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It seemed as though no-one paid any attention.

The gun that Shadow uses is not just a stupid way to make the game 'hip' and 'trendy' or 'in-line with GTA' as everyone thinks, THE GUN IS THERE TO GIVE THE GAME SOME FLAVOUR.

Seriously, think about it this time. Shadow = Lame Sonic recolour.

Shadow the Hedgehog game = Possible StH Adventure 3 recolour/graphic face-lift.

If the game was just Shadow bouncing around and speeding through levels, it'd be another crappy 3-D Sonic game, but now featuring an angsty, shitty recoloured character.

By putting a new weapon or style of fighting in the game, Sonic Team are trying to put 'new-life' into the Sonic series (in vain), by introducing more than one very 2-D way of playing the whole damn game. The only reason the SA games worked even slightly was because there were more than just one character to play as, despite how much we wanted to just play as either Sonic or Shadow.

So, look at it this way.

Sonic Adventure = Sonic + Friends.

Sonic Adventure - Friends = Sonic = The same Goddamn game we've played on for the last ten years, now in 3-D. In 2-D, it may have worked. Now, however, it does NOT. But by all means, I'm very eager for them to bring back an oldschool Sonic game, because the Advance series is one boring game after the other. For some reason, I find the old 2-D Sonic games much better than these terrible games.

If they had removed all the characters from SA, it would've been an even shallower game. Now that they've done that and just made SHADOW the whole fixation of the game, it's gonna require a lot more than just a whole slew of pretty levels to make the game interesting to someone more than just a dribbling, pathetic Sonic/Shadow fanboy.

So, by putting this gun into the game, they may have upped the ratings, added a new style of play to the game, and perhaps even done something useful with it. Who knows? Maybe you'll like the gun.

So, for the love of Nikko, don't start bashing it JUST yet. At least wait for reviews. Or even better, until you've played it.

Sounds like you're the one bashing the series. Personally, I like the Sonic Adventure series (except for 3) better than the old-school games that you're used to playing. If you wonder why I said 3, its because Sonic Heroes was basically SA3, but they made each team have almost the exact same levels and they made the teams nearly identical as far as gameplay goes.

I do agree with you though, the Sonic Advance series was kinda boring. The real problem with it though was that you just played through the same levels with different characters and you get to play as Super Sonic once you get the Chaos Emeralds. It was okay when the series was new with Sonic Advance 1, but 2 and 3 got a little out of hand (no great changes except for different levels and characters and nearly impossible to get Chaos Emeralds in 2).