"The First Level of Every Sonic Game"; Analysis From Super BunnyHop

[Nepenthe]

In light of my baiting in the statuses earlier, our boys at TSS having given this video the spotlight on the front page, and of ShayMay's absolutely perfect ending to his "Sonic Spitball" series (which I loved, btw; and you know a game is a good idea when the lack of story doesn't bother ol' Penth), we have another YouTuber stepping up to the plate to give their thoughts on the Sonic franchise. This time, the gimmick is that said YouTuber, formerly known as Super Bunnyhop, will be trying to argue that the franchise's state over the years can be gleaned to an extent by critiquing at the first stage of each major Sonic release. However you feel about this approach to critiquing Sonic, put a pin in it and give the video a watch. Note that it's 40 minutes, not as long as ShayMay's videos but definitely enough that you might need a sandwich:

I'll put my thoughts- edited from YouTube- in spoilers below as I'd rather a cleaner OP than what my ranting will allow. But in general, what do you think of this overall approach to franchise criticsm? What do you think about his thoughts on different eras and gameplay styles? What do you think about his insight into the more controversial games? Watch and respond!

As for me: 

Spoiler

This video is just a hot mess.

For one, characterizing Genesis gameplay as meant to be played fast to the point that the proper physical use of acceleration is now a design flaw, and criticizing them for having obstacles that may stop or slow you down for being too unskilled to overcome them, just completely misses the point of the gameplay, which is weird because he was on the mark of calling it sandbox-y, the implication there being you can play it however you like within the game's design, before veering too far left anyway.

The cherry on top is it's also inaccurate to the point of being embarrassing when he later says Gens' modern 3D gameplay over SA1's- with the latter's actual attempt to appropriate the classic physics systems and meaningfulness of slopes into 3D- is the closest we've gotten to a 3D classic Sonic game, not to mention the fact that Classic Sonic is actually in the game! Not only is this just dead wrong (and something he didn't allocate to Unleashed's Daytime gameplay for some odd reason when they're basically the same besides button allocation and the tweaking of physics), it contradicts his praise of later games like SA2 and Heroes as forcing you to slow down at certain points. Really, is Sonic meant to be played as fast as possible or not? You can't answer such a simple question from this video.

That makes the Heroes praise all the more baffling as it eschews any sense of or attempt at a reasonable or intuitively understood physics systems from the outset for something far more flat and uninteresting, with a gameplay gimmick that doesn't really engage the brain because it switches out the characters for you at certain points anyway as if anyone is too dumb to figure out its already simplistic and limited application. Indeed, Sonic speeds, Tails flies, and Knuckles punches... and that's literally all they do, against the same obstacles and enemies every single time upon encounter. And this is despite the fact that he derided the entire rest of the franchise before Heroes for being too reliant on rote memorization. How in the world is rock-paper-scissors out of bounds of this?

And on top of everything I outlined, a good chunk of this video's run time is dedicated to criticizing things that aren't the first level, undermining the whole point and, from what I assume, making his job of even putting the video together a lot more difficult. If he wanted to go into meta details like Sonic Team's state or to hammer a point home that's fair, but not a whole lot of it was necessary for the type of analysis he was going for ("the first level describes the game/franchise's state as a whole" which in and of itself is pretty tall order to demonstrate if anyone has played any multi-stage game ever), and it makes it super confusing and off-putting when he starts touching Colors' later acts. A definition or clarification was needed about what constitutes a "first level", although it wouldn't actually have made the meta commentary any less irrelevant in its applications.

Really, all this video does is just come off as just trying to beat a dead hedgehog without the actual knowledge base to back it up reasonably. Ignorance and repetition of negative talking points over meaningfully adding to a conversation that at this point in the franchise's life span has been exhausted in far more depth and detail. Indeed, in a world where ShayMay's excellent "Sonic Spitball" series exists, this video falls egregiously short of the mark for me.

 

[Lord-Dreamerz]

Was thinking about watching this... until after hearing your thoughts on it and from few others... it doesn't sound worth my time TBH. There are many series review videos out there, and I've already seen a good handful. So I'll give this a skip. :/

[Nepenthe]

It's actually getting a lot of agreement and exposure, so perhaps I'm the one who's actually fucking crazy. So give it a watch and see.

[azoo]

It's not that I didn't agree with little bits and pieces every now and then, but his video maintains being the antithesis to Shay's "Spitball" series; and by that I mean that it's the same slog of crap we've heard for well over 10-15 years now.

