I'd describe why I don't like it but there's a problem: I've never actually played it, let alone to completion. I've seen my brother play it and die at Wave Ocean and end up at the opening cutscene because Sega thought it would be a brilliant idea to not autosave the game and we both agreed it was a piece of junk. I've seen a LP of it several times, but I wouldn't touch that game with a 20 foot pole, and since the point of the thread is to describe the worst game you've ever played, I'm not really qualified to critique on it because of that reason. Believe me, it would be on that list, and there'd be a whole pageful of problems with it, but since the worst game I've actually played is Action 52, not Sonic '06, I have to stick with that. I COULD attempt to find the game at a discount and play it, but I'm not sure my sanity could take the mind screwery and sheer despair and unplayability that game has contained with in it. Especially the last episode. :/
Well see, that's my point. Sonic 06 is a terrible game and I've not once denied that, but- first off, if you've never played the game, it's very hard to make a case for it. As I've said, and as others who've played the game will agree, the game is so bad that at first you'll want to stop playing but as you progress that bad will transmogrify into fun and make you not want to stop. Does this make the game better? Absolutely not. I describe this game as a masterpiece, really- and that's why it's so fun. There are a lot of awful, awful games out there, but the thing about Sonic 06, even in comparison to Sonic Boom (which, from the great deal I've seen, is worse, but I've yet to play it), the badness that it contains is like...a beautiful orchestra. It's an orchestra created completely by accident, a bunch of different sounds that start off messy and by the end they're pleasing to the ear despite the fact that they never truly come together. One beautiful mess, that's Sonic 06.
...'Cause, you see, I was like you. I originally just saw Sonic 06- specifically, I watched the entirety of the Game Grumps run (100+ episodes), and it was an absolute travesty. But they themselves said that playing it and watching it are two completely different experiences, and lemme tell you, just getting up to Wave Ocean does not mean you've experienced Sonic 06. That's just the tip of the iceberg and isn't indicative of the entire experience. And I'm not saying that it's guaranteed that you'll like it, and I'm perfectly fine with you saying how bad the game is, but I do think that there is a clear difference between the game being bad and the game not being fun. It's horrible, and it was a test of nerve, mettle, and sanity no doubt, but if it was boring or I felt I was playing it out of obligation- which I did in the beginning, I would have stopped playing. Very rarely will I play a game because I feel that I need to or for a sense of accomplishment alone- if I'm not having fun, what's the point? And even though I'm trying to describe it, as I said, it's not something that I can put into words. I don't want to glorify it, nor do I want to make it sound worse than it is- it's really just better to get hands-on experience with it.
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TL;DR, it's bad. Really bad. But it's a memorable experience that I'd at least recommend giving another shot, especially since you've never played it before. And you have to take it for what it is. If you go into it thinking you'll be bored or expecting a game that's bad in every way, you'll set yourself up for failure. But if you take it for what it is then you'll get out of it what you put in.
And if this truly is deemed off-topic, for now, Sonic 06 will be my pick.
And sorry about the confusion; I agree, it's horrible. Problem is, you think it's so bad it's good with some redeemable bits, and I think it's an eldritch abomination sealed in a double-layered Blu-ray disk that should be wiped from the mortal coil as quickly as possible. It's a game that can drive one to madness. Thus, I agree to disagree. I don't think there's any good in there at all, and you think it could have been good at some point had it been given more polish, and that's fine. Everyone has their own opinions.
It's certainly a game that can drive one to madness, but you said above that you've never even played the game, let alone seen past Wave Ocean. How can you simply pass off that there's no good in it when you haven't given it a chance. And I never said at all that it could have been good if it had polish- that much I don't think is true. I said it has some good ideas, which really means nothing more than that it has good ideas. Sonic 06 isn't the type of game that could just be put through the wash and be a good game, that would horribly be underrating what's wrong with it. I really do think there's been some mistranslation with what I think of this game, because it certainly isn't synonymous with how much fun I had with it.
I actually kinda can relate to this Sonic 06 thing. The story I thought was alright, but for most people it's the story and the gameplay. While I the story was nothing too crazy it was pretty interesting, but playing this game was damn near impossible. But in the end it was quite an experience to remember, unlike Sonic Lost World, or 1000x worse, Sonic Boom.
Well...see, for me, Sonic games that take place in worlds that have human characters (specifically Sonic Adventure 1+2 and Sonic 06) are already pretty goofy. Mainly because...since the beginning, Sega wanted Sonic to be the symbol of cool, and that's fine, but there's no attempt at melding the real world and Sonic, they just kinda put Sonic and friends, who have a cartoony aesthetic, in a real world setting with people that attempt to look realistic, and it's pretty jarring.
And I won't say I ignored the story, because it takes a very specific type of game to make me ignore the story, but there were a lot of things in place, as there were with the Adventure games, that really just made it a very goofy adventure that I took for being exactly that. When I was younger- meaning 14-12 years ago, this wasn't much of a problem since I was young, I didn't really notice stuff like this. But now, when I see a silver hedgehog that's, verbatim, Trunks from Dragon Ball Z if he were a hedgehog (in appearance, in plot, and in transformation)- I'll just say that these are games that want to be taken seriously but ironically demand to be taken the other way, and that's basically how I went about it.
And I'm pretty good at handwaving stuff like this, but I feel that I think this way because the masses just accept it, and it's never questioned in game so its always at the forefront of my mind since it's never addressed.