I know that the majority of those who play video games know about the infamous legacy of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (AKA Sonic ’06), and that what I have to say has already been said many times before. Still, I take pen in hand (or keyboard to fingertip?) to give my personal impression of this classic disaster. Hopefully you’ll find it interesting, or at least get some cheap laughs out of it if nothing else.
What is this game?
Sonic 06 (or Sonic Next-Gen) was a game released in 2006 under the name Sonic the Hedgehog for the Xbox 360, usually abbreviated to Sonic ’06 to avoid confusion with the original Sonic the Hedgehog…unless you got the PS3 version, which released in 2007, so we’re already off to a good start.
After Sonic broke into 3D with the commercial and critical successes of Sonic Adventure 1 & 2, plus a not quite as good but still solid game in Sonic Heroes, SEGA released Shadow the Hedgehog to, at best, mixed to average reception. Thus the main focus for this game was both the next step in Sonic games and a return to the blue hedgehog’s roots, hence the game being titled Sonic the Hedgehog (which will be referred to as Sonic 06 in this review).
The development process of the game did not go smoothly, with Yuji Naka, one of the creators of Sonic the Hedgehog and producer on this game, leaving midway through to found his own company. And as if losing a key member of their team wasn’t enough, SEGA, upon seeing that the Nintendo Wii lacked the PS3’s and XBOX 360’s hardware specs, decided to split the team up even further, with some members continuing to work on Sonic 06, and the rest being moved to develop a game for the Wii, which would become Sonic and the Secret Rings.
To top it all off, SEGA cut Sonic 06’s development time short so that it would release by that year’s holiday season, something not uncommon in the realm of video game creation. So to summarize, we have Sonic Team working on a game for systems they have yet to make games on, and during the process their producer leaves, their team is split up and they’re forced to rush the release. What’s the result? Let’s break it down…
Story
There are three main storylines that run through the game. You’ve got Sonic doing his usual Eggman-beating stuff, except this time he’s taking a page from Mario’s book and rescuing a human princess, who the doctor is after because she has something to do with the Flames of Disaster, AKA Iblis. Then there’s the brand-new character Silver the Hedgehog, a time-traveler from a future that’s been devastated by said Flames of Disaster who’s looking to prevent said devastation; and finally we have Shadow, who’s up against Mephiles the Dark, an enigmatic being who has some connection to both Eggman’s scheme in the present and the ruination in Silver’s future.
Rather than wear you out with several paragraphs on the ins and outs of the story, I’ll just say that the plot is just…there. They were clearly going for a darker and more epic story, but it just feels so underwhelming. And I think a big part of that is how the characterization of Sonic & Co. falls flat on its face. Knuckles, Amy and to a lesser extent Tails are given very little screen time, with the priority being given to focus on Sonic’s relationship with the human princess. And that involves having to rescue her five times from Eggman, with all the other characters just weaving in and out. And in my opinion, giving Eggman a more serious tone, in this case, does not work. He’s no longer has that over-the-top, power-hungry attitude that was established in Sonic Adventure, and Sonic Adventure 2 proves that he can keep that attitude and still come off as a menace. To this day I’m not sure what his end goal in this game was aside from ‘mimic Bowser’.
Also, while I don’t mind Silver as a character in most cases, in this game he’s pretty intolerable. Convinced that Sonic is responsible for the ruined future, Silver hunts him down relentlessly, blatantly ignoring when Eggman captures the princess two different times in favor of killing this blue blur on the advice of Mephiles, never questioning it until he goes back in time even further to witness the creation of Iblis and Mephiles. Oh yeah, Blaze is there, but why she’s in Sonic’s world in the future instead of the Sol Dimension, I don’t know. And she conveniently can’t recall who Sonic is based on the words ‘Blue Hedgehog’. They even managed to mess up Blaze’s character. Amazing.
If I had to say anything good about the story, it would be with regards to aspects of Shadow’s story. He’s no longer the angsty anti-hero that he was in Shadow the Hedgehog, never doubting his own path in spite of Mephiles’ trickery, unlike Silver who does so due to Mephiles’ trickery. And even though there’s this weird plot point where Shadow is shown to have been imprisoned in stasis in the future because humanity feared his power, it does lead to a nice moment between the members of Team Dark, showing the bonds between Shadow, Rouge and Omega in a fitting subtle tone.
But in the end, none of it matters. In short, Mephiles merges with Iblis to create a being called Solaris, the universe ends up getting ripped apart, but the three hedge-kateers go super to fight him, and then the entire thing is prevented by removing the object responsible for Iblis and Mephiles’ creation from the time before they were created, effectively rewriting history and nullifying the events of the game. I think they were trying to go for a bittersweet ending, y’know the world is saved but Sonic is no longer friends with the princess, but because I never cared about the greater plot or the princess herself, nothing of value was lost to me. Heck, if anything, it’s good that it happened because certain other plot points, like Blaze ‘s pseudo-death in Silver’s story, are also nullified.
