Best (GAME) Story in last Deacade?

[Marcello]

I've never actually played the game, but I really enjoyed Team Dark's story in Sonic Free Riders.

Shadow and Rouge are just awful and I love it. The most I've unironically enjoyed the characters since Sonic Adventure 2.

[DabigRG]

2 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Well, I like it  in 'fine enough' way since it came out, so don't loose your mind if I repeat that sentence few years later. I'm kinda surprised it's that hated, but whatever. I  heard reasons often enough.

I don't hate or dislike it either, but what ultimately tanks Forces in general is how they just sorta threw in so much that they were highly unlikely to begin to live up to.

2 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

I see no one defends Rise of Lyric. Unsurprising, it's generic at best, string of terrible jokes  bounce pad comments and Hate Letter to Shadow at worst (that rips part of it's plot from Sonic 06 of all games).

Rise of Lyric was...something. Is incomplete (and as it turns out, meddled with) a thing?

16 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

I will say something crazy though: it had actually decent Eggman. Despite acting like bumbling idiot he's actually very competent.

I mean, look at this scene. If game was actually good, people would remember it as one of best Eggman moments, good mix between cool and funny.

Well Eggman's pretty hard to get wrong.

I agree though: if Knuckles had the best lines in the show, Eggman had the best lines in the game.

19 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

He manipulates Sonic into releasing Lyric, learns from his mistakes trying different methods to take down Lyric, actually gets shoot him, saving the day and by the end of the game he got new Ancient Tech, which was his primary goal.

Was that a part of his plan? I thought that was just something he ended up rolling with since it couldn't be helped at the moment.

21 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Technically speaking he won and actually contributes to that (unlike Lost World Eggman, who just kinda hangs around).

Hm....

 

[thumbs13]

1 hour ago, Plasme said:

No seriously, when did this start?

I vividly remember the game getting absolutely lambasted for its terrible story by both critics and fans upon its release. The awful Final Fantasy rip off villain who has no foreshadowing, the weird way the Sonic characters are like the round table (but also not really - its actually a really bad adaption of the Arthurian romance) for the story book gimmick, Caliburn's annoying lines. 

When did the game start getting appreciation? A few years ago?

I swear the Sonic fanbase starts re-appreciating the worst picks. Unleashed is pretty popular now too, despite also being awful and lambasted at the time.

I bet in ten years time, the fanbase will keep saying how great the story of Forces was and how the game wasnt that bad.

Some of the arthur stuff was weird, but people liked the round table, and a lot of Sonic's lines and characterization. "I don't mind playing the bad guy" was always a cool line for me.
I feel the more positive reception comes from the fact that we never got that third storybook game, but that honestly isn't that bad.

[Multikaris]

Hmm, it's a tie between Forces and Colors. Neither are THAT great, but aren't unbearable either. Forces and Colors at least tried to be an engaging story in the vein of Dreamcast and Classic plots respectively, but suffered from a lack of nutritional value yet matching every superficial beat, but they at least tried unlike most others.  Colors tried to be like a Classic plot, but lacked any of the visceral impact of CD or S3K, and replaced the mystique with bad jokes every 3 minutes. I'd consider even Mania to be more or less the same, minus the bad jokes (replaced with good ones), but the re-use of levels hurts it a fair tad, despite the game getting Classic right in every other aspect. Forces did the same for the Adventure era, but replace "bad jokes" with "dry exposition".

[SaturnWolf]

Gonna have to go with Sonic Mania. It's a simple story that doesn't really have that cheese factor that I love from games like Sonic Adventure 2, but it's charming, albeit falling short of the same kind of charm and storytelling Sonic 3 had.

The Heavies are fun characters, much more enjoyable than the D6. So I guess that's my vote.

[knuckles20]

Going with with Fire and Ice for having non-Sonic characters actually doing something and while it wasn’t huge as other stories, I actually gave a damn about what was happening.

[Multikaris]

23 minutes ago, knuckles20 said:

Going with with Fire and Ice for having non-Sonic characters actually doing something and while it wasn’t huge as other stories, I actually gave a damn about what was happening.

To be fair, this also happened in Team Sonic Racing.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Given that Unleashed is just barely outside the limitations, I'll go for the simple choice of Black Knight. It's the last game to really try to give us anything resembling an "epic" story that runs throughout the game before it all went comedic with Colours. But really, the reason I say Black Knight (Despite not remembering it much because it's been forever since I played the game) is because is two major factors.

