Sonic Adventure

"Easy and fun game, too bad the bugs and camera probs keep it from being enjoyable"

Story:
The story for this Sonic game is different. Because you will have to play through all 7 characters (7th is Super Sonic), to understand the story. It goes something like this, Chaos is a liquefied life-form that was trapped in the Master Emerald. Dr. Robotnik lets him loose, and Chaos gets stronger everytime Dr. Robotnik adds a Chaos Emerald to him. It is now up to Sonic and Tails to stop Dr. Robotnik yet again.

Gameplay:
In this section I'll talk about each of the characters and other aspects of gameplay.

Sonic: Sonic is the main character and playing as Sonic will be the longest, he has the most levels to go through they are all pretty easy to deal with. Most of the time Tails will be there with you, but sometimes he won't. As the story progresses, 5 of the other characters will be unlocked for you to play with.

Tails: Sonic's 2-tailed fox friend's level's are almost identical to sonic's (so that the story would make sense) but instead of sonic fighting the bosses, you (Tails) would. Almost all of the levels require you to race against Sonic or someone else. They are all pretty easy since Tails can fly and take short cuts, and the person you are racing against will simply stop and wait for you if they are ahead of you by a certain distance.

Knuckles: To me, Knuckles was the character I had the most fun with. Since he could fly and he ran pretty fast, and he could also punch stuff (pretty cool :) He is protecting the Master Emerald, when Chaos appears and everything goes wrong and Knuckles has to go find the missing pieces of the Master Emerald. Knuckles has to find 3 pieces of the Master Emerald in each level. But that should be no problem since Knuckles can glide in the air (fly in a way) and the fact that he can climb most of the walls in the levels. Plus, you also get a "Emerald Radar" that alerts you when you are close to a piece of the Master Emerald.

Amy Rose: She is the self-appointed girlfriend of Sonic. The objective of each level when playing with Amy is to go through each levels evading capture from Dr. Robotnik's robot Zero, the levels end when you reach the balloon and beat the level. This is when the game starts to get boring, because up to now, you are used to the fast speeds of Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, but then Amy is REALLY REALLY slow, so you'll have to get used to that.

E-102 Gamma: Was once a evil robot of Dr. Robotnik's but then turned against Dr. Robotnik after meeting with Amy. The object of E-102's levels is to go through the level and at the end destroy one of its "brother" robots, which will free the bird inside who was E-102's friend. You attack by using a laser to lock on to enemies and let go of the button to fire at the enemies. There is a timer on each level, and the more enemies you kill at the same time, the more time will be added on to the timer.

Big the Cat: Now I want to know what the people at Sonic Team were smoking when they came up with this character. Big is a fisher, and his friend Froggy was transformed by Chaos, and now Big has to go through the levels and fish for Froggy. Yes you read it correctly, FISH for Froggy. The level's are all VERY small, you just walk around and get to where Froggy is, and fish. This is THE MOST boring part about the game, takes all the fun away from the game (unless you like fishing games, then you'll like it). I don't understand why they added this character to the game.

Super Sonic: You get Super Sonic after you beat all 6 other characters. There are no levels to go through, just a bunch of cinematics. Then you fight the final boss, and then its the end.

Camera: There are some SERIOUS problems with the game's camera, although you are able to partially control it, it still doesn't help much. Every level you play, there will be camera problems, you view would be completely !@#$ed up. The view will be focusing on the wall of the room next to you, and you can't do anything about it, unless you run around a bit and pray that you don't die doing so. I don't understand how they "fixed" some camera problems from the Japanese version of Sonic Adventure and STILL have it be this buggy.

Bugs: There are still countless bugs in the game. Once, using Sonic, I jumped into an elevator of the hotel, and had myself go through the building, and somehow it showed me fall off a cliff and died. Very strange, lots of other bugs in the game too.

Control: Overall the control is very easy to get used to. There are only 2 (4 counting camera control). A is the jump button, and X Y B are the "action" button, plus L and R to pan the camera angle. Very simple controls and you'll be used to it in no time.

Music: Every character has their own unique theme music as does each level. They are all very well done but some of them might get annoying after a while.

Cinematics (Events): The 'movie' parts of the game (when you just watch) are also very well done, even though the characters' lips are in sync with their Japanese speech, not with the English. Sometimes their mouths move and there's no speech or sometimes they stop when they're still talking etc. but that is very minor. The only thing I have to complain about them is that they are too cheesy (maybe it was because the game was aiming towards a younger audience)

Replayability: There are Emblems which you can collect after beating each level and beating each character. There are 3 for each level for each character, which can add up to be a lot. But after beating the whole game through, I don't see how anyone would find it any more fun to go through it again, since you see most of the levels again with the other characters so they get old quickly.

Final Scores:

Story 9/10: nice story and well done job on making the story make sense with all 7 characters.

Gameplay 4/10: the characters are fun to play with (except Big and Amy). Amy being too slow compared to the other characters, and Big's fishing portion of the game is VERY VERY VERY boring. Plus the fact that there is a major problem with the camera, and the bugs riddling the game, it gets a 4/10.

Control 10/10: simple controls. You'll be used to them right after you sit down to play the game.

Music/Movies 6/10: good music and well done movies, but the movies might be a bit cheesy for the older crowd.

Replayability 6/10: not that interesting after you go through the whole game once, because you'll be presented with the same things again and again, nothing new when you play again.

Bottom Line:
Sonic Adventure is an okay game because it is a game filled with bugs and camera problems, otherwise it'd be a wonderful game. Another annoying thing is that whenever you beat a character, you HAVE to sit through the credits (which are 4 minutes long). But then again, you CAN just reset the game :)

FINAL SCORE: (not an average, like IGN :) 5/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/31/99, Updated 12/31/99