Blog:ThunderKat's Review of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)

So, in light of conquering Sonic '06 earlier today, I've decided that I can now post a full review of the game. One to note is that because I've owned the game twice on PS3 previously, I will fleetingly mention any key differences between that and the Xbox 360 version that I can remember. And yes, this will cover the 360 version primarily, as the version I currently have.

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The story is a rather confusing mess bogged down by poor writing and idiotic decisions made by the characters. It is kind of hard to describe the plot in detail with three stories, so I'll sum it up as such: Sonic spends most of his time chasing Dr. Eggman who wants to harness the power of the Flames of Disaster hidden within Princess Elise, who can't go five seconds without being captured by Eggman. Shadow is tasked with hunting down Mephiles the Dark and sealing him inside a sceptre, and newcomer Silver wants to put an end to his endless battles with Iblis. The first major issue with this story is that the main character, Sonic, is given less focus from a narrative stance; the majority of the plot's conflict occurs either in Shadow and Silver's stories, while Sonic only has his usual gig with Eggman. Silver's story is dragged out by way of the psychokinetic hedgehog taking Mephiles' word at face value without questioning it. Especially considering the only thing he is shown is a projection of Sonic standing in what looks like hell, that's it. In fact, Silver doesn't bother asking questions at all in his story, except when Amy keeps him from killing Sonic, which causes him to question if killing someone for the sake of a better future, the only meaningful question he asks. Oh, and Blaze is here as well, but she does so little to aid Silver in his adventure, that it is easy to forget she is even there. Aside from the climax, you can take Blaze out of the story and replace her with someone else, and Silver's story will change very little. This game also demonstrates how easily the time travel cliche can be botched; there are no consequences to time travel in this game, all that's needed are 2 Chaos Emeralds, and Chaos Control. There are no limits to when and where it can be used; even more ridiculous though, is that Silver can perform it after seeing Shadow use it once (sound familiar?), proving that anyone can use Chaos Control. The rules of time travel are tossed out the window since the characters have no comprehension on the concept, but it makes me wonder why Mephiles doesn't do the same thing to rejoin with Iblis at the point in time they separated, since freely traveling through time is his main power. Better yet, why does Shadow just leave the Sceptre of Darkness behind with an unconscious Elise in the past, when there are many things that could go wrong in leaving such a powerful item with a small child with the power of a God within her. The idea of Iblis being released if Elise cries is absurd, especially after her father dies. Why doesn't Silver insist on accompanying Sonic when he stops the Egg Carrier from exploding? Why doesn't Tails just use the Tornado to chase the Egg Carrier in the first place? So many questions that no business being asked makes the story a jumbled mess with more plotholes than a dingy dirt road. I try my best not to think about, but when I do, these questions arise and it bugs me a little. I can't even take the dramatic moments in the story seriously because of how narm-tastic it all looks, being Sonic the Hedgehog and all that, which allows me to segway into the presentation.

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The CG cutscenes look fantastic. It gives me a sense of what this game could've looked like, though the in-game graphics do look quite good as well. My biggest gripe is the art style. While I do like realism in games, the more realistic aesthetic of the locations and people clashes with the more exaggerated and cartoony appearance of the Sonic cast. It only adds to making the game harder to take seriously despite how desperately it wants me to. While the graphics themselves are fine, the animations are on another level; the Sonic cast look and move in a rather puppet-like fashion, and their faces are barely animated with limited animation and poor lip-syncing. The human characters are even worse, flailing their arms about frequently and swaying back and forth constantly. It feels like the humans were animated with motion capture, and it shows if that was the case. Because of the graphics and animation, certain scenes are less shockingly and more laughable as a result; namely, Sonic's death (yes, Sonic dies!) In terms of sound, the already narmy story is further brought down by the voice acting. Some voice work is passable, like Dan Green as Knuckles and Mephiles, Jason Griffith as Shadow, Mike Pollock as Eggman, and Lacey Chabert as Elise, but others are a more mixed. Pete Capella's voice as Silver can be somewhat annoying as he wavers between not trying, and trying too hard, and Rouge's voice not suiting the character that well. I found Dan Green's performance as Mephiles to be excellent; his hammy delivery is enjoyable to listen to, but at the same time, he is actually rather intimidating when he is being serious. The soundtrack on the other hand is amazing! I love a good majority of the music in this game, with my favourites being "Dreams of an Absolution", "My Destiny", "Wave Ocean (The Inlet)", "End of the World", "Solaris Phase 2", and "Flame Core (Volcano)". There is a good variety of tunes here and it never sounds samey. Some tracks would be right at home in other games too, like the themes to "Dusty Desert" potentially belonging in an Uncharted game, or the orchestrated tracks would work in Final Fantasy. The levels themselves can look gorgeous at time as well, like Tropical Jungle with its luscious colour palette, and Kingdom Valley looks exactly like some old castle ruins should look like. Other levels may not have quite the same flare, but the still look great from an visual standpoint.

