Sonic P-06 Has Redeemed Silver

it's still happening at long last like a father returning from the store chaos X and his organized helper elves have given us the most recent project 06 demo in the Silver release our three main hedgehogs have their fully completed and revamped list of levels available to the public bringing us one step closer to Absolute Divinity look at Blaze she can't even contain herself I owe a lot to po6 not just for being an impressive Endeavor to fully realize one of my favorite video game templates but also for slipping me into the algorithm so I could actually make Sonic videos like before this is a PC exclusive so if you want to play it you'll have to access one and the optimization still isn't airtight aquatic base and Kingdom Valley will chug in Parts sometimes getting you killed there goes the good future but nothing a perusing of the settings can't help with from the moment you load it up it's already trying to impress you more than last time we have a fancy new auto save icon the Sonic team logo Winks at you I nearly combusted on site multiple save files and a player icon to assign our file yeah they're blurry but whatever it's awesome Silver's opening cutscene plays out in celebration and were thrown back into the Glorious his world before assessing the work that's been done here though we need to go back to the original game for some context who and what was Silver the Hedgehog in his debut appearance no sarcastic answers please I've already got you covered psychokinesis is the name of the game here silver will walk around his stages and I do mean walk looking for nearby objects to pick up as projectiles alternatively he can stun enemies for a short time who can then be picked up as well occasionally interacting with runes on the ground to move things and a levitation ability used for crossing short gaps or long ones if you have a disciplined Thumb in general things are slower combative and puzzle-like in nature you'll never see silver take a dash pad that's for sure he's much less mock speed and more Razer scooter but even that's a bit generous I wouldn't be surprised if he was the only character to canonically get motion sick because he's not used to going fast this actually makes his gameplay the least automated of the three campaigns because he doesn't go through those scripted scenes of stylish Flair and I think that deserves its credit like many things in o6 however there is a myriad of technical limitations that render a pretty fun sounding idea into quite the trudge I mean he's literally T posing on the loading screen yes silver is very slow in this game any large open space cases will accentuate this immediately watching him walk up this radical half pipe with the iconic06 speed arrows is like watching your toddler take his first steps only he's not a toddler he's 27 years old like let me get this straight your goal is to catch and eliminate the fastest thing alive and this is the speed you're traveling at you might want to say goodbye to blaze now and that's not counting the aggressive slowdown anytime there are too many objects on screen or you receive damage from these utterly satanic hitboxes sometimes it's to your advantage don't don't mind me just casually touching a Live Laser Grid it's fine it's fine and other times it makes me want to rip a hole into the void so no the pace isn't exactly high and with an emphasis on combat there's a lot of stopping to dispatch groups of enemies before moving on and there are just only so many times I can pick up and throw something at another thing before it gets old stopping bullets Matrix style yeah that's pretty cool but most of the time what are you doing slamming the ground with an AOE grabbing and releasing not even throwing them it's more efficient to let go and watch them implode on sight thanks to the wildly erratic physics can't freaking trust anything in this game man you grab two explosive crates well there's a good chance your whole stack is going to put an enemy can shoot it while you're not looking sometimes you'll walk on the stuff that you're carrying you'll try to grab an enemy and it just won't take staring your target dead in the eye throwing Boulders and none of them hit Now That's a classic right there there is a melee attack where you give them a little schlep but the range is obnoxiously close to no benefit it's more risky and less effective than slamming the ground the amount of times I walked up to something whiffed and got shot is insulting to be honest and check this out could you even tell me what happened here the game's a wild card things just occur leaving you to deal with the consequences and the crazy part is there's always an explanation I just never know what it is how how did she die where am I in The Truman Show what's going on here the runes are kind of cool but it's really a press button to make thing appear animation no different than opening a door you don't get to manually move things around and create your own path I think tropical jungle did it best with the logs that you pull back to swing up into a higher level there's a greater sense of control and timing when your feet aren't glued to it you can move items manually by standing on them and there is some creative freedom you can instill to take shortcuts or get extra height but there is a cap on how far it can go these Lids have some interesting properties this one kept respawning so I killed the robot with it don't look at me buddy it's science they want you to use it as a platform to get up here but the results are perhaps unintended Kingdom Valley had a cool spin on it where you pushed pendulums to knock over towers and through objects at tall structures to create platforms the one part of Silver's gameplay I think is actually quite fun