The Unfortunate Legacy of Sonic the Hedgehog

November 14 2006 the teacher is telling the class how to do long division it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me but then my mind only has room for one thing at the moment once that clock hits 3 30 it'll be time to hop on the bus run home and play the new Sonic game for Xbox 360. I'd played Shadow the Hedgehog so many times the disc wasn't working properly anymore there were only so many times I could go back to play Adventure Adventure 2 heroes the advanced games it was finally time for a new next-gen adventure as soon as school let out I raced onto the bus watched that same old neighborhood pass me by one stop at a time of course mine was the last a cruel twist of fate but eventually I flew out of that bus ran inside said hi to my mom and locked myself away in my room it was beautiful everything I could have ever wanted it to be yet another action-packed adventure with some of my favorite characters a main theme I refuse to stop listening to Graphics my eyes were simply not used to it was a Transcendent moment it's difficult not to get a little wistful thinking about 2006 back when every new Sonic release was this hype event in retrospect that hype didn't always pay off but it certainly did for me at the time Sonic was a franchise that would go anywhere and try anything I always admired that and it's one of the reasons it was my favorite franchise Once Upon a Time as my videos have most likely outlined every one of these games left their mark on me in my formative years and this scam was no different I wouldn't know it at the time but 2006 was a turning point for this franchise many people see it as Rock Bottom yet I choose to see it as the peak not because it was some phenomenal game it was a half finished mess that is a struggle to play these days but because it marked point at which my love for Sonic was at its highest point much like Shadow the Hedgehog my feelings regarding this title are rather complicated I think at this point o6 has risen Beyond a mere video game it's an icon of absolute ruin the de facto worst video game of all time you don't even have to have played it to call it terrible and in fact I'd Hazard a guess that most Sonic fans today haven't given that it's never been officially re-released and so it stands the game which still has an iron grip on all of us no one can forget 06 not even the franchise itself we aren't allowed to For Better or Worse sonico 6 defines this franchise much like Solaris it inhabits Sonic's past present and likely his future the universal constant I am frankly sick to death of the power this game has over Sonic discourse I would love nothing more than for this 16 year old video game to be laid to rest though I don't think myself arrogant enough to achieve this I'm certainly going to try today we challenge Sonic 06 the past which made it Infamous the present which morphed it into an icon and the uncertain future that lay before us this is Sonic the Hedgehog but first this video is sponsored by brilliant I'm a curious person I often find myself going on Wikipedia tangents when I discover something new something about the process of learning is appealing to me which is why services like brilliant are doing the Lord's work brilliant is an online learning platform focused 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using brilliant head to brilliant.org King K and the first 200 subscribers will get 20 off that's brilliant.org King k for 20 off the first 200 subscribers there's no limit to what you can learn so don't hold back the potential that lies dormant within us all Let's Travel back to 2006 and discuss the reasons why I played this game for days on end sonico6 was an ambitious game a lot of people call it Adventure 3 and it's not hard to see why it inherits the approach of both adventure games the intersecting character Stories the Epic God Monsters the Hub Worlds the classic-esque level design I think there's a marriage of both approaches here that makes for a compelling structure the stars of the show are Sonic Shadow and Silver who each have two Amigo characters that show up for a minute at most in some of their levels and play more traditionally this allows everyone to be playable without creating 9 different stories I always wondered how Tales could work in a 3D Sonic game without inevitably becoming really boring and it turns out the solution to that was to not make him a main playable character it's much easier to get past the idea that Tails can't do a whole lot when you only play as him in a short segment during wave ocean Wade Acropolis and Aquatic base Tails can still play a role in the story without distracting Too Much from the stars of the show Sonic is still focused mainly on Speedy platforming occasionally you'll homing attack or bounce on some robots but for the most part you'll be light dashing through ring Trails grinding on the wind running up walls and blasting through mock speed segments the levels you run through strike a great balance between the two adventure games Kingdom Valley opens with quite a lot of freedom you can run or grind down the winding Bridges or bounce up the homing attack this Eagle for a shortcut from there you have so many potential options destroy the bridge with a homing attack to open up the way to a set of Springs to reach the top pathway you could also Dash straight through hop onto the eagle and take the lower pathway or you can bounce on this rope multiple times to jump onto this bridge without breaking it riding the top pathway near instantly if you take the top path you're given another selection during a wall running segment very similar to this section in speed Highway maintain the wall run onto the upper pathway and make it to the end of the segment faster or take the low lower path for the scenic route this is just the first segment of the level the First Act if you will because o6 takes after the first Adventure in another way with seamless transitions to different acts of the Zone you're transported to a segment of the castle closer to the water and tag off to Silver letting him carve a path through this more treacherous segment it's a bit slower the music slows down too you're more focused on platforming here after this quick Excursion you're taken to the next area where the music picks up the pace and the level design adopts a more linear speed focused approach not unlike sa2 ending with a mock speed segment where you run on walls of water in an effort to catch up to Eggman once and for all probably one of the coolest sections in any of these games by the way Sonic's level design feels like the culmination of everything they'd been building in 3D and you see this Evolution dotted throughout the playthrough white Acropolis has a snowboard segment which bridges into a more linear section broken up by the Tails area and ending with this