YMMV / Sonic Omens

aka: Sonic 2020

• Awesome Music:
  • Several of the tracks in the game are breath-taking, with the consensus favorite being "The Paradise", which plays in the Chao Paradise Zone in Episode 1.
  • "Waterfall Chase", which plays as Sonic is escaping a tree that's rapidly filling with water, is a hauntingly beautiful tune that still manages to instill an appropriate sense of urgency.
  • "The Weight of the World", the theme song that plays during the fight with the Final Boss The Exiled while playing as Super Sonic, being both an intense and hopeful rock song with both The Exiled's tragic perspective of wanting to just go back home regardless of what consequences there are in the main verses, and Sonic's heroic perspective of stopping The Exiled in the chorus. Bonus points to having Bentley Jones as a singer, who previously worked on "So Much More" and "Dreams of an Absolution".
  • There's also the instrumental song that was cut from the official release in favor of "The Weight of the World", simply titled "The Exiled" released by Techno Cinema. You can listen to menacing, foreboding first phase of the song here, and the triumphant rock second phase here.
• Bile Fascination: After some of the game's narmy cutscenes and plot elements started making rounds on Twitter, quite a few people became interested in it solely to see the full extent of how ridiculous the story is. The fascination grew tenfold in light of the various controversies surrounding the game, namely locking the game's beta builds behind a Patreon subscription, the poor-to-downright unfair level designs, and reports of toxic working environments at the hands of the developers.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Due to the game's less than stellar gameplay and level design, those who do like the game tend to point towards the story for its highlights, particularly for integrating elements from Sonic X and Sonic Unleashed into a central part of a story that really feels like it was from the times Sonic games had more serious writing to it (if a little overly edgy as detailed by some points in Narm).
• Fanon Discontinuity: Being a fangame, this game was never canon. However, this game manages to be this even within fanon itself; it's very common to see people who don't even want to think of this as a Sonic fangame.
• He Really Can Act: Nicholas "GameGuyNick" Markgraf, the voice actor for Sonic in this game, won over fans and players with his performance since it was very akin to Jason Griffith.
• Magnificent Bastard: Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik, once again the brilliant arch-nemesis of Sonic, figures out The Exiled's plan and is dedicated to stopping it. Spending a month stealing the Chaos Emeralds while evading G.U.N, he stays one step ahead of Sonic, Tails and Shadow when they get involved, snagging the Emeralds before they can arrive while leaving behind robots to slow them down. When the Exiled manages to steal them in an ambush, Eggman manages to escape while rescuing Sonic, teaming up with him to stop Exiled so that he can Take Over the World instead. Locating his base and providing a distraction so Sonic and Tails can slip in, Eggman plays a sizeable role in stopping Exiled's plans, parting peacefully with Sonic for the time being.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Consider this your bad omen!" ^{Explanation (spoilers)} This is what Sonic says to The Exiled during the Final Boss battle, which has been ridiculed by the community of being on par with Morbius (2022)'s equally ridiculous, but at least fake, "IT'S MORBIN' TIME."
  • Chris Thorndyke's tombstone ^{Explanation (spoilers)} The shot from Omens' post-credits scene where Sonic visits Chris' grave is second only to the above meme in terms of notoriousness, with many fans either mocking it for how ludicrously edgy it is or seizing the opportunity to relish in it as a Take That, Scrappy! moment.
• Narm: Part of what makes the game so divisive is that the writing tends to be so serious that it ends up being hilariously over-the-top instead. A few standouts:
  • The memetic "Consider this your bad omen!" was ridiculed for being a hilariously clunky attempt at a Title Drop.
  • While "GameGuyNick" can do a good impression as said above, it can feel like some of Sonic's lines were read without context or multiple takes. More than a few people have poked fun at his almost cheery way of saying, "Going home, what a great motivation for genocide!" while lacking the intended sarcastic tone it was probably supposed to have. He's hardly the only character that suffers this problem, either.
  • Chris Thorndyke's death at the end of the game, complete with a shot of his tombstone, is considered by many to be ridiculously edgy to the point of hilarity.
  • Chris' design is also very hard to take seriously, with more than a few players believing that he resembled a bootleg Sora.
  • The Maria boss fight, even in concept, is an extremely odd premise. While the idea of Shadow having to confront his past head-on is certainly interesting (if overdone), a boss fight where you have to attack a terminally ill little girl is very hard to take seriously. Many joked about the absurdity of the situation following the game's full release.
• Narm Charm: Shadow's Russian accent. While some would find it jarring, many fans find it hilarious and actually fitting to the character.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: If discussions about Omens are not on the topic of either its breathtaking visuals or hit-and-miss gameplay (or both), then it'll most likely begin with the issue of it being a for-profit fan game (where Ouroboros Studios had initially locked the game behind a Patreon subscription), and how it could possibly put the whole fan game community at risk of being cracked down upon by SEGA after years of them being lenient on Sonic-related fan projects. Things only grew worse when a document surrounding the game was released detailing toxic working environments, acts of plagiarism, allegations of pedophilia, and general bad behavior by the game's developers. Furthermore, the developers became open about how they made the game purely out of spite for Sonic Team's missteps with the franchise rather than out of love and passion for it, and attempted to detail their side of the story via a Google doc. Few were swayed, Ouroboros Studios' goodwill with the fangame community was destroyed almost immediately, and Omens is now seen as an example of how not to make a fan project.
• Squick: The crackdown into the game and its development history revealed that the model for Maria has, of all things, underwear textures with a provocative red design and the words "Bad Girl" written on them. Given that Sonic X established Maria as being twelve years old, it should come as no surprise that many have responded to this with disgust.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: It didn't take long for people to discover that the Area 99 stage theme is note-for-note the Oil Rig stage theme from, of all places, Cars 2: The Video Game.
• Tainted by the Preview: Following discoveries of Omens (or its former title 2020) being for-profit via Patreon funding (and thus posing a possible risk of more fan games following suit and spurring SEGA to clamp down on the community, as explained in detail here), many fans dropped their support of the game immediately. It's believed that esteemed Sonic fangame expo SAGE in particular banned the game from being showcased on their website for this reason, and the official community manager from the franchise reaffirmed that fans should not make fangames for profit.
• That One Level: The Tornado Levels. With quite finicky and stiff controls, paired along with painfully unfair level design, many players tend to look down on these levels for being extremely brutal for unfair reasons.
• Unexpected Character:
  • "The Exiled", Shadow's mysterious new master is confirmed by the creator to be a Metarex, an antagonistic alien race that was only exclusive to Sonic X.
  • On another note, was there anyone expecting Maria Robotnik of all characters to show up as a boss of all things?
  • The Egg Dragoon from Sonic Unleashed returns as the first boss, only broken and downgraded as E0-Dragoon. Even without its flight and electric drill abilities, it still proves a good challenge to Sonic.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The breathtaking realism of the visuals, especially the natural settings, courtesy of Unreal Engine 4 and even better than some modern Sonic the Hedgehog games, was what drew many fans to this fangame. It should come as a surprise to no one that the visuals are one of the few unanimous praises about the fangame.

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