Majestic Twelve: WORST Ideas of Sonic 2006

Last time I talked about the twelve best ideas in Sonic 2006. I never said they were well implemented… so today we’ll talk about the twelve WORST things about Sonic 2006… yes… expect some repeats.

#12 – Boss Fights – Hands down, this game had some of the least memorable boss fights in the entire series. I mean, which one did you like best? The lava worm? The lava titan? The robot dog-unicorn? What about Eggman’s random flying saucer thing? And it didn’t help MOST of these fights happened more than once (usually Sonic and Shadow). In normal Sonic tradition, most of these boss fights were about waiting for an opening. But the wait was so long for most of these and lots of these bosses had unbelievably large attacks or had bizarre hitboxes that made it difficult to tell if your attacks were hitting, had an effect, or where your safe zones were. It wouldn’t be until Sonic Generations when we’d get a proper boss fight (Perfect Chaos 2.0). But worst of all was the main villain of the game… speaking of which…

#11 – Mephiles – He gets a spot all to himself. Being voiced by Dan Green only gets you so far I’m afraid as Mephiles was a huge disappointment. Another evil hedgehog? Seriously? His design was really bland and his origin story is grandfather-paradox levels of confusing as hell. His boss fight is a pain in the ass and, if I recall, you have to fight him twice as Shadow. Repeating bosses aren’t fun. When is anyone going to realize fighting the same guy doing the same things every time isn’t fun? It worked for Sonic Vs. Shadow because both fights were significantly different in how you play them. His motivations for wanting to destroy time and space were also kind of… non-existent. He makes even Team Galactic look competent. Worst of all, he kills Sonic. While I mentioned Sonic dying (like temporarily-permanently) would be an interesting idea for a storyline, it should be Robotnik’s doing and no one else’s. After nearly 25 years of battling that hedgehog, he deserves first blood, not the new kid on the block.

#10 – Tails/Rogue – I’m all for having other characters be playable. BUT the issue here isn’t that they’re playable or not, but how poor a job Sonic Team did in making them playable. Dummy Rings? Visually boring and they don’t always function as planned. Rogue’s bombs were “better” but were broken in how easy they are to spam until thing is dead. Rogue was also severely broken in ways that made the Final-Mission stupid-easy. Fly to a tall thing, climb it, then jump from that to fly as far as you can towards the goal to avoid any deadly things. Both characters had issues (one being unfun to play due to lack of good ideas and the other unfun due to being broken as hell). But since the game itself is broken, I guess these are smaller issues in a big vat of stink.

#09 – Side-Missions – As bad as these were, they’re low on the list because MOST of them are optional. Yes, it’s always bad when Sonic Team forces us to do side-missions for any reason, but given the number of require missions outside the action-stages were minimal, I won’t call foul on that (too much). The issue with these lie mostly in just how unimaginative they are, usually requiring you to kill X number of dudes within a time limit or without the use of a power or rings. These all made “find the chao” missions of Sonic Adventure 2 seem enjoy able by comparison. Plus the lack of effort in the character models for the “humans” you were helping makes me not really care about doing the missions or even doing them well. They’re (basically) nameless, faceless entities in a really bland-looking world. I don’t have any attachment to these people or any desire to go out of my way to help them with every mission. Plus the rewards for the ranks seem to be unfair in both the requirement for higher ranks and the rewards given out. That said, only Sonic really has an ample amount of upgrades he can get worth having, so I suppose that’s not as big a deal either… There’s something else I’m forgetting about doing the missions that was horrible… hm… what was it… OH! RIGHT!

