I AM JOHN! said:
Yeah I bet those other two episodes will be great too. Sega will really take a long, hard look at what they got wrong in this one and make it all better, giving us the game we all want. Just like Sonic Unleashed.
Man, Sonic Unleashed really was a "hard look" at what was wrong, regardless of how good or bad you think the game is. Tonally, it is very different from pretty much every 3D Sonic game ever produced.
Hubs are remarkably tiny, each one no bigger than the size of Princess Peach's castle in Mario 64.
Cookie-cutter NPCs have almost entirely been replaced with a uniquely designed character with a name and a sub-plot thread (almost all of which can simply be ignored, if you don't care). There has to be at least 20 or 30 of these NPCs spread across the entire game.
Most, if not all decrepit remnants of "classic Sonic" have been cast aside in favor of a new direction for the Sonic levels - one that follows the course charted by games like Sonic Rush and Secret Rings. You might think it's linear and scripted, but that's just like, your opinion, man (a lot of people hold similar complaints against Half-Life).
There are no shields, no speed shoes, no invincibility - no item monitors at all anywhere to speak of at all. The closest thing are the "10 Ring" items, which are now just really big rings with a "10" in them.
The actual cast of meaningful characters has been significantly paired down and all of the useless baggage was cut loose. There's no Shadow, no Knuckles, no Rouge the Bat or Big the Cat. Werehog stupidity aside, it is a game about Sonic. It's his spotlight and he's the only one standing in it. Everybody else - Tails, Chip, etc. are strictly relegated to roles that support Sonic as the main character, as they should be.
Yes, the game was brought down by a couple of awkward design decisions (most of which seem to be geared towards padding the length of the game out), but that does not change the fact that it really was a very different Sonic game than we would usually get.
But I guess nobody notices that when they're too busy Sonic cycle circle jerking.