While it's a tragedy that this ended up being the final game that I completed in 2022, it feels strangely apt to end on such a sour note. I don't mean to sound like a pessimist, but I'll admit I haven't been in the right headspace for quite a few years now. 2022 was no different, and while I continue to grow as a person and learn to appreciate the little things in life, I'm still dealing with personal traumas and my subpar mental health as I go. But, how exactly is this relevant to Sonic Boom?

Well, every year I think to myself, "This will be my year. Great things await." But nope, every year is the same as the last. Certain ambitions and expectations that are ultimately shattered by disappointment. And that's what Sonic Boom is, really, and with a title like that, it seems highly appropriate. Rather than it being the smashing success that the team probably hoped it would be, it was an explosive failure that somehow managed to make Sonic 06 look competent. In a way, it also parallels the tiny bit of shattered hope I had of 2022 being good.

The funny thing is that I don't really have any major complaints. But it's such an incredibly bland experience that it feels insulting to even play. When I set out to finish every Sonic game, I never expected the series to reach such banal levels of insipid game design, despite knowing full well of this game's infamy. This was a game I could tell was going to be horrible within the first 10 seconds of actual gameplay.

Imagine this: You are running on rails through some uninspired floating roadway as is typical of these games, but suddenly the framerate drops to 15 through some loop or some other janky transition, all while Sonic says any of these phrases and more:

"Built for speed!"
"This is what speed looks like!"
"Can't slow Sonic down!"

As I reference a Nintendo Life article, former Sega of America producer Stephen Frost gave a few reasons for the game's failure, "one of which is that based on focus tests, people were "sick and tired" of Sonic going too fast and wanted to slow him down."

My guy, what the fuck are you talking about? Even if this was accurate, that doesn't also mean literally dropping the framerate. That's the power of CryEngine on Wii U, I guess. And no, I never expected this game to be anything more than somewhat mediocre, but truly, this is much worse than I could have imagined. At least the other bad Sonic games I've played were short enough and didn't subject you to 6 grueling hours of some piss poor excuse for entertainment.

So yeah, 2022 was not at all the year I hoped it would be, but there's always next year. To end on a more positive note, I have to admit that it was not all doom and gloom. There were actually a lot of great moments that happened this year, mostly involving time spent with family. As a coaster enthusiast, I was also able to get a lot of new credits. It's those small and joyful moments that make it worth pushing through life's harships. But anyway, here I am, with only a few minutes to go 'til the start of 2023, fireworks going off outside my window, finishing up this write-up. I am once again hoping 2023 will be my year, but even if it isn't, I can still look forward to the little things I'll certainly continue to enjoy out of life, and I can also find some solace in knowing that I won't ever have to touch this game ever again.

If you've never played this game (and I envy you if that's the case) but you want an accurate understanding of what it entails, please go watch the cutscene where two rejected SpongeBob characters argue over rocky road ice cream. One of the jellyfish mentions the sun, and the camera pans up to it for just a split second as if to remind you of what the sun is. An enemy airship appears over the nearby cliff, accompanied by no sound effects and soothing background music, approaching our heroes as its pixelated shadow lags behind at half the framerate. Knuckles says some dumb one liner about destroying enemies, then Tails exclaims Lyric's goons are attacking. No such goons appear from the ship before it departs.

I am not going to put all of my thoughts on this game here, but honestly? Probably one of the worst games I've ever played.

So generic and joyless that it borders on malice. Completely drained me of any enthusiasm, ironic or otherwise, within the first 20 minutes.

Painful.

How does Sega go about revitalizing the rotting corpse of the Sonic franchise? By making a game, an unapologetic cartoon cash-in that ignores everything that makes Sonic great. Take the worst parts of Sonic Adventure and sprinkle in game breaking “features” and you’ve got Sonic Boom! Long gone are the days of speeding through levels filled with traps, collecting rings like a madman. Sonic Boom believes that for some reason the player just wants to wander around some third rate Jak and Daxter world sparsely populated with robots whose AI consists of standing around and well, more standing.

Sonic Boom wasn’t just a clear-cut example of name-only recognition, it was by far one of those rare moments in video games where nearly every aspect of the gameplay - the most fundamental of all vidya’s building blocks by the way - couldn’t even stand on its own two feet. With a host of game bugs, glitches, broken mechanics and areas that were just outright effortless in their execution, it was a direct punch in the balls to not just die-hard Sonic fans, but also those who vouched for Sega’s occult franchise to possibly get back on track. Well if we’re speaking in context, Sonic Boom isn’t just off the track, it’s falling right through it - Sonic Boom, without question, is easily 2014’s winner for worst gameplay. May God have mercy on your soul Sonic, for Sega shall not.

Fuck you Sega, this is why we can't have nice things, how the fuck after two succesful games, and two "okay" ones you go "yeah maybe we should create sub-franchise that will kill Sonic for few another games, rushed it af as usual and release on the console that was already underperforming??? This is some galaxy brain shit lol

This game and its series is literally why Mania, Forces and TSR got such mediocre budgets and why we have the state of its series like it is.
But hey, you spend so much money on it that you decided to make another 2 games and a tv show that was somewhat succesful and you still lost like 150mln $, great job.

I find extremely funny that in my day and age, i preffer playing this game over Sonic Colors or Sonic Adventure 2, i dislike all 3 games, but Sonic Boom manages to be mildy entertaining thank to the sheer unpolishness that allows the access to a lot of different ways to skip stuff, mainly the infinite jumps with Knuckles, I mostly used that anytime i didnt feel like doing one of those "WE NEED TO PRESS 3 VERY FAR AWAY SWITCHES TO OPEN THAT DOOR" or something high up that required boring platformig, the glitch is easy but easy to mess up so practising it while beating the game, if i try i can complete the game in under an hour without looking at any speedrun guides just with the knuckles glitch, but is kinda slow so thats why i didnt use it all the time.

Some people (I know I met them) will say that im not allowed to critique the game because i didnt play it the way is meant to be played and use the word "objectively" 7 times in the same sentence, but i decide how i play the game, and i prefer this way more than a 7 minute SA2 boss fight with the same interactivity as a 7 second SA1 boss fight.

Videogames are awesome

Even though Forces is the Sonic game I despise the most, I think this is the objective worst Sonic game. Horrible story, even worse writing, it looks and sounds hideous, the characters suck, and the gameplay makes Sonic 06 look fun in comparison. Legit there is not a good thing to say about this game except the characters are SOMETIMES well-animated. Lyric is the worst villain in Sonic history and I'm glad we'll never see him again. Not even the TV show included or even mentioned him. This game is ass, the show was better