So yeah, after a couple long play sessions with a friend, I have finally beaten the abomination known as Shadow the Hedgehog. And my god is it awful.
There are so many things wrong with this game that I'm baffled as to how Sonic 06 is considered worse (I've seen the Pokecapn playthrough and what Game Grumps has done of it thus far, but never played it myself). Knowing full well of the game's awfulness, my friend and I decided to pick up a copy at Gamestop a while back, figuring it'd be fun to just goof off and make fun of its terribleness. Of course to add insult to injury the game had been bumped up to $10 (I recall it being down in the $2-3 range a while back). But whatever, still not that expensive, and we knew we were in for a good, terrible time. And yet, we had no clue of what we were in for.
So I guess I'll just rattle off as much of the terribleness that still comes to mind.
First off, Shadow controls like goddamn soap. It may even be worse than the infamous Superman 64, and I'm curious as to whether even 06 controls this bad. I mean, it's so easy to run accidental circles around a ring, not to mention unintentionally flying off an edge. Added to that, the homing attack is godawful in this game, with enemies taking way too many hits anyway (probably to give guns a purpose) and it being an easy way to fly off an edge. Still, my friend and I managed to get used to this (and to some degree the awful almost-teetering-over-the-edge animation.) What we couldn't get used to, though, is the damn bird/dragon/alien enemy you have to ride at times. That thing has a mind of its own, and it sure loves to go everywhere but where you're aiming. And of course, the camera is atrocious. You simply can't control it most of the time, and it loves to aim in directions you would never, ever want.
The guns, while incredibly stupid and probably a cause of much of the broken nature of the game, are surprisingly not that bad. They work at least, which is something that can't be said for a lot of the game. However, why on earth do melee weapons have ammo, and usually quite low ammo and damage output at that? Oh, and the balance is completely broken (does the heal gun even do anything in multiplayer?). The egg-vacuum gun in particular is the most broken thing in anything ever, scooping up all the enemies and powerups in your path with minimum effort. I'm also pretty sure I saw it eat a hint sign once, which is... interesting. The vehicles are of course awful, but honestly don't feel that much worse than Shadow, just slower for the most part. The little hover platform is just straight up silly. The walkers on the other hand are silly in a completely different way (nothing like getting Shadow in a walker holding a Gatling gun that is busy clipping through everything). Of course their hover is completely useless as you can't move forward pretty much at all with it, and the jumpy one jumps so high you can't quite see where you're landing.
The biggest gripe, though, is the atrocious setup for the game flow and its awful moral system. My friend and I realized after grabbing an ending or two that the "missions" are all awful and poorly designed and will extend the length of the level by an excessive degree and fill it to the brim with frustration. Thus, they're best avoided wherever possible, as neutral is always the best option by far. Furthermore, seeing as the game makes you get 10 damn endings to finish it, it'd be nice if you could, you know, choose to skip to wherever you've already been so toy don't have to play the 1st level forever. Oh, and the endings are all a scam, just a short samey speech by Shadow containing the words "This is who I am" and not really matching that great to what you've been doing anyway (so I help Eggman activate his defense systems... and then immediately beat him up? What?) Oh, and they couldn't be bothered to make more than three bosses each for the middle parts and the endings. And they're all awful. Why would you make a slot machine robot, and why does fighting it involve long distance homing attack lockons at all times, and WHY WOULD YOU PUT AN ENEMY OVER A PIT NEXT TO THE TRACK ON AT LEAST ONE VARIANT CAUSING ME TO HOMING ATTACK TO MY DEATH?!
But I guess the biggest thing to do is dig into the stupid, stupid levels themselves. Pretty much all of them have the problem where the game likes to rip large pieces of geometry (and even whole rooms) and then dump them in other parts of the level, making things extra repetitive and confusing. So I guess I'll just go into some of the specifics below.
