Sonic 06

I agree liking the robots' style is a question of taste. However, can you honestly say they don't seem out of place compared to the rest of enemies the franchise has had? I don't mean Caterkiller, but even next to the pawns from Heroes / Unleashed / Colours. There are a few gems though, for example the two rhinos feel like serious business badniks. I'd say most of the robots based on animals seem to be that but I can't think of Sonic when looking at any of the humanoid robots.

I didn't like that enemies took more than one hit to kill. I'd rather have different ways to defeat them for difficulty. Heroes managed to do this a little better (mostly because of the different shields). Sonic 06's enemies were all defeated by the Homing Attack from what I remember. It's been awhile, so there might be a couple that plays differently.

 

I haven't played the full game, but I did play the demo and I must say that the amount of alternate paths you can use to get to the goal ring impressed me a lot, that single section in Kingdom Valley took advantage of the Z-Axis far better than any earlier 3D Sonic game.

I personally don't mind badniks taking multiple hits, I didn't mind it at all on Heroes mainly because most of the time you would be leveled up, completely destroying the badniks, or you could just spam the homing attack as fast as you could and they would die in a second or two, but Sonic 06 gave you an artificial delay between homing attacks of about a second, combine that with the camera turning to the opposite direction you are aiming at and with those same badniks that can take up to 5 hits to destroy and suddenly the multiple hit badniks turn out to be very damn annoying.

 

Level design was great- same as Adventure and Adventure 2's. Controls were so awful I wondered if Yuji Naka and his team had finalized them whilst eating special brownies.

I really wish that SEGA would just go back to how Sonic controlled in Adventure 2. Colours was a right step, it's really just the camera- I want it to be able to be either fixed, and then, by the click of a button, LOOSE! Holy crap? What the hell? That's witchcraft right there!

I used to enjoy looking around the scenery in the Adventure games/Heroes/Shadow. It provided you with more depth. I think SEGA are only sticking with a fixed camera because they've had so many complaints that they ca't do a free moving one to save their lives. I actually didn't mind the old cameras, it just was turning around which was the issue, which is STILL the issue.

 

He quit and formed PROPE mid-development, didn't he? I mean, I know he started out fairly involved (Original Executive Producer, according to the credits on the wiki), but how much of the final product is his fault as such?

 

He kind of pulled a MML3; as in he announces the game and talks of working with the team to bring a highly ambitious Sonic title, and then ditches it almost immediately afterward.

The only difference here is that Capcom seems to know what they are doing with their project, even with the creator gone.

 

I think he was just there to act as a consultant.

 

He was originally spearheading the game's development as far as I know. I remember being shocked when the web announced he was leaving, I thought "What the hell will happen to 2006?". We all know what happened- SONIC THE HEDGEHOG was a nightmare, and Sonic Riders was rushed and had various silly issues. Some 15th birthday Sonic had.

 

I don't believe Yugi Naka staying would have made a severe impact on this game's quality. I got the impression the guy wanted to move on to different things for years.
Even when ‘06 was first announced, signs of decay were present. They stated the development team was new to the software and yet ambitiously claimed it was a "reboot to the franchise" and that “it's coming sooner than you think”, the incomplete student-quality test demos focused on incredibly irrelevant microscopic details like tiny mushrooms and rubber shoes, chunks of animation appeared to be missing like the rope jump move, early designs ignored very basic fundamentals of character development, and two radically different styles were forced together without any visible thought or reason - probably because it was not originally intended to be a Sonic game at all. It's okay to be hyped about something, but there are usually some warning flags for internal strife.

I say leave the man to write a new chapter in his life.

 

How would he be pulling an MML3 if its something that happened far off in the future?

 

So flipping through the game's soundtrack, I've realized two tracks were severely wasted on this game given what followed it.



Spagonia (Day) Overworld



Empire City (Day) Overworld

Dicking around with my PS3 and the custom soundtrack feature showed they fit somewhat nicely for songs composed long before the areas were conceptualized. But again, this only reinforces that the music was the only truly good part of the game.