though is the levitation unlike Sonic and Shadow's jump Dash you can hover around more freely in Airborne space to take shortcuts in non-linear ways going around locked doors cutting Corners around entire pieces of level design I was impressed by how many opportunities there were to trim the fat the runes that summon debris to use as steps are often optional with a faster alternative right under your nose the platform is there as a baseline safety net to ensure players can get through but someone who's done this before can skip ahead to save time just never gets old does it stages like tropical jungle are begging to be broken in half with how open they are it wasn't until my recent session where I learned of an entire route at the bottom where you ride Turtles there's a whole Disneyland cruise down here and virtually no one experiences it because it's so easy to get up high and spam hover to the second half you gotta break down big wooden gates knock fruit out of the trees to make the big Turtle pop in looking like the happiest creature to ever be born I gained so much appreciation for this level when I examined its density I just wish there was a reason to go down here Dusty desert is platform heavy with puzzle solving elements including the worst thing to happen to me since my sleep schedule flame core has one of my favorite Mechanics for silver the rising platforms once he activates them he has to quickly jump across or else they'll get too high blocking you out of the shortcut for the first time incorporating an element of speed into his gameplay the final segment was always a joy for me combining the rising pillars with hovering and the added challenge of the winged dragon of raw sending out periodic shock waves to force you behind cover of course with an agile mind you can cut down down on some of the Waiting by being efficient and daring then watch him crumble into a Havoc Tech demo there is a dash move where you double tap jump to zip forward but uh it sucks yeah this ain't worth it I'm sure the intent was to give him a longer ability akin to what he does in the opening but because they had a collective 18 days to work on this it never came to pass overall Silver's campaign lacks punch for numerous reasons falling into a dense repetition of mediocre Jank combat is static and shallow speed and flow are nowhere to be found and the random acts of Mayhem do little to mitigate your thinned patience yet ironically I came out of my sessions far more positively than I expected I'm not going to say I thoroughly enjoyed myself but there were times when I did there's a reason why project 06 barely changes any level design and that's because a lot of it is already good I'm able to see this in the retail product I never knew that if you turned around at the start of Kingdom Valley you could fly down to Shadow's hovercraft section to grab this one up these details will always remind me that people did care they cared as much as they could in the time they had I think the platforming gimmicks can be pretty fun and save the whole package from being a waste even the janky stuff is endearing in its own way ibless creatures getting perpetually wrecked by parked cars these enemies literally blow up their own Bridge trying to hit you as if to say yeah you'll never see this coming you got me there or how the side characters cannot stop dying because their AI follows you no matter what this poor cat man she just can't catch a break always falling in pits screaming at oh no she finally lost it it's gonna be okay my friend I'm right here with you let us become one but now things have changed we've entered a new era one where the impossible has become a reality Silver's campaign has been retouched and revamped with the usual bells and whistles we've come to expect plus a few surprises for starters he is much faster now going into a cool psychokinetic pose demolishing the poor pacing issue of the retail game even letting him indulge in that Hedgehog lifestyle a bit with rail grinding and radical train in the occasional dash pad I guess he found his Dramamine I will admit though out of all the characters this was the one I had the hardest time adjusting to control wise I was slipping and sliding all over the place like a lubricated Jackalope I'm used to it by now as one would expect but I still have those moments where I flub a jump or misread my depth perception because the cameras pulled back and there's a lot of glowing the camera in general was more problematic for me this time oh my God all it takes is a gentle graze at the wrong spot and you'll be sent to the fourth dimension this was in previous builds as well but because I was running into walls like a dang fool I saw it more often aside from that though everything was very smooth the new cutscenes are sure to win you over like always Crisis City has establishing shots as our heroes come into frame and a dark lighting filter to match the Sinister Vibe of the intro cutscene tropical jungles has stolen everyone's heart giving silver a self-reflective moment to appreciate what a beautiful world looks like as well as taking place at Sunset now and Kingdom valleys lets him be the cool guy with an over-the-shoulder glare and Sonic being his usual cheeky self he's gone I knew he was fast but as far as gameplay is concerned silver has the starkest contrast between the two major components of mobility and combat they feel very separate kind of like Sonic Frontiers actually when it comes to fighting enemies not a whole lot was changed in the core moveset it's mainly the quality of life adjustments that make it far more enjoyable to play having no slowdown in moderately High Ground speed is 80 of the work if I'm being honest but the extra touches are a big help too like increased range on