aka: Sonic '06
Moby ID: 26398
- Overview
- Credits
- Reviews
- Covers
- Screenshots
- Videos
- Promos
- Trivia
- Specs
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- Released
- November 14, 2006 on Xbox 360
- Credits
- 433 people
- Releases by Date (by platform)
-
- 2006 (Xbox 360)
- 2006 (PlayStation 3)
- Publishers
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- SEGA of America, Inc.
- SEGA Europe Ltd.
- SEGA Corporation
- Developers
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- Sonic Team
- Moby Score
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4.9
#25,147 of 25.7K - Critics
- 41% (37)
- Players
- (53)
- Review Ranking
-
- #993 on PlayStation 3
- #1,313 on Xbox 360
- Collected By
- 83 players
- Genre
- Action
- Perspective
- 3rd-person (Other)
- Art
- Anime / Manga
- Gameplay
- Platform
Puzzle elements - Interface
- Direct control
- Setting
- Fantasy
Xbox 360 Specs
- ESRB Rating
- Everyone 10+
- Media Type
- DVD-ROM
- Number of Offline Players
- 1-2 Players [ view all 13 specs ]
Buy on PlayStation 3
Buy on Xbox 360
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay, Amazon and GOG links (prices updated 11/25 8:00 PM )
Add-on (official)
- Sonic the Hedgehog: Boss Attack Shadow (2007)
- Sonic the Hedgehog: Boss Attack Silver (2007)
- Sonic the Hedgehog: Boss Attack Sonic (2007)
- Sonic the Hedgehog: Team Attack Amigo (2007)
- Sonic the Hedgehog: Very Hard Shadow Mission (2007)
- Sonic the Hedgehog: Very Hard Silver Mission (2007)
- Sonic: Very Hard Sonic Missions (2007)
Conversion (unofficial)
- Sonic the Hedgehog (2019)
See Also
- Sonic the Hedgehog (1991 on Genesis, 1993 on Arcade, 2005 on DoJa...)
- Sonic the Hedgehog (1991 on SEGA Master System, Game Gear, 2003 on Palm OS...)
- Sonic the Hedgehog (1992 on Dedicated handheld)
- Sonic the Hedgehog (1992 on Dedicated handheld)
- Sonic the Hedgehog (1998 on Windows 3.x)
- Sonic the Hedgehog (2001 on DoJa)
- Sonic the Hedgehog (2008 on Didj)
- Sonic the Hedgehog (2019 on Windows)
Description official descriptions
Sonic the Hedgehog is Sonic's first appearance on the PS3 and Xbox 360 in an all-new adventure, this time in the human world. Sonic meets Elise, the princess of Soleanna, which he quickly makes friends with. Unfortunately, Dr. Eggman quickly intervenes and kidnaps Elise in order to destroy the kingdom of Soleanna and its up to Sonic to rescue her.
A line-up of characters from previous games make their returns including Tails, Knuckles, Shadow and a brand new character, Silver the Hedgehog. Sonic races through stages with blinding speed using the 3D elements similar to the Sonic Adventure games. Along with new gameplay elements, familiar features make a return. The gameplay is split up in action stages, fast levels with alternate pathways, and free-roaming town stages where the characters can explore the towns, talk to other characters, get new quests, and visit the shops, similar to the Adventure Fields from Sonic Adventure.
During the game, three main characters can be controlled: Sonic, Shadow and Silver. There are 11 stages in total, and they are tweaked to the abilities for each of the characters. Sonic is the only one to have access to super speed stages, and he has custom abilities, such as the spin dash, light dash, homing attack, bounce attack, a sliding kick, a tornado kick, a mach speed dash and grinding. These are acquired in exchange for rings in stores. Sonic can also trade gems for special powers. Shadow's abilities are largely derived from Shadow the Hedgehog, with a focus on driving vehicles such as buggies, hovers, bikes and gliders. There are also various melee attacks, similar to those of Sonic, but Shadow does not use firearms in this game. The new character, Silver, is a time-traveling hedgehog. His main means of attack are psychokinetic powers. He can pick up and throw objects, and levitate. Additional abilities can be purchased in the in-game stores in exchange for rings.
