This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.
How did I do?
| Category | Completion level |
|---|---|
| Completed | Yes |
| Hours Played? | ~10 ish |
| Favorite "story" | Knuckles |
While the world is focused on Elden Ring, there has never been a better time for Sega Dreamcast Sonic related content. However, I feel I need to prep all the die-hard Sonic fans out there, about who is truly reviewing their game. I didn't grow up a Sonic fan, I wasn't a hater, but I grew up on Nintendo platforms and the first time I played more then a level of Sonic is on a game gear that we had for like 6 months. (I still have no idea what happened to our game gear, I don't remember selling it, or it breaking, it just seemed to disappear within a year). I liked the idea of Sonic, going fast, but I am wired a bit different, and I am someone who always wants to explore levels, and I felt the design of Sonic (for the most part) is the antithesis of this idea. You should be racing forward, avoiding getting hit, and beating a level in like 90 seconds. Sure there are secrets to be had, but spin past all this shizz, do some loop-de-loops and hit that button to beat the level. It is this mindset that never led me to beat that game gear version, nor any Sonic game prior to that.
When I bought a dreamcast, very close to launch, I was firmly on board with what Sega had promised. I remember getting three games with my system; Power stone, Crazy Taxi, and Sonic Adventure. At the time, I played the first level of Sonic, liked it, thought to myself 'I'll play this later' and then got sucked into the two other games where I forgot about Sonic. I never went back to it, eventually I got other dreamcast games, and by that point Sonic seemed like a thing of the past, so despite getting a game nearly at launch I only played a level of it. I picked up the Dreamcast collection on X360 which had, amongst other games, Sonic Adventure, but this time with achievements. I played the first level again, thought to myself "yeah this seems fun, I'll get these achievements later" and then never went back to it. It seemed like every-time I wanted to play Sonic Adventure, I never was in the right head space. Even as I started re-collecting games and retro systems, I bought a Dreamcast, bought a copy of Sonic Adventure and it sat on my shelf unplayed until the game finally came up on a spin. At this point it was destiny, come hell or high water I was going to play Sonic Adventure.
This was actually the planned 100th game I was going to write about, but guess what happened.. I played the first level, and then put the game down while I worked on other games.. It wasn't until I forced myself to make Sonic a priority that I finally saw the second level of the game, and now here we are, a week or so removed from beating it, and we can finally talk about Sonic Adventure.
That was a long intro, before we even got into the game, but Sonic Adventure is a 3D platformer starring everyone's 2nd or 3rd favorite hedgehog, Sonic. Sure there are levels, where you jump, spin, and run fast through set-pieces (more on this later), but in between levels there was an open world to explore. There was some light puzzle solving (getting keys), hidden items to collect (permanent power-ups), NPCs to chat with, and a whole section for taking care of your virtual pets. It's a more flushed out version of Mario 64s Castle. In addition to an open world, Sonic Adventure boasts something that on paper sounds like a really great idea. There are multiple characters you can play as, that each have their own take on the story that unfolds, as well as unique gameplay mechanics, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here, let's focus on our main man Sonic.
