Sonic Adventure

"I want a Monkey Destruction Switch"

Realistically, Sonic Adventure just wouldn't work. Playing Sonic Team's 3D platforming adventure you'll often find yourself, as the titular hedgehog, racing along seemingly endless paths and tunnels at breakneck speeds, without a care in the world. However, just as often you'll find yourself coming to a shuddering halt or smashing against the wall due to the useless controls and camera. In the real world, this would cause Sonic to scream ARGH ARGH OH CHRIST THAT'S AGONY as he excruciatingly scrapes the side of his massive azure head against the jagged, unyielding wall for an age before finally coming to a tumbling, flailing stop, leaving a horrifying trail of scarlet blood and cerulean skin for half a mile. Indeed, Sonic and his cohorts are lucky to be living in an unrealistic world, as the injuries caused by the game's failings would otherwise result in their hideous disfigurement and the destruction of the adorable visages for which we love them today.

Sonic Adventure is the series' first incarnation on Sega's Dreamcast system, and, as per next-generation-console-sequel law, is the first fully 3D Sonic game. While it retains most of the series' cosmetic trademarks and a few of the gameplay ones, the format has been updated for the modern audience for whom a standard level-by-level platformer apparently just won't do. This is through the introduction of a more involving storyline than in previous titles, which gives way to adventure segments featuring people to chat with and the occasional puzzle.

The plot - a faintly interesting tale of Robotnik attempting to resurrect Chaos, an ancient aquatic demon - also allows for an ensemble cast. Old timers Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy show up, along with newcomers Big (a purple cat who happens to be somewhat hefty in stature) and Gamma (one of Robotnik's robots who goes through the beep beep I know now why you humans cry thing). As well as having vaguely different missions, each character sees the plot from a different angle. This could have been something interesting, but unfortunately the characters rarely interact in any major way and they all have their own separate quests, so it's not explored to it's full potential.

Select your character, and, after a poorly-executed introductory cutscene, you'll start off in the first Adventure Stage - Station Square, a lovely coastal city. As well as being places where the plot can play out, the Adventure Stages act mostly as fancy hub worlds for the Action Stages. The Adventure stages take up a good two thirds of your time playing the game, which would be fine, if they weren't dire.

Without doubt, the Adventure Stages are absolutely abysmal. It's almost sickening to see the unstoppable Sonic wandering dumbly around the needlessly-huge arenas, trying to figure out where the hell to go next. You're almost never given much indication of what you should be doing, forcing you to stumble about the place at random until you crash into one of the floating information light things, at which point some ethereal pink bint will relay an idiotic tip ('Go to Station Square! You might find something!') which will usually lead you to a puzzle that's simply an insult ('Casinopolis is open! But the only way in is closed. Sorry about that.') Basically, the Adventure Stages are utterly without merit, and are almost certainly nothing more than filler.

Having ground your teeth to blackened stumps in rage at the appalling nature of the Adventure stages, you'll finally enter an Action Stage, and things will look somewhat more rosy, and a whole lot more Sonicy. It's all coming back now; epic stages with all manner of loops and half-pipes, there's a few TV item boxes over there, and a hideous mechanical abomination hell-bent on sending me and my friends to an agonising death, and - oooh - rings! Outstanding! It's Sonic, in 3D! Sweet rapture, it's... it's... not that good. Pissholes. The Action Stages are not as good as they could have been, for various reasons.

The game comes up short in the two most important aspects essential for a good platformer - controls and camera, and this is most annoying in the action-based levels. The imprecise control is bearable in the massive and forgiving adventure arenas but in the Action stages, which demand precise movements and accurate jumps, it's absolutely useless, and frequently leads to infuriating deaths as you accidentally soar off edges. Meanwhile the camera happily jigs and whirls about uselessly, getting itself stuck at awkward angles and behind walls. Combined, these two tragedies make it hard to walk in a straight bloody line.

The levels themselves are reasonably well designed. The 3D medium allows for all sorts of glorious excess, and the characters hurl themselves about the enjoyably over-the-top arenas at superhuman speeds. There are some genuinely cool sections that manage to overcome the shoddy mechanics and be hugely enjoyable; Sonic's opening battle with Chaos, or his run down the side of a skyscraper are both great moments. This heavily-scripted style does result in very linear levels, and some of the greatest scenarios are painfully devoid of interaction; Sonic's flight from a massive whale in the first level is sublime until you realise that you don't actually have to press any buttons.

While there's only 12 or so stock Action stages, each character has different objectives in each one. Sonic's is the standard platformer get-to-the-end game, and both the most enjoyable, and most lengthy game, with 10 stages. Tails has to race Sonic to the stage end and Knuckles has a hot-or-cold emerald hunting game, which are both entertaining enough, with 5 stages. The rest are barely worth playing, with only 3-4 stages each (as well as those tiresome adventure segments); Amy's flee-from-a-robot game is just about engaging enough, but Big's fish-em-up and Gamma's shooting gallery feel like mini-games stretched out for even more filler.

Aside from the Action stages, the game entertains with a few decent mini-games, and with the obligatory boss battles. The mini-games are the standard snowboarding and kart-racing shenanigans; entertaining enough, although the terrible controls are still present. The game's bosses are also reasonably impressive, both visually and in their design. The mini-games and bosses also the one part of the the game where the camera isn't a grating annoyance.

While the gameplay does often irritate, SA is consistently beautiful to the senses. There's a superb visual style throughout (the clouds-and-water motif is cool), and the graphics are constantly impressive, despite a tiny bit of pop-up and occasionally bad clipping. The soft-rock soundtrack is the type of thing that would be absolutely appalling anywhere else, yet seems oddly enjoyable here.

Sonic Adventure is a game I really want to like. There's occasional moments of brilliance where the controls and camera perform and everything comes together and it's one of the coolest experiences ever. However, for every one of these sublime moments, there's an hour of unbearably tedious wandering and struggling with the camera. Combined with the various other minor irritations - the occasional unfair death because of a level glitch, or the way accidentally pressing Start over Quit in the pause menu instantly ends it - and it's a very difficult game to like. It's just recommendable to Sonic fans, but, as much as it pains me to say it, those uninitiated to the series will find little to enjoy here.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 07/10/04