Complimenting Sonic 06

OK, embarrassing admission I have to make...

I enjoyed '06 more than I enjoyed SA2.

There. I said it. I'm at peace now.

 

I like some of the music tracks. The level design may be a bit tedious but I appreciate that the environments are a bit more organic than the increasingly corridor-styled obstacle courses we were getting, with some more variety.
That's all I can say.

 

Sonic 06 had the only two elements a truly exceptional Sonic game really needs:



I'm gonna go against the grain here, and say that I always enjoyed the game itself more than I liked most of the music. "His World" is a BOP, and I guess tracks like Crisis City and White Acropolis stand out to me. But as well-composed and well-orchestrated as it is, most of it feels a little too low-energy and cinematic to make much of an impression. I like my game music to be catchy and melody driven, and there's not much in 06 that's catchy enough to get stuck in my head. When I played it back in the day, I'd usually use the Xbox dashboard to listen to cheesy mid-2000s pop songs. (The Ataris' "Boys of Summer" syncs up perfectly to my playthrough of Wave Ocean every time.)

Other than that, Sonic 06 is like a lot of trashy 3D Sonic games. As broken as it is, it's possible to squeeze some genuine enjoyment out of it if you're dumb enough to stick with it and learn your way around the jank, and I was nothing if not REALLY dumb in 2007. It's been thoroughly superannuated for me now by titles like Unleashed and Generations - games I like because they're actually GOOD, rather than titles I find a way to like despite themselves - but back then, it'd been half a decade since I'd played a 3D Sonic game as much as I did 06.

 

The CG cutscenes (like the opening cutscene) still look great to this day. While it starts off really un-sonic the opening cutscene in general is really well done with Sonic's characterization during that cutscene being perfect. Also the final-final cutscene is again really well done with it showing a lot without necessarily saying much.

Speaking of cutscenes some of the later in game cutscenes do have some moments that felt like they were attempting to keep some of the lighthearted charm of the series, like when Knuckles fumbles catching the Eggman Mail Card Thing from Sonic. This lighthearted nature is also evident in some of the overworld, like Sonic Man.. and that's about it from what I remember.

Dreams of Absolution is a bop, no questions asked... as cheesy as it is.
My Destiny is also really great too... the whole soundtrack is good but those two tracks are standouts.

 

I honestly think the negativity towards this game is really exaggerated. I have the 360 version, finished it and these are the only technical difficulties I encountered.

Slowdown in hub world, Knuckles/Rouge getting temporarily stuck on walls and the loading times are unnecessarily long. The slowdown does not disrupt anything important and neither do the load times since you just have to wait.

The only legitimate complaint I have is the control feels stiffer than normal to me. Like your constantly trying to adjust the characters so they land or point in the right direction.

I’m aware there are other glitches but from what I can tell you have to purposely trigger them.

I agree with how they incorporated the other characters by just giving them segments throughout the game. It was nice way to include everyone but still focus on the 3 hedgehogs.

Anyway the reputation it’s gained is more of a myth imo that just grew with the internet. I’m not saying it’s one of the greatest Sonic games but it’s fine. Just needed some polish.

 

E3 Instrumental His World should be Sonic's theme. It's so good!!

Aside from that, I enjoy a large chunk of the music from 06.
Oh, and playable Blaze? Hell yeah!

 

I like the soundtrack.

And I think that's pretty much it.

 

I don’t think any of the negativity towards the game is exaggerated. It’s an underdeveloped game released at too early a stage of its development, and whilst some of the story concepts of the game are interesting and the CGI cut-scenes still good today, the rest of the game is a boring slog that causes the player to fumble through it. Not only that, but there are various glaring glitches and oddities in the game that occur frequently that just shouldn’t be that easy to do.

I played this once about 13 years ago. The very first stage as Sonic had me tripping over a tiny rock that was barely visible during a ‘mach’ section, and the fight with Silver... well we all know about that.

I then proceeded down a hill to some sort of enemy camp a short while after some cutscenes and the environment was just empty and bland. Sonic controls like crap throughout (very stiff, very slow) and the whole thing was not that enjoyable: not from a Sonic fan nor a gamers standpoint.

If you can find enjoyment in this game that’s cool, however be under no illusion that this game released as a prototype and because of this is not a good game overall.

Okay, so things I did like:

1) The music
2) the potential for the graphical and art style, which was going for somewhat of an Adventure 2 style.
3) Eggman’s design - it’s awesome.
4) Shadow’s story - he’s grown up and a complete bad-ass.
5) the concept of what the game could have been had they finished it.

 

I don’t know. I’ve heard others having various problems but I only experienced what I posted.

I forgot to mention I thought Silvers stages are too long. They drag on to me. I guess because you constantly need to pick stuff up. Could have made for fun gameplay but the way they designed his stages is just a chore imo.

Not a technical problem but a regular complaint.

 

Sonic 06 is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good game. But I always said that it would've been my favorite Sonic game if they ever got the time to finish it completly.
Of course, I know that's a big "if", and I know most people think the game would've been bad regardless.
But damn me if 06 isn't my dream Adventure game. 3 playable characters that all revolve around the same base gameplay? An edgy anime story with time travel? A kickass soundtrack? Yes please.
However, the end result is consistently disappointing, either because of the rushed developement or straight up classic Sonic Team Incompetence™.

If there's one thing I think is great in the final product tho, it's the level design in Sonic's stages. It's simply the best levels we've had in a 3D Sonic game... ever in my humble opinion. It takes the level design philosophy of Adventure and iron out its kinks, with some Adventure 2 and Heroes stuff sprinkled in.
If we ignore the god awful mach speed sections, these levels are what Sonic Team should strive to achieve again going forward.

 

I do like that the level design took more cues from Adventure. There's some thematic and mechanical progression to some of the levels that I find pretty neat.

 

It's a consistent* time travel story, despite being fairly complex, which is so incredibly rare I can count them on one hand.

*ignoring Last Story and assuming Chaos Emeralds are eternal

 

I’ve only played halfway through Sonic’s story and that’s it. But I’ve seen lots of gameplay and cutscenes on YouTube and I’m of the opinion that it would’ve been a good game had it kept its original dev team and had proper time to finish it (for some reason having this opinion has ruffled some feathers with the whole “but then it wouldn’t be Sonic 06 anymore!!!” argument but that’s the point).

Main compliment is that I feel like is that it’s the last game that tried to take place in the Adventure continuity. Sure the games afterwards might make references here and there but Unleashed and onwards just feels like an entirely different series altogether.

 

Mostly, I'd like to compliment Mike Pollock's range as an actor. Still doing the same voice, he was able to pull of a more serious version of Dr. Eggman excellently. Though "serious" and "Eggman" probably shouldn't ever go into a sentence together.

 

I've only seen the cutscenes on Youtube, but I like how they actually followed up on the true ending of Shadow the Hedgehog. Shadow has legitimately put his past behind him, no more angsting, and is finally free to just be a badass. Whereas he was at least willing to listen to Black Doom, he outright tells Mephiles to shove it.

 

I think in general Shadow's personality was pretty spot on with this game.

 

This game successfully plays when you put it in a disc drive.

 

The music, the hub worlds, the movie CGs, and Shadow's characterization are all nice.