For Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
For five years, there have been plenty of talk of how bad of a game Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 is and the numerous low score reviews. I listened to select songs from the soundtrack and watched Youtube videos of various gameplays and the faults of the game. Without having yet played the game, it doesn't look all that bad; I even gave the benefit of the doubt of the glitches. After all, all games have their faults here and there. Eventually, I got my hands on a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. Is the game as bad as everyone says it is?
The story of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 is about Princess Elise, who rules over the kingdom of Soleanna, is in the perilous hands of Dr. Eggman, who wishes to obtain a legendary artifact from her to use it for his own purposes. Without a doubt, Sonic comes in and saves her from Eggman's evil clutches, but that doesn't stop the nefarious doctor; he is relentless to obtain the legendary artifact one way or another. Meanwhile, a mysterious hedgehog named Silver is determined to eliminate Sonic. What secret does this artifact holds and why is Eggman after it? Why must Sonic be eliminated? Many more questions and purposes are revealed, but will the answers become unmasked as well?
In Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, you start off playing as the title character, completing each stage as you go along as well as free roaming in town and a few other environments. During the course of the game, the other two main character's, Shadow and Silver, will become playable and have their own story to complete. Sonic, Shadow, and Silver have their own methods of completing stages. Sonic's stages are getting to the goal at the end; Shadow's stages are mostly similar to Sonic's, except with the inclusion of vehicles with weapons or accomplishing a specific objection such as destroying watch towers. Silver's stages consists of solving puzzles with his telekenisis ability in order to get to the goal, though some stages are straight forward head to the goal at the end of the stage. Either way, you will be solving some puzzle in a stage with Silver. During the course of the stage, you may control a secondary character to accomplish a small task in order to continue through the stage, whether it is finding a switch far off somewhere or to clear a path in order for the main character to continue.
In Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, you start off playing as the title character, completing each stage as you go along as well as free roaming in town and a few other environments. During the course of the game, the other two main character's, Shadow and Silver, will become playable and have their own story to complete. Sonic, Shadow, and Silver have their own methods of completing stages. Sonic's stages are getting to the goal at the end; Shadow's stages are mostly similar to Sonic's, except with the inclusion of vehicles with weapons or accomplishing a specific objection such as destroying watch towers. Silver's stages consists of solving puzzles with his telekenisis ability in order to get to the goal, though some stages are straight forward head to the goal at the end of the stage. Either way, you will be solving some puzzle in a stage with Silver. During the course of the stage, you may control a secondary character to accomplish a small task in order to continue through the stage, whether it is finding a switch far off somewhere or to clear a path in order for the main character to continue.
As you continue through the game, the stages become difficult; some are even difficult to the near point of absurdity. Nonetheless, the stages makes you want to replay them for fun once you have beaten them, eventually...and with most stages. Once completing a stage, you are graded on how well you performed: how long it took to complete the stage, how many rings you have when you reached the goal, and how many enemies you destroyed. After you receive your grade, you are also awarded a certain amount of rings that can be exchanged at a shop in the game to gain power up items that will help you get through the upcoming stages a bit easier.
When you are not playing a stage, you are often in town, searching for the next stage or accomplishing various missions that are needed in order to get to the next stage. The missions range from escorting a civillian from danger, finding a lost child or pet, going through rings, memory match, and destroying enemies in the vacinity. While the town environments are wide, the downside to it is a nearly impossible to read map. During the loading screen, you will be shown a map of the entire town. However, once you begin to free roam, all that you have to rely on is a small radar at the upper right hand corner of the screen. It does not tell you exactly where you are in town, which often gets you lost to where you are suppose to go.
During the course of the stages and town objectives, vague information as to how to complete the task at hand is more or less often, leaving you to find out what to do on your own until you lose a life. Only then will they tell you what to do in order to go further. This is most common during boss battles.
The controls are a bit clunky at times; when going straight on the analog stick, the character wants to move slightly to the left or right, which may cause you to fall off of the stage or to hit a wall; this is where the glitches come in. Sometimes when you hit a wall, you will be stuck in that spot for about 30 seconds. There are times where you slowly move down a wall, unable to move, for 30 seconds. This can be annoying during action stages, especially when there are tons of enemies in the area shooting at you.
Said controls can also be unresponsive. When inputing a move such as light speed dash with Sonic or Shadow, or a telekenisis ground wave with Silver, it does not work on command, which leaves you to input the command over and over again until it actually works. This can be a hassle, especially during events where you need to use that move to get across a wide gap or to destroy enemies in a short amount of time without substaining damage.