big sandbox you have to make your way through Crisis City also begins with a boarding segment except it's through a ruined City on the sides of Fallen buildings it has a similar structure to Kingdom Valley too transitioning into a segment with multiple Pathways then one more focused on platforming inside a cyclone finally ending with a mock speed segment as you attempt to escape the fire tornado even levels where you're carrying a lease don't skimp on Alternate pathway selections and cool platforming though they might be shorter than most in terms of design and layout they're all fantastic Shadow's distinction comes with his sheer power he can shoot out chaos Spears he sits in the air and flails around after a homing attack and he can even pull out his chaos blast once you kill enough enemies his meter system makes it really fun to rack up combos the higher it gets the quicker Shadow will rip through them all his homing attack turns into a warp and his chaos beers will start doing damage of course each level still has its share of Pathways but Shadow is a lot more about linear platforming several enemies to defeat in the sequence as I said in my shadow video I think it makes sense to focus on his destructive power to set him apart from Sonic watching him shred through enemies is extremely satisfying even get to do it on vehicles that control much better than the ones in Shadow and are generally more useful like Adventure 1 shadow goes through the same levels as Sonic but the design has been altered he'll go through Sonic sections of Kingdom Valley but the first one will be on a hang glider the second controlled by Rue searching for Keys into a hover vehicle section over water ending with Sonic's linear set piece filled section except shadow goes through it backwards to make it feel more fresh there are always minor adjustments like this playing as Rouge or Omega instead of other characters not carrying Princess Elise using a vehicle in lieu of a mock speed section or even traversing entirely new areas that Sonic never sees in Crisis City and Dusty desert what's great though is that the increased focus on combat doesn't take away from exploring for life or ringback and the levels still often have meaningful upper Pathways to exploit to get through them quicker it might not embody the blindingly fast speed of Sonic but it does embody the powerful cool factor of Shadow the Hedgehog Silver is an odd one his power psychokinesis was likely inspired by the new physics engine they were working with you can lift objects or enemies into the air and throw them as if they were projectiles it also allows you to hover over gaps this is fairly non-traditional Sonic gameplay centered around Gathering of a bunch of objects and destroying foes with powerful psychic blasts but if you've been watching me for a while I'm not someone who's a stickler for what Sonic should or should not be as long as it's fun and I think despite not really resembling what most people would assume Sonic gameplay to be Silver's gameplay is satisfying in its own way the levels are still focused on exploring and finding alternate Pathways you just don't use the same tools to find those things instead you use objects like boxes or cars to flow High into the air in skip sections or you use your Glide to reach rainbow Rings or far off platforms with ring boxes and lives awaiting you these levels are about the most efficient way to get from point A to B using Silver's skill set he might be slower than the other two hedgehogs but his psychic powers set him apart and emphasize the platforming side of Sonic more than any of the 3D games really have up to this point it's a bit hard to describe but stockpiling enemies boxes and spike balls throwing them into a cabal of enemies and watching everything blow up in front of you is really addicting I think most Sonic games benefit from outstanding sound design when I was a kid I enjoyed the simple Act of homing attacking gun robots in sa2 because the sound and visual effect that ensued made me feel super powerful and that's part of the reason I enjoy the combat of o6 so much not only does every character go about their combat differently Tails can drop ring boxes while he's flying Omega can shoot from a distance similar to gamma Knuckles can drill dive smash into large groups but every single character has the benefit of this incredible explosive sound paired with the physics system making them fly around all over the place if the audio visual experience was any different I don't think silver would be nearly this satisfying to play including blaze in his story is really cool too she plays a lot like Sonic with maybe the best homing attack making it really fun to fly through her playable areas despite them all visiting the same levels the three stories feel entirely unique and I really appreciate that they were able to strike a balance between the level design and structure of the adventure games but also incorporate the combat elements from Heroes and Shadow the story is more reminiscent of the adventure games Adventure 2 really streamlined the story setup but it also resulted in a story with a much smaller scope most of the concepts in The Last Story had to be explained during The Last Story since the foundation of the base story was just another bout between Sonic and Eggman recently I tried out a mod that puts both of the stories together in chronological order and it showed me that both approaches worked in their own ways which could certainly not be said about Adventure 1. however it also calls into question whether sa2 really got the most out of this structure or if it worked in spite of it in o6 each story is unique Sonic's story is focused on Eggman and Elise Shadows is focused on mephilisk and Silvers is focused on Iblis you could tell this story in chronological order but I think it would be worse for it part of that is because of the reused stages sure but even if every character had entirely new stages the story itself would feel really chaotic if it was told all at once Sonic's story as ever is about the thrill of the adventure he presumably comes to soleiana the city of water to take in the sights and sounds meet the locals however a free spirit like him wants to spend his time I like to think he was simply there to watch the fireworks before Eggman showed up to crash the party Eggman feels like a genuine threat here I'm incredibly sick of his more interpretations representing him as completely incompetent rather than making him out to be an idiot the focus is on his more Sinister elements while not skimping on the goofier elements of his character when appropriate I always get a laugh out of his ejection from the egg wyvern ostensibly this is yet another tale of Sonic vs Eggman with the shake-up being that he has to save a princess and t-shirt about living in the moment and taking charge of her life yeah it's