Platform(s): Xbox 360, Playstation 3
Year of Release: 2006
Fans of the Sonic franchise were fast losing their patience with the series by the time 2006 had rolled around. The last few years had yielded underwhelming entries bogged down by poorly implemented control gimmicks, increasingly poor writing, and even worse game design. As always, however, SEGA stood by their speedy mascot, promising fans that the next Sonic game to follow “Shadow the Hedgehog” from 2005 would be the one to finally turn things around and bring the series back to its successful roots. Instead, what we got was not only one of the worst games in the series, but one of the worst games of the entire decade…
Story:
Like the first “Sonic Adventure” on the SEGA Dreamcast, “Sonic the Hedgehog” attempts to tell a single overarching story from the perspectives of three central characters. On the one hand, there’s Sonic himself, butting heads once again with his old enemy Dr. Eggman, this time in defense of the kingdom of Soleanna and its crown princess Elise, who may hold the key to the fate of the world within her. On the other, there’s Shadow the Hedgehog, who alongside old ally Rouge the Bat has joined up with the Guardian Unit of Nations to track down and defeat an enigmatic entity known only as Mephiles the Dark. Lastly, there is newcomer Silver the Hedgehog, a time traveler who has come from the future in search of the Iblis Trigger, a powerful force that could cause a great catastrophe unless Silver destroys it. The plot is certainly not without ambition, and the script is at least less obviously sophomoric than that of “Shadow the Hedgehog”, but all things told “Sonic the Hedgehog”’s story is pretty awful nonetheless. The dialogue and voice-acting are both outright dreadful across the board, and the time-travelling twists and turns the story arc takes wind up being more confusing than compelling. Meanwhile, the naked imitation of latter-day “Final Fantasy” games in terms of its concepts and aesthetics clash violently with the look of the established “Sonic” cast, making it difficult to take things seriously. The choice to try and create a full-blown romance between Sonic and Elise, meanwhile, is nothing short of a head-scratcher; the visual incongruity of the pairing is off-putting, while the sappy and hollow cliches that comprise its overall emotional arc do it no favors. The “Sonic” series is no stranger to epic storytelling, but this “Sonic the Hedgehog” is almost enough to make you wish it were.
Score:
out of Design:
Like its story, “Sonic the Hedgehog”’s game design revisits the Dreamcast era, utilizing some surface-level RPG elements to keep itself moving. Initially, you have to play as Sonic, but before long you will also have access to the story modes of Shadow and Silver as well. No matter which hedgehog you choose, however, the basic set-up remains the same, with the action divided between two primary modes of play. To start, there are the hub worlds, city locales you can explore that are filled with citizens and side-quests you can pursue for bonus points and extra lives. From there, you can move on to the more standard action stages, wherein you attempt to safely make it through various means from start to finish in one piece. You would think, in the intervening seven years since “Sonic Adventure”, SEGA might have done something to make this formula a bit more exciting than it was in 1999, but lo and behold, not only is it not particularly more advanced than its Dreamcast predecessor, it is almost even less so. Side-quests are all pretty monotonous time wasters with prizes far too small to justify the effort you will likely expend on them, and the power-up features from “Adventure” are nowhere to be found, making the advancements your character achieves over time feel all the more minimal. The real killer, though, are the embarrassing load screens. Despite being a supposedly “next generation” title, “Sonic the Hedgehog” has worse load times than a Playstation 1 title; at literally every step of the game, you are confronted with load screens so numerous they kill anything resembling an effective pace and make the already laborious process of progression through the game all the more difficult to sit through. “Sonic the Hedgehog” has its heart in the right place, but its head is completely out of touch.
Score :
1/2 out of Gameplay:
“Sonic the Hedgehog” divides its game play into three primary styles, one for each of its hedgehog heroes, though obviously there is some overlap to be found. Sonic is the same as he ever was, moving from point A to point B as fast as he can using his super speed, spin dash, and homing attack to get there. Shadow, meanwhile, keeps the game play model from his solo title more or less intact, sharing Sonic’s speed but using weapons and vehicles he can pick up along the way in place of more traditional spin dashing. Silver is the most radical departure, moving slowly but compensating with telepathic powers which allow him to levitate across wide gaps and manipulate objects in some rudimentary physics puzzles. The fundamentals aren’t terrible, but much like everything else it has to offer, “Sonic the Hedgehog”’s game play is nonetheless a mess. All three characters run into the same frustrations: unreliable lock-on systems for their special abilities which can frequently leave you careening to your doom, a spastic camera that is difficult to control and will frequently fix itself at exactly the right angle to get you killed, and a physics engine that is outright broken. Making matters worse, on several occasions the game will force you to swap out mid-way through a stage between the character you are playing as and one of their “Amigos” (Tails and Knuckles for Sonic, Rouge and Omega for Shadow, Blaze and Amy Rose for Silver), who are even more torturous to play as than their hedgehog partners and whose game play mechanics are horribly boring. To top it all off, there are glitches and bugs lurking around nearly every corner of the game waiting to jump out and surprise you. Every so often, the big boss fights of the game might provide you a little fun, but these spots are few and far between, and nowhere near enough to outweigh the cavalcade of problems that fill up the rest of “Sonic the Hedgehog”’s overall experience.
Gameplay: *1/2 out of
Presentation
Much like its predecessor “Shadow the Hedgehog”, the presentation of “Sonic the Hedgehog” is a mixture of strong overall execution to poor art direction and design. Textures and models all work pretty well, and the visual effects certainly do pop, but the game’s design work is a conflicted beast. As said before, the new designs are rather obviously aping the style of the Tetsuya Nomura “Final Fantasy” games, yet Sonic and company still look every inch like the anthropomorphic animals they have always been, and there is rarely a moment where this clash of designs does not grate on the eyes. The hub worlds, meanwhile, feature some embarrassingly bland citizens for you to interact with and their streets are suspiciously empty most of the time until you engage in a mission. The music is probably the only outright success of the game’s package, aptly mixing a variety of styles ranging from trance-techno to hard rock and roll to classical orchestra with some memorable and moving tunes to be found throughout, with a likewise solid stable of sound effects to finish out the sound package. The abysmal voice acting manages to drag the whole thing down, though, and the frame rate can get pretty choppy in spots.
Score:
1/2 out of Overall:
It is hard to imagine a “Sonic” game worse than 2006’s “Sonic the Hedgehog”, which is literally one degree shy of being outright unplayable. A hokey story, glitchy game design, and ponderous game play all add up to a singularly unenjoyable experience that still stands as one of the lowest points in Sonic’s history.
Score:
1/2 out of 
