168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sonic the Hedgehog celebrated his 30 year anniversary in 2021; a tremendous accomplishment. For over three decades, the spiky rodent with attitude has spindashed his way across a multitude of games, films, comics, and cartoons – and in doing so, cemented himself in gඣamers' hearts. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't have some childhood memory or other o🐟f this unique franchise.

Even so, the actual quality of Sonic's mainline games has, shall we say, ꦬvaried. Some are bonafide classics, while others are perhaps best left in the Blue Blur bargain bin. Want to know which of his many, many adventures are worth a spin? Let's find out!

Updated November 4, 2024 by Bobby Mills: The Year of Shadow or the Year of Luigi – who wore it better? Whichever side you come down on, 2024 has been a banner year for our beloved gun-toting ultimate life form. The celebrations have peaked with the release of Shadow Generations, and it's a good 'un; so we thought we'd slot it into our list. Enjoy!

As is practically tradition by now with our Sonic rankings, when we say 'mainline' we're referring solely to home console platform꧃ers that were developed either entirely, or in large part, by Sonic Team. This ex😼cludes spinoffs like Team Sonic Racing and handheld titles like the Rush duology.

One ex🐼ception, though: we'll be covering Sonic 4, despite that being a Dimps project, since it's a numbered sequel.

21 Sonic Theꦚ Hedgehog (2006)

Well, What Else Did You Expect?

Yep, it was inevitable. Sonic 2006, or '06 as it's most commonly known, represents the nadir of the Sonic timeline. An ambitious project intended to breathe new life into the ailing IP via the wonders of high-definition, it crashedꦏ and burned in spectacular fashion.

It would be quicker to number '06's positives than its laundry list of faults. Its immovable Christmas deadline did it ꧋no favours – the narrative is incomprehensible, it's riddled with bugs and🔯 interminable loading screens, and it drops more frames than a clumsy art dealer.

20 💧 Sonic And The Secret Rings ꦬ

Arabian Blights

Part one of the Sonic Storybook Series - which made it to a grand total of two entries before being canned - Secret Rings entered development only because '06 couldn't be ported to the Wii. A motion control-centric experience, it's a grue✤ling nightmare to suffer through.

Tilting the Wiimote to steer Sonic across deserts and evil foundries is a🦄s imprecise as imprecision gets, not helped by the floaty jumping and half-baked RPG elements. Aladdin never had to deal with this.

19 Shadoꦺw The Hedgehog ꦰ

Edge Was The 2000s Formula

Given his ongoing popularity with fans after his post-SA2 resurrection, it was no surprise that Shadow the Hedgehog was given a standalone game. What was surprising✅, however, was that it took the form of a clunky third-persꦫon shooter.

The Ultimate Life Form runs, guns, and (mildly) cusses his way through an assortment of colourless enviro🐬nments in his quest to thwart the Black Arms invasion. You'lꦯl die to misaligned homing attacks more often than to the enemies, and the 'morality system' quests are dull as dishwater.

18 Sonic The Hedgehog 4 𝄹

Fourquels Always Suck

Sonic 4 began life as a mobile title, 'Sonic Portable,' before Sega execs decided it'd make more dough on consoles masquerading as a Genesis sequel. Lethargic and creatively derivative, it was a colossal disa💯ppointment.

Released episodically, we would see two chapters before the project was axed. Epi♈sode 1's physics don't bear thinking about; Episode 2 sands off a few of the rougher edges, but it's not enough to salvage something that's ꦐthis dead inside.

17 🍒 Sonic Forces 🌊

Sonic Forces You To Rethink Your Life

Riding a tidal🐻 wave of hype, spurred on by cannily-edited teaser trailers and convention appearances, Sonic Forces sold itself on a strong premise: Dr. Eggman has won. Sadly, the final offering failed to hit any of the necessary benchmarks to pull off such a high concept.

Eggman does indeed conquer the globe, but it's told to us via a black screen with te♛ཧxt – an omen of the cheapness that pervades the game. You spend more time playing as an awkward OC that you create to bail Sonic out of prison than the Blue Blur himself, and the writing smacks of subpar fanfiction.

16 ༒ ဣ Sonic The Hedgehog

The Original, But Far From The Best

It mꦰay seem like heresy to have the inaugural game this low in the ranking – but most fans tend to concede that Sonic 2 was the true beginning, and Sonic 1 was just the flashy tech demo to move hardware. It's astonishingly brief, rocking a meager six zones, and often has a pace akin to molasses.

With no spindash at your disposal, much of Sonic 1 is spent doing sluggish, single-block platforming. Four out of the six worlds are duds (can an🐻yone in good conscience defend Marble or Labyrinth?) and even the Chaos Emeralds serve no significant purpose.

15 𒊎 Sonic Lost World 🍷

Sonic Goes The Way Of The Plumber

As part of a Wii U exclusivity deal signed in the 2010s, Nintendo assisted with the developmen𝔍t of Sonic Lost World. The result was a confused package that borrows more than a few pages from Mario's playbook, from the cylindrical Galaxy-esque planetoids to the generic world themes.

Sing along, now: grasslands, desert, beach, forest, ice world, fire world, boss. Things aren't exactly buoyed by a complicated parkour system, which in fairness is quite satisfying🔯 to utilise, bꩵut takes far more patience to get to grips with than most players are likely to possess.

14 ♊ Sonic Heroes ౠ

Four Times The Length Means Four Times The Fun, Surely?

Heroes is, at its core, a perfectly acceptable endea🌊vour. The controls are workable, the soundtrack slaps, and there's no extra fluff or hubs between stages. Yo🍸u simply pick your preferred team, and you're off to enjoy that high-octane Sonic action.

But then it dawns on you: in order to reach the Last Story, you've got to play the entire damn game four separate times. Once as Team Sonic, t🐬hen again, with little variation, as Teams Dark, Rose, and Chaotix. Suddenly, the fun begins to melt away, and what should have been a brisk four-🌠hour classic bloats into a 15-hour letdown.

13 Soni꧅c And The Black Knigh🦂t

Whoso Waggleth This Sword Shall Be King

Black Knight closes out the Storybook duology with a smidge more competence than the atr🥃ocities of Secret Rings, but it rꦅemains uneven. Here, Sonic's dragged, chili dogs and all, into the pages of the Arthurian legend, where he's got to help young Merlina dethrone a ghoulish King Arthur.

Assisting you in this knightly task is Caliburn, a talkative sword that you can swipe at enemies (with impressive inconsistenc﷽y) via the Wiimote. Skyward ♔Sword this ain't – but there is mirth to be had seeing Sonic's friends cosplay as various medieval figures for the occasion.

12 💜 Soni💟c Colors

Wii're Gonna Reach For The Stars

We're now at the point in our ranking where the remaining entries are all solid to great. Colors kicked off a kind of Sonic-naissance; hot on the heels of the maligned '06 and Black Knight, all it took was this Wii outing to rekindle public faith in t෴he little guy's games.

After Eggman constructs a (graphically🐈 stunning) Interstellar Amusement Park in space as a front to enslave the alien Wisps,ꦗ Sonic and Tails are on the case. Colors builds on the firm foundation of Unleashed's boost formula to crowd-pleasing effect, but it's marred by an overreliance on floaty 2D portions.