a bit cliche at this point but Sonic also isn't a particularly complicated character he knows what he wants out of life and I think his stories are the most fulfilling when he's able to inspire others to live theirs while removing any obstacles in the way of his fun it's a story that's able to noticeably affect Sonic His failure to save Elise in Kingdom Valley will always stick with me it's humbling to know even he isn't immune to sorrow or despair yet it's his ability to constantly rise above that to find another way forward but I've always admired about him and it makes his seventh Eggman thrashing all the sweeter he's a character that lives for now a paragon of the present [Music] I always thought Silver's story was really cool a telekinetic hedgehog from a ruined future who travels back in time to save it already a compelling hook his naivete while occasionally frustrating is also very understandable he lives in a post-apocalyptic future Iblis is all he's ever known so when another intelligent life form shows up claiming to know how to solve everything silver has no reason not to trust him he's not had a life which would have introduced him to Concepts like deceit or manipulation he takes everything at face value but that's also what I love about him it's genuinely heartwarming to see him take in the beauty of the past appreciating the finer things interacting with the locals and I think it's awesome that Amy plays a role in his story making question whether killing someone to save the future is the right thing to do after he learns about the true origins of Iblis he goes back to the future to seal him once and for all content to Simply rebuild what he's lost rather than take away the happiness of others he achieves true acceptance of the future [Music] Shadow's story is probably one of his strongest showings he finds himself infiltrating eggman's base in white Acropolis as an agent of the gun sent to rescue Rouge she was on a mission to retrieve the scepter of Darkness it's broken in Kingdom Valley unleashing a fragment of Solaris who goes by the name mephilis this story is about tracking methylus down and defeating him with the help of Rouge and Omega a classic Team Dark Adventure methylus works really well as a foil a literal and metaphorical Shadow a manipulative Force tempting him to his side we don't know much about the research project conducted by the Duke of soliana but given the outcome one would assume that Solaris did not appreciate what they were doing to it if I had to guess they were either fearful of its power and wanted to destroy it or they simply wanted to claim dominion over it I mean it's not like we haven't seen that exact same Desire with chaos and Professor Gerald methylus has pretty pissed off at the humans and I think it was smart to connect that part of him to Shadow a character with his own rocky relationship with Humanity he gives Shadow a glimpse of the future a window into their fear of him not only will Humanity betray him once more they're going to use Omega to do it despite this Shadow does not waver his promise to Maria is Ironclad whether they appreciate it or not he will ensure that they'll be given a chance to be happy scenes like this make me question why people view Shadow as an anti-hero an anti-hero is an atypical hero who is often depicted as immoral selfish and otherwise non-ideal they fight for a good cause but not usually for a good reason unless that good reason somehow benefits them alternatively they might fight for a selfless cause but using methods which would be considered immoral or brutal my mind usually gravitates to Someone Like The Punisher who is willing to do whatever it takes to stomp out evil at its source now I think people's idea of an anti-hero is much different from my own considering that when I Googled the term the first result is Batman which uh it seems pretty wrong to me Batman is a hero he fights for justice to save his City from a gang of scary villains often to the detriment of himself or those around him his role is self-sacrificial he loses so much to protect Gotham that it's often a source of drama and conflict with his found family Shadow meanwhile falls into the same camp he works for Gunn the organization that killed his best friend to safeguard the future of humanity most people would never do something like this and an anti-hero certainly wouldn't Shadow could very easily strike out on his own and do whatever the hell he wants to he's the ultimate life form and that's the kicker he works for gun anyway he's willing to work with the gun commander and the president to conquer the past and Forge a better future for the betterment of all mankind as he says should Humanity turn against him he will fight like he always has to forge his own destiny and do what he believes is right with a moral compass instilled in him by Maria the reason I love this moment isn't because he's a deadpool-esque figure doing whatever he wants it's because even when the whole world turns on him he won't give up fighting to make the world better for them because he believes in the inherent good of human nature that was what Maria taught him this is who Shadow was always meant to be a Bonafide hero who always puts the past behind him World chooses to become my enemy I will fight like I always have [Music] all right it's important to note that The Supporting Cast do play a pivotal role in making these stories feel as complete as they do Blaze's sacrifice at the end of Silver's playthrough is why it packs so much of a punch rouge's remarked a shadow that she'll always be by his side even if the World Turns against him solidifies team dark as my favorite Trio and though Tails and Knuckles play a fairly minor role in the story overall having them be there to help Sonic through aquatic base is the cherry on top you get a satisfying plot no matter which story you pick with yet another last story that brings it all together traveling to various levels throughout space and time as Solaris enacts the literal end of the world it feels like a more fleshed out realization of Adventure 1's end game where you play as everyone to collect the scattered emeralds ending with the three titular hedgehogs going super to fight Solaris in the past present and future to the tune of an orchestral Redux of his world [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] there's a finality to o6 that feels fitting everyone forgets what happened after Elise blows out the flame sustaining Solaris with a cheeky hint that perhaps the lingering feelings still remain a Bittersweet note to end the game this climactic when I tell people that I was able to play this game dozens of times as a kid these were the reasons why I wasn't able to articulate those reasons when I was 10 years old I probably would have just said it was a fun platformer featuring some of my favorite characters of all time and