I still think 06 is a very bad game even if it wasn't broken. Boring gameplay for the majority of the characters, a clusterfuck of a story, empty hub world with incredibly stupid town missions, copy-and-paste of previous scenes like the killer whale (omg nostalgia pandering death to Sonic Team), Sonic being a really annoying protagonist like a dull Mario saving the princess, weird decisions like the ball puzzle that Silver can't hold a ball but can hold the giang ball of fire Iblis throws at him, ...and the romance we all know of. Glitches were only the top of the problems, not the core.
And that's right after you accused me of not having standards about this series. We can point fingers at each other all day if that's what you want.
I agreed liked the sections of this video about the game itself, but the “Future” section of the video that trashed great games like Colors because they aren’t what he wants from Sonic just left a bad taste in my mouth. Especially hypocritical that he then trashed Frontiers for those same reasons as Colors despite the fact that it clearly has ambition at least on par with that of 06 which he was literally just praising to high heaven moments prior. I much preferred J’s Reviews’ video on the game where he goes over essentially the same points, but it’s better presented and he didn’t have to make make cynical, annoying jabs at the things he doesn’t like about the franchise and fanbase. Him poking fun at Sonic Retro was kinda funny though, I will admit. Overall though, KingK can do better than this video. I guess he was probably actively trying to get people pissed though, as it sort of came off that way near the end point. I guess I just expected better after his phenomenal video on Shadow.
If this thread can't even hit two pages without needless squabbling, then it probably doesn't need to exist. Take your personal gripes to DMs and let the topic be about the actual topic now, or it's getting locked.
Yeah, it’s really fun. You should try it. We also have a thread on it if you want to read people's opinions.
Speaking as someone who has never touched 06, this was most certainly an interesting listen. I too am disappointed to hear his wholesale dismissal of Frontiers for apparently not being that brave new take on Sonic when that’s the entire reason I’m hyped for it, but I digress. What’s really got me interested is his comments on P-06. It’s something I never had the intention of trying out, but hearing about how it pretty much turns 06 into the true successor to the Adventure games that it was always trying to be is an enticing pitch, so I guess I’ll be checking that out once it’s fully completed and released.
I gave it a watch and I was a bit interested up until the future portion where he just completely dismisses the fact that despite all the criticism for the werehog, people were constantly heaping praise on those very things he said didn't matter. And then that nonsense he said about Colors made me stop watching all together. I'm getting tired of watching all these initially interesting video essays that seem to just end with a fan of 00s Sonic games wanting to hate on the 2010 games that got praised for not having the parts that they enjoyed from games in the past. Especially when those criticisms boil down to calling a game "safe/ambitious". And there's also the issue with ignoring a lot of the nuance behind the common critiques the 2000s 3D games were getting. There's a reason no one really complains about multiple playable characters in any of the 2D games after all...
It’s an improvement over Sonic 06 but I strongly disagree with King K’s assertion that it feels great to play. It feels better than 06, but the controls still do not feel close to Adventure 1 or 2. The movesets are closer to the Adventure games but the controls aren’t, if that makes sense. Where I agree with King K is that 06 had potential that was squandered by a short dev time. I feel that potential in moments of P06’s level design but for me those moments are marred by the constant bottomless pits. To be fair the adventure games overused bottomless pits as well but I feel like it’s especially egregious in 06. I have mad respect for Chaos X and I’m happy that P06 is loved by so many. Technically I think it’s an incredible achievement. It’s just not for me.
I just realized the thumbnail and title of his Shadow and 06 video line up perfectly, that's a cute detail. Both videos also end on "I love Sonic/Shadow, but I really wish he never died." Pretty neat.