The gist of the whole video: Local Youtuber internet guy that's popular gets to make a video thing that goes into detail why the Sonic series is so bad, warts and all, and then fails miserably in many areas trying to understand why it's bad; instead blaming it on tiny things, heavily misunderstanding how the game mechanics work in almost every game, and spending the majority of the video either going off-topic or generally not doing the research.

For example, he goes to praise how Heroes plays in preference to apparently how hard it is to understand the classics. You know, the one where you have one button and two actions besides running. Which is followed by how he has such a hard time running straight into enemies and then blaming the game... because he has no idea how to roll, apparently (looking at you too, Arin Hanson). This kind of thing where he obviously misses major mechanics that are necessary to play the game correctly is only further backed by how he apparently had no idea you could run in Sonic Lost World (??????).

Second, he tries to completely defile everything he can muster about Sonic Adventure and claiming other games made advancements far beyond it's own (such as Metal Gear Solid and Ocarina of Time) in the previous year, despite not acknowledging that neither of those are platformers that move fast and use any dramatic amount of slope physics or traversing on convex surfaces. I mean I don't expect everyone to make that acknowledgement, and I know he needs to slog on how the series started sucking in 3D SOMEHOW, but it should be considered pretty fair for Adventure to be a bit messy when a game for it's time stayed as far away from complex physics as possible. It's just kind of poor how amongst that and many other things, he just doesn't feel like taking note what time period the game came out in, when other games were of similar caliber in those times (ie: Tomb Raider, Spyro, etc).

And then he goes on to blab about how the games such as Colors and Generations brought Sonic into "the best translation from the classics to 3D it'd ever had", despite them playing nothing alike (and only doubled by classic Sonic being in Generations, which despite still being sorta off-mark, played closer to it than modern does). And even if he was talking about philosophies there and not exacts, he still wouldn't be correct, because he manages to dog the classics for being too slow or pace breaking when apparently they shouldn't be. Which also contradicts his statements of saying that Sonic should be all about fast, but then says Mushroom Hill and City Escape are best because they are slower and break the pace more..???

And then of course he goes on tangents about Sonic games not needing stories and praising the minimalism of lately (he called Generations' story "avant garde". More like "avant garde" a clue know what I'm saying, right FOLLOW FOR JOKES), needing to be all about fast, even more inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and goes over every single dead horse he can beat and then proceeds to give it his own licking. As if it were necessary; I mean this about first stages in the series, not a huge retrospective like he seems to want to make it out to be despite saying opposite of that in the video's title.

I don't know, I'm just saying that it sucks when we just got a nice and refreshing series like Sonic Spitball (one that gets maybe 1K+ views per video, at most), and then famous Youtuber guy comes in to rapid fire shit on Sonic and it gets 100K+ views with unanimous agreement that Sonic is a loveless and marketable hellhole of a franchise with very few redeeming qualities besides dumb nostalgia garbage that makes no difference to the series' quality, and fuels itself on extreme misunderstandings of how the series works, because no one gave enough of a shit to give it credit where it's due and actually care about it's contributions to anything at all.

TL;DR 

 

[Wraith]

I think that his approach was all wrong from the start. If you play the first level in any game and then just stop I doubt you'll actually be able to come to any sort of meaningful conclusion on it(If you were to play Mario 3D World's first level, for example, and then stop, you'd miss the constant bursts of creativity the game gets into later on and probably write it off as a "generic Mario platfomer")  If this video had just been about his gut reaction based on the first level of each game alone and not trying to make some grand statements going off so little, I think it would have been way better. As it stands now, though, I don't think it works. I think the guy just wanted to do a breakdown of Sonic, but he didn't want to put the time into actually PLAYING Sonic to do so. It's understandable if you don't want to play Sonic, but to break it down, you need to play it.

That being said, while I think the video has some issues, which is sort of surprising considering how thorough and on the ball the guy is with videos on other games, I found it interesting to watch to see how an outsider would approach these games for the first time and found most of his conclusions at least believable based on his experiences. The fact that he completely missed Lost World's run button says a lot about how thorough his analysis really was but it also says a fair bit about how badly Lost World actually explains how it's supposed to work to a first timer. I can kind of understand his appreciation for Heroes since Heroes's first levels are actually pretty well designed, but the nosedive it takes after those is why the game gets as much shit as it does, and it's not like he stuck around for that. His statement about Gens while completely ignoring Unleashed also makes sense, since from what he said it sounds like he played all of Generations, but just stopped playing Unleashed on it's very straightforward first level. Despite what he said, he didn't really give each game equal amounts of time.

