Personal History: Okay first off, I want to get this out of the way, Sonic '06 (As everyone has dubbed it now) got me into the Sonic The Hedgehog series, I grew up hating it until I got an Xbox 360 and Sonic '06 from my Next Door Neighbor, he didn't know at the time, I popped it in after a year and loved it to bits, I was unaware that everyone was calling it the worst Sonic Game ever, I just wanted to keep playing it some more, I genuinely enjoyed it....but looking at it now, I found all of the problems, but it still has that spot in my heart.
Game History: Okay so with the failure of Shadow The Hedgehog for the PS2, GameCube and Xbox, SEGA wanted to win back their fans by having the anniversary title on Next Gen consoles, the BETA looked great, but mid-way through production, Yuji Naka (The creator of Sonic the Hedgehog) left Sonic Team and SEGA leaving the new and innocent game makers stumped, they made so many unneeded changes and were fired after Sonic '06 came out because of rushed time, they weren't rushed, they rushed themselves; like when you save your homework to last minute, that kind of rushed.
Rating: E10+ and PEGI 12, Violence and the mention of Death, the story gets rather dark....even if the shell of it is bad.
Story: The story part.....joy, this has three different stories revolving around the Hedgehog trio, Sonic The Hedgehog, Shadow The Hedgehog and newcomer: Silver The Hedgehog, I'm going to sum these up and yes there will be SPOILERS, SPOILER WARNING is in order if you have not looked up this game after the near 10 years it came out, scroll down to Gameplay when you see the "Last Story" if you want to avoid them.
Sonic's Story: Dr. Eggman wants to awaken a fire God hidden somewhere in a Teenage girl called Princess Elise, their known as the Flames of Disaster and she has it in her soul....apparently, we'll get to that later on. This is during the Soleanna (The main place) Sun Festival and it's later we find out they have these yearly ceremonies to make sure their Sun God Solaris doesn't come down and kill them all...it's stupid I know, but let's move on. Sonic saves Elise and flees with Eggman capturing Elise the literal minute Sonic turns his back. You rescue her again and again and again and at times you get stopped by Silver The Hedgehog who tries to stop for being a random guy called the "Iblis Trigger" You beat him and move on and it all ends with Sonic and Elise jumping off an aircraft onto the Cliffs of Dover ending Sonic's story.
Shadow's Story: Shadow breaks into Dr Eggman's base to rescue an agent for G.U.N, that agent being Rouge The Bat who went in there to retrieve a Scepter of Darkness, a level later, the Scepter breaks when Eggman ambushes you, he runs away like the knob he is when the scepter breaks causing a Black Liquid to form. The black liquid takes Shadow's Shadow and turns into a black and grey clone of him, we find out his name is Shadow the Edgey do not steal....I'm kidding, his name is Mephiles The Dark, and he has a grudge on Shadow sending him to the future where him and Rouge meet the Sonic crew who got there from Dr Eggman (Jesus Christ I'm getting a headache), the Shadow story is just stopping Mephiles from taking over the world and stuff, you still carry on when he badly convinces you to join his side TWICE!! Let's just move on.
Silver's Story: In the ruined future Silver is flying around minding his own business until Blaze The Cat from Sonic Rush comes in and warns Silver that "He" has appeared again, you then find out "He" is the creator of the ruined future, Iblis, you defeat and Silver gets all moany he'll return, Enter Mephiles who tells Silver that all he has to do is kill the Iblis Trigger which he just shows Silver a picture of Sonic amongst some flames, oh yeah, show that to Phoenix Wright, I dare you. You then travel back in time and hunt for Sonic. Later on Silver encounters Shadow whom he fights after trying to kill Sonic; Shadow and Silver travel back 10 years ago to when Iblis and Mehpiles were created from a failed experiment, it's HERE where we find out that the flames of Iblis were sealed into Elise's 10-year old soul from her dying father, I look forward to his next Father's Day present.