So, stage 1, Westopolis. Yes, it is a great idea to start the game off with random lasers blasting down from the sky all over the damn place. This is also a great introduction to the greatest of all the terrible mission types: kill all the enemies of a certain type. What this means is go through the level killing every enemy of that type you can find, and then SLOWLY comb the level to find the few you missed, bit by bit, until after 15 minutes to a half hour later you find the little jerk. Oh, and this is also the level that proved the stupidity of the keys. You scour the level to find these stupid collectibles, and what do you get? Something to make the level easier. After you've explored its every nook and cranny. So yeah, great prize.
Next up is Digital Circuit, and its sibling Mad Matrix. First off, why did you go to the Internet Shadow, and how? This game is just awful at transitions. It's just boom, you're in the internet, do stuff. The big issue here is probably the stupid high speed dodging of "firewalls," of which there is way too much and it was way too fast and hard to see. The spotlights up in one section of Digital Circuit also gave my friend a hell of a time, randomly flipping the camera after pulling him up and making it incredibly hard to land right. Oh, and there are also bars of light you're supposed to ride up that totally look like decorations and not something to interact with. Mad Matrix adds to the "fun" by being gigantic and open, making it super hard to figure out where you're going.
Lethal Highway may just have my most hated mission in the game. You have to chase down and destroy an alien tank. For plenty of the level the thing is moving in and out of sight, and I'm pretty sure something tends to go terribly wrong with its positioning if you happen to die. Anyway, what makes it so extra special dumb is that you don't shoot the thing, you shoot its FORCE FIELD, which makes it look like you aren't hurting the damn thing WHATSOEVER. It wasn't until I got halfway through the level that the game decided to inform me that yes, you are supposed to shoot the force field till it breaks.
Cryptic Castle is just dumb, and the "ghosts" appear to be floating orbs. So yeah, guess they cheaped out a little extra there.
Circus Park has a setup that doesn't make any sense (Eggman stole a ton of rings and built a park out of them, so go collect rings yay), but it's fairly harmless compared to the rest of the game, I suppose. Though they for some reason seem to have thought that turrets were better for shooting balloons than normal guns, when they really, really aren't.
Prison Island is the UGLIEST piece of crap I've ever seen. I mean, look at this thing. Just... look at it. So awful. Also, the jump pad things look like a glitch or something, just awful. Bleh.
Central City can screw off as well, as it combines the fun off a "find stuff we hid" mission with a time limit. Extra fun was had upon finding out you needed to dynamite a small section of wall that didn't seem to have any visual indicator to find everything. This one took forever and was insanely frustrating.
The flashback levels are super poorly done. I actually joked about them making a flashback level immediately before seeing the first one, thinking the game wouldn't be dumb enough to do it, but... yup. So you have Maria jumping around and following you as this little girl is apparently as physically fit as Shadow. Furthermore, everything looks the damn same, making it extra fun when you have to wander around the level trying to find enemies. Oh, and for some reason the space below the elevators all have instant death holes, even when there is clearly a floor below. So yay! Also, this is the level that showed me the game was dicking with me/us, as they hid one of the enemies such that you had to turn around on a turret section to find it.
Sky Troops is mostly okay, but it's worth noting the hilarious lack of polish in that when you shoot down the second airship it falls straight down and clips through the level right in front of your face.
The Ark's gravity switches can lead to instant death as they aren't programmed well, and they will often leave the game trying to force you the wrong way on an incline, which you then have to fight.
The outside section on Air Fleet is colored really poorly, with the platforms and walls blending into a big blob of orange. Also, the game is blatantly a dick here by giving you a jeep and then opening doors that WILL immediately lead you into a pit unless you drive slowly. Oh, and they added guard rails around the rest of the pit except the part you are sure to go flying into at least once.
The Egg Breaker fight after Iron Jungle is hilarious and can be cleared in like 20 seconds if you just hop in the turret.
Now for the final stages, which are mostly atrocious.
Black Comet is a douchey stage and the last one I did. Yay for crappy hover platform! Anyway, we actually did this one last, and the big problem comes from trying to do the mission. The enemies aren't actually laid out that bad. However, if you follow the path to the goal and have missed one, you will very likely be shot right into that damn giant ring. I had one enemy left and reached that area, only to be shot right at it and, though I tried to pull back, I couldn't stop it. Thus raising another huge issue with the game: if you complete the wrong mission, you are SCREWED. To be fair maybe we could've shut off the console and saved ourselves, but it was to late, and we were forced to start another damn playthrough because we couldn't avoid that goal. God. Damn.
