"Now THIS is the Sonic I grew up with."

The Sonic the Hedgehog series made quite a splash when it entered the 3D environment. Taking Sonic away from grassy fields and throwing him into the world of humans, the games have been put through a more mature and edgy path. Especially since the character of Shadow showed up. When Sonic Heroes came out, it was the first new game that wasn't a port or remake, and didn't have the name Advance at the end. So naturally as a Sonic fan I was eagerly anticipating it. And boy am I glad it turned out to be a great piece of work. This is a fast action platformer that takes Sonic back to his roots, and changes the gameplay for something fresh and extremely fun. So let me tell you why you'd be best to look out for it.

The evil Dr. Eggman is once again up to no good, this time making the first move and actually informing Sonic before hand that he's going to conquer the world. How generous. Sonic isn't going to be able to beat the doctor by himself this time, so now he's bringing along his friends Tails and Knuckles for the ride. Which makes for some rather unique gameplay. You're actually controlling three different characters at the same time, and they each have their own specific abilities that you'll need to use if you wanna traverse through the levels. Sonic isn't the only one wanting a piece of Eggman though. No this game actually has 4 playable teams as well as 4 playable stories going along with it. Count'em, that's 12 playable characters. Yeesh. One group is Team Dark, which consists of Shadow, Rouge the bat, and back then new character Omega the Robot. Their story has them going after Eggman for answers and revenge. Another is Team Rose, which consists of Amy, Cream, and Big the Cat. And all these supper happy annoying characters want is to find their missing friends. And making a return since the 32X game "Knuckles Chaotix", Team Chaotix. Their detectives who get a case from an anonymous individual that wants them to ruin Eggman's plans. Each team has their own unique traits and special abilities.

Now one thing I will say, if you are getting this game for the story, you'll be sorely disappointed. Especially if you came off from playing Sonic Adventure 2. There are plot holes up the wazoo, it's extremely cheesy in some areas, and this is in my opinion where Shadow's whole story just got screwed up. If you watch the opening cinematic of Team Chaotix talking to their client, you can instantly guess who the client is by his voice. It's too obvious. If they wanted to leave any mystery they should've used a dark monotone robot voice. The game has a decent amount of cutscenes. I mean you get one at the start of each act, and at every boss fight. There's tons of dialogue and personality brimming off the characters. And like the classic Sonic games of the Genesis days, you randomly travel from area to area with no explanation. One minute you're on a beach, the next you're in a futuristic city with flying cars. As long as you don't actually expect the game to make any sense, you'll be fine. And the plot IS fine in my opinion. We don't need any convoluted plots about weapons of mass destruction and ancient prophecies or whatever.

Presentation wise this is the most unique 3D Sonic game yet and I love the places you travel around. Once again harking back to the good ol' days, the first level has brown checkered mountains and green pathways, and everything is so colourful and vibrant. It makes me a happy camper. All of the levels have a unique personality, whether you're rolling around in a casino world of bright lights and pinball flippers, grinding on vines in a giant mushroom infested jungle, or riding mine carts in the basement of a spooky castle. This game is just brimming with fun. And these levels are huge too. You can literally spend 9 minutes going through them, even if you know it by heart and try to speed through. The characters look great as well, and have a ton of nice animations, especially when they're teaming up. Like when they wanna fly, two of the characters will hold onto the flying character as he/she lifts them up. The enemies admittedly are kinda repetitive. You got the typical henchmen, the flying ones, the giant hammer swinging ones, and I think a magician robot as well. You'll see the same enemies, but their colour scheme might be different. Either way, you'll get to know Eggman's robots.

In the audio department, all of the actors from past games return to voice their respective characters. Well, everyone except Tails' whose new actor makes him sound like a 8 year old. I don't wanna hate Tails, but seriously his voice is so annoying in this game, and he's always making these "captain obvious" statements. He even says the sentence "Look at all those Eggman's robots!" I'm not making that up, he says it exactly like that. You'd think Tails would know more about grammar since he's supposed to be the smart one. The characters love to talk and make obvious statements. Instead of letting you use your brain they pretty much tell you "Sonic, let me smash through!" and "I bet we could fly across". I don't mind if they're talking, but I am a bit peeved that they're constantly holding you by the hand and telling you how to approach the situation. Let me figure it out! The game also continues the 3D Sonic tradition of having some epic theme songs for each character, complete with lyrics and cheesy 80's rock music to go along with it. The main theme of the game is so damn catchy though. Even if you hate it, you WILL sing along with it. Me, I've always loved the unique Sonic songs. The only thing I have to warn you about, is that playing with Team Rose might make your ears bleed. Never have such a trio of annoying voice actors said so much....