For certain missions, you take control of an amigo, automatically assigned in specific stages. Sonic gets the help from Tails and Knuckles the Echidna, Shadow's sidekicks are Rouge the Bat and E-123 Omega, and Silver is assisted by Blaze the Cat and Amy Rose.
There are two multiplayer modes: Tag Mode (co-op) and Battle Mode (versus in a race for gold medals). The characters are voiced by the cast of the Sonic X animated TV series.
Groups +
- Animals: Hedgehogs
- Game feature: BGM / music player
- Game feature: FMV / cutscene player
- Japanese PlayStation 3 games with full English support
- Middleware: CRI
- Middleware: Kynapse
- Physics Engine: Havok
- Sonic the Hedgehog universe
- Xbox 360 Platinum Hits releases
Promos
Credits (Xbox 360 version)
433 People (394 developers, 39 thanks) · View all
English Character Voices |
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Japanese Character Voices |
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[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 41% (based on 37 ratings)
Players
Average score: 2.7 out of 5 (based on 53 ratings with 7 reviews)
AWESOME but has some very few faults
The Good
Story:some people bank on this story and say its stupid, i say amazing! the story may be confusing but it is a good one that will keep you guessing.
Characters:this game has a large cast of characters including a new one Silver, he is my favorite. Sonic, Shadow, and Silver are the main characters, but you can play as Amy, Blaze, Knuckles, Tails,Rouge, Omega, in certain missions and parts of levels and even some have their own short levels.
Graphics: the graphics are nothing new but in cutscenes the character definitely will move in a strange way. The levels are amazing in graphics though
Abilities: this game is like sonic adventure, but the abilities are bought in a store.
I don't see why everybody hated this game. It's just as awesome as any other sonic game.
The Bad
The loading screen: sure it doesn't take that long around maybe 15 secs or less but the loading screens pop up everywhere.
The Bottom Line
Very good but has some faults so please definitely get it hardcore sonic fans!!
Xbox 360 · by brandon palonis (2) · 2008
Look past your prejudice and just enjoy the game.
The Good
Negative publicity is enough to sink a game. The latest example of this happening is the hilariously tongue in cheek game Deadly Premonition.Sonic the Hedgehog, originally released in 2006 for the Xbox 360 is one of the most prominent examples of this generation of a good game being buried under unwarranted negative publicity.
What you get when you play Sonic the Hedgehog is a great game, riddled with niggling technical hitches. A lot of the time, you won't even notice these.When you consider the high proportion of the game that isn't affected by the occasional frame rate hitch then you come to realize that there really isn't all that much that is wrong with the game.
You begin the game with access to only Sonic's episode. The game is composed of 3 episodes taking place in explorable town stages and action stages set in deserts, beaches and ruined castles.
Each episode contains levels designed to showcase the various skills of each of the characters. Sonic's stages are essentially designed to to be as quick as possible, emphasising the sense of speed you expect from a Sonic the Hedgehog title. Sonic's stages are augmented by "speed stages" which are sort of addendum to his regular acts that are essentially on rails. They are a mixed bag of not particularly well designed and really good.
Shadow the Hedgehog no longer relies on guns to best his foes being armed with "chaos spears" that paralyze which are then followed up by a chaos attack. His stages are similar to Sonic but are actually designed better, to showcase his mix of vehicular combat and regular exploration.You normally aren't forced to use vehicles, however sometimes it is a necessity. They mostly control well, although the hovercraft is a bit floaty at times.
The last episode takes place through the eyes of the telekinetic Silver the Hedgehog who can grab objects using telekinesis and then throw them at enemies or paralyze enemies and then use them as projectiles. Silver's levels are fantastically designed.
Occasionally you have the chance to play as Knuckles, Tails, Rouge, Blaze and the new character Omega however while these levels are mandatory they only make up a small proportion of episodes.
In between the regular levels you must navigate the towns and fields of the game either participating in optional missions or simply going from act to act. Each mission is quite different and can vary from a foot race to a logic puzzle. They break up the game if that is what you want and that is nice to see.