Cosmic Fall is stupid. Just really, really stupid. You have to platform on falling debris. And it all looks like background elements. Even when you figure out it isn't, you're left with a LOT of waiting. Oh, and there are plenty of multihit enemy bridges floating around, which is nice.
Final Haunt, though, was perhaps the worst moment in the game for us. It turns out doing the one mission blocks off the end of the level. My friend accidentally hit one without realizing it. We got to the end and Sonic said something to the effect of "There must be a switch somewhere to open this up!" leading us to believe we had to find a switch to open the door. This lead to 45 minutes plus of wandering around before we said screw it and looked it up. This game can be absolutely awful at giving information. (This level also provided advice to the effect of "looks like something is missing from this wall," which apparently meant "use a vacuum gun to suck on this section of wall." What?!)
After much pain and suffering, we finally got to the Last Story. After watching sphincter face fart to immobilize the Sonic friends, Shadow breaks free and the level starts (and Shadow of course leaves the aliens "eating" them there with no explanation.) And then the last level is just a goddamn copy, seemingly of Final Haunt. Only they removed some springs and forced you to beat up respawning enemies until you have enough power to use the "skip some of this awful game" ability. Yeah, that's great design.
The Super Shadow fight was pretty much your usual awful 3d Super Sonic final fight, so whatever. The charge shot was useless thanks to the debris, and the slow time power was useless thanks to the weakpoint moving, which is nice. The crappiest part of it all, though, was that they screwed up the sound mixing, so that the sound effects COMPLETELY drowned out the awful (yet somehow amazing) goofy rock song, which is like the only fun part of these final bosses.
So it all ended, with Gerald Robotnik even apparently being redeemed as an "okay guy" (despite the fact that he, ya know, tried to destroy the Earth in SA2, but whatever.) What an awful ride. I don't think I even got to ride a motorcycle, now that I think back on it!
There are so many things wrong with this game that I'm baffled as to how Sonic 06 is considered worse (I've seen the Pokecapn playthrough and what Game Grumps has done of it thus far, but never played it myself). Knowing full well of the game's awfulness, my friend and I decided to pick up a copy at Gamestop a while back, figuring it'd be fun to just goof off and make fun of its terribleness. Of course to add insult to injury the game had been bumped up to $10 (I recall it being down in the $2-3 range a while back). But whatever, still not that expensive, and we knew we were in for a good, terrible time. And yet, we had no clue of what we were in for.
So I guess I'll just rattle off as much of the terribleness that still comes to mind.
First off, Shadow controls like goddamn soap. It may even be worse than the infamous Superman 64, and I'm curious as to whether even 06 controls this bad. I mean, it's so easy to run accidental circles around a ring, not to mention unintentionally flying off an edge. Added to that, the homing attack is godawful in this game, with enemies taking way too many hits anyway (probably to give guns a purpose) and it being an easy way to fly off an edge. Still, my friend and I managed to get used to this (and to some degree the awful almost-teetering-over-the-edge animation.) What we couldn't get used to, though, is the damn bird/dragon/alien enemy you have to ride at times. That thing has a mind of its own, and it sure loves to go everywhere but where you're aiming. And of course, the camera is atrocious. You simply can't control it most of the time, and it loves to aim in directions you would never, ever want.
The guns, while incredibly stupid and probably a cause of much of the broken nature of the game, are surprisingly not that bad. They work at least, which is something that can't be said for a lot of the game. However, why on earth do melee weapons have ammo, and usually quite low ammo and damage output at that? Oh, and the balance is completely broken (does the heal gun even do anything in multiplayer?). The egg-vacuum gun in particular is the most broken thing in anything ever, scooping up all the enemies and powerups in your path with minimum effort. I'm also pretty sure I saw it eat a hint sign once, which is... interesting. The vehicles are of course awful, but honestly don't feel that much worse than Shadow, just slower for the most part. The little hover platform is just straight up silly. The walkers on the other hand are silly in a completely different way (nothing like getting Shadow in a walker holding a Gatling gun that is busy clipping through everything). Of course their hover is completely useless as you can't move forward pretty much at all with it, and the jumpy one jumps so high you can't quite see where you're landing.
