Sonic Adventure

It's the 9th day of September, on the last year of the previous millennium. I'd been at school staring at my watch, counting every second until I could leave and claim what was rightfully mine: Sega's Dreamcast, the much-hyped new gamin' machine that I'd pre-ordered months before. That afternoon I make my way to the Woodlands Mall, up to the 2nd floor Electronics Boutique, and find a line of other gamers waiting to pick up their own consoles. Holding my pre-order receipt in hand, I chuckle under my breath each time I hear the front-desk employee inform yet another hopeful that unless they had a system already paid for, they'd be walking away empty-handed. Eventually, the line dwindles until I step up to the counter and happily hand over my slip; grabbing up an extra controller and VMU for each. I'm asked which games I'd like to buy for my shiny new toy. I ask for Soul Calibur. Sold out. "Damn!!!" Oh well, no worries. I'll grab up a copy next time. "Alright then... Marvel Vs Capcom, please." Also unavailable. "No!!!" If only I'd been able to skip class, I could've grabbed copies before the rest of these jackasses here. A sigh... "Well, do you at least have any copies of Sonic Adventure or NFL 2K? You do?! Phenomenal! I'll take both."

Slightly disappointed by not immediately being able to get each of the games I'd wanted to buy, I'm nonetheless eager to get home as soon as possible. After all, Sonic Adventure was the original reason I'd gone ahead and pre-ordered the Dreamcast anyway, and although I'm not much of a football fan I'd still been caught up in the hype of Visual Concepts' gridiron beauty. I get home after what seemed like one of the longest car rides of my short life, quickly unhooked my PlayStation from the TV, and carefully, lovingly (in only the way a gamer unpacking their newly acquired console does), set up Sega's last stand in the hardware wars. Having waited to play it since its announcement, I quickly throw in Sonic Adventure and start up the system. And wouldn't you know it? The damn disc was one of the infamous defects. "You have got to be kidding me..." I end up playing NFL 2K for the rest of the night, enjoying it, yet still fuming over having to wait until the next day to exchange my Sonic Adventure disc for a working one.

September 10th: I walk into the same EB, slap the game onto the counter, and the cashier knows exactly what's bothering me. He grabs another copy and, at my demand, puts it into a Dreamcast and checks to see if it works before I head home, eager once more. Was Sonic Adventure worth the annoyance and effort (It wasn't that bad, but at the time it was infuriating) taken to finally play it? Absolutely. Did it live up to my expectations? Well... To an extent.

Most times when looking back I'd say that this game would've been better had the developers spent more time focusing on just the Sonic, Tails, and perhaps Knuckles levels, while leaving out altogether the rest of the characters. The main reason being that those three were the only characters I really enjoyed playing as (Knuckles' campaign was very annoying at times, though), while the others were either boring, or just plain bad.

As expected, Sonic's playing style turns out to be the most entertaining, even if a lot of the time I ended up merely holding forward on the analog stick and watching him, rather than really controlling him. The game was able to keep up with him, and the sense of speed was enough to make it really feel like what one would expect a 3D Sonic title to play like. Tails follows suit, without too many differences aside from the ability to hover, using his, well, tails. Knuckles' levels however were quite a bit different, taking more of an exploration stance instead of the heavily action-oriented focus of Sonic and Tails' stages. In these, you are dropped into a small area, tasked with finding emeralds, and given a sensor that goes off whenever you're near one.

In Sonic and Tails' case, the camera doesn't tend to be too much of a problem since you'll mostly be hurtling through each level as quickly as possible, and thus, require quite a bit less concentration to accomplish your goals. For our crimson colored Echidna however, the camera can be a real pain. In some ways this adds to the challenge of finding your precious gems, but not necessarily in a positive way. I'd find myself climbing up a wall so that I could glide over to where an emerald was, only to have the camera instantly move to the least helpful position it possibly could, many times effectively causing me to miss my mark. The way that the camera would wildly and randomly spaz out like this made it so that in some cases I'd have to try the same parts time and time again. I don't mind this so much when it's because of something like challenging level-design, but when it's entirely due to a poor camera, it's flat out maddening. I'd heard that the camera was much improved over the original Japanese release's, but all that really goes to show is that their version wasn't simply garbage, it must have been completely broken. However, this was not enough to discourage me, a Sonic fan since I was a youngster, and I eventually made my way through, once I grew slightly accustomed to the meth-crazed camera.