Firstly - Sonic. It gives us an excellent version of him. Jason Griffith was really beginning to ramp up his acting by Black Knight and it's probably his best performance of Sonic being being recasted. His personality IMO is captured spot on from the beginning. That intro where he falls into the world with two chilli-dogs, the over the top reaction to the chilli-dogs almost being ruined, his look of surprise upon immediately arriving in the world, immediately sees someone in danger, and literally springs to action to dispatch the attackers all while catching the chilli-dog in time is perfect to me. It shows Sonic's heroism, it shows his speed and skill, it shows his cocky attitude without just barely any dialogue, just with the completely non-caring way he catches the chilli-dog and eats it right after taking down enemies. It's a hell of an intro for the character.

I like the small random moments of character growth in the game too, both funny, and serious. The stupid arguments he keeps getting into with Caliburn. His exasperation that the first thing Shadow!Lancelot immediately does is drag him into a fight, the knucklehead comments against Knuckles later in the game, or hell - just the fact that Amy somehow got him to agree to a date, and Sonic later having to desperately feed her this half-baked story about being sucked into a medieval world is just funny to me. 

I like that this game just nails Sonic perfectly in terms of characterisation. It captures his heroism, it captures his cockiness, it captures his annoyance, his quips, and hell - it captures just the downright essence of Sonic - that he doesn't really care if anyone wants to label him as a villain, Sonic stands up for what he deems is right, and will fight to save others, even if those people believe he's the villain, it's not characterisation we get to see for him very often, and something I don't think has even been brought up since Sonic Adventure 2 with the "Guy who loves adventure" comment.

Secondly, is the surprise villain - Melina. I thought how the twist was handled was done very well. They established the Knights of the Round Table - despite their loyalty to Arthur were doubtful this was the correct path. After encountering Sonic, they learn the lesson he stated earlier - that you shouldn't be afraid to fight for what you know is right even if you're labelled the villain for doing it. Later, when Melina takes over, planning to make the kingdom eternal, they don't join her, they join with Sonic in order to stop her and save the people she's risking.

But Melina in general just works well as a sympathetic villain. She doesn't do this out of some petty power trip, she does it because she's become genre savvy and is aware that Camelot will eventually change and die according to the Legends. Her twisted desire is to try keep her people, and her kingdom alive forever and to alter the legend that will be their destruction. Her desire is noble, but is so horribly misguided that she ends up becoming the villain.

It works with again - what Sonic said before - it doesn't matter if you're labelled a villain for doing what you believe is right. You could argue she's meant to be the hero, because she's trying to save her world, her kingdom, and her people from extinction via legend. But she's completely wrong for doing so because of the obvious flaw of her plan - that she will hurt many more innocents for disrupting the natural order. 

Sonic is technically the villain, because he's dooming the kingdom to their end. In the end, it isn't really a battle of good vs evil, it's two people who equally believe that their side is right, and better for others. Sonic believes that while everything has to end, people should be allowed to live their lives to the fullest, as free as they want to be, while Melina wants to make everyone eternal, but destroy lives, and rule them for their own safety. In the end, Sonic wins and says just that, allowing everyone to live as free as they can be.

Even the twist I feel works well in that. King Arthur is set up as a corrupted, clearly evil figure who simply has the support of the Round Table and citizens because legend dictates he was the king and hero, and Sonic is therefore the villain for trying to kill him. The final fight is set up to be that, with Fight the Knight acting as a kickass final boss theme. But when the fight's over, the rug is pulled, revealing that no - the story is not that simple, and that the actual villain is a lot more greyer in their motivations, similar to how Sonic himself is by deeming he will fight for what he believes is right.

Honestly, I think it's a massive shame we've come so far and just keep getting presented with the shitty plots we've gotten in the last year. Unleashed and Black Knight were really beginning to show a lot of improvement for the game stories, especially after the total shambling mess that 06's plot was. Unleashed did tons of world-building while Black Knight gave us a good character focus on Sonic, and his motivations, while also giving us a shades of grey villain.

It's a shame that SEGA sort of just ended up falling into the whole cartoon plot nonsense later, because I feel like it's been just been one of the biggest hindrances of the series for the past decade. It is legitimately hard to care anymore about the games when the story is so bare-bones and basic. The humour usually falls flat, the story is usually half-baked, and it doesn't even have the charm that something like Mario Odyssey had to give motivation to keep playing.