ALl in all, I feel like it was an interesting idea but he overextended himself in trying to make some grand statements on the series without anything to back him up.

[Nepenthe]

I've not played Lost World U to any extent so I can't say anything about how the game teaches you about its controls, but Azoo brings up a great point in that it casts light on his ability to make a meaningful jab at Lost World's guidance if he never actually once said anything about rolling and its mitigation of upcoming enemy hazards. He's basically unaware of the design solution to an issue he exaggerated about the classic games...and the classics are simplistic, two-button games. Soooooo.....

[CottonCandy]

I think it's a decent analysis on the series but there's some points I disagree with. Like sometimes I don't think he really understands what he's talking about. I prefer ShayMay's Sonic Spitball series over this. 

 

[SenEDDtor Missile]

Feh, and people wonder why I'm so cynical about Sonic ever getting better if that kind of attitude and mentality (especially the no narrative bit) is still treated as a valid opinion by the masses.

[Tara]

I haven't watched the full video yet, but the first few minutes of it just sort of made me roll my eyes.  Not all of his points are bad, but as stated before, he didn't seem to do much research.  What really annoys me about the video, and many analyses of this nature, is just the fact that he cites basic platforming as bad game design philosophy.  He mentions the rotating spike pole from Green Hill Zone, for instance, and make no mistake, that can be tricky to get past without getting hit, but it's not impossible.  And he keeps mentioning that he runs into enemies constantly, like... then jump?  Roll?  Something?  Like, this isn't like Bubsy where no matter what direction I push, it feels like the controller is taking me in the exact opposite direction I want to go.

I don't so much mind Sonic being the butt of the internet; he's more than earned it with his share of rushed, incomplete, and just plain bad games.  What I hate is people trying to pass off lazy, forced, and just ignorant statements and needless retreading and backtracking as insightful analysis.  Like can you imagine if someone made a video, criticizing Super Mario World because there are enemies that you have to use items or other maneuvers aside from your main jump in order to defeat?  Oh, man, you know what I hate?  When you're playing Call of Duty and you can see in an enemy but he's not in your crosshair.  It would be nice if you could, like, aim, but nope.  All you can do is move forward and shoot, I guess, and if a wall or something prevents you from moving forward, well, fuck.  I tried, I guess.  Also, I hate racing games.  Like, how am I supposed to win with all these other cars on the track?  They just get in the way, forcing me to slow down and calculate how I'm going to get past them.  You know, Tetris was a good game at one point, but there came a point where it just stopped giving me the very specific block I wanted.

Okay, that's a little harsh, but you get the idea.  In a game meant to test your reflexes and force you to make split-second decisions, this guy is complaining that his reflexes are being tested and that he has to make decisions in a split-second.  I don't usually like to deflect criticism at a game series with "git gud" but that's about all I can do at this point.  I said earlier that this isn't like Bubsy, but the thing is, these wouldn't be good criticisms even if we were talking about Bubsy or any other notoriously "difficult in a bad way" game.

And that's pretty much why I only watched a little bit of it.  There's only so much of that I can sit through without getting bored.  The Sonic series isn't perfect.  There are plenty of bad games.  And even the good games have their fair share of little problems, and obviously I don't think everyone is obligated to think these games are the absolute best or even good for that matter.  But the criticisms here are just so far fetched that I really can't empathize.

But like I said, I haven't even watched the whole video.  Maybe my opinion will change when/if I do.  Not impressed so far, though.

[RK64]

I watched the whole thing twice and while he makes some good points (nice seeing Heroes get some love :D), he kinda misses the point to many of the games :l. 

You need to play through each game completely to understand what each game is about, how it works and how the entire package works.

Recently, I have been making a retrospective for the Sonic series on various forums like NeoGaf on my own and on this site thanks to working with tailikku on covering the entire series :). So, I will say that he misses the point, with a lot of the games he covers here. 

Sonic Adventure is a much better game then he is stating it is; personally love the game and outside of Big, its a great evolution of what the Classic Series tried to accomplish. Sonic Adventure 2 is more flawed to me (considering how much the Mech/Treasure hunting levels take up the game + not liking how they changed from their Adventure 1 versions) but I have a lot of attachment to the game from growing up with it. 

