Sonic the Hedgehog was a game released in 2006 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. This here is one heck of a bad game. I’ve played a lot of bad ones so far but I think this one might be the worst. The game is riddled with problems. It’s got terrible controls, a lacklustre story, weird glitches that happen all over the place. There isn’t much else going in this game’s favor. Most of the elements here look like no time or effort went into them. It’s not the case but it still feels that way.
Apparently, during the development of Sonic ‘06 the team broke off into two groups and made two separate games. This one and Sonic and the Secret Rings for Wii. And Yuji Naka, one of the original creators of Sonic the Hedgehog, left during the development of the game which left the team in a state of disarray that I just doomed the game. It’s rumoured that the developers for Sonic ‘06 avoided any bug testing or play testing reports and pretty much let the game launch without fixing anything. And having played the game, I have to think that was true. Sonic ‘06 is a bug riddle mess. It’s a struggle to play and it was a challenge to get through it to be able to do this review. But because I was confident that there had to be four good things about this game I trudged through and did everything possible to find the best elements.
So to start off the visuals in this game are kind of well done in certain parts. Sonic and Tails and a bunch of other characters in the game have been modeled well. But not Eggman. Let me make that absolutely clear. Dr. Robotnik looks psychotic in this game. I mean that’s a good thing with him being the villain. But he looks like a weird fat man with a teeny, little head and it really creeps me out. Every other character in the game that’s human doesn’t look like he does but because the developers were trying to model the character after his prior iterations he looks like a monster of epic proportions. So that’s weird. But other than that the visuals look really good. The opening cinematic for the game looks like something out of Final Fantasy or something. It’s really well done and it shows promise. Which is completely washed away once you get into the game but at least that promise was there initially. Don’t get me wrong, not every cinematic is well made. And the in-engine cinematics that you see through the game a lot of those are really bad as well. But there are a few that really stand out and those visuals kind of make it okay sometimes. So the first positive is this game has some pretty cool visuals.
I was having a terrible time playing this game until I came across a musician playing an accordion on the street in one of the levels. The volume on the soundtrack that was previously playing lowered and suddenly I was listening to this really good composition played with an accordion. And it got me thinking, a lot of the music in this game was good. It’s kind of weird because you would expect the music to be just as poor as all the other elements of the game but it’s not. There’s a lot of well produced and well composed music in this game that just stands out. Which is good because you really need something to get you through some of these levels. So the second positive is this game has some pretty well composed music. Sonic the Hedgehog has a huge cast of characters and while most games would feature these characters in the background somewhere this one allows you to play as all the characters at some point or another. Which is pretty neat. Throughout the game you get to play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow the Hedgehog, Rouge and two new characters. Silver the Hedgehog and Blaze the Cat. Each character offers a different gameplay style which I think was really needed because a lot of the game is just really bad. Arguably not all of these characters play really well. But they do change up the style that you play the game in. Having this fresh spin on the gameplay every once in awhile at least keeps you interested in the game. If you didn’t have that you would be bored to tears just playing as Sonic all the time in a really broken game mode. So the third positive is that this game has a whole bunch of playable characters.
I’ve been a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog games my entire life. And when it came to this game I have to say this is the lowest point the franchise had seen to date. This game gets Sonic the Hedgehog completely wrong. The gameplay’s bad, the characters are off, the story’s terrible and really there’s not a lot here to find enjoyable. I’m glad this game exists because it became the catalyst for future better Sonic games. During the game’s development Yuji Naka, the man responsible for a lot of the earlier Sonic games, left the company. Since then Sonic Team struggled to figure out what they had to do to make a good Sonic game. Directly after this game Sonic Team tried a bunch of different ideas. Sonic Unleashed which was a terrible game and then Sonic and the Black Knight which was another terrible game but then they finally started to figure out something that worked. They released Sonic Colors which a lot of people liked, then they released Sonic Generations which was one of my favorite Sonic games in a long time and then they released Sonic Lost World. These games prove that Sonic the Hedgehog can exist in the modern gaming climate. And I’m thankful for Sonic ‘06 coming out because it was the catalyst that spurred the creation of these different concepts and games. Think about how bad this game is. If you were Sonic Team would you want to replicate it? Well no you wouldn’t. This game instilled a fear in them to never reproduce this kind of terrible gameplay again. And because of that we got some of the best Sonic games in years. So the fourth positive is this game scared Sonic Team straight.
Sonic ‘06 is a terrible game. It’s got glitches and bugs and it’s really not worth playing. I really, really don’t recommend it.
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