The biggest gripe, though, is the atrocious setup for the game flow and its awful moral system. My friend and I realized after grabbing an ending or two that the "missions" are all awful and poorly designed and will extend the length of the level by an excessive degree and fill it to the brim with frustration. Thus, they're best avoided wherever possible, as neutral is always the best option by far. Furthermore, seeing as the game makes you get 10 damn endings to finish it, it'd be nice if you could, you know, choose to skip to wherever you've already been so toy don't have to play the 1st level forever. Oh, and the endings are all a scam, just a short samey speech by Shadow containing the words "This is who I am" and not really matching that great to what you've been doing anyway (so I help Eggman activate his defense systems... and then immediately beat him up? What?) Oh, and they couldn't be bothered to make more than three bosses each for the middle parts and the endings. And they're all awful. Why would you make a slot machine robot, and why does fighting it involve long distance homing attack lockons at all times, and WHY WOULD YOU PUT AN ENEMY OVER A PIT NEXT TO THE TRACK ON AT LEAST ONE VARIANT CAUSING ME TO HOMING ATTACK TO MY DEATH?!
But I guess the biggest thing to do is dig into the stupid, stupid levels themselves. Pretty much all of them have the problem where the game likes to rip large pieces of geometry (and even whole rooms) and then dump them in other parts of the level, making things extra repetitive and confusing. So I guess I'll just go into some of the specifics below.
So, stage 1, Westopolis. Yes, it is a great idea to start the game off with random lasers blasting down from the sky all over the damn place. This is also a great introduction to the greatest of all the terrible mission types: kill all the enemies of a certain type. What this means is go through the level killing every enemy of that type you can find, and then SLOWLY comb the level to find the few you missed, bit by bit, until after 15 minutes to a half hour later you find the little jerk. Oh, and this is also the level that proved the stupidity of the keys. You scour the level to find these stupid collectibles, and what do you get? Something to make the level easier. After you've explored its every nook and cranny. So yeah, great prize.
Next up is Digital Circuit, and its sibling Mad Matrix. First off, why did you go to the Internet Shadow, and how? This game is just awful at transitions. It's just boom, you're in the internet, do stuff. The big issue here is probably the stupid high speed dodging of "firewalls," of which there is way too much and it was way too fast and hard to see. The spotlights up in one section of Digital Circuit also gave my friend a hell of a time, randomly flipping the camera after pulling him up and making it incredibly hard to land right. Oh, and there are also bars of light you're supposed to ride up that totally look like decorations and not something to interact with. Mad Matrix adds to the "fun" by being gigantic and open, making it super hard to figure out where you're going.
Lethal Highway may just have my most hated mission in the game. You have to chase down and destroy an alien tank. For plenty of the level the thing is moving in and out of sight, and I'm pretty sure something tends to go terribly wrong with its positioning if you happen to die. Anyway, what makes it so extra special dumb is that you don't shoot the thing, you shoot its FORCE FIELD, which makes it look like you aren't hurting the damn thing WHATSOEVER. It wasn't until I got halfway through the level that the game decided to inform me that yes, you are supposed to shoot the force field till it breaks.
Cryptic Castle is just dumb, and the "ghosts" appear to be floating orbs. So yeah, guess they cheaped out a little extra there.
Circus Park has a setup that doesn't make any sense (Eggman stole a ton of rings and built a park out of them, so go collect rings yay), but it's fairly harmless compared to the rest of the game, I suppose. Though they for some reason seem to have thought that turrets were better for shooting balloons than normal guns, when they really, really aren't.
Prison Island is the UGLIEST piece of crap I've ever seen. I mean, look at this thing. Just... look at it. So awful. Also, the jump pad things look like a glitch or something, just awful. Bleh.
