What could have Sonic '06 been like if it were finished?

Shit game was shit. Shit premise, shit-filled shitbags of shit. 'Finishing' it would only make it slightly less shit, but it would still have been in the brown section of the quality scale. I don't know why this ever gets discussed.

 

It seems that during the mid-2000's, Sonic Team went about fan-service in an almost pedantic manner. For example, in Sonic Heroes, they went about making each story have the same playstyle and levels, a la Sonic 2 and 3, as well as bringing back special stages. However, you still had to complete every story AS WELL AS collect every emerald in order to unlock the final story. If that wasn't enough, Super Sonic wasn't playable in regular levels, and if THAT wasn't enough, you still had to collect things, which people complained about in Sonic adventure 2, when you were team chaotix. It was like Sonic team couldn't let go of that bad things introduced in the last two games, even if that meant keeping them alongside the things that they effectively 'replaced' come the move to 3D.

Then there was Shadow the Hedgehog. Suffered from virtually all the problems Sonic heroes had aside from the team-based gameplay. Even though you are only playing as one character, the 'alternate storyline' thing was just 'different stories you had to complete' in disguise. In order to play the last story you had to complete every story, resulting in playing just Westopolis alone over 200 times. Isn't the whole point of having alternating storylines so that you can decide what path the story takes?

Sonic 06, sadly, just continued this pedantic way of catering to fans. Sonic Team chose to use Sonic adventure as a basis for the game. On paper, this may seem like a good idea. Sonic's gameplay in Sonic adventure was a nice, balanced mix of speed, platforming and exploration. Sonic controlled just about as smoothly as you can get in a 3D Sonic game, with the exception of a few bits and pieces that feel a little awkward. Overall, Sonic's gameplay in Sonic adventure seems like a brilliant idea to use as a template for a new Sonic game.

But they didn't use Sonic's gameplay as a basis. They brought in elements from Sonic adventure that people didn't want, such as alternate gameplay styles. Not only that, but They brought back an element from Sonic adventure 2 that no one liked; even playing one story wasn't safe. You were still forced to play as unwanted characters no matter what. You could play as Shadow and have to suffer a horribly nerfed Rouge level, or have to play as a slow, clunky, awkwardly-controlling Amy when all you want to do is play as Silver, and you have to play as a snail-powered, ring-bomb-throwing Tails when you chose to play as Sonic.

 

It would have been the best game ever and would have solved world hunger, cured all lethal diseases, created a source of perpetual energy, and fixed all the problems on Earth and the Universe.

Come on now, guys, really? The game would still have been a mediocre mess. That had been Sonic's track record on home consoles since 2001 going into 2006. Instead, we got an utterly terrible mess that only finds amusement in deliberately breaking the game.

 

To be honest I'm quite glad that the game bombed as much as it did, but am not at the same time.

On the negative side, the fact that the game flopped meant that we have to suffer listening to Average gamers and traditionalists who make ignorant comments about "Sonic is doomed, there'll never be a good Sonic game again! He only works in 2D! Blah, blah, blah!" which is incredibly annoying and even more so when Sonic Team have released several half-decent to great games since the game's release.

But imagine if the game had been finished, and featured slightly better controls/physics, no glitches, day/night transitions and a fully playable Super Sonic. It would just go from a flop to being mediocre, and in my opinion, mediocre is the worst a gaming franchise can be, because when a franchise is mediocre, it will, more often than not, mean the games are not good enough to be considered brilliant but not bad enough for the developers to think "Our games aren't very good, let's try harder". That's one of the reasons why I think Heroes and Shadow are 'Worse' than Sonic 06, because those two games are mediocre. Sonic 06 is Bad, and the public made that clear.

If the game had been finished, it may not have been the wake-up call to Sonic Team that it was and it's possible that Sonic Team would be churning out mediocre titles years later. We could still be seeing games with psuedo-serious storylines that can't take themselves seriously and don't know if they're trying to be dark or silly, the whole genre-roulette thing, a bland, realistic atmosphere, etc. years after Sonic 06's discontinuation.