#08 – LOADING SCREENS – My recent playthrough of Fallout 3 and watching others play Walking Dead Season 2 reminded me that while Loading Screens in Sonic 2006 were horrible, they were by no means the worst aspect of that game. They only feel that bad because it was an insane amount for a SONIC GAME. Sonic games used to load smoothly and quickly to keep up with the pace of the game. This many loading screens embarrasses even the Playstation3’s version of Bayonetta, and she had playable loading screens to keep you occupied. It also didn’t help that loading screens took place between every stage, stage segment, boss fight, boss transition, cut scene, mission dialogue, mission, mission failure, mission retry, and basically anything else. It made all of the bad parts of the game that much worse because of how much more time you had to sit and think about how much fun you weren’t having. You can defend as many issues with this game as you like, but none can ever defend the loading screens of this game as being “fun, necessary, or having significant artistic merit to the game as a whole.” Ergo, they get a spot on the list.

#07 – Poor Aesthetic Decisions – For those not familiar with the terminology, aesthetics are referring to the visuals of the game. Not the graphics (which render the visuals). We’re referring the choices made in what the design team thought was worth rendering. To put it another way, Silent Hill 2 has grey, dark, and creepy aesthetics that lend themselves well to the atmosphere and story while Silent Hill Downpour had better graphics but because the design was so clear and rendered so well, it didn’t have the same creepy atmosphere that Silent Hill 2 brought to the table. In Sonic 2006, the design team went out of their way to depict a more realistic world with Final Fantasy level graphics (at least in cutscenes). And while these might have looked good in another game, once you put in a cartoon character like Sonic into the mix, it just looks silly and awkward. These poor aesthetic decisions also poor over into the levels, leading me to…

#06 – LEVEL DESIGN – I get the appeal for branching paths and “open world” levels. But Sonic functions best with a mostly linear paths. Maybe some branches for shortcuts. But linearity is his friend and should remain as such. More open level design worked fine for Knuckles (back in Sonic Adventure when treasure hunting was still a thing) and also for Shadow’s vehicle sections (more on those in a bit). The lack of linearity for some levels also killed certain levels for Silver as you needed to do certain things to get to certain areas. But if you didn’t go in the right order (which there was no indication for a direction) then you’d get lost and not know how to progress. When the levels were somewhat linear, they were mostly fine. It’s when they attempted to do something else that the game suddenly fell apart on itself. Not to mention so much of the most levels looked like crap that it made it difficult to really want to explore where to go (the Duke Nukem Forever effect). On top of all that…

#05 – REPEATING LEVELS – Did you love that hellish volcano level? Me neither! But guess what! You get to play it three times… the same exact level… with three different characters. Won’t that be fun? Or that train level where at least twice, the objective is to keep up with the train in some fashion? What about that crap castle level that’s basically the same for everyone. So much so that Sonic and Silver both have the same switch-off sections in each other’s campaigns. Remember back in Sonic Adventure 2 whenever everyone had their own levels tailor made for their character, even if two characters were in supposedly in the same area? Ah… back when level design and variety meant something.

#04 – Mach Speed/Vehicle sections – With so much shit in this game, I had to lump these two together. They’re basically the “alternate playmode” for the two returning hedgehogs, so I figured it made sense. These were both bad because of other issues mentioned in the top 3. But breaking each down: Vehicles handled poorly, and were required for parts of levels when it wasn’t clear how they were supposed to be used or why their use would be more efficient than killing them by hand. The fact they didn’t expand how they worked from Shadow the Hedgehog and, instead, dumbed down the mechanic shows just how lazy the game designers were for this one. Mach Speed sections were just an abomination. Controls were removed from a character who already had shit controls to begin with. Hitting even the slightest change in the ground’s elevation could send your character flying to their death. And there was no reliable way to farm lives to make these sections less of a pain in the ass. Worst of all, dying in these enough to fail the level means you have to do the whole level over again. And that’s assuming you have enough lives to get TO the damn Mach Speed section in the first place.