the slap now you don't need to have intimate relations with every member of the iballist family tree there's a new projectile attack that homes in acting as a backup plan if there's nothing to throw although it kind of nullifies the pendulums in Kingdom Valley now one of the Hidden upgrades the Lotus of resilience lets him curl into a ball when jumping to bounce on enemies like his Hedgehog Brethren forget the Dramamine Silver's a new man and the other upgrade the flame of control lets him charge the psychic knife a long wave-like projectile that cleans house it's pretty cool admittedly though I almost never used it because I'm usually going for score attack and it doesn't work very well within those rules you have to be in the air to keep your combo going but most enemies are on the ground and the knife will go straight over them if you're jumping so unless they're all lined up which is very situational it's more effective to fight them normally but that's where we run into some issues since the process of fighting enemies is no different than in the retail game look out world he's playing Minecraft the repetition of slamming the ground picking up everything and either throwing or releasing for nearly every encounter is still here we have a few extra tools at our disposal but this is by and large the most efficient method that players are going to use and unlike the homing attack which allows you to quickly and accurately flow from one target to another psychokinesis has a good deal more stop and start involved unless you want to take matters into your own hands let's go for a ride buddy thankfully this is where the scoring system comes in handy to help add some strategy by changing how I view enemy placements and pushing me to see how many I can string together quick recap the way the score multiplier works is by destroying a bunch of enemies and objects in one single chain if you touch the ground or stop attacking the chain is broken best case scenario I'm able to stun and pick up every nearby enemy and release for an instant bonus or I pick up as many as I can and throw them at the ones who I couldn't stun in time this can be pretty satisfying to locate two massive clumps of enemies and watch them Collide for an insane high score your tenacity to get from one group to another before the first becomes unparalyzed is put to the test after all the limiting factor of psychokinesis is that once you're holding stuff you're unable to shock anything else you can't stun one group pick them up go stun another and repeat you get one shot to pick everything up and that's where the creativity comes in unfortunately the physics in this game have the consistency of a roulette wheel sweet Neptune there is so much that can go wrong that you didn't even know was possible getting blocked by the stuff that you're carrying taking damage from it because it's still technically an active hitbox getting stuck on a wall Until It Breaks across your body accidentally pushing enemies off the stage or launching them into the air because you tap them with a paralyzed crate accidentally killing them on an environmental hazard this guy just walked into it himself throwing items in close proximity and they all Miss throwing items and they don't miss but somehow don't cause damage either it's one of my personal favorites when you're trying to improve your high score and play by the rules any one of these freak accidents could turn you into the Iblis trigger now it's not all bad instantly drowning in a puddle with a family guy fall animation I'm laughing but when the game just tells me to bend over like nah you're not making it because the pendulum is made out of Sculpey I get upset or like how the ball and Aquatic base has a trigger point on the very top so if you don't land on that exact spot you're gonna walk right off the edge with about as much class as a Deez Nuts joke Silver's entire being is rooted in physics Sonic may be about using them to his Advantage but silver is literally manipulating physical objects so if the physics aren't Rock Solid the neither is my smile I had to go through a lot of trial and error to figure out how to avoid these nuanced interactions mainly for combat you could play the same section over and over and get slightly different results from the weirdest thing take the intro to Kingdom Valley pick up these enemies throw them into these the crates explode nice 2400 bonus the second time the boxes I'm holding are pushing the last robot out of my psychokinesis range but it's okay I recovered 2400 again the third time I made the mistake of jumping in a platformer causing the same robot to Bonk into the air long enough for the big robot in back to shoot the crate I was holding see me after class the fourth time I guess I was a little too far left because the crate didn't blow up at all so everything's scattered and missed welcome back then the same thing as before I body blocked the robot and pushed him off the edge until finally the planets aligned and I actually ended up with even more points than before turns out I was missing one the whole time fabulous you can see that there are some underlying rules here that can be maddening to encounter which is why I generally use the stun and release method if I can get away with it however there is one gigantic Saving Grace that really helped alleviate these frustrations after getting all s ranks and heading back to Flame core Iblis will drop the Sigil of Awakening giving you a maturity meter that when activated releases an ESP explosion like a mini chaos blast what makes it so good is that it can be done even while holding enemies after grabbing as many as possible you can head over to another group and detonate the whole thing if you don't trust throwing objects one by one