 

The game was shit to the core. Even if the gameplay was finished, the story and premise were still ass. The locales were interesting, and the music was fantastic, but other than that, this game was going to be shit from the getgo. Stylistically, the game was doomed.

 

Would a "complete" Sonic '06 been better than what we got?

Well, you can polish a turd but its still a turd.

 

It's hard to say for sure. If they did spend extra time on it, fixed the glitches, and added some things (I.e. the ability to go back to ALL the stages from the hub worlds and not just the final stage for whatever character you're playing as), I think it would have been a lot less rage-inducing. It would especially have helped if they changed or completely got rid of those High Speed segments. The ones that are in the final game need to die in a fire. Seriously, playing those are like playing Silver Surfer for the NES... on crack.

 

How many speculation threads is this guy going to make? :v:

But I'm pretty sure they would have done better, given that I heard this game was rushed.

 

Straight from the Retro Wiki:

Even though it would have been a year late for the 15th anniversary, I don't think we can put all the blame on SEGA or Sonic Team for the minor issues stated above. That's business nowadays, quality is not a priority to these companies, it's all about making that guap. Now, if we're talking about the major issues such as the convoluted storyline, character alterations, side missions, etc. Point your fingers at Sonic Team, but at least think about what they envisioned with this game to begin with. This was probably supposed to be a push into a new direction for the franchise, which may explain why Eggman for example, was altered so drastically to look realistic. So they gave it a shot, it turned out far from what they hoped or expected, so they scrapped the game's concepts entirely from every game since and tried something else.

We really gotta stop talking about this shit though.. it gets annoying as hell everytime I see people bring up how much they think this game sucks or what could be done to fix it.. no.. just no. stop. it's done. it's 6 years too late to undo what's already been done. move on. you act like a failure on some game company's part affects your life. it doesn't. they failed, they moved on, they made something better afterward. it's not like they came to your house and took a shit on your doorstep. deal with it. go play a Sonic game that actually pleases you. problem solved. thank you.

 

[youtube]http://youtu.be/TPO5jBhBuE0[/youtube]

I don't know. If they had gone and downplayed that Robotnik guy, this could have been a real gold mine for them.

 

I definitely agree with this. Especially the missing the free roam feel. I remember because of this aspect Sonic Adventure was rumoured to be Sonic RPG lmao. None of the adventure games were polished to a finish. The levels were imbalanced. There were often "fall through the level" bugs and awkward camera angles. The games haven't looked to match their platform since the Dreamcast titles. Just a whole lot of bungling. I think the main reason I wanted them to stop making Adventure titles was less because they were a bad idea and more they just don't know how to do them. I was actually really disappointed when the controls sucked in Shadow because the idea wasn't as terrible as people were acting. To this day I think a Sonic based shooter would be a fun idea. Oh well.

Long story short maybe I will start whining about making 3D Sonic right if SEGA ever has their shit together again like in the Dreamcast era.

 

I never had an occasion where I straight fell through scenery in Adventure 1, 2 or Heroes, but I agree that this formula needed tweaking, whereas SEGA seemed to have jumped over it for something else.

The main issue with the older 3D Sonic games is that the camera was only meant to be forward facing, so back tracking (which was sometimes needed) was a real pain. This was especially apparent in levels like Final Rush/Final Chase, where doing such a thing and fighting with the camera led to pit deaths and loss of rings and important stuff needed to get the rank you wanted. Other than the Camera, the Adventure games were great. The occasional clipping issues in Adventure were unfortunately there but confined to only that game, and it's just a shame that SEGA haven't done anything with newer releases to fix it.