Sonic and his buddies look really good and the environments they explore are all artistically realized. Flame Core and Crisis City look fantastic and the beautiful Wave Ocean looks particularly inviting.
Sonic the Hedgehog's soundtrack is fantastic featuring some outstanding background music and competent voice acting. Flame Core, Aquatic Base and White Acropolis stand out as featuring the best music in the game and the general audio quality is commendable.
The Bad
While Sonic the Hedgehog is generally a very fun game there are reasons people look down on it.
To begin with the frame rate does take very noticeable hits at times and it is quite unclear as to what is actually causing it. For instance you can be in a sparsely populated area of town and the frame rate will dip significantly however you could then walk out into the giant field outside town and the frame rate will be fine, despite the amount being rendered. This inconsistency is baffling.
While the town's breaking up the stages are a nice touch, harkening back to the brilliance of Sonic Adventure they do feel rather dead. They feel dead, despite the fact that they are full of people. This is because a lot of what is being said is totally useless. Being able to talk to people and get a bit of direction is fantastic, however when a lot of people have nothing meaningful to say then why have them saying anything at all?
Occasionally you might find in some levels that you'll shoot off into the abyss when you hit a speed boost. Also the camera sometimes jerks around and if you're in mid jump this could completely disorientate you, sending you sailing off the side of a cliff. These occurrences are rare however, far rarer than publications made them out to be.
Load times can become a nuisance. When you try to engage in a town mission, you must sit through 2 loads, despite the fact that these missions take place in your immediate area. They are quite strange.
The Bottom Line
Sonic the Hedgehog is far from perfect, nor is it going to win any awards for creative.The issue is, it's a very solid game with small yet obvious flaws that have been exploited by many publications to further their pro-nintendo agenda's.
Please don't avoid this game, it's a lot of fun and if you've been put off it simply because of word of mouth you need to re-evaluate how you judge games.
PlayStation 3 · by AkibaTechno (238) · 2010
A Low in a Series of Lows
The Good
Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the most divisive game series in existence. Some would argue that the early titles were the forefront of platform gaming at the time. Time, however, has not been kind to the little blue guy, and since 2001's Sonic Adventure 2, things have inarguably been getting worse. The fans will desperately look for any conceivable good in the titles that come out, while the press will dismiss any new title as "another crappy Sonic game" without even giving it a closer look.
Sonic 2006 is not a game entirely without merit. Some of the music is catchy. A few of the environments are rather nice-looking, particularly Tropical Jungle. The falling-through-the-floor bugs that plagued the last few titles are nearly gone. The primary characters (Sonic, Shadow, and Silver) are easy enough to control. A few aspects were introduced in this title that that were later refined in Sonic Unleashed.
But perhaps its real purpose lies in not what the game itself did, but what happened in its wake. Viewing it from years later, it almost seems to have been the "breaking point" for both the fans and the creators; a point where people had grown sick of terrible game after terrible game, and someone realized that maybe, just maybe, it was possible for this franchise that was once iconic and synonymous with the industry to claw its way back up into relevance.
The Bad
That said, it takes a truly awful game to create that kind of reaction. Now, I'm not dismissing the game; I played it through to completion, then kept playing to reach the full 1000 gamerscore out of a sense of duty. I've been a Sonic fan since my parents bought a Sega Genesis when I was seven years old. I got some entertainment out of it, and an incredible sense of satisfaction when that last achievements unlocked, but it is in nearly every way a terrible game. The developers have gone on record to state that it suffered due to an accelerated production schedule in order to get the game out for Christmas, but I'm not sure how much help a few extra months would have been.
The game is set up in a similar way to Sonic Adventure: only Sonic is unlocked from the start, while the other characters are unlocked when Sonic encounters them in the story. The story makes absolutely no sense, with lots of time travel, a princess that gets kidnapped literally a half dozen times, and some weird creature named Mephiles that I'm not sure if I'm supposed to already know or not. The FMV cutscenes are slick and rubbery, nice to look at, but few in number. Without spoiling too much, the ending almost feels like it echoes the developers' thoughts on the game itself. Overall, it serves to lead the characters from one area to the next, and not much else.
