be unique or include Blaze. Sonic 4, while I don't hate it, is so comfortably dull and lacking in new ideas that I barely think of it, either half (I honestly do think they should let Evening Star or Arzest take a crack at remaking it). Sonic Generations 3D, while again not terrible, is so low-energy compared to the HD version and has some pretty crap level design as it goes along. And Lost World 3D...the less said, the better. Oh and I guess all the Sumo racing games are fine.

The middle part of the decade had the chance to stand above all that, but unfortunately a Big Red Button got in the way (the button is labeled 'SEGA'). Rise of Lyric, much as I say it's not that bad, did a lot of damage to the repairs being done on Sonic's reputation. I think that a set of safe games that just don't fuck up super hard is what Sonic needed after the 2000s, but Sonic Boom was just a huge wrench in all of that. Rise of Lyric's bugs and lack of polish make a perfectly-serviceable PS2-style platformer into an embarrassment, and Shattered Crystal might be the most boring Sonic game ever made. I can find almost no compliments for it, it's so boring it went under the radar of everyone defining Rise of Lyric as "worse than 06 because it's boring" (note: this isn't true).

For how many non-Sonic Team platformers there really were in the 2010s, only 3/9 of them (8 if you count both S4 games as one) turned out good. Colors DS, Mania and...Fire and Ice. Yeah, Fire and Ice actually is shockingly okay. Like, nothing amazing, it's a 7-ish, but it's amazing what one extra character, no progression walls and Mighty Switch Force mechanics can do for a Sanzaru Sonic platformer (also, better art direction).

While I am frustrated that people are currently treating the 2010s like they were duh reeeeeel dark age for the series, I also have come to expect it. People were treating the 2000s like they were the worst when I was a kid, then they were treating the 2010s like everything from the dark age was threatening to come back up, and now people are terrified that the 2020s are going to bring nothing but pain for the series. I'm still going to be here when the 2030s are happening and people are scared Sonic Team will "fuck up and make another Sonic Frontiers". Eras aren't actually real, there are good and bad games across Sonic's entire history, and the best we can do is decide which ones are good for ourselves instead of lumping them into chunks that we can't examine closely. Fuck cops trans rights free Palestine read Homestuck The One Piece is Real Gotta Go Fast.

 

If I were to criticize the '00s era of Sonic for being far too careless with the integrity of the "Sonic" brand, the '10s era was far too stale and insecure.

Don't get me wrong, both eras had their ups; the '00s saw Sonic Adventure 2 & the Advance/Rush games while the '10s saw Colors, Gens and Mania. But both decades were largely sludgy and lacking in any sort of strong identity. And both decades have their extreme bombs (06 and Boom respectively).

Both eras were bad, but in different ways. Maybe the '00s were exciting with their badness while the '10s were boring with it? I wouldn't call that a point for the '00s as much as a lament for the series as a whole. We wouldn't have to split these decades up and pick apart their details if the games just stayed well-designed and didn't get any dumb ideas. But alas.

 

The decade started terribly with the release of Pikachu in a Sombrero. By all accounts, it looked and played terribly, so I stayed far away from it.

But then we got Sonic Colours, which I did play and enjoy, despite the story and dialogue not being my cup of tea. Finally a Sonic game everyone could agree was good! But it was on the Wii, so many didn't play it and forgot it in favor of Sonic Generations, which released the next year.

Cue the masses saying Sonic Generations was the first good Sonic game in a long time. I didn't own any of the platforms it was released on at the time, and I still haven't played it. As a retro retread game, though, it didn't excite me.

In fact, looking back, after Sonic Colours the franchise as a whole mostly got apathy from me. In part because I didn't own the platforms they initially released on, but also because the games didn't appeal much to me. Sonic: Lost World was a half-baked idea, Sonic Boom was a technical mess, Sonic Forces was a weak entry, Sonic Mania was a decent entry dragged down by being another retro retread.

