[Vangar]

The game is glitchy as fuck, the voice acting is embarrassing, The level design is boring and the game drops in FPS when blowing up boxes. The loading times are too long... etc etc.

The game never had a chance in hell, unless they started over.

[Scarred Sun]

Are we going to have some variant of this topic once a year or something?

I mean, the game is finished. It shipped. It's on shelves. Debating "what might have been" feels quite foolish.

[Metal Man88]

Yeah, it's akin to "What if I could fly to the moon?" or "What if Elvis never died?"

I think it's just wishes by some that SEGA would try that format again and do it right, which most likely won't happen except maybe to make this statement look foolish 10 years from now.

[GagaMan]

The plot and art direction in the game was so wretched that all the glitch fixes in the world still wouldn't have saved it IMO. They would have had to really simplify or rewrite the story, removing any trace of the awkward creepy relationship between Sonic and Elise. Basically the only way this could have been a good game is if it was er...completely different.

[SpeedStarTMQ]

I think Sonic 2006 could have been good. Not brilliant, but good nonetheless. The final product we saw literally was a beta version, and it's clear that even though the game hadn't been tested or finished, SEGA wanted it out for the sake of money. Things with the project obviously weren't going well, with Yuji Naka leaving with some lame excuse toward the end of the development.

What would Sonic 2006 actually have been like? Well, if they'd have fixed the clipping, the physics and the speed, it would have been a passable game. The glitches: wall walking, ceiling stopping, infinite jumping out of the boundaries (both as a collectible power-up and exploitable issue), falling through scenery, cloning of characters in cutscenes, and an unfairly shit Silver bossare just some of the glitches I experienced in my short playthrough, and there are tonnes more. Had all of this been fixed the game still wouldn't have been what we expected.

We expected a day and night system, better graphics and a playable Super Sonic, none of which was actually implemented in the final package.

Had SEGA stayed on course, given the devs a year to finish it and implement features correctly, then it could have been okay. As it stands, it was rushed from start to finish, with even the 4Kids VA's having their lines rushed or changed, and in one part of the game you can clearly hear the soldier mess up his line, laugh and start again. Seriously. I'm surprised nobody got a refund and that legal action wasn't taken. 2006 was THAT bad.

Edit: I forgot to mention this, but obviously the story wasn't even very Sonic-like. Robotnik wasn't the main villian, or even really a bad guy at all, there was a princess, a time travelling guy, and the whole scenery of the game looked very unlike any other Sonic game. Regardless of any fixing to the current version, it still would have been wierd.

This post has been edited by SpeedStarTMQ: 19 March 2012 - 05:52 AM

[Jayextee]

Shit game was shit. Shit premise, shit-filled shitbags of shit. 'Finishing' it would only make it slightly less shit, but it would still have been in the brown section of the quality scale. I don't know why this ever gets discussed.

[BlackFive]

It seems that during the mid-2000's, Sonic Team went about fan-service in an almost pedantic manner. For example, in Sonic Heroes, they went about making each story have the same playstyle and levels, a la Sonic 2 and 3, as well as bringing back special stages. However, you still had to complete every story AS WELL AS collect every emerald in order to unlock the final story. If that wasn't enough, Super Sonic wasn't playable in regular levels, and if THAT wasn't enough, you still had to collect things, which people complained about in Sonic adventure 2, when you were team chaotix. It was like Sonic team couldn't let go of that bad things introduced in the last two games, even if that meant keeping them alongside the things that they effectively 'replaced' come the move to 3D.

Then there was Shadow the Hedgehog. Suffered from virtually all the problems Sonic heroes had aside from the team-based gameplay. Even though you are only playing as one character, the 'alternate storyline' thing was just 'different stories you had to complete' in disguise. In order to play the last story you had to complete every story, resulting in playing just Westopolis alone over 200 times. Isn't the whole point of having alternating storylines so that you can decide what path the story takes?

Sonic 06, sadly, just continued this pedantic way of catering to fans. Sonic Team chose to use Sonic adventure as a basis for the game. On paper, this may seem like a good idea. Sonic's gameplay in Sonic adventure was a nice, balanced mix of speed, platforming and exploration. Sonic controlled just about as smoothly as you can get in a 3D Sonic game, with the exception of a few bits and pieces that feel a little awkward. Overall, Sonic's gameplay in Sonic adventure seems like a brilliant idea to use as a template for a new Sonic game.

But they didn't use Sonic's gameplay as a basis. They brought in elements from Sonic adventure that people didn't want, such as alternate gameplay styles. Not only that, but They brought back an element from Sonic adventure 2 that no one liked; even playing one story wasn't safe. You were still forced to play as unwanted characters no matter what. You could play as Shadow and have to suffer a horribly nerfed Rouge level, or have to play as a slow, clunky, awkwardly-controlling Amy when all you want to do is play as Silver, and you have to play as a snail-powered, ring-bomb-throwing Tails when you chose to play as Sonic.