Sonic 06's biggest flaw that you'll encounter in moment-to-moment gameplay is how weird the jump is. It's somehow both extremely floaty and extremely heavy at the same time, especially when the homing attack/thwok double-jump is used. I don't really put this down to a bug per se, though I might put it down to an issue with the way the camera handles jumping (it seems to move around more than in other games, making speed and distance harder to judge). Sonic 06's most game-ruining bugs are almost all tied to the amigo system. Knuckles in Flame Core especially has a tendency to get fucked up -- and flame core isn't a particularly compelling stage either so if, like me, you have [strike]some deep-seated self-hatred[/strike] an interest in beating a deeply flawed game (as an accomplishment with greater merit than beating an obviously beatable game), you're not just fighting bad physics but a fairly boring stage overall to try to reach that, uh, coveted max gamerscore. They're mostly full of issues. Rouge loves to get stuck on walls with no way to get off. Tails is impossible to control precisely due to the aforementioned jump issues. Amy is pretty slow and boring. Blaze is mostly ok but has unintuitive controls, and Omega is probably the only one that's consistently fun to play, mainly because of how damn overpowered he is. Sonic 06's most annoying but easily fixable problem comes down to its bad loading structure. Needing to reload an entire area's data during missions absolutely bogs down the game and makes what are already pretty mind-numbing challenges into complete narrative-momentum destroyers. It has some areas that have incredible structural design to them, too. The opening area of Kingdom Valley that the demo was based on was a pretty obvious choice -- while the initial area with its long downward spiral is perhaps the perfect metaphor for the series' critical reception, the design opens up a lot after that point and has no single critical path through it instead basically every part of the map until the end of it having 2-3 different navigation options. And then you reach the end of that area and it's a long, linear grind to the end of the stage that, joy of joys, involves Silver, and is particularly infuriating if you didn't try playing as him before. Other moments of brilliance include the second section of (Sonic's) Tropical Jungle, Sonic's Dusty Desert, and, weird as it is to say it, the surprisingly open Wave Ocean mach speed section. A lot of the other sections, though, manage to be both perfunctory and interminable -- long corridors with very little to do that just highlight the crappy game-feel. P-06 does do a lot to improve the experience, sure, but while it makes the amigo system better and unfucks the loading a lot, it's still a pretty lousy experience due to the fact that the controls are still really awkward.
It's always great to come to retro and get a good laugh. Love or hate the game thats your opinion and no one can take that away from you.
this is actually the smartest post here i think anyways kingks videos are good and also everyone should play spark the electric jester 3 ehehhehehehhehe !!! meow
Hi, I'm also someone who does videos like this... So before we start I'll get the first awkward point out of the way... There was a conversation about 'should threads like this be merged?' Personally, and... this goes back to the awkward "I do videos like this!" I'd say not, just because it's very easy to ignore a megathread, even if it's someone you agree with/like. It's usually better to say "Hey new video on X" and then we just all take a look and start the conversation about it for... Whatever triggers a response. As for the gamer youtube topic... Does anyone look in there anymore? Anyway, the subject matter of this thread. And my second 'awkward point'. I have to now criticise a fellow gamer youtuber. Admittedly, I'm only 15min in and... I can't help but feel that this argument is so far a bit too safe and not really an analysis. For example, when he gets to the kingdom valley section, he talks about how "There's so many pathways here, you can take X, Y or even Z!" Ok so... Oh... We're not going to look at what makes them unique? How they're each a test of a different skillset? Are they that? It feels just like "There's multiple pathways!" Okay but... why is that a good or bad thing in this case? Like, in SA1, Emerald coast has a famous branching pathway, which ironically is mentioned in this video... Whilst one route is the clear winner in terms of speed, the 2nd is an amazingly slow, but also amazingly unique experience compared to the faster route, and you could also argue more fun, whereas the branching pathways in Generations range from being good to just "Oh I can use a grind rail instead of running through this segment." You see how that gives you a better understanding of how the game was designed Vs simply saying "There's multiple pathways" and not much explanation as to why that's good or not. And then a few moments later, we're talking about Shadows combat, which, again feels very surface level, we get a brief explanation of his moves, but little indication as to how or why these are good. Now that said, I do like how he talks about how the sound design is incorporated into the combat, so it makes each hit feel more powerful and satisfying, this is something that I have in my notebook for a future video I want to do on Bioshock 2. So it's something I not only agree with, but if it was the first time I was being told about that, I've just learnt to not only look at games I enjoy, but this video taught me to listen, since sound design can make games even better due to that little trick. But this came almost 11:30 minutes into the video, after a lot of kinda surface level stuff. I've not watched any of his other content so I wouldn't dream of claiming he's bad at this, but from reading some of the comments here, I am wondering if it's worth carrying on? Is there anything else here that will make me thing about the game? Or is it a bit too surface level a look at it? Edit: I clicked play again and got to something which made me... well... at 11:37 he talks about the combat in a positive light... And he gets to Knuckles, and praises how knuckles can dive into groups of enemies... But he shows visuals of... well... look... The drill starts between these boxes... Knuckles clips through the wall, and the camera rotates 180 degrees, this happens in the same frame. Knuckles gets 'spat' out, doesn't actually finish the drill dive animation... Knuckles is now 'recovering' from... whatever glitch just happened... Notice how only 'now' enemies have spawned ahead of him, but enemies 'behind him' (the camera) have blow up from the move completing, you can even see the energy from it go into Knuckles. Oh why not, let's just blow up the enemies which spawned in after the move hit the ground too. "GOOD COMBAT DESIGN!" If I were doing this game, and... Lord, one day I may have to. And I really wanted to praise this move... There is no way I could use that clip, just too much goes wrong in that few moments of gameplay to praise the combat design, yes some of the problems aren't related to it, but with so much going wrong, I can't understand why this was shown and not even said as a throwaway joke "Pay no attention to everything else in the game going wrong! This move is great!" just to acknowledge you saw this. Like I said, I've not watched his content, and from the sounds of people here he's done better stuff, but I can't understand how if you're doing an analysis, you just ignore or miss something like this? Unless you are only going for a surface level study? Which is fine but, it's not really for me.