which I wouldn't blame you for you can even jump afterwards to buy yourself more time in case an extra enemy shows up and while you're in this mode enemies become automatically paralyzed when they get close to you so not being able to stun once you're carrying things isn't to limitation it's a workaround for sure but a dang effective one that makes Silver's score attack so much more reliable white Acropolis is usually a dense Arena of random enemies that I avoid fighting entirely but now I'm rooting around for that Mega combo intentionally getting caught by The searchlights Aquatic base and Kingdom Valley are two of my favorite levels now even if this ball still has it out for me of course blowing things up in style isn't the only reason for this while the combat had some rough patches despite ultimately being worth it Silver's Mobility is nothing but butter I said that hovering around was the best part of his playstyle in the original game and that is 100 percent still the case in fact it's been Amplified tenfold hide your ladies man you'll never be enough if she sees this the teleport Dash has a lot more distance on it albeit nerfed from the previous demo until you find that Lotus upgrade in addition to curling into a ball it extends your dash back to a full meter and this is the gameplay the shortcuts you're able to take fit like a love the speed and rate at which your meter depletes feels so considered so tailor-made for these 17 year old stages I was blown away and it never feels broken like yeah tropical jungle is gonna suffer the poor thing is barely holding it together as is and in white Acropolis you can skip the whole ending segment but everything else feels like an organic evolving of the exact same shortcuts that were present in the retail game they're fast and exciting creative and unique to Silver as a character and with that Sigil of Awakening after the ESP blast it reduces meter consumption by 35 so you can go even further until it runs out Welcome to the Jungle we're already done speedrunners love it casually it's handy it's just a great ability to have that opens up his levels even more silver has become a truly fun character to play as I never thought I would say this but Sonic and Shadow's stories don't win by a landslide anymore at least when fully upgraded I had a sneaking suspicion that the teleport Dash would be the main attraction and playing it for myself was the proof I needed I could see this being someone's favorite campaign easily and it's not just silver who contributes to that why hello there Blaze the cat was always a fan favorite for being the one other character worth playing she was kind of fast had a homing attack a spinning flame for ground coverage and a double jump her only shortcomings were attributed to the usual 06 mannerisms it's good to be back her control was really loose making it unnerving to deviate from a straight line a lack of a homing reticle meant you would accidentally do the fire claw flinging yourself around like an insane person and if you held it too long by mistake you would do the spinning claw because they're on the same button whose hit detection is quite the fickle mistress doing it in midair can cause it to run in slow motion it's just a never-ending adventure to see what this game can do speaking of hit detection the Snowballs grew three sizes that day it covers up this Dash panel just enough to still be used but the effects are null project 06 improves literally everything control is far smoother attacks have practically zero delay the spinning claws on its own button and lasts 15 seconds now there's a new Crow attack that I'll be honest I never used but it's there she has an intro section at flame core before swapping to Silver like normal her wave ocean takes place at Sunrise and has been extended to include Tails section with original level design and that pesky snowball is no longer over compensating although if you keep holding forward in this section she'll break to try and turn around leaving you no time to escape the snowball which is now an instant kill so gotta restart the whole thing the original game locked your movement so you would always go forward no matter what direction you held a choice I thought was smart since no one would be expecting such a rapid camera change it also does that thing where you fly off a slope and lose speed when landing something that ruins Sonic adventure's ice cap for me it doesn't happen nearly as often but it's not enhancing things either aside from that she's essentially perfect now her combo game is on par with Sonic chaining groups together with her spin is exhilarating to see how long you can keep it going and the extra sections a lot her even more screen time Amy was nothing short of a criminal offense in the original slow movement stopping in place to swing her Hammer with a long recovery worsened by the frightening lag and hit detection a double jump that would make Blaze weep with shame robbing you of all horizontal momentum and the spontaneous ability to turn invisible to both enemies and the player no wonder Sonic chose Elise I feel like they had to know how unbearable she was since they only gave her one solitary segment in Dusty desert a shame really because she utterly rules in po6 second verse same as the first movement is eons better fast all around she carries momentum when swinging and can Hammer bounce off anything she has a new spinning Hammer attack that makes her dizzy after a while and a double jump no longer worthy of Tears now I'm good her invisibility is gone but I can only laugh at that for how out of place it was to begin with not like she needs it anyway she's a Powerhouse now I can't believe that silver went from having the worst campaign to potentially rivaling the others with the