Notorious for releasing in the 15th anniversary of the azure hedgehog alongside the equally atrocious Sonic Genesis (GBA), this game had a lot of promise, being the first 'next-gen' Sonic game for Xbox 360 and PS3. This game has a lot going against it, most of it a product of a rushed development cycle. The king of shitty Sonic games, right? Perhaps. While there's also plenty of decent levels as well, such as Circus Park or Death Ruins, there's quite a few annoying and outright bad levels as well. There's a couple levels that are notable for dragging on to infinity, in The Doom and Lost Impact, both can sometimes take a player 10+ minutes just to clear. Remember Team Chaotix' gameplay from Sonic Heroes? And how, for the most part, you could clear the missions in the story by only collecting some of the objects? Well, Shadow takes a darker approach by making you have to collect every object, with very few exceptions. Shadow is known for being full of bad game/level design choices however. it's just so unfitting for a Sonic game, you know? The homing attack is so weak now that you're better off shootin' your head off. Gameplay-wise, Shadow controls like a bar of soap and the game hilariously enough introduces gunplay, which actually handles well for the most part. The actual true ending takes a few elements from the other endings but is ultimately its own thing. Each story path leads to what can be considered 'what-if' scenarios. This is mitigated by the fact that one run of Shadow is 6 stages and only takes a couple hours at most. The downside? To see the true ending you have to replay the game 9 extra times. However, this is a game with multiple paths, and up 10 endings. Story-wise it's actually a sequel to Adventure 2, taking place after Shadow's supposed crash-landing death. I think it's largely agreed to be a literal black sheep in the series - Not a spin-off, but not necessarily mainline either. Hell, when the game was first announced, some understandably mistook it for an april fool's joke. It's ambiguous whether to consider it part of the mainline series or not.

However, they made an extra game in Shadow The Hedgehog. We already saw the re-release of the first two Adventure titles as well as SEGA's first new Sonic game since going third party in Sonic Heroes, which while a step down from the Adventure titles, was still a decent action game in its own right, and is considered part of the main series as seen by Seaside Hill being in Sonic Generations. A gamecube-generation* Sonic game that was a bit of an oddity.

Shadow the hedgehog gun commander