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This is where my biggest problems with game arise. The actual gameplay can be marred by questionable design choices, unclear directions, some of the most horrendous enemy placements I have ever seen, performance issues, and character control. At best, the game is very much playable with minimal issues, and an exercise in frustration at worst. Sonic himself is nowhere as fast as he is the Adventure titles, Heroes, or later games after this one. As a result, he controls rather sloppily since his handling is very loose, making sharp turns with even the lightest tilt of the Left Stick which can lead to me running off the stage because of the precise control. Sonic feels neutered in terms of his moves; his Homing Attack has a pause between each one, the Spin Dash looks like crap and isn't useful to where I forgot he had it, and a Leg Kick that works wonders of boxes and grounded enemies. His Homing Attack also has an inconsistent range too, he has attacked enemies that are further away from him than some enemies are, yet he'd ignore the one closer to him for some reason. Shadow isn't as fast as Sonic, but he does have a more combat oriented play style. The problem is that the combat simply involves tapping the A button repeatedly until the enemy had had enough. Shadow does get some upgrades to his Chaos powers later on, but in my opinion, they are useless. Chaos Snap is redundant since the Homing Attack does the job as it is, Chaos Lance I see no point to since Chaos Spear works well enough also, and Chaos Blast I either never got to work, or I would never use it. Then there's "the new guy", Silver the Hedgehog... Silver's main play style is the use of psychokinesis. This allows him to lift objects into the air and toss them at enemies; he can do the same thing with enemy projectiles. Enemies can also be grabbed, but they need to be stunned first, which Silver can do by way of a psychic bitch-slap. He can obtain an upgrade later on that allows him to stun groups of enemies without the risk of hurting himself. This play style reminds me of the Stasis Field in the Gravity Rush series, only Silver's psychokinesis is somewhat unfinished, and less reliable. The simple act of picking up objects can be a pain in the ass when the buttons don't respond as they should, leaving Silver to take an unnecessary hit, it won't pick up everything nearby,and worst of all, because the objects Silver can hold are so bunched up together, he can fling held items into another, which is a terrible oversight since this applies to missile he grabs which can explode in his face when this happens. For some reason, hit detection is also spotty, since I have thrown stuff at enemies, whether with Silver, Rouge, or Tails, and they simply bounce off the enemy without damaging it. Silver feels the most unreliable of the three main hedgehogs due to his unfinished psychokinesis, and his total reliance on said power with no other means of defending himself. Aside from the main hedgehogs, each one has two "amigo" characters that play'll switch over to at times. These character will come into play infrequently to where they serve little gameplay purpose, plus, all of them have their own problems: Now, as for other flaws with gameplay, there's the camera: this is one of the worst cameras I've ever seen in a video game. There's moments when the camera will suddenly switch angles, fucking up your control as a result, or it throws a massive fit when you're caught under something. The camera also doesn't co-operate in boss fights with Silver; since the camera doesn't focus on Silver, it is very easy to run into Silver by accident, all because you're not given a proper view of him. Another common issue is the poor physics, which can also lead to accidental deaths on your first run through. Objects in the environment often bounce around weightlessly, almost as if they are just Styrofoam props, be it boxes, bricks, or giant pillars. The character don't have any proper weight to them either, since running on an incline doesn't feel any different from running on flat terrain. Going into technical issues, the loading screens are atrocious; one town mission for some reason requires four separate loading screen, each lasting anywhere between 20-25 seconds on Xbox 360. The memory game is the worst one since it has many loading screens per question, making the town mission much longer just from the loading alone! The frame rate is also very poor, dropping down to single digits when stuff breaks, explodes violently, or even at random when nothing is happening to warrant frame drops. From what I remember, both of these issues are worse on PS3, which is inexcusable considering that version had a longer development cycle! There also a few weird graphically hiccups here and there like character models vanishing for a few seconds, characters passing through bounce pads, and an annoying glitch were Silver was hit by a meteor as he was entering the volcano in Flame Core. I did encounter one funny bug when Shadow literally ran circles around some rocks for a few seconds when he did the Light Dash on some rings surrounding said rocks even after the rings were collected. I have to talk about enemy placement for a bit; this game has some of the worst enemy placement I think I've ever seen. It's worse on Hard mode when enemies show up in different places, such as on platforms that bounce pads will send you towards, especially if they start attacking before you land, guaranteeing that you will take damage. The Hard version of Silver run through Flame Core is the absolute worst example of this. It took me five attempts to S rank this level because I had to contend with the bullshit placement of certain enemies. Aside from that, there are character specific issues I also have: The last thing I'll talk about before wrapping it up is the gold medals. I found the medal collecting more enjoyable than I probably should in this game; since none of the characters are very fast, I feel like the stages are more ripe for exploration than say, Sonic Unleashed. There are 180 gold medals to collect in the whole game. They are kind of like Emblems from the Adventure games, only they don't do anything except give you bragging rights, and an achievement on Xbox 360. Because I'm a sucker for doing everything in games, I went out of my way to get every gold medal in the game. Yes, that includes the last episode, "The End of the World", which I consider one of the toughest levels in the game, especially if I'm trying to S rank it. Some levels also gave me a tougher time than others, but in the end, I can now say that I have conquered this game.
