God, for the IDW writers, the Metal Virus Saga must have been such a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too storyline.
Like they got to have a zillion different characters turn into zombots in as many ways. Half the time it was people doing really stupid things that make everything worse for themselves and everyone around them. A character voluntarily bringing a zombot-in-a-box into a safe house was somehow not the thing that resulted in that safe house getting compromised. We got basically every possible reaction to a realizing that a particular character was infected. Everything gets worse and worse at every turn, with apocalyptic stakes from beginning to end. It managed to have Sonic the Hedgehog just about succumb to the virus with a POV shot from his own perspective, for Gaia's sake! Plus, even better than most zombie stories, the protagonists can't actually kill the zombots -- they're durable enough to take a point-blank shot from Omega and a direct hit from Amy's hammer, meaning the numbers are always going up and up!
... And the story could get away with all that because it was all temporary. A "cure" is always on the table, basically from the beginning, and in true Sonic fashion, the solution involves getting all the Chaos Emeralds. Cool action sequence leading up to it with Giant Zavok where Sonic teams up with Metal Sonic and Silver puts up an A.T. field. And then, right before Sonic succumbs completely, he goes Super Sonic alongside Super Silver. Poof, the Metal Virus gets physically pulled out of everyone, and they use the Warp Topaz to dump it into the goddamn sun, because fuck you, we're Super Sonic and Super Silver with the Warp Topaz. Hooray, wholesale victory, tearful reunions, and Whisper going +_+ before pouncehugging Tangle. And it's not even a reset-button ending, because the zombots did a lot of damage, and also sets up a number of plot points going forward!
Like I need to stress that I'm not even criticizing it. It Just Works! Plot devices like that are actually pretty great, when used in moderation.