So five paragraphs to say that the story is basically nothing. And I was consolidating too. Whether that says something about the quality of the story or about how verbose I can get, I can’t tell.
Gameplay
And this is where the proverbial Krabby Patty meat hits the fan. From the start you can tell that they’re trying to emulate Sonic Adventure in this game; you have a hub world to explore with NPCs to talk to, the first level is seaside themed with a whale chasing you across a boardwalk, and you have multiple characters with unique playstyles that you’ll be switching around with.
The problem is with all of the aforementioned development problems, this game plays horribly. You get to play as a total of nine different characters across the game, and while they all have their own individual problems, they collectively suffer from a lack of what makes a Sonic game a Sonic game, badly programmed physics, and many, many glitches. Again, rather than going through every playable character, I’ll try and stick to more common flaws in the gameplay.
My favorite Sonic games are the ones that prioritize momentum and reflex. Momentum: Sonic’s natural speed has him going through loop-de-loops, soaring off of ramps, and running on top of water, among other things. Reflex: You have to be paying attention in order to make jumps, slide under obstacles, or homing attack across enemies.
Momentum is virtually nonexistent, as you won’t be getting a real sense of speed with anyone, especially Sonic. There was supposed to be a mechanic where Sonic would move faster the more rings you collected, but due to the rushed release this was left unimplemented, so barring scripted segments Sonic will be moving at his intended base speed, which is slow. The other characters aren’t any faster, and without momentum, there’s not much call for those snap reflexes either. The physics in this game are problematic too. Trying to precision platform in the air is especially painful because you constantly feel like you’re overcorrecting yourself, which leads you to accidentally do just that.
Now Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 had alternate gameplay styles for variety, like searching an area for hidden objects, levels where you pilot a mech walker with a lock-on cannon, or fishing. That’s sort of replicated here, but the only characters you ever get to play significant time with are Sonic, Shadow and Silver, with the other six just popping up now and then. And their gameplay segments are nothing more than ‘hit the switch’ or ‘find and collect all the objects’.
As for glitches, I could make an entire article on how many there are. Deaths in scripted segments, Knuckles and Rouge getting stuck while climbing walls, getting stuck on the snowboarding sections, going back up the slope on those snowboarding sections; the list goes on and on. But one of my FAVORITES is the fact that rockets fired by Eggman’s robots hit you twice. Coming into contact with the rocket is what knocks your rings out, but then an instant later the rocket hits the ground and explodes, which scatters all the rings everywhere so you can’t collect them. It’s FUN.
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the camera and loading times. Take all the problems that a camera in a 3D Sonic game usually has, and add on constant flipping out of your control if you move towards it and not properly displaying where you need to land or attack a flying enemy in order to avoid death. And I wasn’t kidding with that joke earlier, the game goes through a 15-20 second loading process every time you enter a new area in any Action stage, Town, or Mission, and whenever you’re entering or exiting a cutscene. One of Shadow’s missions has 5 of them.
This is Sonicman.
He legit thinks he’s Sonic.
SEGA has lost it.
Visuals
The visuals are, at their best, a mixed bag. Whenever it’s on a large scale, I’ll say the game looks really good. Wave Ocean is bright and vibrant, the atmosphere of Flame Core is desolate and foreboding, and Aquatic Base gives off that sterile feel that a giant research lab should. By todays standards the textures look kind of flat, especially in the ruin-based areas of Dusty Desert and Tropical Jungle, but I still think the presentation is pretty good.
Where the game falls flat is with the character models. The enemy models are fine, though the enemies are a bit generic, with Eggman’s mechs being redesigned to better fit the more serious story than, say, Badniks or Eggpawns. But the models for Sonic and Co., while in better resolution than previous outings, just come off as very stiff. The biggest issue is with the faces; there’s really not a lot of emotion that can be displayed with how inflexible the models are. Or maybe they’re all suffering from intense apathy from being in this game.
And those problems are ratcheted up to 600 when it comes to the human NPCs. Think clothing store mannequins that have too thick a layer of plastic on the face. Except for the city guards, their faces have an unnatural amount of bagginess. And as for Eggman’s redesign…good Chaos above, what were they thinking..
Luckily you only have to deal with the hideous models during the story and missions, so once you’re done with that, you can leave them in the dust and enjoy the landscapes.
