Official Sonic 2006 topic

[Gabz Girl]

Even if this game wasn't a half finished glitchfest, it would've been very mediocre still. The story for example was awful and would be exactly the same if the game was complete. It means they would've also kept that stupid, unnecessary Sonic death scene in.

[SilentDoom]

What it could've been if it were finished would've still be a terrible game.  The game at it's core is absolutely terribly designed and fixing the glitches, load times and presentation issues would not have changed the fact that the game is still a mess in terms of just about everything else.  

[Indigo Rush]

I feel that the only thing that could have been done to make this game better during development would have been to grab a blowtorch and incinerate every scrap of base coding and conceptual framework, along with giving Yuji Naka a severe spanking.

Seriously, the only things that are salvageable from the very core concept of what Sonic 2006 was supposed to be would be some stage locations, some of the music and some surface-level plot ideas. The argument that this game could have been better if they had given it "more time" or "patched it" would not fix how uninspiring and ugly it is.

It's like saying you could make Bomberman: Zero better by giving it nicer graphics and tighter controls or something. You're missing the point. Sonic 2006 is flawed at its core. It did not set itself out with the right mindset. It's focus was not to make a genuinely good Sonic platformer, but to provide a "what if Sonic were real with next-gen graphics and deep complex story" scenario.

This game was a continuation of the series of follies that you could argue had been happening since Sonic Adventure 2. Sonic Team had been fixated on experimenting with the Sonic formula and adding new gameplay styles in order to try and nail down what would be good to play, rather than take a hard look at breaking down the key components of what made the original Sonic games fun and use the latest technology to bring it into a new generation; this didn't happen (not that they did it properly) until Sonic Unleashed, and even then they couldn't resist adding a God of War rip-off.

This has, and continues to be, the biggest catalyst in why 3D Sonic games are bad; the cheat sheet is right there, but Sonic Team can't get enough experimentation out of their systems. They can't find the right sweet spot because once they make one game, they change it up the next. The boost trilogy was the most consistency we've ever had since the early 90s, and that's ridiculous when you think about it.

But to drive back to the point, Sonic 2006's problems stem from that mid-2000s mindset of "experiment with Sonic again," instead of actually "going to Sonic's roots," something they coin frequently but apparently know jack-all about what that means.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Holiday Rush

[Diogenes]

I was going to make a post to the effect of, "I'm going to start hating '06 not just for what it is, but also for what it could have been."

Except I couldn't actually think of any way that '06 could have been worse.

[pppp]

I love Sonic 06 because of what it COULD have been if it were given some more time to finish

 

The game would still be crap, just a bit less crappy:

 

-The plot would still be garbage,after all it has nothing to do with polishing up the gameplay.

-We would still have overly huge hub worlds that just slow the game down,unless of course they were planning to make the characters faster in the final build.

-We would have a lot less loading times,but would that really make the town missions more fun?

-We would still have crappy level design in some stages like Sonic's Tropical Jungle.The only way i can see that stage being well designed is throwing it all away and start from scratch.

-We would still spend more time mashing X to kill enemies and solving boring ball puzzles then doing platforming.you can see there was barely an effort to have platforming.

-I don't see how it would make boring boss battles like Iblis or Solaris feel more fun.

Of course i'm not a game designer,so i might be wrong but really i don't see how it would become a great game.it would have better controls,less loading times,maybe better graphics but that's it.

[PSI Wind]

It would've been decent at best if its major bugs and load times were fixed.

[Blue Blood]

It would've been decent at best if its major bugs and load times were fixed.

 

Lets say load times and bugs were fixed, as well a control issues, we'd still have to contend with...

• The god awful story, cutscenes and presentation.
• Silver's gameplay. And heck, the gameplay of all the amigo characters.
• Levels with really poor design, like Flame Core and White Acropolis. In general, the level design was pretty bad all over. At best, some of the levels would have been partially decent.
• Two hubs that are nothing more than barren expanses, and a third that's about decent.
• The town missions, which are still forced upon you a great deal of time.

'06 was destined to fail. All that finishing development of the game would have led to was a poor final product that was less offensive than what we actually got.