[GeneHF]

It would have been the best game ever and would have solved world hunger, cured all lethal diseases, created a source of perpetual energy, and fixed all the problems on Earth and the Universe.

Come on now, guys, really? The game would still have been a mediocre mess. That had been Sonic's track record on home consoles since 2001 going into 2006. Instead, we got an utterly terrible mess that only finds amusement in deliberately breaking the game.

[BlackFive]

To be honest I'm quite glad that the game bombed as much as it did, but am not at the same time.

On the negative side, the fact that the game flopped meant that we have to suffer listening to Average gamers and traditionalists who make ignorant comments about "Sonic is doomed, there'll never be a good Sonic game again! He only works in 2D! Blah, blah, blah!" which is incredibly annoying and even more so when Sonic Team have released several half-decent to great games since the game's release.

But imagine if the game had been finished, and featured slightly better controls/physics, no glitches, day/night transitions and a fully playable Super Sonic. It would just go from a flop to being mediocre, and in my opinion, mediocre is the worst a gaming franchise can be, because when a franchise is mediocre, it will, more often than not, mean the games are not good enough to be considered brilliant but not bad enough for the developers to think "Our games aren't very good, let's try harder". That's one of the reasons why I think Heroes and Shadow are 'Worse' than Sonic 06, because those two games are mediocre. Sonic 06 is Bad, and the public made that clear.

If the game had been finished, it may not have been the wake-up call to Sonic Team that it was and it's possible that Sonic Team would be churning out mediocre titles years later. We could still be seeing games with psuedo-serious storylines that can't take themselves seriously and don't know if they're trying to be dark or silly, the whole genre-roulette thing, a bland, realistic atmosphere, etc. years after Sonic 06's discontinuation.

[Lobotomy]

The game was shit to the core. Even if the gameplay was finished, the story and premise were still ass. The locales were interesting, and the music was fantastic, but other than that, this game was going to be shit from the getgo. Stylistically, the game was doomed.

[Aerosol]

Yes, Sonic 06 would have to be remade from the ground up to be a good game. Iblis can still be the big bad guy, but make him part of Eggman's scheme at least. Ditch that whole Mephiles BS, give Silver some other contrived reason for going into the past. The chaos emeralds create miracles and grant wishes, right? He found a couple and accidentally chaos controlled into the past, giving him a chance to stop Iblis from waking up. There we go.

It'd basically be Sonic Adventure with a fire demon instead of a water god, and I'm cool with that.

[cornholio857]

Would a "complete" Sonic '06 been better than what we got?

Well, you can polish a turd but its still a turd.

[Mecha Sally]

It's hard to say for sure. If they did spend extra time on it, fixed the glitches, and added some things (I.e. the ability to go back to ALL the stages from the hub worlds and not just the final stage for whatever character you're playing as), I think it would have been a lot less rage-inducing. It would especially have helped if they changed or completely got rid of those High Speed segments. The ones that are in the final game need to die in a fire. Seriously, playing those are like playing Silver Surfer for the NES... on crack.

[아힝흥행]

How many speculation threads is this guy going to make?

But I'm pretty sure they would have done better, given that I heard this game was rushed.

[Knucklez]

Straight from the Retro Wiki:

Quote

When released, the game received criticism for its numerous bugs and unfinished features which were hinted at during development.

It was also criticized for its flawed controls and excessive load times. This game was originally meant to be released in late 2007 but Sonic Team was rushed by Microsoft and Sony.

Even though it would have been a year late for the 15th anniversary, I don't think we can put all the blame on SEGA or Sonic Team for the minor issues stated above. That's business nowadays, quality is not a priority to these companies, it's all about making that guap. Now, if we're talking about the major issues such as the convoluted storyline, character alterations, side missions, etc. Point your fingers at Sonic Team, but at least think about what they envisioned with this game to begin with. This was probably supposed to be a push into a new direction for the franchise, which may explain why Eggman for example, was altered so drastically to look realistic. So they gave it a shot, it turned out far from what they hoped or expected, so they scrapped the game's concepts entirely from every game since and tried something else.

We really gotta stop talking about this shit though.. it gets annoying as hell everytime I see people bring up how much they think this game sucks or what could be done to fix it.. no.. just no. stop. it's done. it's 6 years too late to undo what's already been done. move on. you act like a failure on some game company's part affects your life. it doesn't. they failed, they moved on, they made something better afterward. it's not like they came to your house and took a shit on your doorstep. deal with it. go play a Sonic game that actually pleases you. problem solved. thank you.

This post has been edited by Knucklez: 19 March 2012 - 07:03 PM