Anyhoo, let me talk about the game and why it just works. Like I mentioned earlier, you're actually controlling three different characters at the same time. They're classified by Speed, Flying, and Power classes. The speed characters obviously make the whole team travel around a lot faster. They can also do the homing attack, which is good for those pathways where there's a bottomless pit, and a whole lotta enemies flying above it. And if there aren't enemies, but there are some even flat walls, the speed characters can use their Triangle Jump ability to get past by hopping back and forth along the wall. They're also the characters that can go so fast that they create a tornado by spinning around in a circle. This also helps the entire team whip around on poles to go up or down. Speed characters are all kinds of awesome. Then you got the flying characters, whose main job is to carry their friends over areas that they obviously couldn't pass by jumping. You get this meter for how far you can take them. Go to far, expect to drop like a sack of potatoes. Because apparently flying and carrying two other people is really tiring. The flying characters can also whip their friends at enemies for some mega damage. Seriously though, a fully leveled flying character can clear like 10 or more enemies just by whipping their friends. The attack is extremely deadly. And I'll get back to leveling up in a minute. And then you got the powerful burly characters who uses their fists of vengeance to smash giant blocks in your path, hidden cracked areas, and steel enemies that Speed and flying characters just can't budge. Their attack power is insane, and you can even level bosses down pretty quick. They also use gliding formations to form a ring so that they can hover over conveniently placed fans.

Utilizing all three of the characters makes for a fun experience. And it's not struggle to use at all. In top corner of the screen it shows that pushing X or Y will make turn into Tails or Knuckles, making it really simple. It may take getting used to all of the abilities, but once you do everything becomes easy as pie. There are slight differences in the teams though. Amy of Team Rose can actually spin like a helicopter for short period of time using her giant hammer. Espio of Team Chaotix can actually stick to walls, and he can turn invisible making enemies completely oblivious to his location. Big the Cat and Vector the crocodile use a different fighting style from Knuckles and Omega, meaning they stand and throw their friends at enemies, as opposed to just charging and smashing the hell out of them. Which is a positive actually. Sometimes Knuckles and Omega's power moves are just too much. You push B and they go quite the distance for just one punch. I can recall many a time dying because they'd go and throw themselves off the edge after killing an enemy. Each team has a special move called Team Blast as well. Kill enough enemies (or find the right container) and you'll eventually fill up the meter. And basically this means that you can kill every enemy in the area. Team Sonic get the weakest one, in that they only kill all the enemies. The other teams get some special bonuses from doing so. Team Dark stop time (Shadow uses his Chaos Control ability), including the timer as well which is good for A ranking levels. Team Rose actually gets a level up from each character, and after the move is done they're invincible for a short time too! Yeesh. And Team Chaotix get a random set of rings for every enemy they hit in the Team Blast. It's a good deal all around. But why doesn't Team Sonic get any extra benefits?

Anyhoo let me explain what I meant by characters leveling up. Every now and then an enemy will drop this blue, yellow, or red orb that allows the character associated with whatever colour you pick up to level up. Enemies actually have health bars, and speed characters can't kill even the simplest of goons in one hit unless they level up. Flying characters thunder shoot ability doesn't even kill anything until it's leveled up either. But when you get all leveled up? The results are phenomenal. Sonic can plow through almost anything, Tails kills multiple enemies in one throw, and Knuckles can cause a literal meteor rain in the whole area around him. Speed characters can even swing up poles merely by homing attacking them when fully leveled. It's godly to be leveled up, but quite frankly I think the game would be a lot funner if there was no leveling system at all and if you just had the best stats from the get go. It's just if you die in the level, all your stats get reset back to zero. Meaning you gotta collect all the orbs again. And it also means that enemies feel stronger and everything because of it. It's so fun being level 3 characters, I don't see why it couldn't just be like that the whole game. But I digress. It's a tiny nitpicking.

