14. Shadow the Hedgehog

Speaking of a Sonic game with a lot of poorly executed ideas, Shadow the Hedgehog is another broadly loathed entry in the gaming lexicon. Again, for good reason. But at least it doesn’t have Sonic ‘06’s load times. Instead, we get an extremely busy, unfocused creation that has glimpses of a decent Sonic game sprinkled throughout. When Shadow’s getting to run through levels uninterrupted, blazing through the environment and being his speedy self, Shadow the Hedgehog feels about as good as any other 3D Sonic game of that era, but it also weighs down all that speed with unnecessary, amateurish action-game bloat.

Shadow gets firearms in this game that he can’t properly aim. He can ride in vehicles that are slower than he is on foot. Instead of running through levels, he ends up completing obtuse objectives and time-consuming collectathons in order to reach alternate routes and story branches. Yeah, Shadow the Hedgehog has alternate endings, but none of them is canon, and are basically “What If” scenarios where you learn more about his past. Oh, he also swears this time around, too.

Shadow the Hedgehog has ideas. A game that lets you reach multiple conclusions and interpret a character’s past in different ways is pretty neat, even by modern standards. It’s just handled so poorly that it is impossible to unearth the gems in the mountain of shit. The theme song, “I Am… All of Me,” is still an all-timer, though.