that is true but I think even at the time I was able to recognize and appreciate how ambitious it all was ironically the game which broke many people's faith in Sonic the Hedgehog is the one which forged my Ironclad faith in it I couldn't stop replaying this game listening to one of the best soundtracks in all of gaming re-watching the gorgeous CG cut scenes screwing around in the hub worlds hunting for S ranks breaking the game with Sonic's gems I don't have the raw numbers anymore since our old 360 red ringed but I'm quite sure 306 is somewhere in my top five most played Sonic games of all time at that time in my life my love for Sonic the Hedgehog had never been greater [Music] of course the older you get the less mysterious life becomes [Music] development for 06 began in late 2004 meaning Sonic team had two years to develop a next-gen blockbuster for two systems that weren't even out yet not only that somewhere along the way they realized the Wii wouldn't be powerful enough to run the game and sega's solution was to cut the team in half and have them work on a Wii version that would eventually turn into its own title Project Lead Yuji Naka would leave Sonic Team during this and Sega would not budge on their holiday 15th anniversary release I'm sure this is stuff you've all heard before but I want to explain it again because it feels like there's not nearly enough emphasis placed on just how much of a miracle 06 Is Not only was it rushed the Project Lead left mid-development and half of its staff were axed to go work on something else and their original goal was to make something with the same cultural impact as Spider-Man 2 and Batman Begins I really want to live in a world where o6 was in a few more years and Secret Rings never came to be who knows where we might be now as I've grown older the blemishes that resulted from this half finished video game have become ever more apparent everything I talked about I still admire today it's just that playing Sonic 06 is an entirely different Beast again I'm sure you've heard this before nevertheless I'm gonna run through its laundry list of issues to drive this point home every single character controls like garbage to greater or lesser extents Sonic Shadow and Blaze kinda work more or less they each have a lot of moves and run relatively fast they still have issues like coming to a dead stop after a homing attack or not being able to damage enemies by jumping on them or not being able to jump out of a spin dash Shadow can't even spin dash when running on walls Sonic will occasionally clip something and fall off Shadow has a really hard time getting his punches and kicks to connect with enemies after a homing attack so he often just flails around in the air doing nothing his Vehicles which are usually required might control better than in his own game but that's still not saying much if he so much as hit a bump in the road not only will your vehicle take damage it'll also probably flip over Shadow's radical train is infuriating because of stuff like this and that's not even mentioning his Dusty desert with this godforsaken hovercraft Sonic can't move while he bounces all characters lose momentum while in the air Sonic will stumble if he hits a wall or object at high speed and those problems become even worse in mach speed it's incredibly easy to take a hit since maneuvering Sonic is next to Impossible you can stun lock yourself into death if you aren't careful Sonic can't move while jumping and there are a few segments that completely break if you don't approach them in the exact correct way basically they control like and they're the best characters on offer silver tails and Omega are a step down Silver's abilities are kinda broken and not in the fun way if you pick up too many objects they'll usually just collide with each other when thrown very fun During certain boss fights he can't reliably stun enemies with his pimp slap unless you're a pixel away from them to counterbalance his abilities he moves super slowly meaning his levels take a very long time to complete since so many of his combat options involve him slowly walking around or standing in place for a long time you take damage constantly for pretty much no reason Omega in theory controls like gamma but when he walks onto enemies he has to stop wherever he is to shoot them and it only does one homing attack worth of damage you can run up and shotgun blast them but it does pitiful damage and you have to get so close that you'll take damage immediately really the best option for Omega is to hover from a distance and shoot energy blasts until everything dies Tails controls like he did in sa1 but he's a lot slower and his flight doesn't last nearly as as long the problem is that since you no longer hurt enemies by curling into a ball Tails has to throw dummy ring boxes sort of like he could in Heroes you can either very slowly and painfully throw them from the ground or rapid fire them while flying except while flying and shooting is the obvious choice here it's also really hard to hit anything precisely when you're doing this but I'd still take these characters over Knuckles Rouge and Amy Knuckles and Rouge have the infamous wall glitch where they get stuck to a wall and can't jump off but they're also saddled with other fun quirks like their attacks being next to worthless Knuckles has his punch combo again but it has essentially no range and more often than not you'll just get hit while you're doing it his drill dive is laughably bad since it doesn't go straight down anymore it follows an arc and cannot deviate from that Arc so if you drill dive over a platform usually this will happen [Music] Rouge can't kick anymore even though I thought the point of her character was to contrast Knuckles by using her legs instead of her hands but oh well she's a secret agent so you have to throw bombs this is similar to Tails except even worse since she also stops to throw them while you're in the air thankfully neither of these characters really need to fight enemies in their short sections Amy on the other hand she's the slowest character of them all her Hammer attack is the slowest thing known to man and locks her in place for several seconds she can inexplicably turn invisible which is nearly useless and she has a double jump which completely cancels any and all momentum she may have had screw the ball puzzle Amy is clearly the worst part of Silver's Dusty desert as you can imagine it's really hard to appreciate the care put into the level design when the controls you use to navigate them are so God awful it's actually pretty tragic when you peruse The Cutting Room floor to see what this game could have been supersonic was supposed to be playable in the levels you might imagine they could have done something with Shadow and Silver too if they had more time there are entire moves missing for various characters Sonic's