Sonic 06 is almost universally disliked as a Sonic game and as a videogame in general. I must admit that Sonic 06 was my first X-Box 360 game and at the time I didn't know what I was getting myself into. The opening cutscene is beautiful however it really doesn't look like a Sonic game (looks more like a Final Fantasy game). After the cutscene I started to play the game and immediately noticed that Sonic isn't that fast however it seemed reasonable as it is in a hubworld. After meeting Tails I started noticing the problems. Firstly the god awful loading times are an absolute pain to sit through and secondly if you first start playing the game you'll get confused within a seconds as the game doesn't give you clues or any idea where to go, for instance at the beginning you have to visit an old man inorder to get coins and buy the light chip but if you're a first time player you won't know what to do. With the light chip in hand our story begins.
Story[]
Sonic's side[]
Sonic's story starts off quite well with you at at beach setting similar to Sonic Adventure. Sonic plays quite well as you can easily control him however as stated before he still isn't fast which is a slight pain but I'm not hugly annoyed by it. After a while you enter a mock speed section which i can easily say are not enjoyable, it's good that Sonic is fast now but I don't like the collision detection nor the glitchyness of these mock speed sections. After completing the mock speed section I find out this game's "story". The first level by the way is absolutely pointless! Throughout Sonic's campaign you go through Desert, Jungle, Crisis City (the best level in the game in my opinion) and a ancient ruin, however most if not all the levels go no where story wise in fact most of time its saving this new character Elise who has the tendency to get kidnapped in fact some times she doesn't even bother escaping or running away from capture she just gets captured over and over again. Sonic's boss fights are all pretty easy, just jump and bash into them until they die (except Egg Cerberus and Egg Wyvern).
Sonic's story in a nutshell: Sonic must save Elise! Sonic saves Elise Yay! Oh no Elise is Captured! over and over and over again.
Silver side[]
Silver is a new hedgehog who I quite like at first, his personality is good and he seems likable. Then there's the gameplay (ugh!) Silver is slow, he can hardly defend himself as the Psychokinesis chooses when and when not to hold missiles or boulders being fired. Lastly Silver has been seen in cutscenes to travel really fact and cover large distances inorder by flying, so why can't we do that? Why must we be forced to walk a snail's pace just to get somewhere which could easily have been done in blitz second. Silver is also a gullible character, so gullible it makes me cringe every time. Silver's story consists of him being raised in a messed up future where it is dominated by a creature called Iblis. With the help of Blaze (who for some reason is from the future now) has to stop Iblis but only in vain that is until Mephiles appears and tells him that Silver can change the future by killing a certain blue hedgehog. This creates one of the biggest plotholes. For one thing why doesn't Mephilies if he can travel through time to kill Sonic himself (we see later one he can) and plus Silver is willing to believe this random dark looking figure with no mouth with no second thoughts what so every! Silver, unlike Sonic, does deliver more of a plot even if it suffers from repetition and plotholes.
Silver's story in a nutshell: "Go kill Sonic!" "ok" "Don't kill Sonic" "ok" Kill Sonic!" "ok" Don't kill Sonic" "ok"
As you can probably tell this is what to expect playing as Silver. Silver does meet up with other sonic characters such as Amy , Shadow and even Sonic himself however the most you'll get to interactions is with Amy. Silver's boss fights are pretty lame especially with the psychokinesis playing up half the time (e.g. failing to hit the enemy or unable to chuck stuff at all)
Shadow side[]
Shadow is in my opinion the best character to play as in the game. He has a perfect speed and gameplay value and also brings us the majority of the plot. Shadow now works for GUN (strange as these guys gave Shadow hell in the past games) First shadow has to save Rouge who was captured by Eggman and I must admit I quite like this level, short fun and simple. Rouge had stolen a septure which it turns out holds Mephilies who takes the form of Shadow's shadow and sends the two into the future. They meetup with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles. Both sides have to find a chaos emerald in order to travel back the past and stop Mephiles and Iblis. Before hoping back shadow faces against Mephiles who has a easy but quite enjoyable boss fight. Meanwhile in the past Rouge awakens E-123 Omega so he can save Shadow in the future. Shadow returns to the past and starts piecing together Mephilies's plans. He stops and train, fights Silver and discovers that in the past the king of soleanna was working on device which backfired releasing Mephilies and Iblis. With assistance of Silver, they both trap the two creatures which results in the king forcing Iblis to be inside of his daughter and tells her not to cry. How can someone not cry for at least ten years is beyond me. Silver gives Elise a chaos emerald and the two are off. Now at the time, this game was meant to be a reboot so the chaos emeralds in the other games wouldn't could however Sonic Generations proves that this game is indeed canon to the main story line meaning there must more that 7 chaos emeralds because how could Sonic turn super in the other games if Elise had one for at least ten years?! After all that Shadow fights Mephiles one last time and it ends with team dark going off to battle.
