5. Sonic Free Riders (2010)
What’s worse than a poorly controlling Sonic racing game? How about a poorly controlling Sonic racing game that uses Kinect. Kinect has still yet to prove itself a capable piece of hardware for controlling anything other dancing games, and creating a bad hoverboard racing game starring Sonic characters certainly didn’t change this. The core of the game was similar to the not-great, not-terrible Sonic Riders games of last generation, but was utterly crippled by the poorly implemented Kinect controls.
4. Sonic Shuffle (2000)
With the popularity of Mario Party on the N64, Sega inevitably decided to get in the party game genre with Sonic. However, Sonic Shuffle was not simply Sega attempting a blatant rip off of Mario Party, they actually went out and teamed up with Mario Party developer Hudson to make Sonic Shuffle. What is really surprising, is despite Hudson being involved, Sonic Shuffle did in fact turn out to be nothing more than a cheap knock off of Mario Party. Hudson clearly put more effort into the Mario Party games, which was unfortunate for Sega, but nevertheless, Sonic Shuffle is a really bad Mario Party knock-off.
3. Shadow the Hedgehog (2005)
Introduced in Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow the Hedgehog became an a staple in most Sonic games that came after. He got his first starring role in 2005 with the aptly titled Shadow the Hedgehog. Like Sonic Heroes, it ran on the game engine used in the Adventure games and as such, suffers from the same control and performance issues of those games. What Shadow the Hedgehog so much worse than any of those games were the additions. The levels are akin to the worst designed levels of the adventure games and Heroes, but with baffling addition of guns. Yes, guns. Shadow wields guns, lasers, and rocket launchers which he uses to kill robots as he makes his way through awfully designed levels. To make matters even worse, the story is terrible, with yet another amnesia focused plot involving Shadow and a very forced feeling “dark” tone.
2. Sonic and the Black Knight (2009)
The second “storybook” Sonic game to appear on the Wii, and by far the worst. Where as Sonic and the Secret Rings had some decent ideas amidst its many flaws, Sonic and the Black Knight had almost no redeeming qualities. In this game, instead of the basic running and platforming of most Sonic games, there was a large emphasis on melee combat involving a talking sword. Outside of the melee combat, the speed/platforming parts are not as good as you would want. These segments are more along the lines of the Adventure games and Shadow the Hedgehog, and not so much like Sonic Unleashed, which was just released around the time of this game. Like Sonic and the Secret Rings, this game was re-telling of a classic story, in this instance King Arthur and the Knights of the Round table starring Sonic characters.
1. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)
Sonic ’06 is without a doubt the worst Sonic game ever made. There is almost nothing good to say about this game. The gameplay is similar to the Adventure games, but this game just felt worse. This game had even more technical issues than past games, and some of the worst loading times I’ve ever experienced in any game. There are some segments of the game where the load time to gameplay ratio is like 4 minutes of loading for 30 seconds of gameplay. The thing I hate most about this game is the cringe-worthy story, where Sonic has a really creepy romantic relationship with a human teenage girl. Sonic ’06 is simply the worst Sonic game ever, and no Sonic game before or after it is anywhere near as bad.