Heroes was where it went downhill imho, I re-played it a year ago so that I could judge better, since although there are lots of people that dislike it (me), there are a lot of people that actually like it, and I found out to be a somewhat mediocre experience.
Gotta say though, I previously thought that what was bad in the game was mostly the concept of "formations" and how shifting through formations made the gameplay slower and dumber, but when I re-played it, I realized it was not that. The concept of formations is actually pretty good, but it's how it's handled in-game that fucks things up, because each formation plays terribly in a way or another.
For instance, something that was really annoying about how badly each formation moves and how the game fucked you up the ass because of that, was that after bumping through a spring and landing on the floor, if you had the Speed or Power formation, you would be "boosted" forward when you land, with no control over it. In some levels, when you have to take a spring to land on a small platform, you die instantly because of this boost that propells you off the platform and dying. The only way not to die was to use the Fly formation, which lands perfectly on the ground, and that is fucking bullshit.
Another bullshit death that I remember was on the end of that forest level, when you're grinding through a vine, a bit before the alligator chases you. Apparently going too fast on it (by using the Speed formation) makes you always miss the spring at the end of the vine, making you fall to your death. There are tons of bullshit deaths like that because of slippery and shitty controls on Sonic Heroes and because I guess SEGA never plays their games while doing them to point out those obvious flaws.
Another thing that I don't like is that although all three formations have different abilities, some of them aren't used for anything other than getting through a specific obstacle. For instance, the Power formation's gliding, you only use that ability to get through some giant fans and that's it, there's no difficulty in that or anything that changes how it works, or obstacles inside the usage of that ability: It's artificial difficulty. It would be really nice if within the exact same platforming section you'd have a different way to get through with each formation you use (I'm not saying about splitting paths, each path for a different formation, i'm saying one path with different ways to go through), but that barely exists in Sonic Heroes, and every time you have to use a specific formation's specific ability to get through, and it mostly works like that way I just mentioned.
So yeah, those (and the plastic visuals with oversaturated MSPaint default palette colors, and the stupid story and dialogues, and the pretty weak music compared to other Sonic games - with a few very good tracks though) are the reasons I consider Sonic Heroes a really mediocre game, But I definately wouldn't mind (I'd even appreciate) if there was another Sonic game with the formation gameplay of Sonic Heroes, but done right. Maybe even with the level-up system of Secret Rings, giving skills to each character individually - that would be pretty neat and very fitting to the gameplay.
Also
(06-20-2010, 11:41 PM)Innocence Wrote: [ -> ]You're right; Sonic 2006 could have been a great sequel to Sonic Adventure 2.
But nooo, SEGA forced Sonic team to rush it for the PS3's release. That was a horrible idea. SEGA sacrificed Sonic's reputation for a greedy attempt at releasing a half-assed launch title. Not only did it sell horribly (both versions only sold 30,000 copies in Japan), it bombed critically (It has a metacritic average of 46 the last time I checked). Most prominently, it paved the way for all the shitty "anti-Sonic" hate (like Mega64's "sonic sucks"). I can't find an internet article featuring Sonic without seeing an anti-sonic comment (the common "dear sega make sonic blah again" type comments are really fucking annoying) nowadays. I think that Sonic Team is trying to make us forget about that disaster (There were no references to egg guardians, silver, shadow and princesses in unleashed), which could have been a whole lot better than the trainwreck that it is now.
The PS3 version was released way after the 360 one, just saying. And both of them were really bad and really glitchy. Maybe if they had all the time needed to finish it, it could have been a forgettable game and that's it. It would never be an appropriate sequel with that story and gameplay. Yes, even unconsidering the glitches.
But you know, there's really no excuse to why Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 is so shitty when you consider that Sonic Adventure was equally as rushed but still came out really, really good.