I feel for you, Sonic the Hedgehog.

Through the hours I've spent with you in this incarnation, I saw an ambition unlike any other. A burning passion, very reminiscent of the fire that burned in your chest back in Adventure 1. That will to inspire, to impress; to usher in a new generation of video games with style and attitude. It's only a shame that in your haste to do so--a haste you should be all too familiar with--you stumbled, as you did many times before. Sadly, this time, you failed to get back up on your feet, and the end result is the worst fall in your career.

A lack of creative consistency. A lack of familiarity with new, cutting-edge hardware. A lack of time.

Sonic 06 is the culmination of every bad decision this series has made in its three dimensional life up to this point. "Sonic had a rough transition to 3D"? No, my dear friend. Sonic had a rough growth in 3D, and this game stands as the apex of those growing pains.

Bad camera, poor collision detection, stiff movement(which is EGREGIOUS considering the INTENTIONAL freedom previous 3D games gave in you in terms of movement. More on that later.), large hub worlds with fuck all to do in them, braindead combat sections that take way too long to get through considering the rain puddle-esque depth that said combat features, and an overabundance of those "just let the game do its thing. touch anything and you're dead" moments, except oops! This time you should've moved. Back to the checkpoint you go.

It's hard to believe they managed to get so many things wrong here. Adventure 1, 2 and Heroes were fun games to play. Yes, they all feature at least one of the issues I've brought up previously, but not in this magnitude. They were all games that managed to succeed in spite of their failures; again, a stumble rather than a fall.

Now, as weird as it may sound, I wasn't bored while playing this. Oh no, there were plenty of laughs to be had, but much like Shadow the Hedgehog, I wasn't laughing with the game.

The sheer amount of bullshit you can pull off in this game is staggering. Entering certain areas of a stage with a character that was never meant to visit them, completely skipping puzzles and sections by clipping through walls or flying so high with boxes or other collision glitches that you can just fall on top of the goal ring. Oh, and let's not forget the gem power-ups you can acquire as Sonic which apparently weren't coded correctly, meaning you can use them indefinitely, meaning you can just infinite jump your way through his campaign once you unlock it.

All of these things were VERY funny, but more than that, they're baffling. How does this pass? How is any of this approved? Sure, we're talking about SEGA, aka Mr."As long as a bug doesn't impede progression, don't submit it", but how could they market this game with any confidence when it's filled to the brim with so many amateur mistakes? There are piles of shovelware out there that feature competent programming this game wishes it could replicate. It's embarrassing that a character with this much history and presence in the video game industry gets a stain this gigantic in his resume.

And the only thing I've covered so far is the gameplay, I haven't even started going over the presentation. But for now, let's have some praise. After all, that half star is there for a reason: Music.

All (legit)Sonic games have good music, that's a given. It's the "Free Space" in any video game Bingo card, but Sonic 06 honestly surprised me with the quality of its soundtrack.
I knew of the vocal tracks, I was a Sonic fan in the late 00s after all, but they're the weakest part of this OST IMO TBQH. Wave Ocean, Dusty Desert, Soleanna Castle Town, Tropical Jungle, Aquatic Base, fucking FLAME CORE! Seriously, the guitar at 2:38 actually made me put my controller down and just. vibe with Knuckles until the song looped. Beautifully crafted from top to bottom, with only a couple of bad spots. It feels as if the sound team was trying their best to make up for the overwhelming lack of faith permeating in the rest of the staff. "Sure, this is the third time you have to light up these orbs to open a door and the combat isn't any better, but maybe if you can relax to the rhythm of a gentle math rock-esque guitar, you'll feel better about it?" Oh, like you wouldn't believe, Tomoya Ohtani. I'm only sorry that your hard work couldn't save the rest of this trainwreck.

POST PUBLISH EDIT: How could I forget to mention End of the World? I love it when games have themes that get more dynamic as you progress, and this is one of the best I've heard yet. I may have checked out of the story from the halfway point onward, but this brought my attention back, if only for a moment.

