Majestic Twelve: Best Ideas of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006

Sonic the Hedgehog just released a new game this past week. And while I'd love to play and review that, the budget is a little tight at the moment between having just bought Bayonetta 2 and Smash Bros 3DS with Smash Bros WiiU and possibly Pokemon later this month. So Sonic will have to wait unless the reviews are extremely good for either the 3DS or the WiiU Sonic Boom games (but I'm not entirely expecting that). 

So instead of talking about either Sonic Boom game, let's shit on Sonic 2006 instead. Because if we truly want better Sonic games (like Generations and Colors) we need to look back at the games that were truly terrible and learn the lessons from those as to WHY they were terrible. Enjoy!

This is a game that nearly broke my spirit, mind, and body due to whipping myself as punishment for playing such an awful game (not literally). There are SOME fans out there who consider this game to be “good” and they are the people we send straight to the looney bin the minute we find out this fact. And while I’ll put it up on the list just above Sonic Unleashed, Sonic 3D Blast, Sonic and the Secret Rings, and Sonic and the Black Knight as the WORST SONIC GAME EVER, I feel that we can’t always look at in the most negative light. I’ve said before that sometimes the best ideas are recycled bad ideas that have been improved by individuals with real talent. So here are twelve things that I actually liked about Sonic 2006… yes, a worst of list will definitely be coming.

#12 – Multiple Story Lines / Perspectives – This is low on the list because this isn’t necessarily a NEW idea as Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, and Sonic Heroes all tried this same gimmick as well and pulled it off with a much better level of skill. If you think about it, the multi-perspective idea was kind of used in Sonic 3 & Knuckles when you can play as Sonic, Tails or Knuckles but because there weren’t cutscenes or much of a plot, it wasn’t as big a deal. I’ve always liked this idea, especially if a villain character like Shadow E-102 Gamma are playable because then you get to see the story from a different side you normally don’t see in your Mario games. And the idea wasn’t even really put into bad use here (mostly). The problem that started in Sonic Heroes is the recycling of old levels when returning with a different character and this only emphasizes the strengths of the Adventures games that much more because everyone basically had their own level or their own iteration of that level to avoid repetition. Plus not doing so comes off as utterly lazy and lacking in creativity. I would love for Sonic games to do this again, at least with a Hero and Villain story campaign like in Adventure 2, but I don’t expect it to happen again anytime soon.

#11 – Reworking of returning characters – Not all characters changed in 2006 but a few did. Notably, Shadow now functions different from Sonic in that he’s much slower, making it seem more necessary that he needs the guns and vehicles to actually keep up with Sonic or be of any use. And making distinguishing differences between similar character like that is always a good idea because then it makes each one unique and stand out a bit more. The problem here though is we’ve already established Shadow can be just as fast as Sonic, so explaining how he slowed down is a bit of a challenge. Tails is now out of his mech and assists Sonic on foot like in Heroes. Yes, the shooting segment was bad, but at least it gave Tails something he could legitimately do in battles, utilizing his tech to take down enemies. I feel he should have been the one to start using weapons over Shadow. At least a stun gun he invented or just give him better bombs like Bean the Dynamite. The characters are all in need of a reboot masterwork to give them more personalities, but this is another issue SEGA continues to drag their feet on.

#10 – Improved Visuals (For the Cutscenes at Least) – Previous games had some sub-par visuals looking back on them now. None that were outright atrocious, but just all-around lackluster by today’s standards. But they’ve noticeably got better and Sonic 2006, like it or not, had some of the most beautiful looking pre-rendered cinematics in the franchise. The problem is the number of qualifiers I needed to make that statement… among other things. The entire game of a Sonic game should be bright, colorful, and pretty and it wasn’t until Sonic Generations game along and nailed that trait PERFECTLY. Going from the well-rendered cutscenes to the jagged-looking in-engine graphics for 2006 was jarring every time.  That said, the pre-rendered visuals were at least a step in the right direction. It’s just unfortunate how humans and buildings got a super-realistic look and then we see Sonic and friends… who still look cartoon animals. How anyone thought that would look good put together is beyond me. We can’t all pull a Space Jam and get away with it.

#09 – Good Source for Remix Music – The music in 2006 was, originally, very uninspired and pretty boring. But that made it a great source for songs to remix into better versions said songs. Nothing exemplifies this better than the remixed songs shown in Sonic Generations that remixes the songs from Crisis City stages into music for both Classic and Modern Sonic. Both have very different styles to their arrangement but both sound AMAZING. And there have obviously been other great remixes of the songs here too. It’s gotten to a point where I’d love to see a Sonic game that features nothing but music from remixers to see how that would fit into the game.

