[Dr. Corndog]

I've been a huge Sonic fan since the early 90s, but ever since Sega dropped the Dreamcast, each new Sonic game has been less a must-play and more an "I'll play this game at some point," even when the games are good. So, I've never actually played a good number of games in the series. Some I fully intend to, and others I really wonder about, in particular, Shadow the Hedgehog and the infamous Sonic 06.

Are these games worth the frustration? Or are they at least worth a playthrough for a diehard Sonic fan, simply by virtue of belonging to the main console series? Is Sonic 06 even functional enough to be at any time enjoyable at all?

[Fantastic]

Sonic '06 is worth a playthrough, if only because of how fun it is to break the game.
It gets even better if you get a few buddies to laugh at how bad it is.

I have no input on Shadow since I haven't played much of it.

[Sonic Warrior TJ]

I don't completely hate Sonic '06, or Boom, but mostly because I'm a platformer junkie and I'll play whatever's around. Shadow is sort of a breath of fresh air after Heroes, because he's the only character you play as, but that doesn't mean the level design or core gameplay is anything special. A lot of the levels feel really samey and seem to reuse a lot of assets, and while attacking works fairly well (including the gun stuff), Shadow feels like he's ice skating in three directions at once when he's moving along. If you choose to play this one, plan ahead and avoid both of the inside-ARK levels (The Doom and Lost Impact), they're both absolutely terrible and can take half a year to complete if you can't keep track of where you are (like I said, some levels are repetitive as shit, as far as assets go).

Sonic '06 on the other hand is in a strange realm where it's so absolutely godawful that it's...not good, but not bad, just kinda there. You'll appreciate what they set out to do with Sonic and Shadow, and maybe even Silver, but you'll notice pretty quickly things took a turn for the worse pretty early on in development, because everything around their already buggy main stages is a mess. Hub worlds are giant with just enough landmarks that you might be able to find your way around after a few hours of playing, the town missions add absolutely nothing to the game (AVOID THE CRATE COUNTING ONE AT ALL COSTS! It's not even worth your time if you know all the answers, just because of how many 20-30 second long loading screens are rammed in there), and the only thing about the story worth mentioning is when Shadow fights Mephiles in the future. They could have just made a Shadow 2 with Mephiles as the main villain and left it alone, but they had to give Sonic EIGHT co-stars to dick around with, most of which have no business being there. The entire reason Knuckles is there can be summed up as, "Hey Tails, tell Sonic that Eggman gave me this message for him. I'll be waiting right here until he shows up and then I'll inexplicably tag along for the next four hours." Tails is only there because he heard someone mention Sonic's name. He doesn't fly you around, he doesn't make things. He's just chillin'. There's a part where this castle bitch asks him to go find the princess, and you play through the first level again as Tails. It has absolutely no effect on the story. You just do it to do it. The only characters who have any business being anywhere in this game are Sonic, Team Dark, Silver, and Blaze, but only because of how Silver's story ends. Amy does a couple things to warrant her being in the story, but nothing to deserve being playable.

I totally didn't make a very good case for Sonic '06. I like it, because of memories attached to it, and some of the levels are actually fun, but it really is a technological mess, on a nearly impressive level. If you're going to play it, now would be the time. You can probably find people on eBay giving it away.

If you play anything made after the '90s, play Colors and Generations. Colors is a lot more of a standard platformer than what you'd expect from a Sonic game (the phrase, "Sonic in a Mario game" has been tossed around more than a few times), but it's one of the most solid adventures in the series, and Generations is pretty much a labor of love for the franchise as a whole infused with two well-crafted types of gameplay.

Here's one of Sonic '06's best features, set to some soothing music.
https://www.youtube....h?v=DxlSs_0izHQ

This post has been edited by Sonic Warrior TJ: 25 January 2015 - 12:25 AM

[.Luke]

I want '06 so bad, mostly because of Blaze. I hear she's the least buggy and most well-rounded playable character in the game to boot. Dunno if it'd be possible to withstand the rest of the game just for her, though.

