It's strange how this game deviates so much from Sonic’s established formula, while still feeling boring and uninspired. Lost World introduces many new ideas to 3D Sonic, it tries lots of things, and for that I give it praise. Everything else though is a jumbled mess.

To start with something positive, the game does look nice. It's bright and colourful, there's a lot of polish, and it runs at a smooth 60fps. I like how the minimalist art style makes the badniks look like their original concept art from the 90s. I love the weird Zelda, Yoshi and NiGHTS DLC levels, and they even brought back the super peel out! However, a lot of the level aesthetics feel bland. If you take away the rings and the badniks, some of these environments look more like Mario or Kirby levels then they do Sonic. The generic grass, desert, beach, and ice world level progression doesn't help matters either. This sentiment applies to the music as well. It's not bad by any means, there are a lot of tracks I like, but it doesn't quite have the style that I look for in Sonic.

Most importantly though, it simply does not feel good to play. The run button could have been a good idea to give players more control over their movement, right? Unfortunately, the implementation winds up doing the opposite. The reason why the run button in 2D Mario feels so good is because 1) it gradually accelerates, and 2) you can use it in the air. Lost World does neither of these, and without this level of nuance in the basic controls, the whole game feels stiff and clunky. Well, what about the parkour system? While there are moments where it’s fun, it never works quite like you want it to, and the level design doesn’t develop it or use it to its full potential. Then when you add on top of all this, how turning feels strange and stilted, how 2D levels feel too slow, how the multiple homing attack system never quite works, it all adds up to make gameplay that just isn't fun.

Then there's the characters and story, which are maybe the most insufferable a Sonic game has ever had. Firstly, the Deadly Six suck. Not only are they boring, one-note stereotypes, but their designs look more like knock-off skylanders than they do Sonic characters (again, one of the main appeals of Sonic is its distinct aesthetic, so to see this game ignore that repeatedly is frustrating). The writing sticks with the saturday morning cartoon tone of Colours and Generations (which I've never liked for Sonic) but combines it with incredibly forced character drama, and dialogue that turns Sonic into an unlikable prick. Ya know what I love about Sonic the Hedgehog? It's not his heroism, or his carefree attitude, or his love of adventure. No, what I love about Sonic is how he makes fun of fat people for eating too much, and calling women dumb superficial bitches.

So while the game is at least functionally competent, there's not actually much to enjoy here. The visuals feel generic, the mechanics are a mess, and its narrative is actively unpleasant. It also gave us Zavok which is an unforgivable sin, because for some ungodly reason they've kept forcing him into the series ever since. If there are mods which can iron out the control issues, then there might be something here, but ultimately I would rather play Shadow The Hedgehog or Sonic ‘06, because at least those game's failures are funny.