#08 – Side-Missions in the Hub World – First, yes, the implementation of these side-missions is GOD AWFUL. Loading screen, get the missions data, loading screen again, more mission data, loading screen some more, do the mission, if failure, loading screen, failure message, loading screen, hub world, repeat. The loading screens killed these and a lot of the possible enjoyment from the game as a whole. But as far as side-missions are concerned, I think it is actually a brilliant idea to implement them in these games to give players more things to do. It just needs to be handled better. They should require creative use of the controls already established. NONE of them should be mandatory to do. And they need to be varied up so that it doesn’t get tedious to stop and do them. Taking concepts from Sonic Generations, perhaps doing them merely raises your experience or level, which allows you to unlock new abilities to make doing more missions or levels easier. But, most importantly, these should be fun. If not, they should be in the game.

Couldn't find related image. So this will do nicely. 

#07 – Final Story Time-Portals – These were atrocious and made that last level one of the most frustrating experiences in any game ever. BUT I feel they could have been implemented better to be less of a bother. In the game, you see the portals sucking in objects and other portals spitting out objects. So it only makes sense that if a portal sucks you in that you’d have to come out somewhere. As such, why didn’t they make the portals with this in mind? Instead of being an instant kill, it just warps you somewhere else in the map or (better yet) alters the surroundings to look different like a different dimension or time-period. It isn’t as rage-inducing, would look cool, and allows the portals to stay in and make things trickier than simply not having them. But doing this requires a lot of work and we’ve already established that not a lot of work went into this game.

#06 – Multiple Characters for a Single level – I liked the idea that, in a single level, I could become a different character to solve a different puzzle or section of the stage. But it was for scripted areas, not at will like the superior Heroes. But I still like the idea because it lets you try different play-styles without them being a core part of the game. If it were me, I’d either make the character swap at will so players can use them if they liked that control scheme or make the sections you go through that character entirely optional because not all characters played equally well. And also emphasize the differences in their playstyles when making sections in the levels for them so that it seems worth switching to them. Don’t make Sonic’s section combat heavy if we have an option to switch to Knuckles, who is all about beating up dudes.

#05 – Open-Ended Levels (For Certain Characters) – These work well for characters designed to explore or have big combat arenas. So Tails, Rogue, Omega, and Knuckles utilized these best (or could have). But two things are required for that to be the case. One, the level design still needs a clear indication of what the goals are or we’re still lost. Second, gameplay needs to be designed for the open-ended areas in mind or else it just won’t sit quite right. This was one of the major problems with Silver, as using puzzle-mechanics for progression really only works in a linear fashion because you don’t know otherwise where you go to progress.

#04 – Mach Speed Sections (In Theory) – The idea of sections where you go ridiculously fast and dodge obstacles is an idea that actually makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, the problem is it wasn’t done well with a mixture of bad controls, bad physics, and combining that with the removal of certain controls functioning properly. 2006 may have failed, but it seems later games expanded upon this idea by added quick-step controls where you hit the left or right triggers to dodge left or right at oncoming obstacles. If these controls had been in 2006 like they are now, then Mach Speed sections could have been way more fun than they ended up being.

#03 – Vehicle Sections (In Theory) – In this game, we establish that Shadow is different by being slower and so to balance that out, we give him guns and cars, much like the game, Shadow the Hedgehog. The problem here is that the cars all handled poorly and the guns were attached to vehicles, meaning that they were inseparable. A good game would have at least had a couple separate gun options so players wouldn’t have to put up with crap cars. That being said, Vehicle sections were a nice break from the broken platforming sections. These could have been a lot better if Sonic team had just copy-pasted the stuff from Shadow the Hedgehog or just started using the stuff for the eventual Sonic & All-Stars Racing games. The vehicles should have been faster and offered a more interesting way to play through the level… not be a chore.

#02 – Some aspects of the plot (obviously not all of it) – I have a whole different post planned for aspects of the plot I don’t like so I won’t talk about them here. What I can get behind are other ideas like Sonic being killed as part of the plot (which is completely undermined by the whole “lives” thing, but who cares). This was a genuine attempt by Sonic Team to make the games feel darker and go in a significantly different direction. The problems (aside from the lives-thing) are that the death wasn’t from Robotnik, he was deus ex machina’d back to life DBZ style, and there wasn’t any tension to that scene or build up to create tension. It just kinda happens and it really undersold the whole idea entirely. I would love for Sega to try something like this again… but perhaps after they realize lives are a dumb mechanic in console games.

#01 – Silver the Hedgehog – If any one thing from this game CAN be salvaged and reutilized for something else, it’s at least Silver the Hedgehog. And, in many ways, he continues to linger on in the Sonic universe via the comics, his appearance in Sonic Colors (DS) and Sonic Generations. And, truly, he isn’t a bad character overally. Poor voice acting and being a stereotypical-Trunks aside, I actually liked the idea of another rival character in the mix. I also liked his focus on puzzle-mechanics (which weren’t utilized properly in this game… or perhaps the games physics were just so terrible… whatever). The point is Silver, at least, has left a mark (for good or ill) on the series and continues to be a part of it to some degree. Whether he’ll get his own game like Shadow (probably not) or ever get a main spot in a game again (probably not) is something we’re just going to have to wait on a while.

That’s all for this episode. Tune in next time for when I discuss the twelve WORST things about Sonic 2006… can I do more than twelve? I think I could probably hit twenty if I wanted.