missing his Misty flip that he could do in the adventure games I'm sure you could even imagine a universe where the game's loading wasn't so abysmal it might not sound like I've really gone over a lot but control is basically one half of the platforming experience here and I'd argue it barely functions this isn't like the previous 3D Sonic games which had little bugs or quirks that would pop up from time to time when you enter a level in o6 you will run into something that will upset you multiple times guaranteed though I really respect what the story was going for it is also very clear to me that it was the only draft written for it people like to prod at Sonic Adventure 2 for having weird moments like Tails creating a fake Chaos Emerald out of nowhere and I agree that its story was never perfect but I think when you compare it to o6 it's clear that it least reached its final draft time travel is a tricky mistress for most stories and this one is no different there are a lot of really cool ideas here like Shadow meeting mephilis in the present after methylus had already met shadow in the past or Omega showing up in the future to help Shadow Fight methylis by going into stasis for many years Squad goals for sure but it means that when Omega travels back to the present with everyone two omegas now exist it also means that shadow had to exist in the past to meet mephilis so this is fine right as long as we abide by the logic that you can't change the past except you can change the past since Sonic does it to save Elise from dying because he can do this with basically no consequences it kind of makes me wonder why Shadow and Silver don't try to just travel a little further back in time to stop the soleiana experiments from taking place they clearly have no qualms about changing the future early silver doesn't it's also pretty insane that all you have to do in order to time travel is use Chaos Control on two Chaos Emeralds what was happening in Sonic CD anyway as we see at the end of the game Elise blows out the flame of Solaris resetting everything that happens it's kind of a I suppose you could just say it's time travel deal with it the Good Old Kingdom Hearts approach but that isn't even the end of the weird stuff in this story I really like mephilis but the actions he takes are questionable his goal is to make Elise cry thus Awakening Iblis you'd think he could just kill her would that not also release Iblis but even if we take it at face value that she needs to cry for Iblis to be released mephilis is also someone that can time travel at will and has literally no problem interacting with the world around him yet he chooses to manipulate silver into killing Sonic for him then when silver doesn't do it he just kills Sonic anyway the only explanation for this is that methylus is sadistic and specifically wants to make both Elise and silver suffer but it just feels like a fairly weak motivation especially since the people who conducted the experiments are long dead by this point I don't hate the idea of Elise but I think they pushed her a little too far into the realm of Romance when all they really had to do was make Sonic into an inspirational figure for her as I said in my adventure video I'm not a big fan of humans existing in the Sonic Universe but since they already pulled that trigger I'm fine with them continuing the trend but I think there are ways to pull this off that aren't quite this disturbingly realistic I don't necessarily have a problem with more realistic environments even though there were a few more abstract environments in the classic games by the time we reached Sonic 3 there were more realistic locations than ever before Angel Island sandopolis ice cap lava Reef there were even a lot of man-made locations like flying battery and the Death Egg I never got the sense that Sonic has ever abandoned the more surreal aspects of its levels especially since we got heroes in the middle of all this I just wish they were able to find a blend that worked better than this because it's one of the only games in the series where Sonic and friends look genuinely out of place in most scenes Eggman just yeah he doesn't really work here the pacing of the story is honestly quite boring with characters standing around and doing Exposition most of the time it's clear that the voice actors were given one or two takes at most and the line reads Clash heavily with the poorly mo-capped cut scenes Sonic doesn't get a lot of moments to show off the more cocky impatient parts of his personality and Jason's already subdued performance probably doesn't help matters there he became my favorite voice for Sonic at the end of his tenure but his early days were a bit rough he fits Shadow much better unfortunately Silver's voice is probably the reason everyone hated him so much he's supposed to be naive sure but every single sentence that comes out of his mouth makes him seem like a whiny child then tell me what we should do how can we completely destroy Iblis for the future of the world I will destroy you don't you dare turn your back on me you're my friend right the coolest parts of these stories are always at the very beginning and the very end there's so much fluff in between which isn't helped by the random Town missions you have to do for seemingly no reason why does Sonic have to choose which woman he loves more before he can enter Kingdom Valley who set up these trials anyway these are the reason Sonic can't reach a lease in time and she dies it's funny some of these Town missions come out of nowhere like sometimes you'll be watching a cut scene and as soon as it ends you're immediately thrust into a mission to escort some girl unfortunately the town missions are the only worthwhile thing to do in these Hub worlds upgrades are bought at the shop so you can't explore for them like you could in sa1 and their layouts are a lot more Barren to top it all off there are in fact many many many glitches to encounter and here's where I thought we were all in agreement right Sonic 06 shot for the stars and fell terribly short because of its infamously poor development cycle had things been different we might have had a much much better game on our hands but then I remembered something there is a subset of people out there who had a bone to pick with Sonic ever since he took his first steps into the third dimension people who consider Adventure Adventure 2 heroes and especially Shadow the Hedgehog to be Abominations the stain on the franchise's Legacy so of course Sonic 06 would be shown no quarter and given how bad it already was I think it was far easier for the general public to start agreeing with those sentiments see before I think it's safe to say that the general discontent towards 3D Sonic was headed up by very hardcore Sonic fans the type that would spend most of their free time browsing Sonic retro or some other Forum this is