[Milo]

As far as I'm concerned, 06 was doomed the minute Naka jumped ship to form Prope, with most of the original Sonic Team (at least ten out of the original fifteen IIRC) following him afterwards. If it actually did get past the beta stages during development and got rid of it's bugs and glitches, loading times, and even got it's promised features (day to night transition, that purple gem, Metal Sonic having a role...I think that was planned? I'm not sure), I could probably see it getting a reception on par to Unleashed and Lost World (polarizing) at best. At worst, probably a slightly better reception than it has now.

[Goldenlink64]

Just going to chime in here... 

• Silver's gameplay. And heck, the gameplay of all the amigo characters.

Silver may have been a scrappy due to lack of polish and refinement (hell, everything in this game is a scrappy because of that), but I'll actually admit, Silver's gameplay by design was one of the more interesting parts of Sonic 06. Had they made him faster and refined his psychokinesis powers a little more, he could've been a lot more fun to play as. It's a lot better than Shadow's (*XXXXXXXXX* enemy dead, repeat for 8 hours gameplay)

 

Same thing goes with Tails, just fix his obnoxious movement so he plays like Adventure One. I miss him being playable dammit.

 

• Levels with really poor design, like Flame Core and White Acropolis. In general, the level design was pretty bad all over. At best, some of the levels would have been partially decent.

 

Now maybe it's because it's been a while since I played the game but I distinctly remember Flame Core (or at least Sonic's version) being one of the better designed levels. Now if you wanna point out absolutely horribly designed and should be tossed immediately, Tropical Jungle's a much better example. Playing that as Silver, I had no idea where the heck I was supposed to go. Screw that level and everything about it. 

[Diogenes]

Silver may have been a scrappy due to lack of polish and refinement (hell, everything in this game is a scrappy because of that), but I'll actually admit, Silver's gameplay by design was one of the more interesting parts of Sonic 06. Had they made him faster and refined his psychokinesis powers a little more, he could've been a lot more fun to play as. It's a lot better than Shadow's (*XXXXXXXXX* enemy dead, repeat for 8 hours gameplay)

Grab box, throw box, repeat, doesn't sound like much of an improvement. And I think '06's focus on combat was a mistake to begin with; even if they could make Silver's combat more interesting, he doesn't have any interesting platforming abilities.

[Biggs]

James "AVGN" Rolfe plays Sonic 06:

 

 

This was horribly painful to watch. Not necessarily because of how bad the game is, but the absolutely putrid, dog shite playing skills James Rolfe has here. I don't like this game but how the hell he managed to get lost and not know what to do during the hoop mission melts my eyeballs. Turned the video off after he had to restart the game.

 

The game is a load of bollocks (IMO), but this dude needs to get good. I'm honestly suprirsed that such a hardcore gamer that's forced himself to play crap like Cheetahmen can be so bad at this.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

i liked the different gameplays in the Sonic the Hedgehog. Silver was my favorite of them because it was different and intresting and I also liked Shadow's as well because it was a little like his game. Tails was boring, Knuckles was okay and so was Rouge. Amy..... why did they give her invisable powers? Blaze, she seemed faster than Sonic and that's a no-no.

[spinny]

In all honesty, even though it's most likely some stupid mess-up in the game's coding (HEY JUST LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE), I like to link Amy's invisibility in this game to the whole magic and tarot cards thing that her bios in CD and Chronicles got at. It's a very forced reasoning and most likely not what they had in mind, but it's something better than nothing.

[Diogenes]

I really don't think Amy's invisibility is any kind of bug. It's a distinct move with obvious uses; it's not the kind of thing that could be done by accident. The line of logic, I think, is that Amy doesn't have the offensive power of the rest of the cast, so they compensated by making her a stealth character, who could sneak around enemies and take them by surprise. Maybe at one point they did intend to justify it by linking it to her tarot card reading, but considering how much of a clusterfuck '06 is I could just as easily believe that they just threw it in because whatever and didn't care if it made sense.

[Goldenlink64]

Grab box, throw box, repeat, doesn't sound like much of an improvement. And I think '06's focus on combat was a mistake to begin with; even if they could make Silver's combat more interesting, he doesn't have any interesting platforming abilities.

 

You forgot the part where you can grab enemies with Silver's telekinesis and throw them at others, along with being able to stop bullets/missiles mid-air ala Keanu Reeves and then fire them back at the enemies.

 

And then there was the huge satisfaction of being able to hold, like, 12-15 objects all at once and then being able to fire them all at a mini-boss or a bunch of grouped enemies. I actually thought that was pretty cool, now if it was made a little faster paced it'd be even better too.