If I had to point to a specific problem, it's that the series doesn't have a strong identity anymore.

 

I was still recovering from the Wii's release. Suddenly, there were tons of releases to keep track of, all spread across multiple platforms. Around that time, we had a Xbox360. Although Sonic 4 was a disappointment, the re-release of Sonic CD and SA2B, on the other hand, weren't. Then the Wii U came out and was backwards compatible with Wii games, which meant for me: get Wii U and catch up on some Wii games. Wreck-It Ralph came out as well.

The Sonic Boom era was wtf? from an HD gaming perspective, but things went uphill again after that.

 

I thought it was kinda boring. Not as embarrassing as the decade before it, but still nothing that interested me. Mania coming out at all, much less being as good as it was, is just a fluke.

 

it's funny because in my post I touched on how meta humour became a trend in the 2010's but I agree that calling this era of Sonic the "meta" era as if that's the only thing that defines these games is silly

especially when it's actually Sonic Frontiers which contains the most meta joke in the series

 

Edit: 2010 Sonic Generations - an excellent boost game with fun 2D platforming.

Sonic 4: Episode II - technically better than Ep I, but more forgettable.

Sonic Lost World - passable, but unusual with some frustrating mechanics and bosses.

Sonic Mania - best 2D Sonic since S3&K

Sonic Forces - very generic, just… ok.

Then there’s the additional games of the decade:

Sonic CD Remastered - 10/10
Sonic 1 Remastered - 10/10
Sonic 2 Remastered - 10/10

Overall not the worst decade for Sonic, but also a very up and down one.

I think every decade for Sonic so far has had at least 2-3 years where the output has been mediocre. The 1990’s was from ‘95 to ‘98. The 2000’s was from ‘06 to ‘10. The 2010’s were a mixed bag, not helped by the huge drought between releases. Between 2012 and 2017 it wasn’t a great time to be a Sonic fan.

 

You know, technically the decade started in 2011, so Sonic Colours and Sonic 4 technically aren't part of it.

 

Very valid point, let’s deduct!

Edit: actually, the decade would start with 2010, and end New Year’s Eve 2019, so it stays, right?

You wouldn’t say the 90’s started with 1991, for example.

 

Sonic Mania alone gave me hope for the future of the series. I truly never ever thought any game like that would exist again. The game is one of the most popular choices for best Sonic game ever made, let alone best of that decade.

Buuut I basically didn't care for the rest of it. Generations was pretty fun, the mobile 16 bit ports were great mostly because the originals were, Sonic 4 Ep 1 and Forces are probably my least favourite Sonic games. Colours and Lost World were very flawed but I can appreciate some of what they were trying to do.

 

What kept me around here...

Colors, Generations, S4E2 (it was a lot better than E1 at that time), The Taxman Remasters (that was a renaissance for us in this forum), the Boom Cartoon (the game is awful, the cartoon is legitimately hilarious), and everything Mania related.

So really, the 2010s was mostly about the gradual steps which took us towards Mania, and its post release success and community.

Any modern fan was bound to be disappointed by this era after Colors and Generations. Lost Worlds was a step backwards. Forces was okay at best. But Classic fans? This was our gradual revival, and because of that I'll still have many fond memories. However, even for them, the marketwide ports of SA1 and 2 gave those games a whole new life and opened them up to some immense and intense modding possibilities. The 2010s was the start of the modding era, something which has now grown much more expansive for Sonic.

Also, fan works really, really took off in this era. The things we take for granted now became much more standard in the 2010s. SRB2 2.1 and 2.2. Experiments like Utopia.

The 2010s was the era where the fandom grew up and put their professional expertise into the brand, and it changed everything about the franchise's success and appeal.

 

What was flawed about Sonic Colours? I can see not everyone liking the Wisps, but this is the first time I see anyone call the game itself flawed.

 

i still haven't played Lost World or most of the modern games, I just watch videos of them