Sonic Adventure

"It definitely has its ups and downs, though ultimately the occasional burst of fun (and a good soundtrack) conquers all"

Before I get into the depth of this review I'm going to get tell you about one of my biggest complaints about this games. The accursed cut scenes. They are just sprawled with problems. For a start the voice overs are horrific, especially Tail's and Big's voices: Tails voice squeaks out short pointless sentences and Big's voice over is quite possibly the most annoying voice you will ever hear in the videogame, as it resembles a character's voice from a 2-year old's TV program. These cut scenes also pass very slowly with large gaps in between speech making them feel disjointed. To make it worse the cut scenes are often reused as you play through a different character's storyline, meaning you have to sit through some of them 2 or 3 times if you want to unlock Super Sonic as playable.
Another nuisance is the Adventure Mode, which had a lot of potential, but ultimately ends up feeling tacked on. One problem with the Adventure world is how empty it feels: when you're in the City area there's only about 20 people standing outside, almost all of which are standing still, and on the Egg Carrier there's only a couple robots roaming around, none of which interact with you. Another problem about Adventure mode is how long it takes to get anywhere, which is a nuisance considering how empty and boring the world is, and also considering you often end up repeating the same “Take X to Y” tasks with different characters.

The characters consist of Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Gamma, Big and eventually Super Sonic, and they are a mixed bunch.

Sonic is the funnest character to play as, as his stages are often similar to the classic 2D stages, except of course in 3D: True to form this means many of his stages involve running and jumping through beautiful stages of platforming bliss. A couple of his stages (Notably the Casino and Twinkle Park) take a break from the platforming, instead providing pinball and racing respectably, and they do this well. Sonic's story is reasonably good, though feels a bit random at times.

Tails is also quite fun as his stages involve racing Sonic through the platforming stages. Tails can also fly a small distance. This works very well, as to make up for your likely slower speed you will find yourself flying over the track at times to make your own short cuts. Tail's story is quite annoying as most of the time you're just playing the sidekick, and thus the story really isn't centered around you.

Knuckle's levels are right on the verge of feeling tacked on as you search for emerald shards scattered around the level. Most of the time this can be fun, though sometimes it will frustrate you. Knuckle's abilities are to glide and to cling to and climb walls. The gliding is great, and makes Knuckles feel really unique. The clinging to and climbing of walls is annoying however as there's no way to find out if a wall is climbable until you've glided into it: many walls aren't climbable for some reason. Knuckle's story is easily best, especially as it hides it self in a lot of mystery.

Amy's levels involve normal platforming, except you're being chased by a robot the entire time. Amy's ability is to use her hammer both for offensive purposes and to propel herself into the air. Amy's levels are mostly fun, though it is annoying that the robot is not constantly chasing you (he doesn't follow you into some rooms), as this means you pulse is not constantly pounding. Amy's story is quite simply terrible.

Gamma's levels are FAR too easy compared with the rest of the game, and often feel repetitive. Gamma's levels are very short platforming levels where you shoot enemies to gain time onto you time limit, and although this could be good, the only level that feels like it has been properly developed is his last one.

Big's levels are terrible. They involve slowly waddling around until you see a frog swimming around. You then cast you line and fish for the frog…this isn't fun and does not compare to a proper fishing game such as Sega Bass Fishing. To make things worse Big's storyline is horrific, and to summarise it, his frog keeps running away and he wants to re-capture his frog.

Super Sonic only appears for the last boss fight which is one of the best moments of the game, particularly as you can only hurt the last boss by going at insane speeds.

However many of the bosses in the game are a huge let down, with many being far too easy and taking about one minute to kill. This feels very unrewarding, but the few fights that do go well go VERY well and feel very rewarding when you win them.

The graphics range a lot. There are a couple movie sequences that show off everything the Dreamcast can do. Many of the levels look beautiful, and the character models are pretty good as well. That said, humans in town and ruins look atrociously blocky and don't do the game any favours, and the textures on the tree-tops in the ruins look very ugly.

The music is very good with quite a lot of variety and a lot of quality. In fact the music is among some of the best I've ever heard in a platformer.

Chao garden is a famed feature about the Sonic Adventure series, however SA's Chao garden is terrible compared to other versions such as Sonic Adventure 2 Battle's.

This game is flooded with glitches, from flying through walls, to Chaos mysteriously leaving the garden, to the expected graphical glitches, and this puts an annoying dent in the gameplay.

This game is, in short, a mixed bag. On one hand it can be fun, has great music and occasionally good graphics. On the other hand, the adventure mode feels tacked on, the cut scenes are infuriating, the graphics can go downhill a lot, glitches swarm the gameplay and sometimes the gameplay is quite simply not fun.

Gameplay: 7/10
Sound (Music): 10/10
Sound (Voices): 3/10
Graphics: 8/10
Storyline: 5/10
Controls: 7/10

Final score: 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/12/07