The Archie Sonic comic books are ridiculous, I happen to read a few every time I go buy a couple for my baby brother, and they are always awfully written and there a lot of characters who seem like they were submitted by fans and secretly stolen by the artists
Basically, as far as I know, it's currently like this:
Writer, Ian Flynn (hated by most oldschool fans) has some weird plot idea and in most recent issues he pretty much got rid of whole original team of freedom fighters
instead of the shitloads of unrelated ones added by previous writers. From previews it seems that he wants to introduce more characters from the games, I guess so that new sonic fans can check it out without having to find out who that Sonic the Hedgehog recolour #49 is. Not a bad idea, but at the same time he pissed off all the Satam fans.
When it comes to Sonic Universe, that has always been closer to the games characters-wise, it's currently being written by both magazines' artist and long-time fan, so I guess the quality of writing might be poor.