What did you like about Shadow and Sonic 06?

If you seriously spend that long on every level then maybe you should check to see if the controller is plugged in

There are no missions where you have to kill Egg Pawns

I've never seen this happen, can you show me a screenshot?

No different from Sonic Heroes, besides, you don't have to kill every enemy in the game

 

'twas probably supposed to be this way around:

HERO MISSION COMPLETE!

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

TOTAL SCORE: 0
RANK E

 

Shadow had a few fun levels in it, but for the most part it wasn't too great. A very very average game it was, '06 was fucking atrocious though. Okay music, everything else eh.

 

Shadow? The utter insanity of it (the environments, the inane cursing, etc) was genuinely entertaining, it was the only game in the 3D series that actually had somewhat focused gameplay (meaning that the diversions from platforming were just that... diversions) and it had decent rewards for completion. It had a number of really good levels too. It had some crappy levels and some of the levels were made crappy by annoying missions *Chase down and destroy the president's escape pod/kill a billion aliens comes to mind*. You pretty much had to learn to live with the guns. Anyone who tried to live by the "guns are optional" rule was bound to hate the game from the start. They aren't optional. They are, but you'll completely ruin the game if you try to play that way.

Also the unlockable hard mode was nothing short of intense. It's probably one of the single hardest platform gaming challenges in existence. It took me more attempts to pull that one off than Cave Story's bonus level.

Sonic 06 on the other hand had glimmers of what could have been fun had the game not ended up being a completely unplayable unfinished irreparable mess.

 

I have plenty of issues, but in the spirit of the thread I'll try to lay off them.

Shadow had some very nice level ideas (Tron-inspired cyberspace levels? Eggman's Circus?) and a great soundtrack to accompany them. The character models were too shiny and bright to really fit both the mood of the game and the high-end renders used in it's menus and promo art, but they did generally have nice, fluid animation, even if they tended to fall into overly dramatic action like an early silent film. The game's pre-rendered scenes were also gorgeous.

Sonic 06 could've been so much more. Control was stiff, but it wasn't slippery like Sonic Heroes. Despite being bogged down by what ties it into the main story, Shadow's storyline had a fair share of awesome moments for the character and actually seemed to keep in mind his previous character development from his self-titled game. Aspects of the character's gameplay seem like how it should have been in the aforementioned game aswell. Silver's gameplay was poor in execution, but seemed like a decent concept. And of course, the game also has absolutely wonderful music. The awesomeness that is Solaris Phase 2's music almost makes you forget how broken and awkward the boss fight had been up to that point.

 

I'm sorry what?

How is it that I am in no way aware of these powers despite having S-ranked everything for both Sonic and Shadow on '06?

EDIT: (Except DLC, of which I have none)

 

I don't really want this to turn in to a "thing" because the thread isn't supposed to be about it and it was my mistake bringing it up in the first place (I wasn't thinking).

Looking at the times for the levels I've beaten a lot of them are 15 minutes or more. I was exaggerating for the sake of effect.

Sort of, anyway.

Stop nitpicking. You know exactly what I mean.

Unfortunately, getting this exact scenario to happen isn't always possible. The problem was, until I really sat down ten minutes ago and thought it out, I had no clue as to how the game's retarded scoring system functioned and it provides no hints. It just says "SCORE SCORE SCORE TOTAL SCORE" and I'm left going "wait what".

I decided to try and demonstrate this by booting Shadow up and taking some pictures while I played.

So I decided that I'd try Cryptic Castle, the Dark Mission. As you know, it's the mission where you have to light 5 torches. Simple enough, right? I don't have to hunt out 20 enemies, destroy 10 battleships, or anything like that. Just five torches.



Barely even half of the torches lit and I'm already passing ten minutes.



What a surprise! I've come to the "final" torch (a dead end at the farthest point) and I'm missing one. The hunt begins.

I guess I must be really terrible at the game. I die six times - three times because the camera decided to change position (a full 180 degrees!) while making a tricky jump, once because a light dash misfired, once because I pressed the wrong button, and, my personal favorite: upon reaching the end of its flight path, the flying creature dumped me nowhere near the platform:



I'm sure Shadow is laughing his ass off.



This is my fourth time through this area. I keep checking and rechecking for walls I haven't smashed, nooks (like this one) that I haven't spun under, everything to try and find this last torch.



FINALLY. I find a small torch tucked away I never lit which creates a bouncy thing that launches me to the final giant torch location. Just shy of 40 minutes!

So it wasn't until I took a good hard look at this score screen that I finally figured out how scoring in this game works. Because I was doing the Dark Mission, the score is calculated thusly: Dark + Normal - Hero = Total Score.

Thus, it's entirely possible that if I got a higher Hero score than the other two, I would end up with zero total score. Which is bullshit.

But, I mean, to each his own, I guess. If you like this sort of thing, it's not like anything I'm telling you is going to change your mind. As far as I'm concerned, though, it's like hunting for emerald shards with Knuckles minus a radar plus 10 times as many shards. Just about everything regarding the game is sub-par enough that it's not worth suffering through, for me.