The Duke of Soleanna tells the player (As Elise was sleeping then!) that if she were to ever CRY, her soul would awaken Iblis inside causing Armageddon, you hear that? IF SHE EVER CRIED!!!!! Iblis would release! That is STUPID! You mean to tell us a Teenage Girl went 7 whole years without crying? Did she leave every sitcom before it became too funny? Did she get her toes amputated to avoid banging them on the corner of stuff? Can she not get too happy to avoid Tears of joy? What about bleeding? Does that not count?! You seriously can't say she's gone so long without crying at least ONCE!!!! At the age of say 20 or 30? Possible, but not at the age of 10 when her DAD JUST DIED!!!!!!!!!! Ugh.... Silver learns the truth and goes to his Present to seal Iblis once and for all, but Iblis wouldn't accept Silver as the vessel so Blaze takes over as her soul already has flames inside of her. Blaze tells Silver to use his Chaos Control to stop time (Because he apparently has that) and seal her and Iblis into another dimension, Silver outright refuses because he would lose Blaze as she was his friend (4Kids handled the voice acting, we know he loved her) so Blaze does something with the emeralds, turning her body all sepia and transparent effectively killing herself and Iblis bringing peace to the future ending Silver's story (Funny thing is that the music sounds cheery while the moment is sad XD)
Last Story: SPOILERS At the end of Shadow's story, Shadow defeats Mephiles, but as it turns out he wasn't properly dead as he returns with the Purple Chaos Emerald, Sonic and Elise are walking in the forest but get distracted by the Emerald blinding them with strobe light effect, Mephiles rises behind them and thrusts forwards shooting a spear into Sonic which kills him, yup, Sonic DIES.
Elise starts crying because apparently losing a blue Hedgehog you've met for a couple of days is way more sadder than losing your Dad at the tender age of Ten Holding back the rage.
Mephiles uses this chance to join with Iblis causing the End of The World but conveniently leaves the world distorted with the animals and Eggman in one place, except Blaze she's long gone. Elise senses Sonic in the wind with Silver saying they can revive him because he's MOSTLY dead, not all dead, so they get the Chaos Emeralds and Elise gives Sonic a lovely Snog to revive him into Super Sonic (I'm not joking, this sounds like a story you could've found in Fanfic.net), in all honesty, I'm surprised Amy allowed it; with Sonic revived, he transfers his abilities to Shadow and Silver making them Super and they fly up to kill Solaris. After the Final Boss Battle, Sonic and Elise are sent back to a time spot where Solaris was just a flame, and all they had to do was blow out the flame, but Elise refuses at first, why? Because she would lose Sonic,
DIRECT QUOTE: Elise: "But our encounter. You and I...will never meet....it will never had happened...... I....to tell the truth.....Tears in eyes I don't care what happens to the world!" You.....piece of Shit! You are a PRINCESS, your job is to protect your people and rule over your Kingdom, and you're willing to let all the destruction of Soleanna and TIME ITSELF(!!!!) resume because you won't be able to resume your beastiality fetishes? Screw YOU! Anyway, sonic tells Elise to smile prompting her to blowing out the flame and rubbing out this story from canon, it then returns to the.....Sun(?) Festival with Sonic watching from a roof and looks up to the moon ending Sonic '06 once and for all.....Bloody Hell that was annoying.
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Gameplay (Sonic): Sonic controls like his adventure self in some sense,he can Spindash, which is worthless, perform a slide attack which is okay, perform a massively delayed Homing Attack and a pointless leg Sweep, problem is this game has no physics, you can stand on walls and ceilings and have the same speed no matter which direction you go, I'm serious, the rushed game got rid of Sonic's best points: His Speed, but in about 4 levels, Sonic realizes who he Bloody is and starts running at Mach Speed, these sections aren't the best, you can't control yourself when in the air and you can't even slow down, just increase your speed slightly by performing the Light Speed Dash on trials of rings, their pretty difficult, so good luck, Tails and Knuckles return, but they've been nerfed, You ever had Watered down Dr Pepper? Yup, they're that, Tails can fly but drops like a rock and can use Dummy Ring Bombs, knuckles can glide and punch....but that's it, excluding the DLC, you use them during normal levels for a short while, the boss battles aren't anything impressive so there's no point going over them.
Gameplay (Shadow): Shadow is a slower Sonic and with no guns, his homing attack can be spammed when it collides with an enemy and you can even snap to a chain of enemies when you've bought the Chaos Abilities, you can ride cars and bikes that are rocking missiles and bikes....but that's it, they moves like tanks and get damaged by even the chips of wood on the floor and for no apparent reason. Rouge and Omega make a return, Rouge is now rocking bombs and glides, she's a mixture of Tails and Knuckles in some sense, she has a treasure hunting level where you find three keys, problems? Yes, no radar, what's wrong about that? Level is about the size of Pumpkin Hill from Sonic Adventure 2 if not bigger so you're flying around as blind as a....bat really. Omega is a walking Peashooter, he sucks and his voice sucks, okay okay so he does shoot okay when you're in the air, he can hover which you can actually spam taking him forever to hit the ground, use this to your advantage, you can bypass huge chunks of the level, trust me.