Shadow the Hedgehog is a 2005 platform game developed by Sega Studios USA (the former United States division of Sonic Team) and published by Sega as part of the Sonic the Hedgehog series. In my review of it, I mentioned how it served as the breaking point for my hatred towards this setting in Sonic games. You know what I'm talking about, the serious, shonen anime energy fucking festering around the veins of this series since Adventure 1. Not only did this setting fail to provide any stories worth following considering it's too far up its own ass to care about consistent writing, it also managed to completely shit all over the visual identity Sonic games relished on for years up until the start of the 3D era. I do think Shadow 05 is the worst looking game of said era, but Sonic 06 is the runner up. It's only when Heroes came around that we got to see this series back to its visual roots.

POST PUBLISH EDIT #2: That's not to say I'm against the series going for a more serious vibe--these games always did have more of an edge compared to other "mascot games"--but if they want to go in that direction, it has to be done right. So far, all Sonic games featuring stories with this tone failed to impress me and end up coming off as half-hearted.

The realistic textures and human models simply Do Not Work with Sonic & Co.'s inflatable toy adjacent models. Any screenshot where one of the main characters is standing next to a normal ass person looks like a Skyrim nexusmods preview image. They don't mesh at all.

Horrendous pop-in, next to no environmental animations(seriously, Sonic just phases through the water surface when you fall in the ocean. Not even a basic ass splash_particle.png, nothing.), characters and enemies just pop out of existence at certain points, some cutscenes have no BGM, like Omega shooting the fuck out of Mephiles in dead silence, while other cutscenes have no sound effects, like Iblis falling flat on his ass in, again, dead silence. One of the newspapers has "SOREANA" written on it, and it's not even an easily missed background detail. Sonic proudly spreads the newspaper open in front of the camera for all to see the typo. They really just didn't give a shit.

I won't even get into the story, considering how little it's worth; literally, since the ending undoes everything. All I'll say is: Amy would NEVER watch someone else kiss Sonic and let them keep their head after.

At the very least, there is one redeeming factor to Sonic 06, besides its soundtrack. It serves as the series' definitive rock bottom; it does not get any worse than this. We'll have other instances of mediocrity, of failure and misdirection, to be sure, but never again will this series go through another embarrassment in this scale. But, you know... It really goes to show how much people love this blue fucker. Any lesser franchise wouldn't survive a car crash like this.

I feel for you, Sonic the Hedgehog. You'll get your chance to shine again in the future, you'll laugh and play and inspire again, for there will always be those who stand by you no matter what. I consider myself one of those people. For now, just rest.

So, Sonic 06 (It also goes by Sonic The Hedgehog or Sonic Next Gen). The game that was supposed to be the best Sonic experience ever, but ended up being half-assed. While not the worst experience ever with a Sonic game, it definitely has it's issues. Personally, I think the game is fine as it is but it definitely deserves some of the flack that it got.

Just like my Sonic Adventure 2 review, I'm going to go over the pros and the cons of the game. Just so I'm not overly positive or overly-negative. First I'll go over the pros and then I'll go over the cons.

Pros:

The Story: The story of 06 is probably in my opinion, the best part about 06 for me. It really gives off that feeling of a final chapter to a story that's been running for 15 years (At that time). It puts the stakes to a whole new level, even rivaling stories like Sonic 3 & SA2. I'd say the best part about the story is Shadow because it puts a close to his entire arc of finding his true identity and moving on from it. While there are some parts of the story that are kind of lacking (Sonic's entire story & the whole time traveling situation), the story still has a lot of things that make it really good.

Silver The Hedgehog: Silver is one of the new characters who was introduced to the franchise in this game. Being a time traveler who is fighting to save his timeline from the threat known as Iblis. Throughout this game, Silver has to decide whether or not if changing past will affect his future. Which he learns later on that it won't thanks to Shadow. With him being inspired by Future Trunks from Dragon Ball Z, I think that helps him stand out as a character more. While SEGA doesn't use him much in the games outside of spinoffs and most of his screentime is in the IDW Sonic Comics, I think he's a really great character and I hope SEGA uses him more in the future.