It is just the most confused mess, because they never wanna get so serious that Sonic has to snap out of his happy-go-lucky mood. Even in Forces when he's imprisoned, he's still cracking jokes at Zavok, despite being locked there for six months while Eggman took over his planet. It's one of the critical flaws that a lot of writers fall into - they never seem to realise that Sonic can actually emote, or have more expressions than just cocky, or smug. They never seem to get that Sonic can balance out his cockiness and humour by being serious every once in a while.

That said however, I'd actually also argue Team Sonic Racing had one of the best stories. It's little more than an excuse plot, but for a racing game, it's pretty funny. It allows for a ton of fun character interactions that present some different shades to the characters, like Silver being a total dork, Sonic and Shadow having a petty rivalry, Blaze's royalty status being brought up more often etc. I don't know if we'll ever get the quality of Black Knight's writing back, but honestly - I wouldn't mind TSR's writing to be a good starting point for later stories if they can at least accurately hit the characters' personalities and give us a lot of fun moments with them.

[DabigRG]

25 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

 

It is just the most confused mess, because they never wanna get so serious that Sonic has to snap out of his happy-go-lucky mood. Even in Forces when he's imprisoned, he's still cracking jokes at Zavok, despite being locked there for six months while Eggman took over his planet. It's one of the critical flaws that a lot of writers fall into - they never seem to realise that Sonic can actually emote, or have more expressions than just cocky, or smug. They never seem to get that Sonic can balance out his cockiness and humour by being serious every once in a while.

Actually, Lost World does have him totally drop it in Silent Forest and Sky Road.

[Marco9966]

Sonic Boom games because they tried something new and some world building instead of Green Hill Zone.

[Dr. Detective]

Mario and Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games (3DS).

I'm actually not kidding either. I remember being really impressed by what that game did with it's story, especially coming out directly after Sonic Generations. 

London 2012 not only had 20 of the main characters in the roster to work with but they also utilized all the rival characters and even the NPCs that you can't play as. What their role in the story was turned out to be heavily reliant on who they were as characters. Eggman and Bowser set up machines around London that creates a fog that summon body doubles of different people. Eggman explains to his minions that he stole an urn from the British museum that contains the Phantasmal Fog that was already stolen 300 years ago by the legendary pirate William Kidd. The main plot isn't anything too complicated but already that's quite a mouthful.

The actual thing that impressed me was just how they managed to find something for every single named character to do in that story. Waluigi was fucking around with his own evil invention completely separate from what Eggman and Bowser were doing and ended up getting wrapped up in the narrative in a way I didn't see coming.

Wario, despite being antagonistic towards the Heroes, inadvertently helps them out by destroying one of the machines when one of Eggman's plans makes him angry.

The Chaotix are all on their own missions. There was a point in the story where Vector takes you to meet up with Charmy who was investigating the area and had to remember four locations for you to seek out.

There was a plotline where Omega was brainwashed because he found out important information detailing where Eggman and Bowser's hideout was.

Eggman Nega acted like he was one of those magical, mystical, all-knowing weirdos with an agenda who gives you a riddle then after you solve it disappears in a literal puff of smoke. No seriously. He bows and then disappears into a puff of smoke after leaving you with a cryptic message and doesn't show up again. It's fucking badass.

There was so much that was happening. Goddamn Omega had such a huge role in the story and he wasn't even playable. 

I couldn't believe it when I saw it. Here's an excerpt taken from Sonic News Network of just one of the few things that was happening in the story taken out at random. It's insane.

"Their first target is Donkey Kong. The Magikoopa promises a pile of bananas in exchange for defeating Bowser in an event, but when the ape agrees, the wizard summons a Thwomp to fall on DK, making him dizzy and less likely to win. When Bowser shows up, he defeats DK, but behind his back, the Magikoopa makes it up to DK by getting him those bananas he promised. Later the Magikoopa, as well as the Lakitu and a Dry Bones, somehow convince Knuckles and Vector to rendezvous. To convince them to fight, the magikoopa uses his magic to make the Laitu look like Charmy and the Dry Bones to look like Espio-"

Crazy shit was happening. Just a ton of characters betraying each other, scheming by themselves independent from what the main villains were doing, tons of moving pieces, I was flabbergasted. 