The game is set up like the old Genesis Sonic games in that each level has 2 acts, and a boss fight (usually against Eggman). And if you pick up a key and don't get hit at all, reaching the goal line with that key, you get to participate in a special stage! The 1st Act's special stages are really only good for getting free lives. But the 2nd act's special stage will contain a Chaos Emerald. I know what you're thinking. SUPER SONIC FOR THE WIN! Well....you'd be wrong. No collecting all of the Chaos Emeralds only ensures that you unlock the last storyline after you beat all 4 teams' storylines. I know, it's a major bummer. I mean having Super Sonic return to 3D would be epic! Why hasn't it happened yet?! Oh and before I forget, the special stages have you going down a circular pathway in which you collect balloons so that you can get turbo, so that you can catch the Chaos Emerald before it reaches the end.That being said, I love that Sonic Heroes has returned to this structure. It's just so gratifying to have acts and bosses at the end of each act. It's like the good ol' days. And we're not treasure hunting or riding in mech suits or fishing, or whatever! This is the Sonic gameplay that should be in every 3D Sonic game! And if you think having 3 characters controlled at once would make the game slow, you'd be wrong. I don't recall EVER seeing any slow down. And the characters move faster than any other game before. Go to the level Frog Forest, reach the loop de loops, and prepare to be amazed. This is a fast, fast game.

Actually before I go and say there's no treasure hunting, I should correct myself. Each team has a unique story mode. And according to Omochao's message in the menus, they have their own difficulty. Team Rose is essentially the easy mode of the game. Their levels are shorter and just easier to navigate through overall. Team Sonic is the average level of medium length areas and somewhat challenging enemies. And Team Dark is the hard mode, with the longest levels and more challenging enemies. And then you got Team Chaotix, who have unique missions in their levels. Are they fun? To be honest I hate Chaotix's gameplay. They make you find 10 of whatever item in each level, and you'll more than likely do a lotta backtracking. They got stealth missions in which you literally cannot be seen at all. Expect to use Espio's invisibility a lot. It's just too much busy work for a game with as big as this, and it really wasn't necessary. I beat Team Chaotix's story and never looked back. Oh and each story mode is essentially the same. They all go to the same levels, in the same order, and even fight the same bosses too. Some might find it repetitive. Me, I think the different difficulties do make some significant changes, so you're always getting a new experience.

I wanna give this game a higher score, but the camera is really damn annoying sometimes. For the majority of the game you have to move it around yourself just to see where you can actually travel to. But the camera isn't even flexible. It'll pan left and right but anytime you want it to look up or down, it's just not going to. It was a huge problem in certain parts of this game, and I can't ignore how frustrating it was. That and the Knuckles/Omega punches of doom. The game also has a big selection of multiplayer games that people can play. The problem is that in order to unlock the majority of them, you have to earn all of the emblems, which means a lotta single player gaming until you and a buddy can take advantage of the multiplayer. Which is dumb if you ask me. Every multiplayer mode should be open right from the start! The games vary from races to whoever has the most rings, and even to battle modes. The one thing though, multiplayer is where you'll definitely see some major slowdown. If you want my opinion I wouldn't get this game for the multiplayer. It's okay, but nothing special.

And that's Sonic Heroes in a nutshell. I commend Sonic Team for taking a different direction from Sonic Adventure 2. You don't see a single human being in this game. The levels are all cartoony and over the top. They're also structured in act form with an Eggman battle at the end! This is the Sonic I played with in my youth. This is the Sonic that should continue to be! And this is the only game in which Amy Rose is actually a fun character to play with. Cause she's actually fast and has a homing attack! Sonic Heroes was a great step in the right direction, and I wouldn't mind to see more of this. The trio gameplay was fresh and it just worked all around.

IN THE END...
This is the Sonic I grew up playing with. Using the classic formula with a new way to play, Sonic Heroes takes the series in a brilliant direction. Great graphics, great gameplay, it's just such a treat. Just don't expect an epic storyline or the best camera work. Regardless, Sonic Heroes is a classic.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/08/08

Game Release: Sonic Heroes (US, 01/05/04)