I always felt that this current generation of Sonic games was linear because SEGA didn't know how to fix the camera for free roaming and instead opted for a linear level design to compensate. There were always ways around the old camera style which as a younger teen was amazed they never bothered to try. In some places they could have repositioned it better, in other cases they just needed to let the game switch to a a freestyle mode for you, rather than you having to pause and do this.

Whilst I love the new style, I really do miss being able to stop and have a good look around. They could still even implement a thing whereby if you slow down and stop, you can look through Sonic's eyes like in the older ones. There was a brilliant image of the eart in Colours, and whole mountains of candy and such which they never let you get a really good look at. It's a shame.

 

Fixing gameplay bugs wouldn't change the fact there is a hedgehog x human love scene in the game.

 

It's some BS someone that goes by Pkstarstorm1up put on the Wiki. BlazeHedgehog made a tumblr post about him defending the game in the comments on his video: http://blazehedgehog.tumblr.com/post/19185844041/todays-stupid-youtube-comment-s-3-12-2012

 

Oops! I got a little self indulgent in my caustic behaviour there. And I'm sorry if the Robotnik phrase didn't make a lick of sense. I thought with him being more of a background event to Sonic's human girlfriend and the Monster(s) of the Week that it would have produced a laugh or two. Now you made me explain the damn joke.

Oh well. Trash it if you like (and this post too).

 

For me, even if all the bugs and stuff was fixed, there's still far too many hedgehogs - and the ridiculous characters and storyline would still make the game a failure (even though I've never played the game myself, I'd decided one day to watch the YouTube video with all the in-game cut scenes from it - and boy is it a lousy storyline! And yes, I have watched plenty of gameplay on it as well).

I'm looking at you, Shadow the Hedgehog [game] - for comparison.

 

I never played Sonic '06. I've heard split opinions about the game; some people utterly hate the game and would buy it just to throw it against a wall, while others didn't mind the game but still hate the storyline. I'm pretty sure that if Sonic '06 was finished, it would be a lot less buggy but would still have the God-awful storyline. Sonic games seem to have a tendency to not be completed on time, most games do. There aren't many games where you can't find removed or unimplemented content. A few examples? The first 3 Sonic games are full of removed content. Sonic 2 is particularly famous for this reason (but everyone here obviously already knows that). Other games that quite famously contain Beta elements would be many Mario series games, almost every Pokémon game, and both Pikmin games. It's interesting to think about what these games would be like if they were finished on time, but the truth is that almost every game that has ever been released has had something removed at some point in its lifetime.

 

I am, to be extremely and completely honest, happy that '06 bombed. I hated that it was so terrible at the time, and even more aggravated that I spent $20 on the dang thing, but in hindsight, '06 is the best thing that happen to the franchise since 2001. The Sonic Adventure formula can work, and I believe that it's a place the franchise should try and go back to combining moves and elements learned from the Unleashed/Colors/Generations gameplay style. But the fact remains, '06 was the kick in the butt the franchise needed.

Sega had been pushing the SA formula continuously forward, adding frills and additional elements, but not fixing core fundamental problems that had been stuck with the series since 1999. Essentially, they had been hobbling along on a fractured leg for seven years, and '06 is just when it had a clean break. The franchise literally hit rock bottom and they realized that they need to re-think everything. I love what the Sonic Adventure formula could be, but there can be no denying that what Unleashed brought to the table was precisely the kind of thinking outside the box that Sonic needed at that point; and we have '06 to thank for bringing Sonic Team down to the level that they actually had to re-assess everything from the ground up. Additionally, several elements from the Unleashed formula itself can be directly traced back to ideas that hadn't fully developed yet in '06 (in addition to Secret Rings, Riders and Rush).

I don't care what '06 really could have been; to fix all the problems you had it would essentially become a completely different game, so it's kind of a moot discussion. But I would choose the upward trend the franchise has found itself in now due to '06's failure rather than a most likely mediocre finished '06 that would bring up more mediocre titles with the same problems. The trade-off's been worth it, no doubt.