How the Mighty Have Fallen
There's a generation of gamers now that are old enough to fondly remember the Sonic the Hedgehog games. This generation may have picked up one of the Genesis games as among the first games they ever owned, if not *the* first games they owned. It had a simple formula, and offered a unique platformer that gave Sega its answer to Mario.
To say that time has not been kind to Sonic is like saying it's a bad idea to wear a heavy coat in ninety degree weather. Sonic's games have been on a steady decline in quality for well over a decade now, with the franchise's transition to a 3D environment often being marked as the point the franchise jumped the shark. Sega has been attempting to recover the franchise's mojo into a big-budget console game ever since.
Sonic 2006 is not that game. It is a testament to everything that has gone wrong with the franchise. For as much as it was sold as a reboot, for all its hype, for being sold as a new entry point for the franchise for the disillusioned, it's a miracle that this game didn't sink the franchise entirely.
One of the big problems with the game is its continued insistence on forcing the player to play as characters that aren't Sonic. This was tolerable in Sonic Adventure since it was clear new things were being tried and that most of the game you *did* play as Sonic. It was fine for most of Sonic Adventure 2 since the game was trying to refine what was liked in the previous game and most of the game featured gameplay similar to Sonic's.
Sonic 2006 limits the player to playing as Sonic or experiencing Sonic-esque gameplay to only a third of the game. And even in that third, the player is forced to switch to 'amigo' characters at certain points of the stage. The other two thirds of the game are different types of gameplay with two different hedgehogs- Shadow, the ensemble darkhorse, and Silver, a hedgehog created just for this game.
This wouldn't necessarily be a problem if the gameplay was actually enjoyable. The game seems to have no concept of the term 'friction' or 'speed', with the player's movements feeling like they're moving on ice. The amigo characters range from playable to flat-out bugged, and all three storylines are forced to use them. Sonic's mach speed stages are almost impossible to control, and the camera does you no favors. Shadow's reliance on vehicles is hampered by the game's physics engine, as well as the fact that vehicles are not the reason one plays a Sonic game. Silver's slow gameplay and focus on telekinetic powers felt more like a proof-of-concept, an excuse to insert an actual physics engine into a Sonic game. Now add a poorly conceived hub world to the mix, and blend.
The game itself is poorly constructed. The graphics range wildly, with some elements belonging more on the XBox and the PS2 than the 360 or a PS3. There are glitches everywhere, caused by anything from poorly coded AI to the physics engine going berserk, causing the player to die repeatedly and lose all their lives. Which leads into the load times. The load times are unforgivable. The player can expect to spend anywhere from a fifth to a third of the time spent playing Sonic 2006 to be spent on a loading screen, which can last from ten to thirty seconds. Sometimes, the game is loading a small cutscene that lasts barely the length of the load time before going into a second load screen. The only positive aspect of the game's structure is the music, which is pretty darn good to be honest, though 'This World'- the game's theme song- plays far too often.
Finally, there's the story. Entire games with questionable gameplay have been saved by having an awesome story. But the time travel story on display in this game is so filled with plotholes, dumbfounding logic, and a romantic plot tumor that's flatout disgusting sink any reason to care about what's going on. Though the quality of the gameplay might have already done that to you.
The game's cardinal sin is one of wasted potential. There are very, very slight glimpses into what could've been a good game- the mach speed sections were precursors to the day stages of Unleashed, the best part of that game.
To call this the 'worst game of all time' seems too big of a call to make, given the relative levels of quality that can be considered 'acceptable' from generation to generation. Sonic 2006 can easily be declared one of the worst of this console generation however, and an utter disgrace.
