I've never seen a fandom more willing and able to put up with immense amounts of bullshit than the Sonic fandom. It's actually incredible how resilient and patient this juggernaut fanbase is with a series that continually shoots itself in the foot and trips over its own anthropomorphic cock (when it comes to the games, at least; Sonic side material is usually pretty solid or at least enjoyable enough). Like, it must be a fucking endurance test to be a Sonic fan. You've been forced to put up with dead end after dead end for almost two decades by this point: Sonic Heroes, Sonic 06, Unleashed, Colors, Sonic 4, Lost World, Forces, just a constant barrage of poorly-constructed mainline games that are divisive at best and fucking awful at worst. Every now and then you'll get a pleasantly-surprising diamond in the rough like Generations or Mania (the latter of which is arguably more of a fan game than a Sonic Team game) or a fun sideline experiment like Sonic Riders or those racing games, but these throw-the-dog-a-bone moments are so few and far between whereas disappointment is a dime a dozen. How the hell can you stomach this much perpetual abuse? Is Sonic the toxic on-and-off ex you just can't get rid of no matter how hard he pisses you off?

Well, speaking as someone that used to utterly adore Sonic, I can tell you exactly what it is: nostalgia and Stockholm Syndrome. Were it not for these two essential ingredients, I wouldn't even give Sonic the time of day. Sure, I like to play bad games sometimes; hell, some of my favorite games tend to be janky pieces of shit from time to time (Fallout: New Vegas, inFamous, etc). But Sonic is such a uniquely depressing kind of 'bad' because the prospect of Sonic capturing that old magic he used to have is constantly dangled in front of our faces like a carrot on a stick. We either constantly delude ourselves into thinking "well, shit, maybe it'll be good this time?", or we wind up buying the damn games anyway even though we know they'll be terrible.

(I'm reminded of this one old fan comic on Deviantart where two guys on a couch complain about how lame Sonic and the Black Knight looks like, how the very hook of Sonic being an Arthurian knight and wielding a sword is fucking stupid, because make no mistake, it assuredly is... and then they mutually agree they're gonna cough up $60 for it anyway and just let the conversation drop. That is exactly what it means to be a Sonic fan. You learn to love the beating.)

Why? Why do we put up with this? Why do we indulge in this self-destructive, ritualistic behavior? Because we're children. Not just Sonic fans, mind you: we're all children, all of us. Every single time Sonic does something even a little radical, the inner child that still exists in all of us constantly guides our hands to our wallets like a greedy phantom puppeteer. This is the same inner child that makes Star Wars fans put up with literal decades' worth of trashfire source material, because either they grew up with it and aren't willing to part with those memories, or their parents did and they just forced their children to put up with it as well.

Sonic holds a very special place in a lot of our Millenial-Zoomer hearts, and it makes the prospect of pulling the plug and abandoning the wish-washy blue blur that much harder to commit to. Sonic was the very first video game I ever bought. (He was also the first comic series I ever read.) I was a starry-eyed tiny little boy buying this strange purple square they call a "Gamecube" that I knew nothing about, all because I saw some other kids at this daycare playing the SA2B multiplayer on Radical Highway (yes, exactly that level, I will never forget this visual). It looked super fucking cool; even though I had no idea what a video game or a video game console even was, I just wanted whatever this 'Sonic Adventure 2 Battle' even was. We were lucky enough to be able to afford it, and the guy at Target even threw in a free copy of Metroid Prime. I hope that guy at Target is living his best fucking life, man, because Prime is easily one of the best first-person shooters ever made. What a bangarang game, even if I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. And after playing through SA2B and being absolutely dazzled by the campy, colorful grandeur contained within it, I was hooked. Sonic became my everything. For almost ten years, I bought every single game that came out the moment I was able to, I eagerly watched the cartoons and the OVA, I drew fanart and made Sonic OCs of my own (Alex the Hedgehog was so cool; strangely enough, I don't recall ever making a "Sam the Hedgehog"), and I was a loyal subscriber to the comic books even after I started growing out of Sonic (around middle school, so after Black Knight was released) because I found the Archie Comics' plotline to be just that engrossing and engaging (and convoluted).

I was a child, so of course I had no idea that Heroes was a repetitive, ice-rinky slog, that Sonic 06 was a buggy, broken mess, that Unleashed was 80% slowass brawling and 20% "press square to win", or even that Sonic and the Secret Rings was complete and utter fucking drivel. How could I have known? I was a child. I just loved what Sonic brought to the table. I loved him, and all my friends loved him, and that sense of community and belonging is what kept us anchored to Sonic throughout our formative years.

See, look at all the flowery and evocative language I'm using. These are fond memories. And this is exactly the trap that Sonic uses to keep ensnaring us time and time again. This is why the "toxic ex you can't get rid of" metaphor is honestly pretty apt. No matter how often Sonic fucks up, or pisses us off, or makes national headlines when its literal 15th anniversary game is one of the worst games ever made... we come flocking back to Sonic's arms no matter what, because that damned smirk is just so inviting and we just want to protect Sonic from all the people that keep making fun of him, even if he kinda brings it on himself.

When I saw Sonic 2 in theaters, the entire auditorium cheered when Sonic transformed into Super Sonic. It was a downright standing ovation. And I didn't just join in, I helped ensure the ovation lingered, like a conductor wielding an excitable baton. Have you ever been in the middle of a standing ovation? Being in the epicenter of such a sweeping but simple display of emotion and catharsis? That was a moment, man. This was the first time any of us had ever seen Super Sonic on the big screen; it was like every childhood dream come to life in a single, explosive, heartwarming moment.

And it was in that moment that I understood: as long as children are around, and as long as we keep our inner child and our empathy alive and well... Sonic will never die. As long as there are children, there will always be Sonic, because Sonic will never not be appealing to children. Because he's the fastest thing alive, the coolest kid on the block, and what you see is what you get: just a guy that loves adventure.

...but god damn it Sonic makes it fucking hard to love him sometimes, this game is absolute dogshit, it's boring, hollow, repetitive, surprisingly blandly-written even though they got a professional writer to take the reins, the open world design has a ton of random rails, springs, and platforms placed haphazardly throughout the island, resulting in an incoherent mess of an open world that looks like a procedurally-generated Forge map or custom Smash level made by an eager 8-year-old, the game blatantly reuses cut-down levels from past Boost Formula games just to pad out the runtime, some sick fuck on the dev team thought it'd be funny to make Light Dash fucking L3 on the PS4 controller, you have to collect items to increase your top speed (???), and there are moments where you have to collect a bunch of items in an UNSKIPPABLE collect-a-thon quest just to activate a cutscene that'll tell you to collect even more items for the next batch of unavoidable collect-a-thon chores and tonally-dissonant minigames.

Yes, you read that right. Sometimes you have to do a fetch quest just to activate a cutscene that tells you to do MORE fetch quests. Never stop disappointing us, Sonic. Never stop vandalizing our hearts. It's what you do best, you charming little rascal.

Solid game, good start to the series. Wanted to go back and actually play the first 3 games in the series to be ready for Ragnarok since I've only played GOW2018. I liked a lot about this game such as the combat, story, and music. Some things like the level and enemy design haven't aged very well but thats pretty much what I expected since this is the first game in the GOW series. Overall God of War is a solid experience, it hasn't aged well in some ways but it's mostly a fun and epic experience that shows clear inspiration from the Devil May Cry games.