Sonic Boom has successfully made me long for the days of less characterization. Knuckles' characterization as a dumb oaf had me cringing; there's no positive side to it, the dumb jokes aren't funny, and I'm wondering how he's survived this long.

Contrast this to Dan Ryckert, who has raised stupidity to an art form. Dan's "how has he survived this long" idiocy (egg "whites" are not shells) is accompanied by sheer chutzpah in pulling off crazy things just by making offers (like driving with George Clinton, or making a commercial with Game Informer, or the monkey photo which I am still confounded by). I don't know if you could split the two apart, he's nailed what makes an idiotic character interesting. Pity the new Knuckles can't take a page from Dan's playbook and pull off amazing stuff just because he doesn't know better.