The series may be mixed at points but it is overall a lot better then he is stating it is. 

Shay's 'Spitball' series is a lot better and more organized. I felt that he spent time playing the series and grew with it, vs. SuperBunnyHop who thought 'Lets trash the series and see what happens'. 

 

[Alienrun]

Since people keep bring up Shay May, I should probably post his thoughts on the video here: (from his twitter of course)

LRT: Disagree with the assessment of the Mega Drive games, but it's vindicating to see the same conclusion from someone that's not a fanboy.

Basically what he's impling is that he came to the same conclusion of Sonic not having a focus as mentioned at the end of SBH's video.

Now onto my thoughts...

I think I'm so used to seeing crappy Sonic "analysis" reviews that this has literatly become the standard for me, despite knowing that it sucks. It's come to the point that I was actually suprised to see people actually take this guy seriously and get a little upset about it. Like I said I'm too used to it, so I couldn't get bothered to be bothered. I'm not subbed to SBH for obvious reasons, but something that hasn't been said yet is that I think he has more of a thing for understanding a games intent in the grand scheme of things (AKA the video game industry) rather than understanding the complexities of specific game design. I mean in all fairness he did say "I have no idea what I'm doing" which I think is supposed to suggest that's he's just making the video "just because" and that you should not go to him for any sonic or platforming advice in general. I saw his Mario Maker video before so I kinda saw this "ignorance" comming. Like...

2 hours ago, Tara said:

He mentions the rotating spike pole from Green Hill Zone, for instance, and make no mistake, that can be tricky to get past without getting hit, but it's not impossible. And he keeps mentioning that he runs into enemies constantly, like... then jump?  Roll?  Something?  Like, this isn't like Bubsy where no matter what direction I push, it feels like the controller is taking me in the exact opposite direction I want to go.

In a game meant to test your reflexes and force you to make split-second decisions, this guy is complaining that his reflexes are being tested and that he has to make decisions in a split-second.  I don't usually like to deflect criticism at a game series with "git gud" but that's about all I can do at this point.  I said earlier that this isn't like Bubsy, but the thing is, these wouldn't be good criticisms even if we were talking about Bubsy or any other notoriously "difficult in a bad way" game.

...This is exactly what probably went through my mind had my expectations been any higher. Like if you play a lot of platformers, your gonna get better at reaction times. This is very natural for people, this is easy to understand, I don't get why people don't get this. I mean really this is a problem with a lot of reviewers really, not being able to understand difficulty curves correctly and just expect the game to play the way they want before they even start. Sonic has a low skill floor and simutaneosly a high skill ceiling for those who take the time to learn it, like that's the appeal of the whole series basically.

Might I remind you we are talking about the guy who said Shovel Knight was best game of 2015! He prasies the game for not challenging him too much, considering its an 8-bit game tribute I find this a bit strange since...you know, 8-bit games are supposed to be challenging. I just feel he doesn't know how to look at games in-depth but because he knows how to cover a lot of ground, he can get away with it and thus has the fanbase he has as a result.

Really my only real gripe with the video, the rest was just "meh". Plus he was defenetly too harsh on adventure 1, acting like it was impossible to act to a moving camera and it killed the entire game. Like I get that even IGN complained about the camera back in 1998, but at least they praised the rest of the game as not being fantastic but at least good, they acknoleged SOMETHING else besides the games fault. (This is the most I have ever defended SA1 by the way, that's how ignorant I felt he was on the topic)

I really like Spitball by the way, without a doubt better than this, part 2 was personally my favorite as well! XD

[Cyrus]

Is beating the "Sonic is baaaad" dead horse just a requirement for having a gaming centric platform on the internet? If you're a reviewer, gotta review Sonic 06, if you're an animator, you gotta draw at least one frame of Sonic doing a try hard funny face or in pain, if you're any of the above or a let's player, you gotta mispronounce "Sanic" at least once or else your account will be terminated and Arin Hanson won't leave presents for you this upcoming Cyber Monday! Sonic 06 reviews will get you mad dough and you'll be seen as a holy edgelord and earn you hundreds of subs on Youtube!

And of course, he doesn't run at any point in Lost World, because a Sonic game where Sonic doesn't run is completely normal and checking other buttons on the controller and consulting tutorials and manuals is for cavemen!