As for Shadow, it's more derpy than buggy, from what I remember of the Gamecube version. XBOX/PC ports are the best way to go with that game. The PS2 port makes Shadow of the Colossus look like a quality, first-party game. (Not that it was a bad game at all by design. I couldn't tolerate the constantly dipping frame rate and weird button mappings.)

Now, if you want a Sonic game that's less functional than '06, look no farther than Sonic Jam on the Game.Com. It puts every other bad Sonic game to shame, because it's actually impossible to complete legitimately, I think.

[Sonic Warrior TJ]

Blaze is definitely the best of the lot, but unfortunately you only get to play as her a few times throughout Silver's story. She gets her own version of Wave Ocean, and then her own little section in three other stages.

[Metal Knuckles]

Sonic Warrior TJ, on 25 January 2015 - 12:24 AM, said:

Here's one of Sonic '06's best features, set to some soothing music.

I've got you beat on both counts.

[Sonic Warrior TJ]

Agreed. There are so many things about this game that are bad enough, whether by design or by poor programming, to warrant a purchase to see it firsthand. It might not have been worth the money at release, but by now it's cheap enough for a curious gamer who's still down with the 360/PS3 generation to check out and enjoy. Nobody said we had to enjoy the parts of it Sonic Team intended for us to.

This post has been edited by Sonic Warrior TJ: 25 January 2015 - 01:55 AM

[Sodaholic]

I just completed a full playthough of Somari. Why am I such a masochist?

[Tiller]

If you like playing video games, then no, most of them are not worth looking at. Die hard Sonic fan? You should try them to know what hell the series has been through. />


Heroes is alright but mediocre. The stage tropes are a magnificent return to Classic surrealism despite the level design. It's probably the sole game that made everyone hate Sonic's friends due to the horrific voice acting and non-stop yapping. It brought back Metal Sonic and the Chaotix from the grave, so there is that. It's also the game that started moving away from Sonic Adventure's more faithful physics and controls, though there is plenty of momentum in the movement. The flow is constantly broken by the combat and team gimmicks.

Shadow is just...Sonic Team trying to be hip and cool after the backlash from Heroes being too kiddy. It's something you wish was self parody but it was clear they were actually trying. Exactly the sort of direction Sonic never needs to tread down. It's playable, but mediocre. The gunplay is half implemented and brings nothing to the table. The morality objectives don't entirely work with the game since no matter what side you pick everyone tries to hurt you. It's really just dumb.

Riders 1 is actually kind of neat but unpolished and unbalanced. Worth a shot I think to see what you think. Riders 2 removes the unique turbulence system from the first for a gravity gimmick that looks cool but mostly sucks.

Sonic 06 everyone should try just to see how far the series falls. It is the ultimate example of how not to make a game. Most of the entertainment value comes from how easy it is to break the game world and the number of incredibly bad design decisions that got you there. People always state that this was Sonic Adventure 3 given the move back to alternate gameplay styles, the more serious tone, and the "realistic" worlds, but the first time you start moving Sonic around it should become immediately apparent that something went horribly, horribly wrong.

The Storybooks are neat in concept but piss poor in execution. For an on rails game the camera and controls shouldn't have been nearly as bad in Secret Rings. The stage grinding for necessary abilities was a great way to turn anyone off from the game. Black Knight is probably the best written Sonic game that wasn't Battle, but the sword gameplay worked worse than guns in Shadow.

Advance 1 is great, 2 and 3 much less so due to their focus on speed and gimmicks.

Battle is a great spin off. It was fun for what it was and the only sort of brawler since Fighters. The writing is entertaining and probably the best in the series. That's mostly because the game doesn't really do anything offensive and needs a story to unfold in the first place.

Rush 1 is a neat spinoff if only for the music and pioneering the boost gameplay. But doesn't improve that much for Rush 2.