They put all their eggs in THIS basket? 

It's still really silly of course. The ending wasn't really all that epic and some of the motivations were more delightful in how quant they were BUT the set-up and follow-through was like something out of an RPG or something. It was weirdly highly detailed.

If we're talking regular old Sonic games then I'll go with Black Knight too.

If we're talking from 2010 to now than that'll be Team Sonic Racing in terms of general writing. Sonic Lost World was the best of the Pontaff stories if only because it actually tried to do something interesting with the characters. It's frustrating that I can't just say Lost World was the best outright because what it proposes isn't capitalized on correctly. For all the praise I have for the awesome scenes it genuinely does have, it all falls apart whenever the next scene undercuts it. I always say that Lost World works best when you don't think about how it all fits into the same narrative. It's individual cutscenes are great but it just doesn't work when you put them all together. Putting the scene where Tails blames Sonic for trusting Eggman more than him directly after the one where Sonic says he doesn't want to team up with Eggman is still one of the most baffling things ever. 

 

 

 

[MetalSkulkBane]

I said it twice, maybe third time's a charm: Black Knight is outside the limitations too, even if by few months. Arbitrary I know, but I wanted to take better look at all the controversial stories of late, not highlight last majorly agreed good story.

It would be like having a debate about best animated Sony movies after Spider-Verse came out. Kinda pointless Okay I like Transylvania series too

But I agree London Olympics was kinda great, in a cheesy way. It's a shame that Rio 2016 abandoned charming shenanigans for a gang war between Mario and Sonic Gyms (much less cool than it sounds).

[Plasme]

Sonic and the Black Knight has lovely presentation, I can't deny that, but the dialogue is absolutely fucking awful. Honestly, the story is so badly written that it makes you appreciate Pontac and Graff all the more, because while they can certainly fuck up tone, they are a hell of a lot better at writing dialogue and character conversations than tripe like Black Knight. Almost all of the dialogue is straight exposition with no finesse whatsoever, it's the key problem with almost all Sonic games pre-Pontac and Graff. The characters just talk at each other and either say obvious, bland truisms or offer direct exposition for the plot, they don't actually talk like human beings. Either that, or the characters just spout the game's themes directly to the player with no subtly whatsoever (isn't a knight supposed to protect people etc). When the characters do try to express emotion (such as Merlina especially) and build characterisation, it just comes across as really melodramatic and trite at the same time. And on Merlina, her betrayal is terribly handled and has no foreshadowing whatsoever. Some of the lines are also just so badly written they make you cringe ("so long, Sir Sonic" is particularly egregious).

If I can say a few things about the story that is good, I do think the Arthurian literary style is kind of cute. Sonic's personality is also cocky without being mean-spirited, which is better than the way he's presented now, where I think his cockiness has actually gone a bit extreme. I also like that the story is pretty direct and unconvulted (until the Merlina nonsense rears it's head).

To be honest, the fact a lot of Sonic fans like stories as bad as Black Knight (and also Team Sonic Racing has received some appreciation, which is also really badly written) shows exactly why Sonic Team shouldn't listen to the fans when it comes to the game's stories. Because even if they didn't make Forces and created a story people want without just being superficial, it would still be absolutely awful for all involved other than the most hardcore of fans. Because Sonic fans essentially want stories which resemble horrible stories, they in essence just want terrible stories.

The truth is, Sonic Team has never been even acceptable at writing stories, they were (at least once) good at crafting platformers. What they should do is focus on making a good platformer rather than trying to make a good plot, because they don't have the talent to do it and many, many other games offer great stories well beyond what the Sonic series can currently offer.

[StaticMania]

12 minutes ago, Plasme said:

Because Sonic fans essentially want stories which resemble horrible stories, they in essence just want terrible stories.

You wouldn't be 100% wrong considering there are people who consider Shadow and Sonic Nex Gen to be "desirable" stories next to anything from Colours onward.

Buuuuut, that's about it where that goes.

[Emerald Chaos]

Gotta go with Colours DS and Sonic Mania.

