Like many kids growing up, I loved Sonic. It was great playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on my Sega Genesis. But looking back, and looking at where Sonic is today, I realize it was just a really crappy concept, which makes for a really crappy game.

Sega lately has been making new Sonic games (and they may be for a long time), but there are several problems with the character of Sonic that makes gameplay repetitive, boring, and, in the end, unsatisfying.

The one thing Sonic has going for him is that he’s fast. Really fast. That’s great and all, but in all honesty, it’s also his downfall. The older side-scrolling games consisted of running as fast as you could (holding down that right D-pad button) until you ran into something. God forbit it was dangerous and spiky, then you had to go re-collect all the rings that you just lost before they all started fading away. After that, you jumped to another platform over the obstacle, and… repeat.

Sure, there were some neat levels, like the Casino levels where you could play slots and pinball, there were some power-ups too (even though they did very little for you), and I guess the boss levels with Dr. “Eggman” Robotnik were neat.

But after the few minutes playing the slot/pinball machine, got some power-ups, and defeated the boss levels, you returned to the same game, and you just started running again.

With the Sonic “rebirth” games Sega has been producing lately, they brought Sonic to a three-dimensional field, and this worked, except the fact that it didn’t. It was still the same game. And you know what else? You can hardly have a true free-roaming game with the Sonic character because running in one direction for a period of time in the old games through loops and such was the sorta fun part, and it worked because you could only go in two directions, left or right. In a truly three-dimensional space, Sonic could move in any angle, which makes it very difficult to shoot toward something and complete your goal. They sort-of solved this by adding launchers or springs to point you in the exact location, but what fun is that, just letting it do the work for you? If you did make a truly three-dimensional environment for Sonic to run in, what level designer would want to create an area for him to run a billion miles in every direction. Uh, no one.

And that bears the following question: who wants to play a game so expansive that finding something in that one particular level becomes impossible. (I’m not talking Zelda, here.) Since you’re running so fast, you have to make the level longer, larger so that each level isn’t going to take just thirty seconds. It’s TOO big.

Another thing: if you do want Sonic to run really fast, you have to make sure that people can actually perceive where they’re going quick enough to make turns or they’re just going to get too frustrated trying to do the same action over and over again (more-so than figuring out the sequence and timing in your jumps for Mario games, for example).

The solution? Sonic needs to slow down and get some more interesting powers or better, power-ups. The latest game “Sonic and the Black Knight” looks interesting, but a hedgehog with a sword is weird, even for game standards. (I mean, sure Mario was in a raccoon suit, but he’s been doing that for years!) Sonic isn’t a sword kind of character.

I think Sonic should just die. They’re probably never going to get it right, because he’s just a flawed character. Either make him die or return to 2D and work from there. 3D is too complex for a character like Sonic. Sega, go invent another slick character, but this time think it through, please?