The soundtrack: No many what your opinions on 06 are, you have to admit that the soundtrack SLAPS. With tracks like His World, This game's version of All Hail Shadow, Dreams of an Absolution, the hub world tracks, all of the Crisis City tracks, all of the Kingdom Valley tracks, all of the End of the World tracks, & Solaris Phase 2, it's obviously SEGA was determined to go all out with this game. The music in this game are so good to the point where SEGA continues to use them in future games as unlockables.

Shadow's Characterization: It's unfortunate that Shadow's characterization fell off after 06 because I think 06 was able to capture Shadow's character perfectly. He takes stuff seriously but not to a point where he's an edgelord. 06 also shows that he's cares about his friends as well. Caring about Omega when there was no way for him to activate him, helping about Sonic when he was about to get killed by Silver, & realizing that Rouge will always be by his side when he found out his fate in the future. It shows that Shadow is more than Edgy The Hedgie like people think he is.

The Cons:

The gameplay: I'm going to be honest, majority of the characters in this game feel terrible to play outside of Sonic & Blaze. I don't know what happened during development, but the decisions that were made for the characters are VERY questionable. Tails no longer does his tail attacks or uses his gadgets, he just uses the ring dummy bombs from Sonic Heroes. Knuckles is alright, but getting stuck on walls can get annoying. Shadow would be better if he was faster and his Chaos Boost abilities had more time in the oven. Rouge is basically a mix between Tails & Knuckles. She doesn't do any combat like in Sonic Adventure 2, she just shoots out her Dummy Bombs. And unfortunately, she suffers with the being stuck on walls glitch that Knuckles suffers with. Silver is okay at best but definitely is underwhelming since this was his debut game. And Amy.......I just think the developers didn't know what to do with her so they gave her random stuff. Her double jump doesn't angle forward and only angles upward, the range on her hammer is terrible, and she now can go invisible like Espio for some reason. Now I did say that Sonic's gameplay was enjoyable alongside Blaze. But the Mach Speed section are also just terrible. There's no way to slow down Sonic at all outside of taking damage. Everything around you can hurt you and that only makes sense when your playing an endless runner like Sonic Dash or Sonic Forces Speed Battle.

The Ending: While I did enjoy the story of 06, I think that the ending was the worst decision SEGA has ever made. It's because of this ending that the fanbase can't figure out what's canon or what's not. For those who don't know: After Sonic, Shadow, & Silver defeat Solaris, Sonic & Elise get transported to a place that contains the Solaris's flame. Once Elise blows it out, it erases all the events of the game from happening and it leaves only Sonic remembers what happened. I think this ending should've been left in the drafts because there could've been better ways to end off this game. Now with the events of this game being erased, we don't know if certain things are canon or not. Crisis City was added in Sonic Generations along with Blaze remembering it. This is weird since SEGA has confirmed that 06 isn't canon anymore. So whether the ending of this game matters or not is up in the open.

Sonic's story: There's nothing much to say here. Sonic's story is a whole load of ASS. It's just Mario saving Peach from Bowser except you replace Mario with Sonic, Peach with Elise, & Bowser with Eggman. It definitely is the weakest story out of all of them. But it did have a good message at the end.

Sonic & Elise's "relationship": While I don't hate the idea of this ship, it's just that it would work better if Sonic was also human like Elise or if Elise was a Mobian like Sonic. Due to it being a relationship between a blue talking hedgehog and a human woman, people definitely took the chance to attack this game and the people who support the Sonic Franchise. Again, I don't hate the idea of the ship. But if Elise was a Mobian like Sonic, I think people wouldn't care that much.


All in all, I don't think this game is the worst thing ever. I personally enjoyed it and I did have fun with it. I'll even admit to having more fun with this game than I did with a game like Sonic Colors. I understand this game being as bad as it was ended up messing up the franchise and forced SEGA to make a lot of critical changes moving forward, but I can still look at this game and give it credit with what it was trying to do.