The beginning of the end

My old buddy Shineget64 was inspired to type up his impressions of the much loathed Sonic 2k6. This marks the beginning of a series where we review every infamously bad game - or at least ten of them - to determine the most unplayable video game ever created. - RFO

*****

Watching all of Let's Play Sonic 2K6 inspired me to try it for myself and with it being only $10 now I decided to risk it since it's a relatively small price to pay if I end up not liking it. I just beat Silver in Sonic's game which according to the menu screen is 23% through his story. It's certainly not a good game, but I don't think it's so bad that it's unplayable either.

PROS

+I like the story and the voice acting so far (except for Tails, I want to cut him every time he speaks). The cutscenes are well done and have a great sense of style and execution

+As with every Sonic game, the soundtrack is top notch. Before ever playing the game I was always a fan of His World.

+Collectable medals in the hub and stages as well as getting them for earning S-Ranks. As a completionist, this is the type of stuff I love.

CONS

- The physics are all wrong. Jumping is too stiff and Sonic likes to get stuck in walls if he gets too close to them. On loops a few times, Sonic just likes to run off the edge into the abyss instead of completing the circle.

- As everyone knows the loading times are terrible, although in practice they seem shorter when I'm playing it compared to when I watched it in LPS2K6 so it's not quite as bad.

- Hub world is kind of pointless. I'm very glad that Sonic Unleashed's hub world is optional and doesn't need to be done if you don't want to (or in the case of the Wii/PS2 versions it's been pretty much removed completely in favor of a point and click map ala Sonic Adventure 2)

NOT AS BAD AS ADVERTISED

- The camera. When things are actually going it's fine and it's just when you want to stop and explore that things get dicey. Even then I found that just hitting L1 or R1 (I forget which one) repositions the camera behind Sonic no matter what's happening. It's saved me many times when I would have probably died trying to fix the camera manually.

-The stages themselves. Like the camera once things gets going it's pretty fun and comparable to earlier 3D Sonics. The auto-running segments are also a lot more fun in practice then they were watching them in the videos because I love stuff like with. Both boss fights so far were alright too against the Cerberus and Silver.

So uhh...yeah it's not a good game but I also dont' think it's as bad as advertised so far. I'd probably give it a 6/10 or so right now. I guess we'll see what happens as I play more and as I begin to play as Silver and eventually Shadow. At the very least...it's better than Shadow the Hedgehog.