best side characters you're never gonna say oh man I got a swap doesn't happen Blaze is awesome Amy doesn't show up enough Silver's a king we're fixing the timeline ladies and gentlemen and speaking of time I think I should talk about this now when we're dealing with a game this fundamentally unpolished it takes something really significant to stand out and uniquely irritate people Silver's Dusty desert was by far the most hated stage in the game possibly top 10 in the franchise part of that was Amy but the main culprit was a little something we call the ball puzzle Satan's testicle if you will this was a notorious section where you had to smack a giant billiard ball into a hole at the end of the final hallway there were pits to avoid a limited number of smacks a time limit and of course the physics themselves it's been a long time since I first played it so I don't remember exactly how annoyed I got but I know my dad was watching me play and he had to leave the room because he couldn't take it it was that upsetting you had to be so precise operating under conditions that were equally unclear it was impossible to know how far the ball was gonna Ricochet off the wall and at what angle hitting a bump in the road going a completely different direction because you rotated five degrees nothing was easier than finding a new way to fail at this puzzle and every time you had to walk all the way back if you failed immediately which is where most of mine were it took 10 seconds to respawn and that feels like ages when you're angry if you think you have patience play this and prepare for a Herculean test as an adult though I do have to admit there's a bit of a skill issue involved I'm not saying it's good but the player isn't totally unaccountable for what happens you can line up a straight shot push it to the left side shoot diagonal right and repeat there's a lot that can go wrong for sure but when you follow the intended path it's minimized greatly I actually got on my first try when Gathering footage maybe that comment I made about preferring this over the Frontiers pinball wasn't so hyperbolic after all regardless I can't deny that it's in a much better State now the change in physics alone would have been enough but he streamlined the room layout replacing the boxes with angled stone walls to guide the ball forward the passive timer was removed only going down when struck a ramp was added at the End plus a gravitational force that sucks it in and you can even grab the ball to stabilize it it's almost dispassionate by comparison something so rageful rendered mundane with a few tweaks it's definitely an improvement it's just surreal there were a lot of little changes like this made to the existing campaigns as well too many for me to list off entirely Sonic's bounces higher one-ups don't respawn after dying unless you restart the section stair epilepsy is gone all character animations are tighter silver left is x-ray hacks on to look for diamonds Shadow's combat was sped up even more health bars get shredded and it feels killer but two changes in particular really stood out to me the first is to Sonic's mach speed nearly every suggestion I made back in my video was answered sliding no longer slows you to a crawl keeping the excitement and danger fairly intact the explosions in radical train always cause damage now instead of being able to run through them at top speed so dodging is still lightly required a shame about this ring Dash I trusted you Sonic the hit detection on item capsules has been reverted so they're much harder to grab and most of all Crisis City is no longer a straight line dodging is required again they even brought back the two beams close together with the light Dash above to save you assuming you put that together in the moment because you will die here without it might be a little too spontaneous I don't know I'm still not sold on the knockback this is the only spot in the entire game where you'll ever die to it so it sticks out as a random one-off occurrence that you can't really build up to or learn from especially in a mode where objects can be ran through knock you back and sometimes cause damage freaking umbrella at least the camera stays behind you here unlike wave ocean where it pans to the front and then immediately back behind God rest my cerebellum but even still mock speed is in the best shape of its life every change made in this demo is something I can get down with oh my the other big Improvement was made to Omega before he was the weakest link with an interesting close-up and now he rocks his ground attack has been replaced with his Sonic Heroes slashing improving the flow and spectacle considerably he can move during both his lock-on and Air Attack turret aiming speed was increased and movement in general is faster he can actually combo somewhat well now still nothing terribly complex but I can say without hesitation that every character in this game is fun to play I don't dread a single trade-off or stage in fact I enjoy every one of them this was an incredible update to a project that will only continue to impress I can't wait for the bosses and final story demo hearing Solaris Phase 2 in a functionally f big fight is a bucket list item I never thought I'd get to cross off thank you to chaos and everyone else involved you are making history take all the time you need with that said thank you guys so much for watching and as always don't forget to check out the next episode whenever I post it which will probably be soon all right see ya silver Lookout

Channel: bickuribox12

Views: 209,721

Keywords: sonic the hedgehog, sonic project 06, sonic 2006, silver the hedgehog, review, analysis

Id: h7hoMSsmBao

Length: 25min 40sec (1540 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2023