Gameplay (Silver): Silver is the worst, he's the slowest to start making travel in the massive hubworlds boring, he has psychokinesis which allows him to pick up things and throw them, even enemy missiles, having that ability is actually pretty fun I will admit, but only for a while, the worst of Silver gameplay comes with Dusty Desert, there's a Ball Puzzle where you must roll a ball to the end of the mirrored L shape hallway while avoiding pitfalls, what's wrong with that? You can't pick up the ball and you can only hit it 9 times before it spontaneously combusts making you start again, and before you say ANYTHING in the last boss of the story you stop a ball the size of the moon being thrown at you with just your psychic powers, so what's the excuse here? Is a big ball somehow heavier than a bigger ball? Is it made out of heavier material? If so then what's making it jump when you smack it?! The amigos with Silver are Blaze The Cat and Amy Rose, Blaze is really fun, she's limited to some levels but she controls almost like Sonic and like I said is fun to use with her flame abilities, Amy Rose is God Awful, speed which I bet is slower than Silver's a Double Jump which cuts off all momentum you have, she swings with her hammer with a terrible range and can turn invisible, which stops the enemies seeing you (Except the ones that saw you turn invisible) and stopping you from seeing her, the only hint is her shadow she still somehow has, when you play as Amy, go invisible if you need to, when you turn Visible, you have a 5 second animation where you can't do anything as Amy gasps and checks herself leaving her open, if you go invisible and THINK you're running out of time with it, jump, the animation won't play when you turn visible in the air and you can continue, trust me that will save your life.
Gameplay: (Last Story) One level and one boss, End of the World is a collab of the previous levels as you hunt for the Chaos Emeralds as all characters except for Sonic, Elise and Dr Eggman, the only new thing is the irritating music and two Death Cores (Custom Name) the Black Mephiles Cores suck everything in whilst the orange Iblis Cores throw crates at you, when you'[re Amy, if you go invisible the cores won't spawn and when they're spawned when you turn visible on the ground, guess what? You're F*cked! And if you get a game over, you start from the very first Segment of the God Damn level! The only way to get rid of the cores is to touch a stone that gets rid of all of the cores for about 5 seconds then they slowly come back, you start with Tails and end the last segment as Shadow. The Final Boss is Solaris where you switch between the main Trio, explaining it will be difficult so I will avoid it, but it's worth it for the Main Phase 2, oh my God, it's the best track of the game, Solaris Phase 2, just listen to it, please.
Likes: The music is great, it's actually credited as one of the best Sonic soundtracks out there which not really surprising, Sonic is known for great music after all.
Dislikes: I've covered most of them, but I don't like the size of the hubworlds, they are HUGE with nothing going on in them, trust me you will not be shunned if you get lost or bored in them, another thing is the loading times, they are EVERYWHERE! In levels, in town missions and even when loading the animation for when the boss appears and for the fight to begin; they are soooooo loooong, about 30 seconds per load time, the town missions, it's so tiring, you accept one, Load Time, person says one line of dialogue, Load Time, do the mission, Load Time person thanks you and thew results screen plays, Load Time, you seeing the problem here??? The load times just get you so bored and installing the game onto thew system does nothing, trust me, it'll probably take .5 of a second off, the story is the worst thing to enjoy, but Sonic's gameplay is fun, yes, I only enjoy 1/3 of the game, I don't care I'm saying it.
BETA: This game had interesting BETA, there were loads of things taken out, a Homing Attack that didn't have a delay like the Adventure games, a faster Sonic, a Day and Night cycle which looked gorgeous, and (Here's the biggest one) The game (I kid you not) looked a million times better than what we have now, the graphics looked great and Sonic had more animation to him, levels had more detail to them in the BETA build, now I just ask....what the hell DID happen? Why did they get rid of a good BETA, apparently they had loads of builds and the one we got was the most stable, the graphics were bad, but they had to accept that, the game was incomplete and Sonic Team just added the cutscenes and sent us the game, I'm only scraping the surface here believe me.
Overall: I still keep playing the game, believe it or not, I enjoy the music in it and I just focus on Sonic's gameplay, I don't bother with the story (Oh and pay attention in one of the parts in Shadow's story, they didn't edit out a blooper in there) would I be humming a different tune? Yes, Metal Sonic was gonna appear in this game, so if they had that story in instead of what we have now, I would've been humming a different tune, I'll give it a 5 out of 10.
Thanks for spending your quality time on my post. Hope to post more games review tomorrow. Stay tuned.