Sonic's gameplay is pretty standard for what you would expect for a 3D platformer. He can jump, he can do a homing attack on enemies, he can spin and he can run really fast. The point of his levels are essentially to collect as many rings as possible, avoid getting hit, and then hit the level end button as quickly as you can. In fact nearly every level, for every character has multiple goals associated with it, that get you the equivalent of Mario's Stars. For Sonic, the first one is to beat the level, the 2nd is usually to beat the level while having so many rings, and the 3rd is to beat the level under a set time. In order to progress the story, you only need to accomplish the first task, but for all you Sonic heads, there is some re-playability here. In the 3d world of Sonic, and probably the showpiece of the Sega Dreamcast, a lot of Sonic levels have what I would call a showpiece event. This is a big moment that the level is really built around. In the first level, this happens about midway through the level, where Sonic is attempting to outrun a whale that is breaking apart a bridge he is running on. In another level, this involves Sonic snowboarding down a mountain being chased by an avalanche. These are moments that look genuinely cool. Usually the camera changes to a close up of Sonic, or a dramatic view of what is happening , but in reality these might as well be the equivalent of a cutscene. These big moments are barely (and I mean barely) playable. In the whale scene, the camera makes it so you can't see what is upcoming, which would normally be a huge hazard, but the game just kinda auto-plays for you. You are hitting speed pads, and jump pads, and its almost impossible to fail this part of the level. As long as you are even lightly holding the controller, you will make it through the whale attack. For the snowboard scene, its almost the exact same moment, with the camera looking at Sonic's face while he runs toward the camera, as long as you are don't turn off the game, you will pass that scene. What bums me out the most about these showpiece moments, is that the game takes away the feeling of you playing what is clearly the coolest moment of the game. When I play games its so that I can feel like I am in control and doing cool stuff, if you tell me I can do all the boring stuff and then when something cool happens I have to give my controller to someone else, its like being a little brother. It's also a shame, because it happens again and again, it's not like the game says "we are going to do this first one for you, to show the cool shit coming up, but the rest is up to you" because that is not the case. The Snow boarding level is maybe halfway through the Sonic Story and you still barely have control during it.
As Sonic progresses in the story, he actually unlocks characters that you can then play through their whole version of the story. In concept this is great, because these characters are only in part of Sonic's story.. so now we get to see what everyone is up to when Sonic isn't around. Their stories are all usually shorter then Sonic's, and you are revisiting a lot of the same locales, but they have different gameplay mechanics that make the levels more interesting or something else completely. Tails objective is to race sonic in all his levels, but since he has the ability to fly for brief moments means he can take some interesting shortcuts that Sonic would not have been able to. Big the cat, plays each level as a fishing mini-game. It's a bad mini-game, but it's very surprising that your goal isn't to get to the end or fight any baddies, but rather to fish out your frog friend to beat every level. Knuckles, which ha my favorite gameplay mechanic, turns each level into an open world level, where he is just trying to find 3 crystal shards in the whole level. The crystals beep when you are close, and knuckles can climb walls making traversal easier, but it takes a long boring straight corridor level from Sonic and Tail's playthroughs and makes it more interesting to explore. There are more characters each with their own version of the story, but what I found incredibly funny, is that I actually preferred nearly every character's playthrough over Sonic's. The namesake of the game, the story that has the most content, is one of the worst ones to playthrough. Part of it is the showpiece thing I outlined above, but the other characters just feel more fresh and interesting to play the levels through. I would much rather fly as Tails, make the game more explorable with Knuckles, or shoot badguys with a gun with the robot, then just spin jump my way through a level. I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but it is still hilarious that he gets the short straw in his own game.
So, lets talk about that story element since that is just a big part of why each character has their own "adventure." Well.... it's pretty bad. It's confusing and needlessly complicated for what amounts to a story about Eggman awakening the wrong creature with chaos gems. In order to get the full story you have to play as every character all the way through, but the game doesn't know what order you will play in, so all the story elements are just scattered around the playthroughs and they might not make sense until you finally wrap a character up. It's certainly a nice try, and something I commend them for attempting, but the story should have just been that Eggman is bad, and Sonic is trying to get the chaos gems back, and not some story about how an ancient civilization was destroyed by greed, and the protector of the gem is this misunderstood monster who is really good, but is doing bad things for reasons. Listen, you can ignore it, and you won't miss anything.