pretty much just par for the course of any fan base a minority of a minority lurk on the forums critical reception for the adventure games was extremely positive and even heroes got a pretty decent rating for a game that was most certainly not finished there was still a feeling amongst critics that the 3D entries weren't quite as Stellar as the 2D ones but those remarks didn't come without praise not to mention 3D was this new and Uncharted Frontier and basically none of these games not even the legendary Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time would be able to hold a candle to their much more refined 2D entries in the eyes of fans basically every single franchise had growing pains around this time and Sonic was no different it reviewed well sold remarkably well on what was at the time a dead console and continued to sell well when afforded to GameCube I mean in terms of high-speed 3D action stories there wasn't a lot else like it at the time yet they were never going to be as Paul or proven as the 2D titles with each release that dissatisfied Elite grew louder and louder as Sega lost its share in the console Market went multi-platform and was clearly going through its own Financial struggles 3D development would become more and more expensive as the industry marched forward with more powerful Hardware development time would balloon and so at its cost and yet Sega tried to maintain its blindingly fast output Heroes was clearly compromised Shadow even more so and o6 was the boiling point we found ourselves in the fan dubbed Dark Age of Sonic so while yes Sonic 06 was an unfinished mess it simultaneously became the franchise's laughing stock as the years went by people would poke fun at the glitches and weird quirks but every now and then someone would make comments about how weird it is that there's a love story between Sonic and Elise someone would comment about how dumb it is that there's a huge time travel plot someone would rant about how awful the voice acting was someone would throw this story through the CinemaSins machine someone would inevitably say this isn't what Sonic should be somewhere along the way Sonic 06 was no longer the tragedy of a development team brutally mismanaged by its parent company it had become a project that was doomed from its very Inception whether anyone knew it or not a firm Line in the Sand had been drawn Here and Now much more firmly than it had ever been after all what better place than Rock Bottom to finally argue about what brought us here so when we look at Sonic 06 what are the root causes of these issues is it that the nine playable characters are broken or is it that there are nine playable characters is it that you can poke a million holes through this story or is it the fact that there was such an ambitious story to begin with is it that the voice actors were given very little direction or time or was it that these characters even have voices to begin with was this the most high-profile disaster the industry has ever seen or was it the stupidest idea to ever grace the franchise Sonic 06 has transcended video game status now it's this ultimate icon of failure one that most people have heard about and even fewer have actually played since it's been stuck on 360 and PS3 since it was released people consume this game through Let's Plays absorbing the opinions of the entertainers who play up their reactions to it they consume it through the opinion of their favorite content creators and they then spread that opinion to their friends who spread it to their friends and before long Sonic 06 is the Boogeyman of the industry this mythical disaster that every subsequent release will be compared to L the franchise itself has begun poking fun at the game through its social media team it's the cool thing to do naturally this affected the trajectory of the franchise and its games Sonic Unleashed came out and what was the response oh no Sonic turns into aware Air Hog now that's stupid never mind that it shot Sonic into higher speeds than ever thought possible never mind that it had a heartwarming Globe trotting adventure story never mind that the humans were stylized to fit in better with Sonic and Pals never mind that this was the game where we finally got to see and play through Eggman land nope none of it matters because Sonic turns into a Werehog and that's not Sonic scrap it all regardless of your feelings on Unleashed it's clear to me that Sonic Team poured their hearts and souls into it and for it to be met with middling critical reception and overwhelming cries for Sonic to basically stop trying it's no wonder that every new game Stripped Away a part of his identity Sonic Colors took away the scope and basically stopped trying to do anything too exciting an extremely light-hearted story with awful jokes centered around saving colorful aliens from a maniacal doctor it was nothing too egregious I don't need every Sonic game to be some big epic showdown with world ending stake after all I like Sonic Heroes curiously Sonic Generations a celebration of the series history has basically no story at all and as excellent as that game was it's hard not to see that as a strange move given that story had a pretty important role in making these games so special as far back as Sonic 3. we don't get to see any of the Myriad characters brought back to do much of anything except sit around and wait to be rescued there's so much missed potential here Generations was awesome but can you imagine a generations with a proper story but no we had already decided by that point that Sonic's friends were very stupid and should not be playable even though the series had established a pattern of introducing a new playable character for every single game since Sonic 2 bit by bit the things I always admired about Sonic from the beginning his willingness to challenge conventions and try to stick out in his own way had completely vanished in favor of aimlessly ripping off other franchises and pandering to Fan nostalgia in every single game to ever release and no matter how bad things get no matter how clearly rushed the games are no matter how derivative they are no matter how much they shove Green Hill in our faces even when they poured everything they had into a reboot initiative that crashed and burned almost immediately the overwhelming sentiment was well at least it's not Sonic 06. Sonic has always meant a lot to me and I think most would probably wonder why that is I mean Sonic really there are so many other better games out there to play I had always resisted that people might make fun of me for saying that Sonic Adventure 2 is one of my favorite video games but I think it truly deserves that spot it's by no means a perfect game but I don't judge art mathematically some of my favorite games are as close to perfect as you can get and some of them are barely held together what ultimately matters