[NoirSuede]

2 minutes ago, Auto said:

Is beating the "Sonic is baaaad" dead horse just a requirement for having a gaming centric platform on the internet? If you're a reviewer, gotta review Sonic 06, if you're an animator, you gotta draw at least one frame of Sonic doing a try hard funny face or in pain, if you're any of the above or a let's player, you gotta mispronounce "Sanic" at least once or else your account will be terminated and Arin Hanson won't leave presents for you this upcoming Cyber Monday!

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheSw1tcher

[Cyrus]

10 hours ago, Azoo said:

he called Generations' story "avant garde"

... Oh, okay, so he's talking out of his ass and this whole thing really is just something made on the quick for adsense. Moving on then.

[NoirSuede]

3 minutes ago, Auto said:

... Oh, okay, so he's talking out of his ass and this whole thing really is just something made on the quick for adsense. Moving on then.

Or he's saying it ironically, because you know, due to how non-existent Gens's story is.

[JezMM]

I get where he's coming from with a lot of his observations, and honestly I agree with 90% of the shit he threw at SA1, especially considering all of it is backed up by the on-screen visuals displaying as such (and I've always felt that starting the game with a boss battle was an atrocious decision that was clearly a case of narrative taking prescedence over gameplay which is about the worst thing you can do when trying to re-create an existing franchise into an entirely new dimension).

The place the video is inherently flawed is that during the intro he sort of manages to spin it as if the first stage of each game does reflect the series at any given point when... it simply doesn't.  He even touches upon this with Heroes, admitting that it seems to have a strong opening but reviews tell the story that the game gets bad later on, which of course is completely true.  But despite this, he still goes on to analyse the series at large from these limited pools of content anyway.

 

Basically, this could have been a good video where the first stages are analysed and it is discussed how the current state of the series informed that stage design direction.

The video does the sort of opposite instead, where it looks at the stage design (and surrounding elements of that stage such as cut-scenes/hubs etc) and uses it as cues to discuss the state of the series at that point - whether the first stage reflects them or not.

[shdowhunt60]

Nevermind Shaymay. Nickonaquamagna and Exoparadigm gamer have been putting out their dissections and analysis on the series, and those have went largely ignored as well.

Not gonna lie: this was pretty damn atrocious. The whole thing reeks of a clear bias against the series, and a fundamental lack of understanding of the games themselves. Not to mention the fundamental idea of judging every game on a first-level basis is such an unbelievably asinine concept that I can't even begin to fully grock it completely. I'm truly stupified that something like this is garnering so much attention for something that's so poorly thought out.

I may have my specific disagreements with all the above, but I can acknowledge that their general opinions and conclusions were at least well-thought out, and what remains is personal opinion. I certainly can't say that on this video.

But I think that it does rather illustrate one of my fears for the series: that it will never be able to truly succeed, because the very basic fucking concept of Sonic is absolutely lost on gamers today: especially the elitist Nintendo snobs that dominate Youtube and review sites.

[MetalSkulkBane]

I'm not going to completely ignore what he said. I mean, we are fandom, he is a more-less neutral tester, it's obvious we're more biased then he is.

However, I have to admit that this video was shallow. No wrong, just shallow. He did got some parts right (at least first impressions are correct), but... why am I even talking, dozen people above made a point. I'm just sad about Sonic's reputation. Don't read the comments below the video, some of them just hurt.

[Nepenthe]

Being a casual player or a non-fan doesn't mean one is less biased than a fan and thus will have meaningful commentary on any given franchise (they could be prone to disliking a given subject due to preconceived notions about how games should play after all, and as much as we try to deny it, to say that the joke culture around Sonic hasn't impacted anyone aware of it isn't a convincing conclusion the moment you hear about media theory). It is not inherently virtuous to lack investment or experience. It simply means you are less knowledgeable than someone else, and frankly I don't know why we let people who aren't knowledgeable about Sonic define the terms and tone of the conversation about him. That's the reason people continually get away saying the dumbest shit like "Modern gameplay is the closest we've gotten to 3D classic gameplay" while simultaneously painting fans who point out why this is erroneous in this corner of, " Well, you're super biased because you're fan so of course you're going to not see the value in his criticism."

Honestly, one's ties to the franchise shouldn't matter because the option to research exists. He didn't do that research for a lot of his talking points. That would be an issue even if he was a self identified fan.