 * 1) *Tails plays similarly to how he did in Sonic Adventure, only his ground speed is abysmal, he tires quickly while flying, and he doesn't have the Rolling Attack and Tail Spin, having Dummy Ring Bombs instead. While the attack is effective, it can be inaccurate; they suffer from questionable hit detection at the worst of times and you can go into First-Person view by accident even if you are tapping X.
 * 2) *Knuckles is absolutely dreadful since his fighting doesn't flow as freely as it did in the Adventure titles. I almost never got a good combo going because hit detection is so atrocious. He also suffers from poor speed on the ground and his gliding doesn't feel right, it feels kind of heavy.
 * 3) *Rouge is more tolerable than Knuckles since her gliding doesn't feel as heavy as Knuckles, and she doesn't have ineffective fighting skills. Instead, she uses bombs similar to Tails, only it is far more accurate and reliable.
 * 4) *E-123 Omega moves quite fast on the ground and his hovering module can be exploited, but his attack sucks; his arm cannon works beautifully when it does work, but it is a massive annoyance when it doesn't work as it should.
 * 5) *Amy Rose reverts back to her Adventure play style which wasn't all that great, but it's somewhat even worse; she's painfully slow, her Hammer Swing has poor range and it stops her in her tracks, she has a double jump that's amazing for giving extra height, but kills all horizontal momentum, and she can turn invisible... for some reason. I almost never use this technique since A) it's extremely pointless, and B) it's never required at any point.
 * 6) *Finally, there's Blaze the Cat. Despite her near non-existent role in the story, she is actually quite fun to play as, but unfortunately, she's only playable three times. Blaze has a Fire Spin technique that works well against grounded enemies, she's pretty fast, a Homing Attack that has decent range and is faster, and she has a double jump that Amy Rose wishes she had. Blaze is easily the best side character you can play as, and it feels like more effort has gone into making her playable than the other characters.
 * 1) *Sonic has four sections where he runs at a higher speed than the regular levels. Sounds more in line with Sonic the Hedgehog, right? Well, his control is more limited, and he can only move left/right and cannot stop at any point. In addition, he cannot duke left/right mid-jump, so you need to be careful not to jump at a bad angle otherwise, death! Crisis City is awful for this since there is so much shit being flung at you from behind; you'd be had pressed to find video footage of someone actually passing this section without getting hit (save for one person who did so in response to SomeCallMeJohnny's review).
 * 2) *Shadow needs vehicles to get past certain areas. The worst ones being the Hovercraft sections; in addition to control feeling rather stiff, the terrain makes these sections even harder than they should be. In Kingdom Valley, Shadow has to avoid the collapsing pillars that will kill him on impact, which is not helped by the awful camera. Then there's Dusty Desert, with so many dunes that can cause the hovercraft to flip over and instantly kill Shadow, the method of progression is also stupid since you can't just go to the door to the ruins; instead, you have to guide Shadow through the gates that rise from the sands before he can gain entrance to the ruins. This feels like another method of padding out the level. Aside from the three mandatory Glider sections, there are vehicles places in various areas, but you really don't need them most the time; the buggy and motorbike are required one time each, that's it. The vehicles are overall an unnecessary addition to Shadow's gameplay outside of when there are actually needed.
 * 3) *Finally, there's Silver's run through Dusty Desert. There are 2 sections of the level that require Silver to pocket billiard balls in order to progress. The first one at the start of the level sin't so bad since it can be done quite easily, but the other one is the most infamous. You know the one, the lone ball you need bitch-slap through the L-shaped hallway into a hole at the end. Becuase of the poor physics and unreliable nature of Silver's psychokinesis, this puzzle will often take ages to complete it legitimately, relying more on luck than skill because of how unpredictable the physics can be. It's pretty sad that I just exploit the shoddy programming of this game to bypass this puzzle every time I play this stage. The one time I tried to do it legit, it took me 15 minutes to do the puzzle, that's how bad it is!

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Well, I think I've covered pretty much all bases. Overall, for a game that has been universally bashed, mocked, beaten, and pretty much hated by the gaming community as a whole, not just the Sonic fandom, there were many times where I found myself really enjoying this game. Don't get me wrong, it is a poor excuse for a Sonic game, what with its broken gameplay, bad controls, and poor writing. I got a good kick out of Blaze's gameplay, but feel like she was underused, and the other characters had taken steps back in terms of how they play. It is possible that I just have a higher level of tolerance for games like this, or I'm just not as big a Sonic fan as some others are, or the fact that I played it years prior to this run, or I never bought the game for full price, I don't know. Maybe if this game didn't bear the Sonic the Hedgehog name, then it could have been something more, but since the name carries a lot of weight, it is perfectly understandable that others went into this with certain expectations, only to be disappointed. Objectively speaking, yes this game is underdeveloped, yes it is flawed out the backside, yes there are many poor design choices, but I was able to get some enjoyment out of it in spite of all of these problems. ThunderKat's Final rating: Rental at Best