Shadow also has vehicles that return from Shadow the hedgehog game. The car is ok to drive, great for combat and terrible at jumping. The bike sucks but maybe that just me. The glider can go through walls, landscape and it is impossible to die in this. The hover craft is okay but knocking into something will sometimes send you tipping over resulting in death.
Ending[]
The ending results in Sonic being killed by Mephiles... yeah. Then the world ends...yep. So far so good? We play as almost all the characters to get the chaos emeralds to defeat Solaris (sonic is dead and Blaze died too, I almost forgot about Blaze in this game and I couldn't care less) Tails is fine to get through, Omega can be tricky but also fine, Knuckles can by pass everything to get the chaos emeralds... then there's Silver I lost all my lives because of him being slow and the damn purple voids opening at the worst times. Amy is okay at getting emerald, Rouge is the same as Knuckles just bypass everything to get to safety and Shadow is the only fun one. After all the emeralds we get quite possibly the most disturbing scene in Sonic history... Elise kissing Sonic (I almost want barf just typing it) So after minor bestiality that I'm sure all furries would have enjoyed we finally get super Sonic, super Shadow and Super Silver. The Supers fight Solaris. I usually use Silver to destroy the armour plating and then use Shadow to do all the damage. After all that hard work of sweat blood and tears we get our ending and guess what it ends with Elise blowing out the flame of Solaris and basically removes every single event from the game. I was angry and disappointed with the ending. Really that what what we get for our hard work? that! You might as well have never played the game in the first place or even better never have released or created this game in the first place if that was our ending!
Characters summery[]
Sonic plays good and is as usual likable. His story sucks though.
Eggman is always a thrill and am I the only one who kinda likes his design, it's a guilty pleasure.
Silver is good character but absolutely terrible in gameplay.
Shadow as stated before is good story wise and gameplay wise however the character isn't all that developed.
Mephiles is always considered a bad ass to most and I will admit he was awesome as a villain.
Amy is terrible in combat and can turn invisible for a odd reason. She seemed likable at first but as soon as she states she'd rather let the world die instead of Sonic, I lost all faith.
Tails is slow and can fly. He is terrible in combat but his character is quite good.
Knuckles has been butchered in this game, no longer can hit a target properly and is usless in the story sadly.
Rouge is a more useful Knuckles.
Blaze is fun to play as shes like a cross between Sonic and Shadow in a way however in the story I completely forgot about her.
E-123 Omega is not as powerful as he was in Sonic Heroes and like Knuckles has been butchered. I also think his voice has taken a downwards drop sounding like a person doing a terrible robot impression.
Elise is quite possibly the worst character in the game and the worst character in Sonic history. She does nothing to save herself, she has a terrible voice, kissing scene and plus she is only in this because she holds Iblis. I despise Elise big time.
Other thoughts[]
The best aspect of Sonic 06 is the music especially His World which is an awesome theme.
Overall the story is bad.The characters are okay. The music perfect. Gameplay varies on who your playing as.
I give this game a 5/10. Certainly isn't the worst Sonic game but not a good one.
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