At risk of being split out into it's own topic or having it be deleted, I'd rather just drop the subject right here.

 

K, I've never played Shadow the Hedgehog except for 6 minutes of multiplayer on my pal's hacked Xbox v1. And I loved the mixture of 3PS and Speed. This made it feel like one of those old fpses like Quake or Doom. I also like the idea of the many many different ways to play campaign.

 

I forgot to mention one of the better things about Shadow, if only from a SA2-fanboy's perspective: the ability to actually use Chaos Control. Yes, I know it was technically part of Chaos Inferno in Heroes, but shut up. The music was satisfying, and it even had multiple uses, depending if you used it in a stage or a boss battle. Too bad it was near useless in most non-neutral missions, but it was something I had been wanting since Shadow first used Chaos Control.

 

Shadow the Hedgehog: The pre-rendered CGI. Overall garbage game.

Sonic 2K6: It played a lot like Adventure, which is a good thing. It had more of a focus on platforming with some speed, which is what Sonic should be about. Hub worlds were fun with purchasable gem chips. Oh yeah, sick music too.

 

It's not bullshit. It's the game's feeble way of giving you incentive to actually fight for the side you're fighting for, although for the purposes of clearing the level or the game it really doesn't penalize you; it just makes it harder to reach the covered A-rank, which you may or may not care about depending on how you feel about the game.

Also makes one less reckless with firearms when you actually care about who you hit, doesn't it?

I don't remember taking 40 minutes on anything, but I DID take 30 minutes the first time I had to hunt down those DAMN Artificial Chaos things.

 

Not really. Regardless of which side I'm currently "aligned" with, everybody attacks me just the same. If it's trying to kill me, I have a right to self-defense.

 

Not according to the scoreboard, you don't. =P

 

To me Shadow the Hedgehog is more fun if I just skip the missions and run through the levels. I would rather rush through the game and get it out of my way when doing a full series playthrough. I agree that the levels are designed much like Sonic Adventure 2's. Just keep moving forward...

With Sonic '06 I have the PS3 version and really all I have to say is that I beat Sonic's story but never felt like finishing Shadow or Silver due to their different control schemes. I thought the game was like Sonic Adventure 1, except it had some parts that took many tries to get past (similar to my problem with Sonic Heroes, but not as bad as Sonic Heroes).

If there's any one game that makes me mad it's Sonic Heroes, not these two. I die in Sonic Heroes way too much.

 

Wow, Blaze. I accpet times of 30-40 minutes in missions like "FIND ALL ARTIFICAL CHAOS" (the one hiding under a door had me going on for hours), but on that mission? Fail, man. :v:

 

This. Shadow has always felt to me like a somewhat improved version of the Heroes speed gameplay, but obscured by vehicles, guns, karma meters, branching paths, and emo. From those, while the vehicles were all pretty lame, the guns weren't actually as bad as they're made out to be, for the most part. I kept seeing people complain about the auto-aim never working, but it always worked just fine for me. The only guns that really bothered me were the ones with no auto-aim at all.

Most of the level designs were pretty nice too. There were a few bad ones, like the freaking jungle stage, and the Black Comet stages felt kind of bleh. As for missions, most of them had neutral "Get to the Goal Ring" ones that you could take if you just wanted to play normally, and they were usually just fine. There were a few good ones in the Hero and Dark missions, but some really bad ones stood out more, like the ones in the two Ark flashback stages, and Central City. On a last note, the music was alright. Not as good as most of the games around it, but certainly not bad either.



As for Sonic '06, it really feels at times like a "So bad it's hillarious" kind of thing. It may suck, but at least it usually gives me a good laugh because of that. Along with that, as nearly everyone said, its soundtrack was pretty rad. Plus, the game somehow managed to portray Shadow as a decent character for the first time since Sonic Adventure 2. His overall story (gameplay aside), was actually fairly decent too.

Also, for some reason, I actually do like Sonic's Radical Train stage, Mach Speed and all. The main stage is definitely not without its problems (constantly running into one particular fence no matter what I do comes to mind, along with sometimes messing up on the loop partway through), but at least it's a lot less messy than pretty much all of the other stages. The Mach Speed area is even fine for me. Unlike the other three, it never gives me much trouble, really, except for sometimes killing me at the very end when the train is exploding regardless of what I'm doing.

The game still sucks overall, though.

 

My fave part of Shadow was blasting through the totally-neutral middle path straight to victory: not only was it the path that felt most like a Sonic game, but it concludes with Shadow the Hedgehog judo-chopping Eggman in the face.

 

I enjoyed Shadow the Hedgehog for the most part. Story was interesting, gameplay was refreshingly diverse despite only one playable character, soundtrack was ace.

Haven't played '06 yet, though I did like Shadow's and Silver's stories again, as well as the soundtrack.

 

I agree. Bad level design is totally my fault.