to me is a game's Spirit how did its various elements come together to craft something Unforgettable despite some of the things I used to say in my videos I'm not someone who only cares about the gameplay or whatever I care about how it all comes together Sonic Adventure 2 isn't one of my favorite games because it's the most fun video game I've ever played I mean it is really fun but there's more to it than that the fast-paced high-stake story adds a a lot to the levels you play through the music gets my blood pumping and ultimately I love the characters enough that I want to play through a bunch of levels with them a really fun game is great and all but it adds so much more to the overall experience when that gameplay is enhanced by everything else and that's why I used to love Sonic it was a franchise that was firing on all cylinders it wasn't content to just make a fun game it strove to make something really cool it didn't always meet that goal and even all admit sometimes Sonic Team found themselves in situations where they bit off more than they could shoot they had a few ideas I didn't always agree with there were some unfortunate setbacks but none of that really mattered to me because at the end of the day Sonic gave me something I couldn't readily get elsewhere now well what Sonic currently provides I can very easily get elsewhere while the rest of the fan base gets sucked into Sonic Frontiers I'm over here waiting for the Xenoblade 3 DLC to release because it's a franchise I care so much more about my only love for Sonic these days is entirely focused on fan projects Sonic Mania Sonic triple trouble and project 06 I have a question for the people who believe that Sonic 06 was fundamentally flawed have you played project 06 I'm sure you've heard about it but have you actually witnessed it for yourself because I have and it's amazing as we've already established o6 has incredible level design so all you need to do is make the characters fun to control Sonic controls like he did in the adventure games you can spam the spin dash and jump out of it you also maintain your momentum while jumping meaning you can use it to reach higher areas again homing attacks are faster and maintain your momentum you can move while bouncing the light bash is mapped to a separate button while running is basically Flawless mock speed sections are actually some of my favorite parts of the game now that you can control yourself at midair and can't def lock yourself all that really happened here was a few tweaks to the way Sonic controls and you can see in this footage just how much it improves the flow of the game Shadows attacks are faster and more powerful than they have ever been it feels so good to mow through enemies and build your chaos meter but now he has a spin dash vehicles have been fixed but now that you have the spin dash you often don't even need use the vehicles anyway when you're forced into them you actually get to see what they were supposed to do like how the hovercraft can maintain speed while in the air Shadow's flame core is some of the most fun I've ever had in a Sonic game teleporting through enemies trying desperately to keep your meter filled up if you go beyond level 3 after unlocking the inhibitor Rings mode yeah you heard that right Shadow can take off his inhibitor rings to enter a super-esque state where he's at his most powerful it's even more fun to change since when you run out shadow gets stunned and you have to wait a few seconds trying to find the most optimal time to take these off to fly through enemies and make it through the level as fast as possible is absolute Peak shadow gameplay it's the same with Sonic super transformation which has a mid-air Dash that can skip sections entirely if you use it right at the time of writing silver doesn't have his campaign released yet but in his brief playable segments during Sonic and Shadow's Stories the changes made to him are already in incredible he moves much faster now with a floating animation for his top speed his Glide takes him much farther and his Dash move is way more useful especially for taking shortcuts his stun range has been increased and the objects he throws are less prone to Breaking mid-flight he's also been given a set of projectiles to fight enemies with should he whack objects from the environment it doesn't sound like a lot but p06 silver and regular o6 silver are like night and day and I'm very excited to see his eventual story release not only will his levels be much more fun the segments where you play as Blaze and Amy will no doubt be amazing since the Amigos have also been fixed tails is overall a lot faster so his sections are more fun to get through but he also benefits from a change to the overall game where you can damage enemies by curling into a ball again however he also has his twirl from Sonic Adventure and the tail swipe move in midair you can actually tail swipe onto enemies to stay on the air without spending his flight meter it's super fun trying to extend your flight time by pulling this off Knuckles and Rouge both benefit from better combat options and less glitchy abilities Rouge can kick again Hallelujah and hey the levels where she hunts for Keys have been altered to more closely resemble their Adventure counterparts where now the keys are randomly generated again and you even have a radar you can use to find them making tropical jungle in particular much more Dynamic than it was in the original where you sorta just flew over to the gold ring Omega can go into first person turret mode to gun down his enemies his overall moveset is still a bit weak but I hear there are some exciting changes to his moveset coming down the pipeline which put him more in line with his Heroes play style and you cannot imagine how hyped I am for that there are so many small touches too silver actually shows up to fight the robots for Sonic and Kingdom Valley Sonic telling Shadow not to be laid occurs in a shortcut scene before Crisis City Starts silver flies up next Sonic at the start of Kingdom Valley there's a brief cutscene between shadow and rouge and white Acropolis and one between Omega and methylus and wave ocean so much lost dialogue has been restored and inserted into the levels to round them out and some of the levels take from other campaigns to make them fit better with the overall structure I don't even need to convince you that 06 wasn't flawed from conception anymore because po6 is living proof of my point you get to enjoy the superb level design now A Perfect Blend of the best 3D Sonic had to offer I've played po6 more than I've played any new Sonic game in the last 10 years and I cannot wait for it to be finished but hey if you believe chaos X has taken way too many liberties with this fan remake that he's added too many of his own flourishes and that none of these features would have been implemented even if