Colours DS for being the last example of the 00's style of Sonic writing before most of the series switched to the self referential humour that a lot of fans have grown to dislike these days, and also for featuring a good chunk of the cast, even if they had small roles their presence was appreciated. Sonic Mania for telling the story fairly well in the classic style (post Plus patch specifically for the various improvements made). It may not be perfectly cohesive, but it has a lot of fun moments and stuff like the Hard Boiled Heavies involvement stands out pretty well. The gameplay is front and center but there's enough character there that it doesn't feel lifeless.

[Splash the Otter]

12 hours ago, Plasme said:

Sonic and the Black Knight has lovely presentation, I can't deny that, but the dialogue is absolutely fucking awful.

I didn't think it was that bad.

12 hours ago, Plasme said:

The truth is, Sonic Team has never been even acceptable at writing stories, they were (at least once) good at crafting platformers. What they should do is focus on making a good platformer rather than trying to make a good plot, because they don't have the talent to do it and many, many other games offer great stories well beyond what the Sonic series can currently offer.

Can you imagine how boring Sonic games would be without any story though?  I'd rather have a bad plot than none at all.

[knuckles20]

Seriously can we please knock off the idea that we can only have either good gameplay or good plot. It’s possible to have both. 

[Kazhnuz]

The problem here is defining exactly what we are judging as "part of the story". Writing ? But Character Writing or actual, litteral, formal writing ? Scenario ? Lore ? Universe ? Quality of the pen used by the writers ? If we like or not the writers because how could he maim my favourite character that's mean and that mean he hate it writers are evil !!1!1. Or some kind of resulted fusion of the different elements, in a more holistic point of view ?

 

Talking about both character writing and story, Black Knight, mostly for its villian (because it's nice to have a viliain with human motivation), it's best handling of character, and one of the last game to have actual themes and interesting things to *say*. It also made a good decision to use Blaze, Knuckles and Shadow as character, because it really had an interesting way to show their different personalities using Gawain, Percival and Lancelot. A bit sad that they just had written Amy by "not being Amy" though. It should have been funnier to keep more of her personallity in her… even if with how Maekawa doesn't handle her well, it's presumably for the best he didn't. Sure, it's not a "perfect story wow game of the century" and have a lot of Serie B feeling… but Sonic is essentially playable Serie B movies with talking animals. The main problem is the kinda "automatic" and not really "alive" writing of this era, but I feel it's more a question of translation than real pure writing. To be fair, I've got that feeling with a lot of occidental translation of japanese game in the 2000~2010 era.

Removing Black Knight (as it's an obvious late representative of the previous era) and talking about the Pontaff Era… Well, it's a tie between Forces and Lost World. Forces because it tried the most and had for nearly the first time since a while interesting themes (Infinite being some kind of nuclear bully, the inverted miroir between Infinite and the Avatar, or the whole theme of illusions) and is quite smart under a ton of problems. The problem here is that there seems to had too many hand over the scenario (and maybe even some kind of "design by comitee" story wise according to the leak, which is always and by ever mean a problem and the story spiraled into a mess of contradictions and tamed stuff. We even go to stuff like the whole story of Tails being nearly invisible while it's an interesting concept and maybe the most positive idea in the franchise in the last few years (basically a "rise up" story, but it's quite interesting : I liked the idea of making Tails hit bottom and slowly growing again until he is the one making all the actual plan. Too bad that the presentation was so much flawed). Lost World suffer some similar problem (it have interesting ideas and concept, but they aren't well executed at all, most point being even missed), but not for the same reason though.

The problem is that good/interesting ideas aren't enough to make a good story. They are just enough to make people think about "what it could have been", if the story isn't right in the first place. So if we are taking another sense of best stories, as "actual best product", I would say Generations, as it's inoffensive enough. Or Colors DS which is basically a tamer version of Colors, with less joke and even a bit of foreshadowing of its final boss (the final boss also make it a bit better).

 

To do some more "generation considerations", I think that mostly mostly, writing is better now since the last decade in a formal sense, but not in the "stories". The problem is that form without meaning isn't usefull at all, and there is nearly nothing behind the forms. They are used just for bad jokes and stuff, which is a shame when we are in an era with a lot of cartoon with good stories and the ability to tell things while being really funny. I've got nothing against a "lighter" Sonic era, light is cool and stuff, the problem is that they should add something behind. But slowly, they are trying.

