Everyone talks about what Sonic Team can do to fix Sonic. Hire fan devs or bringing back the chao garden or "mix boost and Adventure" (this one drives me fucking nuts), but you wanna know what'll actually fix things? What'll make Sonic as great as we all know he can be? If they FOCUS. ON. THE PRIMARY. GAMEPLAY. LOOP! What can the player do in the span of 1-10 seconds? Whatever it is, iterate on it until it is as fun as possible, then, build the rest of the game around it.
AAAAAAAALLLLLLLL that other shit? Doesn't matter. Open world? Lots of characters? Ambitious story? Icing. MAKE THE FUCKING CAKE GOOD FIRST. If what you can do in those 1-10 seconds of gameplay isn't fun, tweak it until it is. If it's not fun in a flat, empty plane, it won't be fun when you have actual level design, tweak it until it is. Then, add a single bit of terrain, and do it again. Then add another, and do it again. Every new type of interaction, do this. I DO NOT CARE HOW GOOD YOUR ICING IS IF IT'S ON A CAKE THAT TASTES LIKE MUD.
All of the above? Exactly why I'm not a fan of the boost. If you put Generations Sonic in an empty plane, moving around would be totally boring. Your movement options limited to variations on left, right, up and down (yes even in the 3d sections). Drifting adds a little nuance to those movement options but not much. The boost is almost entirely reliant on its level design to engage the player, dodging obstacles. Conversely, I could (and basically do) mess around with Adventure 1's controls every time I boot it up. I have spent an ungodly amount of time just goofing around in the Adventure fields, 1 of which mostly IS just a flat plane with some small ramps (station square).
Didn't start this with the intention of dunking on the boost again, but here we are.