What did you like about Shadow and Sonic 06?

I'm not even trolling when I say I think Shadow is the best 3D Sonic game there's been (with the possible exception of SA1). This may be because I can't remember anything that happened in SA2, but still. The branching paths were awesome, the weird level environments were awesome (urban warfare followed by digital madness followed by stratospheric fleet battles followed by GUN HQ? Do want!), and the quickness of the levels (barring a couple of... outliers) makes it a breeze to just pick up, blitz through a route in half an hour, then go back to studyin'.

Endlessly replayable, too; each level was practically 3 levels in one with the mission system, and the umpteen different routes you can go through means you're never repeating yourself. Me and my brothers still occasionally pick it up to play another route or two to this day (we're on about 250 now).

Admittedly, the gunhandling wasn't very Sonic-y, but I came to like it for its own charms, eventually. Running through GUN Fortress with a gatling gun four times as long as Shadow himself, spraying bullets into anything that moves at absurd rates, is pretty much the most fun I've had from the 3D Sonic since SA1's oh shit I'm inside a tornado Windy Valley exhilaration.

06... while I have finished it, it's the only Sonic game I had to come back to, after first playing it, then putting it back in the box the moment something else, anything else, came home with me. But it's not that bad. I applaud the attempt at a srs bsnss plot, though no-one can deny it was horribly executed. The cutscenes (particularly Sonic's opening) are like visual gold, and the mach speed sections were fun. They weren't even broken; everyone except me is just shit at them. :P

 

They were short.

Seriously. Neither game had any good qualities to it. Purest shit.

 

I'm sorry, but that train stage's mach speed zone was terrible, especially the opening gauntlet. It's VERY hard to not lose all your rings because of how awkwardly laid out the whole thing is.

Kingdom Valley's was epic, though.

 

Fun to be had? Not for me! I wanted to kill myself! Which the games helped me do too many times.

Well, the music was nice, as always.

 

Shadow was okay, and I especially liked seing Sonic get KO'd from behind in the opening. I think it's about time, what with all the other hero characters getting brainwashed (Pinball Party), kidnapped (CD, Sonic 2 8-bit) etc, that Sonic gets some kind of humiliation.

I can say the same for Sonic '06- he gets killed. My initial reaction to that was a brief laugh, as it was a little unexpected that he would actually die.
But the best part of '06 is- well, all the times Silver gets 'got' in a similar way to the above, as I've taken a dislike to him, from a childish instinct that a psychic character was my idea, but in fact it was only a fan character we're talking about, and I've abandoned him since, but the grudge lives on.

 

Shadow the Hedgehog was quite different than what you would usually expect. However, I did play it and complete it. Unfortunately the game stopped working one day, at that point I just fucked around with levels using the Shadow Rifle and the sucker as well as trying to complete more paths that the game had.

I can't say much for Sonic 06, I've never had a chance to play it due to my lack of a modern console. Maybe if I get a PS3 some day I should get it for the lulz. The music is okay though, the engine was just plain buggy according to the videos I've watched.

 

Shadow the Hedgehog was a really fun game, I played it for like 4 months straight

The number one thing it has going for it was the multiple paths you can take through the story. A single playthrough is only 6 levels, so it's a really quick game much like the old Genesis games, but there are over 20 levels to unlock and hundreds of possible combinations depending on how you complete each level.
The replay value is enormous too, with secret keys, a rank given for every mission in every level, of course unlocking every level and every ending, secret weapons and vehicles
The weapon system is simple and easy to use, and completely optional if you don't like the idea of shooting people
The music was good too, I really liked the style of Shadow's music in SA2 and this is pretty much the same

Also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqGPU6iszPY

 

Never really played Shadow so I can't say much about that. Both it and '06 have pretty damn awesome Vocal Tracks albums though. I actually went and bought Several Wills because I liked it that much.

 

Not just buggy, blatantly unfinished. Sonic has a power meter that fills up as you take out enemies, but doesn't actually do anything. His powers, supposed to be linked to said meter, can be used infinitely, which breaks the game something righteous.

...You have to HOLD the button to use his time-slowing power, though, by the way... and Shadow's powers work, they just never get any explaining, so you'll have to either figure them out on your own or find a guide that explains how/when to use them. I knew at one point, but I don't remember, I just remember that the only reason I had to find out was that teleportation was MANDITORY to get past a certain obstacle in his DLC version of Kingdom Valley.

 

I liked 08's music and graphics.

I like Shadow's cutscenes and story.

 

Some of the endings in Shadow were pretty funny, just because they were overly cliche. I missed out on Sonic 06 but from what it sounds like I didn't miss anything of value.

 

I haven't played any of those games so I cannot comment about it..
but I would try if given the chance ...shadow especially...

 

oh shit, if you remove and disregard ALL audio/dialogue/story from Shadow, I actually had a lot of fun with it... they fixed quite a lot of the collision detection problems of the Heroes engine, the level designs were competent with equal parts platforming/exploration and fast/fluid areas, and the music was really good.

Damn... I really liked the Shadow game, now that I think of it lol

2006? Fuck that.

 

I'll just say this: Shadow the Hedgehog for the GC just did almost everything right. Good graphics, great music (Westopolis music FTW), and gameplay that works. No screwing around with many charactors with broken physics, you play with one charactor with refined physics. The only thing I don't like about it are the camera (crappy in EVERY sonic game ) and Shadow's slipperyness and broken homing attack. I actually loved the cars and guns; it gave it a bit of a Grand Theft Shadow feel.

I probably just contradict'd everything you guys said, but I just LOVE Shadow the Hedgehog GCN

 

That is all.

 

Err, I meant "refined" as "better than Heroe's engine, that's for sure"

 

Yep. A really quick game. Where every level... takes 30-60 minutes to complete because you missed destroying that one Egg Pawn and now you have to scroll through each checkpoint one at a time looking for the one corner of the map you forgot to look in originally.

Oh look, there he is, and - oops! You accidentally triggered a scripted scene. Better find the next checkpoint so you can go back to the previous one and then retry that section again.

Yep, a rank given every mission that doesn't make any fucking sense.

HERO MISSION COMPLETE!

DARK SCORE: 3500
HERO SCORE: 7800
NORMAL SCORE: 2500

TOTAL SCORE: 0
RANK E

Completely optional! As long as you like homing attacking every enemy in the game 15 times to wear down their health bar.

:v:

 

ITT: What you actually liked about the games, not "Shit on everyone else's opinion of why they liked the games".

 

Turning a blind eye to bad elements of a bad game is one thing.

If I'm meant to say something good, well, I liked the enemy variety in Shadow. The three factions at war was a cool idea and lead to fighting a lot of visually different enemies. Instead of "ten flavors of egg pawns!" it was "two flavors of egg pawns! two flavors of aliens! two flavors of GUN soldiers!"

And since Shadow was the only playable character, they really tried to diversify stage gimmicks a bit more than a traditional 3D Sonic game (where gameplay/control gimmicks take center stage).

Of course, if this was any other thread, both of those statements com with "But..." qualifiers.

 

There's a difference between "turning a blind eye" and someone not being affected as much by problems as yourself.

I never gave two shits about Ranks in any of the new Sonic games, so whether I got an E or an A didn't bother me personally.

And the checkpoint back-tracking thing was a bit of a nuisance, but it really only happened the first few times you played through a level... not much different than going through every square inch of a level in the older games when it was all New To You.