Now, what about the other half of the cast? Well, those I also made my way through, regardless of how boring or tedious some of their stages grew to be. Starting off with Amy, the female (and thus, pink) hedgehog, who you might expect to be speed-oriented much like her famous male counterpart. But no, instead they have you slowly jogging around, trying to protect a small bird from ZERO, an evil robot that chases you throughout her levels. She'll use her clumsy mallet to attack enemies and solve rudimentary puzzles. These stages are the second most boring in the entire game, only being trumped in lameness by Big the cat. In his campaign you'll be (very) slowly walking about levels trying to find your pet frog, hoping to get him back via excruciatingly tedious fishing. Why the developers thought for even a second that something like this would be worth putting in a game, let alone in a Sonic title, baffles me. Ugh... Big's levels make Amy's seem worthy in comparison. Totally pointless. Finally we have E-102, one of Eggman's robot minions whom you use to basically run around, blasting tons of enemies to bits with its lock-on cannon. While these stages aren't bad, they (much like Big's and Amy's) didn't really need to be in a Sonic game. E-102's campaign can be pretty fun at times, but they just got old before long.

When you aren't in one of the action or exploration stages, you'll be wandering around various hub-worlds; looking for power-ups, fighting bosses, and advancing the stories along. Most of the boss battles involve Chaos, the liquid God of Destruction, or Eggman himself. None of these fights are particularly difficult, even the extra version of Chaos you unlock after having completed each of the six character's storylines. They mostly revolve around the general wait-jump-attack formula you'd more than likely expect to find. They're decent I suppose, but nothing particularly impressive or exciting... So when it comes down to it, you've got two characters in Sonic and Tails that are really fun to play as, though they are both very similar, and one that's alright but is bogged down by a horrid camera. Once you've breezed through these three stories, all you've got left are the rest, which really this game could've done without.

Also, in many of the stages you'll come across mini-games, most of which are pretty fun. I really enjoyed the snowboarding sequence in particular. The Chao raising I never really got into, I messed around with it for a few days and bred a few champions, but soon grew tired of it, the VMU part wasn't even worth my time though to be honest. Though if you're one of the people who ends up liking Chao raising you'll most likely love it, and spend countless hours training the cute, evil-looking bastards. If it's your thing, then hey, by all means go ahead and have a blast...

Now, while a lot of what I've written down so far hasn't exactly been positive, that's not to say that I disliked the game. For one, the visual presentation was fantastic. While in comparison to some other titles, such as Soul Calibur, it didn't quite messure up, Sonic Adventure most definitely had that "this is next-gen" look to it. After having played countless Nintendo 64 and PlayStation titles for a few years prior, many of which looked spectacular themselves, Sonic Adventure was a definite step up in visual quality, and did a lot towards making me feel as though my purchase was justified. The framerate remained nice and smooth for the most part, and everything just looked great and popped with a clarity I hadn't seen before aside from certain arcade titles (many of which were from Sega as well). Certain things however, like vehicles, and quite a few of the characters looked a little off. And apparently, Sonic Team spent no time syncing mouth movements to the voices at all. It really does look odd, but didn't bother me too much as it gave me and my friends a few laughs. The levels themselves looked amazing, with Lost World being a definite standout. When everything was going together and I was actually playing, this game truly looked wonderful.

The same can't be said for the audio aspects though. I wasn't really put off by the ever so popular butt-rock that blares throughout much of the game, as again, it was kind of expected. But the voice acting? Aghh, terrible. Man, it was almost embarrassing to sit through some of the cut-scenes. Luckily, none of them last all that long, so the pain doesn't go on. Ugh, I think I'll move on now. No need to dwell on such unpleasantness.

Had Sonic Adventure been focused more on, well, Sonic's adventure, this game would've been far better. But taking the entire game as a whole, it's seriously harmed by the lackluster secondary characters and nigh-broken camera. Unless you are like me and feel the need to play through every campaign, I'd suggest simply sticking to Sonic and Tails for your fix, the rest will just leave a bad taste in your mouth. What this game did well, it did very well. But what it botched? My sweet Hell, it faltered in such a disappointing way.

If you're a Sonic fan, chances are you already bought, played, and beat this game years ago. And if you're one of those Sonic fanatics, you more than likely hate me for what I've said in this review already, but try to understand that I still liked the game. It's just that I really only enjoyed about half of it. For those of you who are reading this that haven't tried it either on the Dreamcast or in its re-release on the Gamecube, I wouldn't say stay away. Just know that you're getting a really good game, with a crappy one added on.

And by the way, I'm not holding the defective disc against the game or its score in any way. It was just a trip down memory lane that just so happened to involve this game. I figured I'd share it...