When I made this topic, I wasn't expecting a critical analysis on YouTube Critical analysis culture but its a welcome surprise. Most of it is surface level stuff and the usual rose tinted view about the 2000's you see from Sonictubers nowadays, but I did like the exploration of how the fallout from this game was gradually building up as a result of the growing pains of early 3D game design that not even Mario and Zelda were completely immune to. It just puts it into perspective for me how 06's failure was also a matter of timing as well as it came out relatively early in Sonic's 3D lifespan, so having such an irrevocable effect on them.
I don't like doing it because some people can take it the very wrong way, which isn't my intention here, like I said, I've not seen his other work and some people have said it's a lot better and given his sub count I'm guessing it will be. ...Annnnnnd it opens my SA1 analysis video up to a lot of own goals, e.g. "Well why didn't you include that multiple pathways thing... Cos I'm saving it for my Gens video." =p Yeeeeaaaahhh... I'm also not a fan of this rose tinted look on games which seems to go through a weekly cycle on socials like twitter either. People have been trying to do it with Forces of all games this week, which is... marvellous. You really can't rose tint these games. If you like them and enjoy them, ok that's fine, but you've got to make the argument as to why you feel that way, as someone who doesn't like this game, I have to at least be able to understand why you feel the way you do, and likewise if I'm going to tear into it, I'm not just going to go for the surface level argument, because I need you to understand my feeling on it, even you disagree, I need you to understand where I'm coming from and... I'm not sure this video is going to do that =/
I enjoyed this video a lot, especially when it tackles the internet's relationship to the game and in general how it's shifted the conversation. I won't say that it makes every point perfectly clear but I can tell that this is a person who has said what they wanted to say. What would you consider "fundamental issues", if jank controls etc were removed from the equation? Is it story? Is it level design? Is it character swapping? Is it overall game structure? At that point, you're pretty much on entirely subjective points that can't equate to a fundamentally flawed or bad game. It's like if I said a Tony Hawk game was bad just because I don't really care to earn points in something instead of just completing a goal or if those points don't contribute to a goal, like an A or S Ranks in SA2 or 06 - or for an even more relevant example, calling NiGHTs Into Dreams the worse NiGHTs game because it's more score / arcade focus instead of a more linear but still freeform goal-based Journey of Dreams. Every game has a different focus, and you have to judge based on what the game is trying to do through its design, who it's trying to appeal to, instead of what you wanted it to be. It's difficult for a game like Sonic because it's not just trying to appeal to existing people but to create a new appeal in general, something that's increasingly harder to do as online creators and influencers get more and more critical of things they don't understand and the kids who would have been unphased by the online conversations of the 2000s (like King K) are now more aware of what's "popular" or what's "bad" instead of getting their own defined tastes. It's why Sonic kind of has to "chase trends" (I hate that phrase but there's nothing better at the moment) to survive, why we can't really go back to the raw ambition of the 2000s, because even if it's guaranteed to sell it's not guaranteed to keep the brand alive, which is why Sonic did what it did in the 2010s. But I think that's all getting into personal analysis I'm trying to piece together for myself so I'll stop myself short of that. I can't speak for him but I myself would agree with the idea that Sonic was ambitious, but I start to stop agreeing when I feel the ambition never left but has been placed in different areas but sometimes suppressed in one way or another, so I can see someone saying they don't think Frontiers is ambitious because Frontiers doesn't aim to build anew but finally pull the public and the fanbase together. It's very very easy to forget, even for people who think it's just a basic rule. We're all trying to process and seperate what we like and don't like and get passionate about both and ignore it when talking about it because of that. Even King K himself slips into that towards the end, so I think that's why he tried to highlight that, as a reminder to himself and to everyone listening. It's weird because I love basically every part of the design, more than King K, the story feels special to me, I like having the town missions carry from level to level, and I guess that most people who say that P-06 is what they want would disagree with me when I say that I would be entirely satisfied if the original cutscenes, story, town mission and hub world design was put in almost unchanged compared to how the levels have been modified. Hell, ChaosX already took away one of my favorite parts of the game after the last Sonic Release update brought the absolute mastery needed for S ranks in the levels down to a simple understanding what makes an S rank. And here people are saying that all of that needs changed. It's the difficulty with "fixing" 06, where do you stop before you make a start making a different game entirely?
