My opinions on Sonic Next Gen, also known to some as "The Disaster."
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Table of Contents
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Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 (Next Gen)
System: PlayStation 3 & XBox 360
Rating: E 10+
Story
All I know is this - We've got a princess with the evil spirit of a demonic force sealed within her, a future destroyed by this force, and a being from the future who is planning to use it for his own evil intentions. It all sounds good in a retrospective point of view, but I think it wasn't executed too well thus far as I've read. Featured in this game are three new main characters; Princess Elise, the princess who has an evil spirit; Silver The Hedgehog, a character from the future accompanied by Blaze who wants to go to the past to kill the one who is supposedly responsible for the chaotic future, Sonic himself; and Mephilies The Dark, a mysterious Shadow lookalike who has evil intentions, he serves as a sort of master to Silver as he pretends to be one of the good guys, but he reveals to others he is pure evil.
There's really not much I can say other than that. It has some nice ideas, but the overall setting doesn't fit Sonic so well. Which is pretty bad, because it was announced as a story that would return to the roots of the series, not bring in a dark, new setting.
Gameplay
Gameplay, to my understanding, is much like the previous console games (Sonic Adventure, Sonic Heroes, Shadow The Hedgehog, etc.), but with the use of new consoles, it's full of glitches at every turn. Bad placement in objects which slow you down, the fastest speeds don't require you to do much of anything (which is pretty bad since otherwise there's not much decent speed), and from what I played in a demo it was pretty unstable with movement and attacking to a point where you'll die a LOT. As for Shadow, his gameplay appears to be focused on weapons and vehicles much like his self-titled game, which is rather limited. Silver's gameplay sounds decent with the fact that you use telekinesis to move objects and enemies, but I haven't played it for myself to know if it's good or not.
Graphics
Graphics are impressive because of these systems, but it would seem focusing on them so much leads to some lacking in everything else. I've been told it has tons of loading screens due to needing to load all the graphics, as well as some lackluster voice dubbing and the above mentioned gameplay. In short, graphics were focused too much, and it becomes eye candy.
Music
Music here has its own style, more or less being a good thing. The games theme (and the theme for Sonic) is "His World" performed by Zebrahead, which has a nice tune but is one of those 'modern rap' songs which sounds really lame. Notably, it actually says "kicking ass fast," a somewhat mild line for Sonic music. The song is later remade by Crush 40, which sounds less like a bad rap song, which I like. Silver's theme is a techno song by Lee Brotherton and Remix Factory, called "Dreams Of An Absolution," my favorite song in the game. And Shadow's is just a Crush 40 version of "All Hail Shadow," one of his themes in his self-titled game, which sounds a little improved. Overall, the music aside from this has a unique style seemingly following the style of the theme, with a mix of dramatic and mystical.
Voice Actors
I cannot say much of anything good here due to my opinions on the current Sonic cast of 4Kids Entertainment. The only decent voices are Mike Pollock as Dr. Eggman, and Pete Capella as Silver, but otherwise there was nothing new or impressive.
Recycled Material + Identical Comparisons
One of the more annoying qualities of this game is that it's nothing new. An evil entity wanting to destroy the world for no particular reason, Sonic goes Super to fight it, and so on. This was used in Sonic Adventure with Chaos, Sonic Adventure 2 with the Biolizard, Sonic Heroes with Metal Sonic, and Shadow The Hedgehog with Black Doom. It was okay previous times, but now it seems to just be a mix of Chaos and Black Doom, so it's nothing new now. Some also feel offended by the new character Princess Elise, because she appears to be a stereotypical "can't protect herself and always gets kidnapped" princess, among other things about her I won't reveal.
So, Sonic has always been compared to the anime Dragonball Z due to its similarities with a spiky haired hero (Sonic/Goku), the seven magical items to search for (Chaos Emeralds/Dragonballs), a super form (Super Sonic/Super Saiya-jin Goku), a rival from space who's of the same race and ends up being like a rivaling ally (Shadow/Vegeta), a long-time rival scientist (Dr. Eggman/Dr. Gero), and a large cast of villains and enemies. All of these are considerably common story concepts, but the mix of them were very identical to Dragonball Z. However, this game in particular causes some controversy with introducing Silver. His background, abilities to some extend, and even his voice, all resemble a character of Dragonball Z named Trunks - He was from the future where it's a chaotic world destroyed by two androids, he goes to the past to warn the main characters of these events to save his future. Granted, the background is somewhat distant from Silver's, but this identical setup leads people to theories about Silver being Shadow's son (as Trunks is Vegeta's son.) He even has a super (Super Saiya-jin) form which, with the way his spikes are designed, looks similar to Trunks as a Super Saiya-jin.
To put it simply, this game makes a lot of problems for fans.
Overall
Overall, I'd need to play this to understand it fully, but with what is presented so far, I don't think it's worth buying an expensive console for.
Rating: 1/10