 

Now platforming-wise, if you want to get creative, we could scrap that mid-air dash of Silver's he has now and make something akin to Sonic's Unleashed mid-air boost (a bit more controllable though), and maybe allow him to stop midair too. It'd be a hell of a lot closer to this and could perhaps work for some interesting air platforming similarly to how Tails did in Adventure 1.

[Diogenes]

You forgot the part where you can grab enemies with Silver's telekinesis and throw them at others, along with being able to stop bullets/missiles mid-air ala Keanu Reeves and then fire them back at the enemies.

That's just turning enemies and missiles into boxes to throw; it's the same shallow, repetitive grab-and-throw sequence. Silver's powers are cool in concept, but there's nothing about '06's execution that makes good use of them, even as a guideline.

Now platforming-wise, if you want to get creative, we could scrap that mid-air dash of Silver's he has now and make something akin to Sonic's Unleashed mid-air boost (a bit more controllable though), and maybe allow him to stop midair too. It'd be a hell of a lot closer to this and could perhaps work for some interesting air platforming similarly to how Tails did in Adventure 1.

SA Tails wasn't really interesting, because he could just fly over everything. Making Silver similar wouldn't really be an improvement. And even if it wasn't that broken, I don't think an airdash/hover is enough to make him interesting, and it's not really a compelling use of his powers.

[Jet Prower]

I honestly had thought just fixing the loading times and tons of glitches and such would have been a bit improvement honestly as much as most of you like to bash on the game.

 

The hub worlds are one of the things I want most more in these sonic games. The level to level style is so boring and hub worlds like in Unleashed, here and in SA1 are some of my favorite things in the games. I love that free explore feel. In this game, the load times and missions are about all that slow that part down and the missions could have easily been improved a bit with less load times. People play Sonic Adventure DX and its missions and seem ok with them, yet not here.

 

The story while flawed, isn't completely terrible. You could have simply fixed a few things that didn't make full sense and I never thought it was that bad. The premise of Mephiles and all that I still think works honestly. The whole tear thing, maybe not so much, but the entire thing with Mephiles being in some artifact that releases him sounds fine to me.

 

As much as many people say it, I just always thought the game could have been a lot better if fixed a bit and not been so rushed. Don't get me wrong, the game isn't great, but it could have easily been given a few points more in score and such if many of the bugs, glitches and other things like that had been fully fixed and tweaked a bit.

[StaticMania]

I honestly had thought just fixing the loading times and tons of glitches and such would have been a bit improvement honestly as much as most of you like to bash on the game.

 

The hub worlds are one of the things I want most more in these sonic games. The level to level style is so boring and hub worlds like in Unleashed, here and in SA1 are some of my favorite things in the games. I love that free explore feel. In this game, the load times and missions are about all that slow that part down and the missions could have easily been improved a bit with less load times. People play Sonic Adventure DX and its missions and seem ok with them, yet not here.

 

The story while flawed, isn't completely terrible. You could have simply fixed a few things that didn't make full sense and I never thought it was that bad. The premise of Mephiles and all that I still think works honestly. The whole tear thing, maybe not so much, but the entire thing with Mephiles being in some artifact that releases him sounds fine to me.

 

As much as many people say it, I just always thought the game could have been a lot better if fixed a bit and not been so rushed. Don't get me wrong, the game isn't great, but it could have easily been given a few points more in score and such if many of the bugs, glitches and other things like that had been fully fixed and tweaked a bit.

The Hub world here is also a contributor to slowing the game down because the game doesn't tell you what you need to do to access each level and you have to go out of your way to figure it out the 1st time....done as early as the 1st actual part of game-play...How would you know that you'd have to do a "Town Mission" in order to get enough rings to be able to buy the "Light Speed Dash" giving you access to the First level. The game does a poor job(an even poorer job than Sa1)at letting you know where you need to go and what you need to do to get there.

 

Sa1 atleast lets you know where you need to go via cutscene, or the Tikal orb and what you need to do by giving you very OBVIOUS visual cues to certain areas, and if you still get lost they put Tikal orbs there to help you. The worst it ever gets is the Mystic Ruins area. Also none of the "Rank missions" in Sa1 are Mandatory to actually beating the game, they are basically "Challenge mode/Hard mode."