Rivals 1 and 2 are entirely skippable. They're mostly unnoteworthy except for god monster of the week possessing people to race. That was pretty stupid.

Don't touch Sonic Chronicles unless you want your ears and eyes to bleed.

This post has been edited by Tiller: 25 January 2015 - 02:29 AM

[Captain L]

I'd say it's worth at least trying them, because the Sonic fanbase is split on everything, so some of the games they decry constantly probably aren't that bad. I still enjoy Shadow in an ironic sense, I think Unleashed is just fine, and I'm writing an article right now about why Black Knight is a really good game. Of course, some of them aren't even worth touching, I would never tell you to play Secret Rings.

[Jen]

Honestly, I wouldn't bother with Shadow. It's a really horrible game and, if you want to unlock the last part of the story, you have to redo the levels multiple times to get all the different endings; which is fine, if said levels are actually fun to play, which I would argue they really aren't. I think I managed to put myself through about 5 or 6 stories before switching off the Gamecube and never playing it again. I got the game when it was new, unfortunately, so I didn't actually know that it was going to be a complete shit-fest. I don't really give a damn about Shadow or his backstory either, I find him to be an incredibly over-rated and uninteresting character, so maybe that didn't help either.

'06, on the other hand, I was prepared for because I didn't get an Xbox 360 until a few years after it was released. I'd seen in on Youtube and knew what I'd be up against, but I'm a bit of a collector and so I jumped on '06 when I saw it being sold really cheaply second-hand one day. It's horrendous, simple as that - I can honestly say it's one of the very worst games I've ever had the displeasure of playing (it's right up there with the likes of Bubsy 3D). Despite that, I forced myself to at least play through Sonic's story to the end, got close to finishing Silver's, and never even touched Shadow's at all. It's literally laughably bad, especially when you come across the many glitches that the game is riddled with. It can be hilarious but it can also get maddening when you just can't get to the end of a level because it keeps fucking up all the time. It's almost worth giving it a shot if you can find it on the cheap, just to see how bad it really is and to get a bit of a laugh out of it (it really has to be played to be believed), but I really wouldn't pay much money for it because it's really shitty.

[Dr. Corndog]

What got me thinking about this in the first place is that I recently got Generations on Steam. Sonic 06 has always looked to me like Sonic Team's attempt at Sonic Adventure 3, before reinventing 3D Sonic with Unleashed. The brilliant thing about including Crisis City in Generations is that it gives disappointed fans an idea of what Sonic 06 could've--should've--been.

I have played Heroes and Secret Rings, and I actually liked them both. SR has a lot of minor dings with a mostly solid game underneath. Heroes is actually, in my opinion, one of the most underrated games in the whole series. Just compare it with SA2, a game that really gets an undue amount of love despite some really good moments, and you'll see that Heroes is a lot more polished and a whole lot more consistent. It never quite hits the highs that SA2 does in its best moments, but there's nothing in Heroes even remotely as bad as Mad Space.

I may drop a few dollars on some of the crappier Sonic games just to have them in my collection. Like someone said, they're bound to be dirt cheap on eBay. I believe the PS3 version of Sonic 06 is the more stable one, right?

[ICEknight]

I'd watch a walkthrough of each until you can decide if they're worth spending your time on them.

[Fantastic]

No, for the most part Sonic Team's last-gen games played better on the 360. IIRC PS3 '06 was buggier and had more framerate drops, PS3 Unleashed had longer loading times and I'm not quite sure about Generations.

[Dr. Corndog]

Fantastic, on 25 January 2015 - 07:13 PM, said:

No, for the most part Sonic Team's last-gen games played better on the 360. IIRC PS3 '06 was buggier and had more framerate drops, PS3 Unleashed had longer loading times and I'm not quite sure about Generations.

Well, rats. If I pick up a last-gen system, I'd much rather get a PS3 than a 360.