Which would be fine if the areas themselves were interesting to traverse; I'm firmly of the belief that strong gameplay can support a weak story. The problem lies in that there are only actually nine stages in the game, and you have to play all of them with Sonic. Then all of them again with Shadow, and again with Silver. Sure, the layouts are a bit different, skipping areas that would be impassible with certain characters, but it's quite clearly the same stage each time. Indoor areas go even further and reuse rooms within the same level; some levels like Aquatic Base are made from just the same six rooms stuck together in different ways, and there's not even any attempts made to mask this.
The objective in most areas is either "get to the end without dying" or "kill everything in this area". These simple objectives are the strongest part of the game, but things start to slip when they get more complicated. Shadow has the ability to climb into several vehicles, most of which are nearly impossible to control; the hovercraft, in particular, will flip over and fall into the water at the slightest bump -- including using its jump function. Silver can use telekinesis to throw objects, but will often hit the other objects he's holding when he tries to throw. Then there's the ball puzzle at the end of Silver's White Acropolis stage; suffice to say, this one room may hold the distinction of being the most aggravating, poorly-thought out "puzzle" in the franchise; thankfully, there's a bug that lets you bypass it completely.
The game suffers from a serious lack of design focus. There are several half-implemented side characters that you're forced to use for varying amounts of time. Tails can rain massive amounts of bombs on enemies, but for whatever reason his bombs are ring capsules filled with "fake rings". Knuckles is the most egregious offender, getting hopelessly stuck to walls, and having an uncontrollable fireball attack that most often leads to him sailing off into a pit, which will be familiar to anyone who plays Kirby in Super Smash Bros.. There are the aforementioned awkward driving sections. There are more than 50 pointless "town missions" that serve no purpose other than to say the game has side missions.
There are also obnoxiously long load times. Every load time last about 12-15 seconds, and that includes loading for a single screen of dialogue or a five second cutscene. Loading breaks in the middle of a level. The town missions are the absolute worst, though: talk to a person, say "yes, I'll help you", 12 second load, "thanks for helping me", 12 second load, play the mission, possibly fail, 12 second load, "sorry, try again", 12 second load, back to where you started. Installing the game to a hard drive cuts the load times by about half, which makes them almost tolerable, but having to sit through nearly a minute of loading because you made one tiny mistake in a short mission is inexcusable.
The Bottom Line
For all of its faults, I'm still glad this game was made. The lessons learned by the development team were likely a key factor in the production of the far superior Sonic Unleashed two years later. This is a game that has truly earned its dubious reputation, but if it means we're going to start getting better Sonic games now, then it must stand as a reminder of how far a once-loved franchise can fall.
Xbox 360 · by j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】 (110327) · 2010
[ View all 7 player reviews ]
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
When Mario Meets Sonic | Katara (1) | Aug 22, 2007 |
Trivia
Development
In a Kikizo interview with one of Sonic Team's producers Yojiro Ogawa, he explained that the quality of the game suffered because of the Christmas launch date and the Xbox 360-PS3 cross-platform development with just one team.
Music
The theme tune to Silver's character, "Dreams of an Absolution" bares a resemblance to the music for Green Hill Zone from the first Sonic the Hedgehog game, although the writer Lee Brotherton states that this wasn't intentional.
Awards
- 4Players
- 2006 – #2 Biggest Disappointment of the Year
Information also contributed bysonicteamUSA
Analytics
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Related Sites +
- Let's Play Sonic the Hedgehog 2006
pokecapn's playthrough of the game on the Let's Play Archive - Video review of Sonic the Hedgehog (Language warning!)
The Angry Video Game Nerd, James Rolfe, reviews Sonic the Hedgehog on the XBox 360. - X360A achievement guide
X360A's achievement guide for Sonic The Hedgehog.
Identifiers +
- MobyGames ID: 26398 [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Jacob Gens.
Additional contributors: M.Allen, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, Harmony♡, OmegaPC777.
Game added February 16, 2007. Last modified November 2, 2024.