Rarely does a game have a reputation as infamous as Sonic ’06. This Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game is emblematic of every problem people had with the Sonic the Hedgehog series in the mid-2000’s. It was a buggy, glitchy, mess with a time-travel plot that many fans found confusing. Despite this, Sonic 2006 never feels like a cash grab that was intended to be sold on brand recognition. There is much to appreciate about it, despite its shortcomings.
Sonic 06 has Incredible Sense of Scale
As a franchise, Sonic the Hedgehog places a huge value on spectacle. Sonic ’06 makes a point of this immediately, with its beautiful pre-rendered opening cutscene and its overwhelming speed in its mach-speed sections. The game even ends with a greater threat than ever before, with the entire universe collapsing. With three different main story campaigns featuring nine unique playable characters, Sonic 06 feels as though its developers were shooting for the stars. They wanted to make a breathtaking game unlike any to come before.
Unfortunately, the scope of Sonic 06 is likely its greatest weakness. Anyone who has played the game knows it is extremely buggy, lacking in level design, and overall needing more work. While part of this can be attributed to a tight (and possibly unfair) deadline, the huge scope of the project undoubtedly caused problems. Designing a game with one unique playable character is difficult, so making nine is a Herculean task. It’s very impressive that the mach-speed sections move so fast, but Sonic is ridiculously hard to control during them. Perhaps less is more; had the team just focused on a few characters this would not be a problem.
Level Design at its Best and Worst
It is too easy to criticize Sonic 06’s level design and physics. The game runs on the Havok Physics Engine to enable a lot of the gameplay, most notably with Silver’s Psychokineses power that allows him to throw objects and enemies with his mind. This is often barely functional, best demonstrated by the end of the pyramid level in which Silver must launch a pool ball into a specific hole at the end of a hallway filled with holes. It never reacts in a logical way that the player can predict.
In addition, there are many generally poor design choices, such as requiring Shadow to jump off a ledge to hit a switch that the player may not even know is interactable. The switch in question is less of a problem if the player plays all of Sonic’s campaign first, as the game teaches the player how to tackle this obstacle there. However, this is one of the final Sonic stages and only the second Shadow stage. It is very likely a player would struggle with this part as Shadow, and it is emblematic of poor design across the game.
Despite these grievances, Sonic 06’s actual level layouts tend to be cool obstacle courses. Even when issues arise like being unclear as to where the player should go, the critical path is created in such a way that the player would have fun running through them. Despite frustrations with the design, there are some great concepts hidden underneath it all. It is clear that the developers wanted this game to be great and were working towards that goal, even if the final product didn’t turn out that way.
An Epic Plot that Doesn’t Deliver
Shadow the Hedgehog’s story is a generally well-written campaign with a solid throughline, in which Shadow must track down and defeat the evil Mephiles that copied his appearance. This throughline is engaging with Shadow acting as a proactive character, constantly moving forward. The Sonic and Silver campaigns, however, are a lot shakier. Sonic’s is a bit repetitive, with him constantly having to save Princess Elise as she is repeatedly captured by Dr. Eggman. Silver’s has an interesting premise, as he believes he must kill Sonic to save his future, but ultimately has a similar problem to Sonic’s repetition.
Other issues are prominent as well, as the direction for most of the cast feels off. Sonic’s characterization is far more serious than it had been in prior games, and this can likely be partially chalked up to poor direction for the dub actors. If you listen to Japanese cutscenes, you can hear a Lupin III-esque snark in Sonic’s voice, yet the equivalent too-cool-for-school attitude Sonic usually has in his English localizations is completely missing here. This stiltedness makes a lot of conversations feel awkward, which is especially a problem for Sonic and Elise’s relationship which is meant to be heartwarming.
Sonic 06’s most infamous scene is when Princess Elise, a photorealistic human, kisses the cartoon mascot Sonic to bring him back to life. While this is awkward, there is a bigger issue with Elise, in that she is very interesting conceptually but it fails to land. As a child, the evil god Iblis was sealed inside her, and she was not allowed to cry for it would awaken the deity. A character disallowed to express sorrow is a fascinating concept, but her relationship with Sonic fails to manifest this in any interesting way. It’s also rather unbelievable that she never cried as a child, making this an ambitious idea that fell flat.
Conflicted Feelings on Sonic 06
Sonic 06 is never a boring game. Sometimes it is frustrating, and sometimes its plot goes to poorly realized places. It is an unfinished product that has so many bugs that more often than not it fails to be fun. Even so, it is also a game that is worthy of respect. The number of ideas it has- From the multiple playable characters to the grand plot to the complex physics system, everything about it screams ambition. Sonic 06 may not be the most fondly remembered game in the series, but it is one that is memorable and worth learning from.
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