There are bosses in this game, and I will say that they vary from being completely trivial wastes of time, to stupidly difficult that require insane precision to complete. For instance there is a Chaos you fight in a pond, that despite fighting him with multiple characters, I don't think landed a hit on me at all, but both of Sonic's last bosses (final of his story, and final of the game) took me multiple and I mean multiple attempts to complete. Some of my deaths were from my own mess-ups, of course, but others were because this is a game with bugs. Sonic's final boss of his story, is a ship piloted by Dr Eggman that has multiple stages you have to go through. I won't bore you with all the details, but the fight takes place on a ledge above a bottomless pit, and everytime you hit Eggman you automatically bounce back to the ledge, except on one hit. The hit that destroys his ship and sends him to a desperation attack, does not automatically bounce you back to the ledge, and worse yet, the camera follows his ship and not Sonic. So, I died 10 + times on this hit alone, because I would homing attack hit him, and then fall to my death because I didn't guess the direction i needed to fall to stay on the ledge. It was infuriating because then you start the whole boss over, which is easy, but just so damn time consuming. I was glad to see when I looked up this problem online, the always helpfun internet community just offered advice like "git gud" and my favorite addition to any conversation "I beat him on the first try," which just in general serves no one. Not only are you not offering advice or even encouraging words, but no one asked you, nor can we confirm if this is true. Never change internet, never change.
You know what just sucks all around in this game, the camera. It doesn't matter which character you are being, the camera will lose you and it might come at a time when you are making a tough jump, or a part where you can chill and let the camera catch up. I know Sonic Adventure was maybe before we can start yelling at games for bad cameras, since 3D was still being figured out, but nothing like getting caught in a gust of wind, or hitting a bounce pad, and the camera being a second or two behind where your character is.
So, was Sonic Adventure worth me buying it 3 different times so I can finally check off not only this game, but my first Sonic game on the list. Eh... not really. There were moments where I hated booting the game up, because even though each character is unique, it's a chore to play through the same environments like 5 times, or go through the same open world 5 times to find the level start for each character. There were times when I was genuinely having fun, and there was also a majority of time where I felt that the game was a real 6/10. There were big chunks of this game I skipped over, I didn't do any Chao garden stuff, I never went back to earn additional "stars" on levels after like the first two levels, and there are secrets in the open world I never figured out (what is with that burger mascot that looks like an NPC that you can just move around the city?) I don't actually know what the consensus is for this Sonic game. I can't imagine people like it as much as Sonic Mania, or Sonic 2 for the Genesis, hell I don't even know if people think it is the best 3D Sonic game, but at least its off my backlog.
Is this the greatest game of all time?: No
Where does it rank: Sonic Adventure even after completing it is a conundrum for me. There is a lot to dislike about Sonic Adventure (the camera, Sonic, the story, Sonic, the set-pieces, Sonic, etc.) and yet I had moments where I was really enjoying the game. I played both Tails and Knuckles full stories in a single sitting, because I was enjoying myself. By no means, do I think this is a great game, or even a top 30 game that I have played, but maybe in a different world, if I would have played this in 1999, I could almost be nostalgic for this game... almost. Sonic Adventure is the 54th greatest game of all time!It is sandwiched between 53rd "Dicey Dungeons" and 55th "Serial Cleaner."
1. RingFit Adventure (Switch)
2. TBD
3. TBD*
*Let's be honest, I am just not getting through games at the moment. I could blame a lot of different factors, but this happens to me at least once a year where I find my desire to play games wanes for a little bit. While I am working on 5 games right now (FF6, Dishonored, Sherlock Holmes, Gauntlet Legends, NBA street Volume 2), some of those games I only play with other people which can be tough to consistently play, and the games I am playing solo (ff6 and Dishonored) are not short little adventures. I am trying to work through the games as best as I can. That probably means that not only are we only going to do one review a week (instead of the usual 2), but we might also have a break between weeks when I don't have a game to talk about. I don't want to break my process, or rush a game, because of some imaginary timeline I need to blog on. So, Ringfit will be talked about next week, but there might be a down period while I wrap up some games before continuing. Eventually luck will be back on my side, and I can knock out some indie games and other games to re-create a backlog.*
Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.
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