Well, I finished the game. Took me two days.
At first, I wasn't quite going along with it, but I've been that way since the start.
I started to cozy up to the game in the following months.
And now I've played through it.
You know, it's actually a good game! Sure I was pissed off at the final boss with a huge difficulty spike that was just out of place.
I played through all the stages, I liked Splash Hill Zone a lot, Casino Night Zone is also pretty good. I kinda hated Lost Labyrinth because the way the level was designed it was a little hard to predict what would come up next, resulting in a lot of cheap deaths. But it had some clever puzzles.
I found Mad Gear Zone to be the most fun stage I went through, even if it featured some of the most annoying enemies from Sonic 2.
Again, the physics that a while to get to. But after that you just go with it. It feels weird that Sonic feels so heavy, because in comparison, when I play Sonic Unleashed and seeing how freaking fast Sonic is, in the old games and in this new game, it feels like Sonic is carrying lead on those sneakers.
And again, all of this depends on how you feel.
This game is either an insult or an homage, depending on the fact that you either hated it or loved it, respectively.
If you go by what a lot of people say on NeoGaf, it's probably the biggest disaster since the Titanic and the Hindenburg combined. If you start reading a couple of professional reviews, it's apparentely pretty good.
So... take your pick, really.
You might have fun with this game, you might feel that your childhood has been rapped and shot in the face, then rapped again.
I liked it. A part of me, considering how the stages in this game are pretty close representations to earlier Sonic games, it feels unnecessary.
To me, I have one only gripe, is that a lot of people are complaining this game is short.
Let's take a second to break this down, critics have been pissing and moaning over how different gameplay styles ruin Sonic, how it has too many characters and they all hurt Sonic, but then when a Sonic that solely features Sonic and it's way too short, the obvious answer is: NO F***ING S***!
There are no other playable characters, hence, there's 0 variety in gameplay or nothing else to play once you're finished with Sonic.
And considering that all you do in this game is just getting to the end of the stage and considering how fast the character is, it doesn't take long till you finish it. Sonic Team could've added 1 or 2 extra stages in this episode and it would still only add about 20-30 minutes of extra game time.
Sometimes, be careful what you wish for, 'cause you might just get it.