I don't know if they can succed, or if we need new writers (because writing style is something that can change a lot, and that is affected by a lot of other things than just the writers), but I'm kinda interested to see where we are going. At worse it'll give me food for though about writing and story handling xD

[Wraith]

Black Knight is the most complete. It has structure and followthrough. The stakes are clearly communicated and make sense. It has major themes and some level of character growth. Sonic's personality clashes with the other characters in ways that spark some fun interaction. There's a lot of criticism leveled at the game simply reinforcing Sonic's philosophy without forcing the character through any growth on his own. I generally agree with that, but think it's become exaggerated as a problem. It's fun. Much less interesting than the Adventure games but it runs circles around what came after. A little shallow thematically but that's...kinda par for the course of simple action games aimed squarely at a young audience. Find a game that's approved by critics so classic fans won't get insecure about saying it's good like, say, a Zelda title and you'll find similar levels of thematic depth if I'm being honest. 

There's nothing wrong with wanting more stories like this either. It's got heart and something to say, even if that thing isn't ground breaking. 

If this makes Sonic fans easy to please, that just shows how fundamentally broken the moden stories are. I was torn between Lost World and Forces as far as games that actually apply to the OP goes but I couldn't really bring myself to find things to praise about either of them. The supposed praise for the dialogue is lost me since it's still very cheesy and surface level in a way that's juvenile, but expected.

They're a downgrade in all other aspects of how they convey their narrative. They don't take advantage of the game side of things in any meaningful way to emphasize important sequences or clashes. They avoid any interesting or unique presentation choices. They don't even follow through on the basic ideas of their stories. They're broken in ways that run far deeper than a Black Knight or an Unleashed. 

[MetalSkulkBane]

Is it so hard to read the first post??? I think I was clear that... forget it. I should change name of this topic to "Why Black Knight is great".

1 hour ago, Wraith said:

If this makes Sonic fans easy to please, that just shows how fundamentally broken the modern stories are.

When I was transported to Bizarro World?!

1 hour ago, Kazhnuz said:

To do some more "generation considerations", I think that mostly mostly, writing is better now since the last decade in a formal sense, but not in the "stories". The problem is that form without meaning isn't usefull at all, and there is nearly nothing behind the forms. They are used just for bad jokes and stuff, which is a shame when we are in an era with a lot of cartoon with good stories and the ability to tell things while being really funny. I've got nothing against a "lighter" Sonic era, light is cool and stuff, the problem is that they should add something behind.

I want this printed, framed and sent to Sega. You hit the nail on the head.

[Soniman]

23 hours ago, Marcello said:

I've never actually played the game, but I really enjoyed Team Dark's story in Sonic Free Riders.

Shadow and Rouge are just awful and I love it. The most I've unironically enjoyed the characters since Sonic Adventure 2.

If you enjoy character because of how terribly they're written rather then actual genuine charming character writing. That sounds more like ironic to me lol

[Marcello]

5 minutes ago, Soniman said:

If you enjoy character because of how terribly they're written rather then actual genuine charming character writing. That sounds more like ironic to me lol

Awful as in awful people, not awfully written.

[Soniman]

9 minutes ago, Marcello said:

Awful as in awful people, not awfully written.

OH that make sense I've actually never seen the story of free riders in full so that's my b

[DabigRG]

If I had to rank the Modern game stories by categories, it would probably be:

Colors Wii (Most Coherent 1, Mostly Consistent 1, Simple Structure 3, Okay Substance 3)

Free Riders (?)

Generations (Simple Coherent 2, Streamlined Consistent 2, Bare Structure 5, Partly Flavored Substance 4)

Lost World (Fairly Coherent 5, Not very Consistent 4, Most Structure 1, Good Substance 2)

Forces (Kinda Coherent 4, Vaguely Consistent 5, Okay Structure 4, Not Much Substance 5)

Team Sonic Racing (Questionably Coherent 3, So-so Consistent 3, Decent Structure 2, Sorta Great Substance 1)

I'll admit off the bat that I haven't played Free Riders and only sampled some of its cutscenes(mostly the final story) years ago; this is why I left it blank. I left off the Boom games for similar reasons, with Rise of Lyric being the one I'm most familiar with due to commentaries. Also, I haven't played Mania but it's Classic anyway so it can't really count, I assume; that can probably go for the Boom games a bit as well, while we're at it.

EDIT: I honestly forgot Forces and so had to hastily add it.

 

[Eurisko]

Sonic Colours. Simple , entertaining and well written - especially Cubot and Orbot. Great game too.