[Daya]

Here's a thought I had months ago:

 

If Sonic 2006 was scrapped when Yuji Naka left/during production, and SEGA jumped straigth to Sonic Unleashed, what would've happened to Sonic's reputation?

[Celestia]

The series' reputation was already going down due to Shadow and  to a lesser extent Heroes, but if they had scrapped '06 and Unleashed came out two years later, I do think the entire situation wouldn't have gotten as bad as it did. Maybe the "break" between ShTH and Unleashed would have helped to some extent, with the later being a surprising comeback?

 

I mean, Unleashed was controversial and was flawed especially the Wii version, but it isn't as bad as '06 by any stretch of the imagination (though it did, somehow, get lower review scores, IIRC).

[Emmett L. Brown]

The series' reputation was already going down due to Shadow and  to a lesser extent Heroes, but if they had scrapped '06 and Unleashed came out two years later, I do think the entire situation wouldn't have gotten as bad as it did. Maybe the "break" between ShTH and Unleashed would have helped to some extent, with the later being a surprising comeback?

 

I mean, Unleashed was controversial and was flawed especially the Wii version, but it isn't as bad as '06 by any stretch of the imagination (though it did, somehow, get lower review scores, IIRC).

Personally I don't think Unleashed would even exist if Sonic 06 hadn't failed as badly as it did, because Sonic Team wouldn't have recognised that they really, really, REALLY needed to step back and change the formula for the series to succeed.

 

I don't think we'd have had the exhilarating daytime Sonic levels or the light-hearted tone of Unleashed if it's predecessor had succeeded. We might've still had the werehog, though, because that particular element was definitely a relic of the "surely they don't want to play only as Sonic through the whole game?" mentality that the series desperately needed to shake off.

 

(Wouldn't mind a return to the option of alternate characters that run and jump like Sonic, but the mandatory alternate playstyle characters were bad and good riddance)

[Celestia]

Yeah, you have a point. Unleashed probably would have been a lot different if it weren't for the backlash against '06. I still think it would exist, though; wasn't in development for some time? Err...maybe I'm thinking of the Hedgehog Engine...

 

That being said, in a hypothetical scenario where '06 had been scrapped, I honestly think the boost (and thus, the daytime stages) could have ended up introduced to the main series anyway, simply because I always saw it as them seeing the general success of Rush at the time and deciding to roll with it. Or should I say, NOT roll with it! Hahaha-*punched*

[gala]

It seems that SEGA decided to just give up on this game after it's bad reception. No updates really seemed to attempt to fix the problems associated with the game, which could have been done. Hell, Lionhead added a whole online mode to Fable II through an update, so couldn't SEGA have fixed a couple of bugs and improve things people had criticized about the game?

 

Saying that, maybe they thought fixing Sonic 06 would just be like beating a dead horse, seeing a people would still have their first impressions about the game being bad and an update might not change people's views on it

[TCB]

It seems that SEGA decided to just give up on this game after it's bad reception. No updates really seemed to attempt to fix the problems associated with the game, which could have been done. Hell, Lionhead added a whole online mode to Fable II through an update, so couldn't SEGA have fixed a couple of bugs and improve things people had criticized about the game?

 

Saying that, maybe they thought fixing Sonic 06 would just be like beating a dead horse, seeing a people would still have their first impressions about the game being bad and an update might not change people's views on it

 

I don't even think patches to the game would have helped if the game itself was bad at is core. At least that's what I get from it all.

[Gabz Girl]

This was horribly painful to watch. Not necessarily because of how bad the game is, but the absolutely putrid, dog shite playing skills James Rolfe has here. I don't like this game but how the hell he managed to get lost and not know what to do during the hoop mission melts my eyeballs. Turned the video off after he had to restart the game.

The game is a load of bollocks (IMO), but this dude needs to get good. I'm honestly suprirsed that such a hardcore gamer that's forced himself to play crap like Cheetahmen can be so bad at this.

I have to agree that watching James play the game and not knowing what to do made me cringe a bit. You have to remember though that James is more of a retro gamer. If you've seen other videos where he plays modern games, he's totally clueless because he's just not used to them and doesn't know how to play them very well. Give him a break, not everyone is good at the games you play.

And it doesn't change the fact that Sonic 06 is a POS. =]