u/Human_Helicopter_697

A criticism with Shadow the Hedgehog (game) is how levels lack cohesion in alternate routes.

Like take Cryptic Castle, Shadow is looking for Eggman, but during gameplay, he already meets up with him and helps defend against the Black Arms, yet we still fight him as boss. Funny enough, the enemies of that mission are his own robots and it’s the only route that takes us to Central City where Shadow is aligning with the Black Arms after helping Eggman previously. It just doesn’t make any sense.

This came to mind because I recently played Starfox 64 and felt like it handled alternate routes better. I think the problem with Shadow the Hedgehog was trying to make everything connected when it could have taken a less is more approach and have certain routes be restricted to pacific endings, because it feels like a disjointed mess overall imo.

This is actually a great parallel. People say they would’ve liked Helen as the main human character in Sonic and I do wonder how that dynamic could have been portrayed.

I have a theory that the 7th emerald power might not be what we think it is. We know that once acquired, it gives us an extra ability based on the character, but Sonic never needed a chaos emerald to home attack and we saw Amy using the hammer throw in the background of Pinball Carnival. This seems to imply that the characters already know these moves and this is more of a game feature.

I think the real silver emerald power is to Reverse / Resurrect and it was used by Eggman instead of Sonic & co. First off, based on the ending of Golden Capital act Knuckles, it’s implied that he at least found one chaos emerald because why the empty box. So most likely, Sonic & co. only used 6 of the emerald powers before then. Secondly, Egg Fortress act 2 had the whole stage reversing back to the way it was including enemies being resurrected, same for Big Egg boss. It’s also possible that he intended to use this power to reawaken the Black Dragon, though it may have done that by itself.

Of course it can argue why Eggman didn’t have the chaos emerald when using this power, but it’s possible when Fang stole the emeralds, he worked with Eggman to transfer their data into his machine before Sonic and the others got the emeralds back, but this is just theory.

I’ve seen half the fanbase get upset for referring Colors DS as Rush 3 and I want to counter this argument.

The Title: While we know it’s not called Rush 3, it does share a lot of the Rush games’ DNA to the point of being nearly identical

No Playable Blaze: By that logic wouldn’t that make 06 Rush 3? Also it’s called Sonic Rush not Sonic & Blaze. The Rush title seems to imply the boost formula, which originated from that game, there by fitting in Colors DS

No trick system: The exclusion of one move doesn’t seem to make the game feel that different since the physics / philosophy are the same. If you were to play Rush or Rush Adventure without the trick system, it doesn’t feel any different to Colors DS. The key word is FEEL, that’s why majority of people don’t refer the 3d boost games or even Generations 3DS as part of the Rush games due to differences

Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, but thought I give a reason why me and many others think of the Rush games when it comes to Colors DS

Even though Sonic is supposed to win this fight, I still think we could’ve had this boss from Shadow’s perspective. Here’s my idea based on the cutscene. Similar to other bosses, this one has 2 phases with a chaos control event.

Phase 1 references their first fight in SA2 and Heroes with Shadow and Sonic on a circular floating platform. Sonic will attack you with the homing attack, spin dash and blue tornado, except blue tornado will function like the Sonic Rush boss where it can suck the player in. At first it’s easy to home attack or boost into Sonic when he’s not attacking, but then he gets smart enough to evade boost completely and deflect your homing attack. That’s when you need to find moments to use chaos spear (since Sonic’s the only target, it won’t be doom spears) or with enough energy, use chaos control to make him vulnerable for attack.

Phase 2 will act similar to Sonic Generations with both Shadow and Sonic boosting along the road, except it won’t be a race and Sonic won’t just be boosting. Just like the cutscene, he’ll be able to parkour and run on walls that during gameplay will be unusable to Shadow. He’ll also summon sonic wind at you like he did in SA2. Like before find moments to make him vulnerable for homing attack using chaos spear. It’s advised hold off chaos control until the final hit like the other bosses.

Sonic’s final attack like the power boost he used against Shadow in Sonic Generations, he’ll charge at Shadow with a huge boosting aura. Just before he hits Shadow, Shadow must activate chaos control and freeze Sonic. Then he chaos snaps all around Sonic while unleashing chaos spears. Finally he charges a huge chaos spear and rains them all down on Sonic, making him crash. He gets up, stares angrily, boss is defeated.