[Tara]

I played the classic trilogy a little bit later than most fans after growing up in a Nintendo household and I can safely say that even as an outsider, these games really aren't that hard to figure out.  Some of the points he mentions are things that you would expect to understand after only a few minutes of playing.  Whatever bias I may have as a fan is irrelevant, because they're basic gameplay mechanics.  But that would forgiven if he weren't blaming the game for punishing him for doing bad.  I mean, if it were a critique on how it punished you, maybe I would be able to empathize.  Like, you see games like Sunday Funday (or Menace Beach for you sinner types), it punishes you for doing bad with physics that knock you all about, and it often asks you to to do things that aren't feasible for the abysmally-programmed engine and control scheme.  That's not the case with Sonic; the solutions to problems are almost always abundantly clear and everything that you're expected to do can be done without hassling with the controls.  For an actual Sonic example, you could cite the water levels, the way that some enemies have spike balls that are annoying to get past, just something other than "I often find myself running into obstacles."

[Carbo]

Dug this video quite a deal as a means of an interesting experiment to draw parallels of first impressions in regards to each game, mostly because when you get down to it a large majority of Sonic's lasting appeal in the hearts of many is defined by it's first impressions. Moments like City Escape, Chemical Plant (not actually the first level but point applies) and the opening FMV of Sonic Adventure occupy a positive head space more than just about any other moment of their respective games and you could even argue that the inverse applies such as the gun shot sounds on landing of Shadow and the insane loading times and side quests required of 06 to actually get in the first level.

I do have some problems with it but little of it has to do with the context that's being argued against the OP or the fact that Sonic Boom was a spinoff (at this point ignoring this series in a critical analysis of the franchise is a lost cause not because of it's bad reception as a game but because of Sega's insistence to acknowledge the subseries as an equal part of the greater sum - in which case it's a perfectly valid target of criticism when analyzing the franchise). The only glaring oversight that stuck out to me was the omission of Sonic's run button in Lost World as he cites the platforming as fairly solid when it is maintaining a decent tempo. That said even as someone who likes that game and enjoyed the playstyle over Generations, even I'm somewhat surprised that they would settle against a formula that worked better for them considering how fucking safe they play it as a company nowadays.

Nonetheless I heavily enjoyed the video and found it fun to have everything stand in line for counting.

[Phos]

I'm only just starting this video but the weird fake "Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto" is really distracting.  

Hehe, that "Wha-EEEEEEE" snidash noise is trademark emulator screw up stuff, found that a little amusing.  

[Chili Dawg]

He called the Heroes theme hot garbage.

He don't know shiiiiiiitttt

[Phos]

I'm guessing he didn't quite pick up on the design language of the first few Sonic games (which don't actually follow it quite as well as they maybe should have): downhill means safe, uphill means dangerous. The games (almost) always put a non damaging obstacle in the way prior to an actually threatening one.  It actually took me a while to get a handle on exactly how you're kind-of-meant to play those games, it's not immediately intuitive and the marketing leads you wrong.  It's kinda hard to explain.  

[Wentos]

I guess we hear what we want to hear, because I came away from this video in no way thinking he was just "taking a cheap stab at the Sonic series for fun and money" like several people here seem to be asserting. I will admit I don't agree with him on every subject, and I honestly enjoyed the blunt flavor of the presentation, but seeing an analysis on how the first levels of each game make their impression was a fun little romp. I even think he brings up some things that most people familiar with the games probably have long since stopped questioning, such as the camera moving without changing the relative axis of control in Sonic Adventure. It's not necessarily a flaw, but it is something that takes getting used to, which is fair game when the point is to analyze how the game makes its first impressions. A game with a learning curve is by no means a bad thing, but Adventure had a lot more flaws than that, and I think it's reasonable to accept such.

Hey, if you don't agree and think he's uneducated, that's totally fine. There were definitely holes in his research (Although the case of not knowing the run button in Lost World could be argued that the game didn't explain it very well. Why would you even expect a run button in a Sonic game to begin with? It says a lot about the game when his prior exposure was probably gameplay videos where the player spindashed the whole time because the running controls are honestly annoying), and again I didn't agree on everything, but I can't help thinking some of the reactions here are rather knee-jerk. I get that criticizing Sonic as a franchise is something done to the point of beating a dead horse, but SEGA also refuses to do anything (consistent at least) about it. Every time we seem to be getting on track, a new game comes out and it goes off the rails of quality and consistency again.