User blog comment:Blitz1995/Least Favorite Sonic Characters?/@comment-1889468-20120220210052/@comment-115265-20120222145328

The reason his game was rated poorly, I believe, was because people were treating it like a Sonic game, including the critics. People probably should have let that part go and treat it like a Shadow game.

That said, if they had done that from the beginning, Shadow's game would have been more successful, and maybe he would have gotten his own series from that point on.