Music
So let’s start by getting out of the way the tracks that don’t work. Uh…none of the event music really made an impression…the mission themes are kind of generic…that’s about it. When it comes to the Sonic franchise, the music is something you can usually say good things about, even if the game itself fails in all other aspects of being a video game. And for me, this applies even to Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 06. Honestly, I could probably write an entire article about the music and what about it I like so much, but I will refrain from doing so here because of this section sharing the same page as the other aspects of Sonic 06.
Now, by no means do I claim to know all about the technical aspects of music, but I’ll do my best to give the soundtrack justice. Let me begin by saying that not only is the music well composed, but it all fits perfectly with the stages they play on. Dusty Desert’s subtle tones reflect the sand-swamped ruins you explore, while Crisis City’s bombastic tempo and high-energy staccato are perfectly reflective of a metropolis devastated by flames. (Look up the soundtrack online if you want to see for yourself.)
In addition to being the one unironically good thing about this game, it’s also the only thing that it succeed at emulating Sonic Adventure in. Sonic Adventure’s stages were divided into multiple sections, with Sonic usually going through the entire stage and other characters using parts of those stages for their gameplay sections, and thus the stages would have 2 to 4 different tracks. That same thing is captured in Sonic 06, though admittedly the long loading times break the immersion. The music tracks not only fit the stages perfectly, but also the individual areas within the stages.
Take Wave Ocean for example. The area that you play in with Sonic, Tails, Shadow, Omega and Blaze is certainly upbeat, yet also serene. In Sonic’s super speed section and Shadow’s glider section, the tone shifts from serene to blood-pumping by shifting to a faster tempo for the drums and increasing the amplification on the guitar. White Acropolis’ first section is a very smooth-flowing, pianissimo melody representative of the snow-covered incline you find yourself running down, while the second section starts with a soft, sostenuto synth broken by occasional beats from drums, then after a quick buildup shifts to a more allegro mix of both synth and drums, and from there it cycles around again. This brings together the effect of the frigidity of the snowy, mountainous landscape and the imposing military base built into it.
As a sendoff, I want to give special attention to the track that plays during the final level of the game, End of the World. In that stage you play as Tails, Omega, Knuckles, Silver, Rouge, Amy and Shadow, in that order, as you go back through various stages to look for the Chaos Emeralds to repair a time-space rift and rescue Sonic, who is at the point of death. The general tone of the music is hollow and foreboding, fitting not only the situation on an esthetic level, but on a gameplay one, as the longer you go without touching a magical eagle statue, the more the time-space rift distorts, shown by the colors warping and gravity wells in the form of eyes becoming more constant.
But where the real depth lies is how the piece fits together as a whole. For this, I highly suggest looking up a complete track on the internet, as the loading screens in the game make it impossible to appreciate it. You see, the song is divided into seven stanzas, one for each character you play as. And not only does it have a beautiful flow from the beginning to the end, but each section also captures that character’s emotional state for the world being torn apart and Sonic’s life hanging in the balance. From a compositional standpoint, it’s one of my favorite BGMs in the series.
Did I enjoy the game?
Yes, but for all the wrong reasons.
Yeah, this isn’t an opinion exclusive to me (I think), but I actually have fun while playing this game because it’s a terrible game. It mainly boils down to two reasons:
- Dumb Fun: This one’s obvious. Seeing what happens when you try and play the game is a source of amusement in and of itself, even more so if you’re playing alongside a friend or two. Or you could deliberately try and break the game, which is just as easy to do as when you’re playing legitimately. Boundaries do not exist, so if you try hard enough you can get past invisible walls and real ones. Not to mention that Sonic in particular gets a bunch of extra power-ups, one of which allows you to throw a gem and warp to it, and another that shrinks you down and gives you an infinite jump. They’re as exploitable as they sound.
- Fighting against the game: This one might be just a me thing, but I like to try and see how good a score I can get in the various levels of this game. Yes, this Sonic 06 is a broken mess. I won’t deny that. But I find that I can have a good time seeing how well I can perform, both using the aforementioned glitches and fighting against the poor design of this game. And potentially hot take here, I actually like this game more than Shadow the Hedgehog.
Would I recommend this game to others?
Only for the morbidly curious.
Despite the fact that I can derive a great amount of enjoyment from this train wreck, I cannot in good conscience recommend it to other people. There’s dumb fun to be had, yes, but you also have to get through quite a bit of frustration in order to reach it. Also not everyone will find testing their ability to actually get high scores in a badly made game enjoyable like I do. If you want to see just how bad this game can get, then a cheap and easy way is to look up videos on the net. If you feel that you need to experience this disaster firsthand to believe it, then by all means. Just don’t blame me if it doesn’t work out, ’cause I warned you.
Disclaimer: The author of this review accepts no responsibility for money, time and/or effort spent/wasted on this mess.