Central City can screw off as well, as it combines the fun off a "find stuff we hid" mission with a time limit. Extra fun was had upon finding out you needed to dynamite a small section of wall that didn't seem to have any visual indicator to find everything. This one took forever and was insanely frustrating.
The flashback levels are super poorly done. I actually joked about them making a flashback level immediately before seeing the first one, thinking the game wouldn't be dumb enough to do it, but... yup. So you have Maria jumping around and following you as this little girl is apparently as physically fit as Shadow. Furthermore, everything looks the damn same, making it extra fun when you have to wander around the level trying to find enemies. Oh, and for some reason the space below the elevators all have instant death holes, even when there is clearly a floor below. So yay! Also, this is the level that showed me the game was dicking with me/us, as they hid one of the enemies such that you had to turn around on a turret section to find it.
Sky Troops is mostly okay, but it's worth noting the hilarious lack of polish in that when you shoot down the second airship it falls straight down and clips through the level right in front of your face.
The Ark's gravity switches can lead to instant death as they aren't programmed well, and they will often leave the game trying to force you the wrong way on an incline, which you then have to fight.
The outside section on Air Fleet is colored really poorly, with the platforms and walls blending into a big blob of orange. Also, the game is blatantly a dick here by giving you a jeep and then opening doors that WILL immediately lead you into a pit unless you drive slowly. Oh, and they added guard rails around the rest of the pit except the part you are sure to go flying into at least once.
The Egg Breaker fight after Iron Jungle is hilarious and can be cleared in like 20 seconds if you just hop in the turret.
Now for the final stages, which are mostly atrocious.
Black Comet is a douchey stage and the last one I did. Yay for crappy hover platform! Anyway, we actually did this one last, and the big problem comes from trying to do the mission. The enemies aren't actually laid out that bad. However, if you follow the path to the goal and have missed one, you will very likely be shot right into that damn giant ring. I had one enemy left and reached that area, only to be shot right at it and, though I tried to pull back, I couldn't stop it. Thus raising another huge issue with the game: if you complete the wrong mission, you are SCREWED. To be fair maybe we could've shut off the console and saved ourselves, but it was to late, and we were forced to start another damn playthrough because we couldn't avoid that goal. God. Damn.
Cosmic Fall is stupid. Just really, really stupid. You have to platform on falling debris. And it all looks like background elements. Even when you figure out it isn't, you're left with a LOT of waiting. Oh, and there are plenty of multihit enemy bridges floating around, which is nice.
Final Haunt, though, was perhaps the worst moment in the game for us. It turns out doing the one mission blocks off the end of the level. My friend accidentally hit one without realizing it. We got to the end and Sonic said something to the effect of "There must be a switch somewhere to open this up!" leading us to believe we had to find a switch to open the door. This lead to 45 minutes plus of wandering around before we said screw it and looked it up. This game can be absolutely awful at giving information. (This level also provided advice to the effect of "looks like something is missing from this wall," which apparently meant "use a vacuum gun to suck on this section of wall." What?!)
After much pain and suffering, we finally got to the Last Story. After watching sphincter face fart to immobilize the Sonic friends, Shadow breaks free and the level starts (and Shadow of course leaves the aliens "eating" them there with no explanation.) And then the last level is just a goddamn copy, seemingly of Final Haunt. Only they removed some springs and forced you to beat up respawning enemies until you have enough power to use the "skip some of this awful game" ability. Yeah, that's great design.
The Super Shadow fight was pretty much your usual awful 3d Super Sonic final fight, so whatever. The charge shot was useless thanks to the debris, and the slow time power was useless thanks to the weakpoint moving, which is nice. The crappiest part of it all, though, was that they screwed up the sound mixing, so that the sound effects COMPLETELY drowned out the awful (yet somehow amazing) goofy rock song, which is like the only fun part of these final bosses.
So it all ended, with Gerald Robotnik even apparently being redeemed as an "okay guy" (despite the fact that he, ya know, tried to destroy the Earth in SA2, but whatever.) What an awful ride. I don't think I even got to ride a motorcycle, now that I think back on it!