there was more time you could also emulate o6 using Xenia where you can apply a bunch of mods to restore what was lost from the base game not as good as po6 but you can immediately see how the game jumps up in quality when you're actually able to play these levels without the game breaking in half and if stuff like this can be fixed by one guy who's to say the story wouldn't have dramatically improved had there been a few more extra years another draft or two would have probably ironed out most of the plot holes and left us with a more coherent story maybe the load times would have been shorter maybe the visuals would have been better maybe the voice acting would have been more natural ah you get my point by now I find myself in a tricky spot Sonic no longer inspires much hope in me I look at Frontiers and I don't see anything that interests me an open world premise where it seems like you'd sort of just run around and grind on a few rails or homing attack some enemies pick up random Collectibles there are even some puzzles that I swear to Christ are ripped straight from Rise of lyric I'm not gonna say the game definitely had to have momentum or anything you know who I am by now momentum sounds like a good idea to me since it's been present since Sonic 1 and would fit the open world format like a glove but it's not like it can't be good without it I just haven't seen anything so far that would make it fun for me to run around the island I think any potential hype or interest in this idea was killed The Moment I Saw cyberspace for the first time it's really tiring to see them use green hill and chemical plant again using level layouts copied from other boost games it's really painful to have to say those words out loud but apparently you aren't allowed to take issue with that because Mario and Kirby do it all the time I really do not care how good the reasoning is for this stuff to be here I was sick to death of these stages before forces even came out now I don't even know what to think I don't know that they can ever do something entirely original again it feels like they're afraid to rock the boat especially after the financial ruin that was the sonic boom initiative and with their recent ports being pretty awful their spin-offs being almost non-existent and pretty middling when they finally do release I can't say I really have any faith in Sonic anymore What Hurts the Most is the idea that it seems increasingly unlikely that I'm ever going to get to play as some of my favorite characters again Sonic and the Black Knight was the last time I saw a Sonic I didn't want to punch in the face these days he's an insufferable jerk who cannot and will not stop making awful jokes every time he's on screen Tails has been relegated to Tech boy his development from essay 1 and 2 is all but vanished to the point where he cowers in fear at the sight of chaos zero every other character is lucky to exist in any of these games and when they do they essentially just sit there and spew Exposition playing Lost World and forces used to really upset me but nowadays I kind of just feel numb to it all but then mob mentality being the way it is I'd start to wonder if I'm the odd man out here complaining about Sonic on Twitter is met with harsh resistance and most people seem to be loving what we've seen of Frontiers I feel like I'm living in some alternate universe sometimes I wasn't even this jaded during the forces pre-release I remember thinking that we were finally gonna try something cool again Eggman has taken over the world and we have to take it back we're finally gonna see all of these characters do something again there was so much Intrigue surrounding the Rogues Gallery why is Shadow working for Eggman how did chaos come back and who is this mysterious infinite we get to create our own characters too that's awesome and such a cool nod to the fan Community I was hooked I was in [Applause] to add insult to injury earlier that same year fans released Sonic Mania a wonderful game in my opinion but you know what that sparked endless think pieces about how Mania is the future of Sonic and that all of his 3D outings are a mistake it was miserable to be a fan of Sonic as a franchise after forces came out after all that do you really blame me for looking at Frontiers without yeah Ian Flynn is writing the game Cool except even on his own comic we know that Sega held him back in various ways Lord knows what kind of restrictions they have in place for a main game I still don't really like the voice cast they're going with they're banking on Nostalgia for the tenth time the music seems cool but the music is always good maybe this franchise simply isn't for me anymore Maybe everyone else wants something different and to be honest I've recently come to accept that Sonic is very likely not going to satisfy me anymore when I went back to play all these games again to make videos on them from Sonic 1 to 06 it was really Bittersweet I rediscovered where my love for this franchise came from or my love for these characters came from where my love for this gameplay came from I loved rolling around in Green Hill plopping onto the tornado after defeating the Death Egg Robot chasing after the Master Emerald in space watching chaos finally find peace watching Shadows sacrifice himself running and jumping through eggman's Fleet watching Shadow destroy the black Comet and banding together to save the universe from Solaris yet as good as all that was it was also a little painful I knew where the franchise was headed after that but those moments would become more and more sparse until they essentially vanished but hey those games I love those moments I crave they'll always exist and they'll always be responsible for the games I love today nothing can change that no matter how bad things get I suppose what I want for the future of Sonic more than anything else is tolerance we need to be okay with the fact that there are so many different opinions out there different people have different definitions of what makes sonic good or bad one person might love the momentum one person might love the music one person might love the characters one person might love the level design that might be a mixture of those one person might prefer one era to another and there's nothing we can do to change that nor should we ever want to none of those stances are more correct than the other you know where I stand by now and hopefully you can better understand why Sonic just isn't for me anymore I love Sonic the Hedgehog I hate Sonic the Hedgehog but above all I really wish he never died [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] my life's an open words does not exist s [Music] at all

Channel: KingK

Views: 309,107

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Id: bPT7VPoHxxs

Length: 58min 35sec (3515 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 18 2022