The camera is also a set back. You will often find yourself messing with the camera to get it to where you can see what is ahead of you in order to avoid falling off into oblivion or getting hit by an enemy's projectile. This can also be a big problem during boss battles, which will actually cause you to be hit by an enemy or cause you to miss a chance to strike. On the bright side, the glitches are not too common and the camera control is not too tedious as the game goes on.
The biggest problem Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 has is the loading time. When you are not playing an action stage or a mission in the town, you will run into the loading screen. It takes approximately one minute and thirty seconds to load to go to the next scene, even if it is a very short scene. This also occurs when going to the next part of an action stage. You shouldn't have to wait this long just to continue a stage. So many loading screens and the lengthy wait is already unforgiveable.
The opening cutscene are highly detailed and will leave you inspired. However, as the story continues, the graphics slightly detoriates until the end of the character's story where you view said story's ending scene. Though it isn't an often occurrence or much of a problem, the voices during the cutscenes are slightly off sync or delayed. The acting, however, falls between mediocre and acceptable. More times than often, most characters like to state the obvious or ask the obvious. Overdramatic acting can be evident also, which is then prolonged longer than necessary, adding a poor dramatic effect to an already overdramatic scene.
The story...is a questionable one. While it is understandable at first, you will soon find yourself almost greatly disturbed by a hedgehog and a human princess falling in love. Though it is never spoken through the story, it is heavily implied to at point where it is actually confirmed through a certain action. This is very unlike a Sonic the Hedgehog game. No matter how one may put it, a hedgehog ending up with a human in terms of romance is plain wrong and disturbing in many ways. (Aren't there laws against this sort of thing in the game? There has to be. There should be one.)
The story also gets confusing half of the time. SPOILER ALERT At one specific event, a few of the main characters end up in a horrible distant future. In order to get back to the present, they need to find two chaos emeralds. They managed to find the two emeralds and induct a chaos control, which creates a portal that will allow them to go back to the present. One of the character decides to stay in the bad future behind to defeat an enemy. Back in the present, one character managed to track down an ally, who is a robot, and sent it on a mission, along with a chaos emerald, to go back to retrieve the character who stayed behind. But the character who stayed behind is stuck in the bad future. Somehow, the robot ally managed to appear in the bad future to rescue the character who stayed behind and bring him back into the present. But that couldn't be possible because you need two chaos emeralds to do a time skip, but the robot ally only had one. Not only that, it can't use the power of the emerald because it wasn't a living organism. Thus, the entire rescue attempt was never explained and was not possible to inact in the first place. Another head scratcher is why does the main antagonist (not Eggman) looks like or resembles a certain character? It was never mentioned why until that character went into the past and met the main antagonist after his birth and to stop his actions from causing damage to the present, but the character met the antagonist for the first time in the present, and said antagonist still resembled said character. Along with various unexplained situations and actions, this is all so confusing and incoherent that it is best not to give it much thought and just let it be.
Moving on, once you complete story mode with Sonic, Shadow, and Silver, the last episode will become unlocked. While seeing it onscreen may cause excitement and curiousity, you may soon become disappointed and/or frustrated. After a few cutscenes, it is time to resume playing. As soon as you begin playing an action stage divided into seven parts in order to progress the last episode forward, you may notice that the difficulty level has increased greater than what you have previously played and endured. There is an absurd amount of enemies in your path than usual along with other hazards. All the while, the stage environment gives a vague sense of direction as to where to go next, not to mention that you are on a time limit. Once you get to the next part of the action stage, there are more vague directions and the difficulty increases a bit more. The unresponsive control input comes into play and there are objects flying at you off screen, causing you to get hit and lose your rings, plus you have to avoid other hazards like black holes randomly appearing after a small amount of seconds have elapsed and pulling you inside, causing you to die. To quote a well-known Spartan, “This is madness!”.
Unfortunately, it became much too difficult for me to fully complete the last episode, which left me disappointed for I was eager to fight against the final boss of the game and to view the story's conclusion. For now, I will set aside this game for another day before I begin disliking the gaming mascot I grew up with.
Overall, Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 isn't a horrible game as everybody claims it to be. While most of the stages are enjoyable to replay, it is also not a great game. In my opinion, it lies along the line of above mediocre, decent, yet slightly below good. It has great graphics and a superb soundtrack that is not to be missed, from orchestrated music to heavy rock to tribal music. However, it is a bit lengthy and almost moderately to very difficult, the controls are clunky at times and the camera can be a nuissance, and the story can be very confusing...and disturbing. All in all, I give this game a 6.5. It isn't a game to avoid completely, like most people say. I suggest you, the reader, to give it a try and see how it goes. You may actually end up liking it.
Score: 6.5/10