#03 – Plot Details – While mechanically broken as fuck, the plot is probably just as broken, and more convoluted than you would ever expect. First, a romantic relationship between Sonic and a human character? I get Sonic (along with StarFox) seems to have a large furry following… but pushing that agenda alienates A LOT of other fans and is just kinda creepy for a kids game. Had Princess Elise been another cartoon animal like the rest, this wouldn’t even been an issue. Also, the chaos emeralds again? I get they’re Sonic’s dragon balls, but when are we going to have a plot that doesn’t revolve around the seven magic McGuffin’s? (Answer: Sonic Secret Rings, Sonic Colors, Sonic and the Black Knight, sonic Generations, and Sonic Lost World). Lastly, let’s use time-travel to solve all the problems. But when shit hits the fan, let’s just use time-travel to erase the fact we time-traveled and then remove the game from the canon of the Sonic mythos… within the game’s own plot. It’s like the writers didn’t even have faith in this game they just wanted to remove it from the canon of the Sonic franchise before the game even finished. I really have no follow up to that… it’s just silly. But what’s worse is that prior to rewriting time so the events of the game never happen, Elise and Sonic have a discussion about how doing so means they never meet and how “sad” they’ll be. NO ONE CARED! EVERYONE IS FUCKING GRATEFUL THAT RELATIONSHIP NEVER HAPPENED! Done.

#02 – Physics – Physics can be a funny thing to mess with in a game. From lagging the game telekinetically carrying three dozen barrels down the streets of the hub-world to simply standing on the corner of the curb and fading in and out of reality, the physics in this game were an absolute mess. It made the worst aspects of the alternative control sections come to light even more with cars that would just bounce around as if they were weightless balloons, or flinging yourself into space at mach speeds because you hit a pebble you could see around your fat ass. But let’s never forget just how fundamentally broken they were for ANY of Silver’s physics-based puzzle challenges where you levitate things around other things or to other things to make things happen. Level design made these puzzles unclear and crap physics made these puzzles come from a special place in Hell, designed by the same people who invented rubix cubes.

#01 – Changes to Established Game Mechanics – 2006 wasn’t the first game to change mechanics on us drastically, and it won’t be the last. Spindash changed a bit from Sonic Heroes onward. But it never felt more broken (or gone) than in 2006 and it’s funny how the mechanic hasn’t been seen since except for Classic Sonic in Generations and a little bit in Smash Bros. Lightdash no longer works with the same fluidity as it did in Sonic Adventure or even Sonic Heroes (to some degree). Combat for characters like Omega and Knuckles didn’t have the same feel like you were actively trying to hit something but, instead, just that the two characters were flailing about or shooting air at random directions. Additionally, Knuckles and Rouge’s flying / climbing mechanics tend to get them stuck in areas still that make it difficult to escape due to shit camera angles. The homing attack also feels awful, with a slight pause in between each successive one and you never know if you’re locked on to an enemy or the box the enemy is standing on. Many of these issues and more get ironed out in later games, but the fact is they even were issues in the first place. How hard is it to just copy-paste the functioning mechanics of Sonic Adventure 2 and just build up from them? Why does it feel like every previous iteration of the game was scrapped and they built from the ground up with this title, only to not finish any one aspect of the game? Worst part is when you know the controls barely work normally and then you introduce sections LIKE the Mach Speed sections where controls are taken away or less effective, generally making it impossible to get anything done without a high death count.

Again, I love some ideas put into this game. But it was all implemented poorly and it shows. There are people who will actively defend this game and I can’t fathom why, even as big a Sonic fan as I am. Perhaps they’re just unwilling to accept a bad game because it makes them feel they aren’t actually fans. That’s unhealthy and stupid. If you’re a fan of something, you should be MORE critical of it so that it gets better with each iteration instead of wallowing in the same pit of the mundane like Mario and Mega Man or resulting in experimental bullshit like Sonic. If you love the Halo series, you don’t have to love everything of every game. You can say there are bits you don’t like and would like to see fixed in the next game. If you think Persona games are the best games to exist, great for you. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t flaws worth discussing and addressing.

Every game has flaws and ways to improve (even if they’re minor and seemingly trivial). Sonic 2006 is a game with major flaws and issues. They have been discussed by me at infinitum and with this Majestic Twelve, we’re done unless someone decides to address this topic and wants us to weigh in on it. But hopefully that won’t really happen. Tune in again for something that isn’t about Sonic 2006 next time.

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