Sonic Heroes

"Team Sonic must not like the PS2."

Lately Sonic hasn't been doing very good; the last great Sonic games were for the genesis. Yes I did enjoy the adventure series very much but they hadn't yet perfected Sonic into a 3D world. Also, they were obviously more of an adventure game than Sonic games should be. In this game I finally thought they would have something great on their hands, though the whole teamwork thing sort of turned me off, nevertheless, I still looked forward to it.

Story.
The basic Sonic story line, egg man is out to destroy the world, and Sonic is out to stop him again. This is one small let down. There's basically no story line except for a couple of cut scenes that keep things interesting. You get to play as different teams though. Team sonic, Team Dark, Team Rose, and Team Chaotix. Every team's story ties into the games main story.

Gameplay.
The gameplay is the biggest change to Sonic; personally I ended up liking the idea of how it turned out. Sonic is crazy fast and can do some stuff with wind, and yes his thing were he goes through lines of rings is back. Knuckles is incredibly powerful and can use Sonic and tails for punching gloves. Tails can fly and throw Sonic and Knuckles to knock down stuff. It works very well because the places where the characters are needed suite them well. You switch through your 3 characters with the triangle and circle buttons, pretty simple stuff right?

It all changes after playing for a while. You'll then notice the major flaws. One is Sonic's speed. If you've played Sonic Adventure 2, you'll notice that in this game Sonic, and his equivalents in other teams, speed has increased by a lot. Because of this the PS2 cannot handle the speed, frame rate issues occur. The movements you make seem very bulky. Nothing ever works right. Anytime you want to use Sonic in a level you will mostly die because he just gets out of control. Add in a horrible camera that always seems to be pointing in the wrong direction, and you have horrible gameplay. Another very annoying thing that occurs is that when you jump up a very long distance and land you'll suddenly be burst forward like if you were still running, this doesn't happen with tails because when you're leading with him you're going very slow. This will lead to sudden deaths especially with Sonic. Basically anytime you try to do something in this game it just doesn't work. A good example of the control issues is evident in Sonic's homing attack. When you do this Sonic should home in on the nearest target and destroy it. This move worked perfectly in the Sonic Adventure titles. But, in this game you sometimes wonder what happened to the homing part of the attack. Many times you'll do it with an enemy in clear view and you'll just fly off into nothingness. The sad thing is that this is Sonic's main attack, and it won't work a lot of the time.

The levels in this game are also very boring, nothing exciting ever happens and when it does the horrible blotchy gameplay makes you lose control and then you die. Like when you're going through loops it goes into that cinematic view to make it look "cool" but that's what makes up most of the levels, and during this you do not really control sonic. Everything else in the levels is just slow.

There's also a serious problem with depth. You can't tell where you're going when you try to jump platforms or on to other things. Most likely you'll miss where you're going and fall. This game also has some of the lamest and most boring boss battles ever, not only are they easy and long, because of the gameplay you'll probably die a couple of time trying to do a simple hit. (Again Sonic's homing attack).

Graphics.
The graphics are actual improvements over the past Sonic games. Even though they are improvements, they are nothing but average. (Knuckles gloves for example) just look poorly made. The levels have good colors in them to, giving an illusion that they could be fun. Upon closer inspection though you'll notice that they are bland and not very well done.

Sound.
The sound is basic ring pick ups, swooshes, bouncing and other little things here and there, the music is decent but some of the sound effects could use a lot of work. The voice acting is still pretty bad (they sound forced), but I find it a bit hilarious, sort of matches the craziness of the Sonic world.

Replay Value.
If you can actually stand the game, it'll provide a lot of play time, with 4 teams. If you're a perfectionist, you can try getting all a ranks on the levels. If your not into perfection then you'll probably only want to play as Team Dark and Sonic, because Team Rose is way too easy, and team Chaotix isn't that great (they don't really fit into the Sonic world, I don't even know why they were added), though their levels are mission based if you want a change.

Like I said before I don't know what the happened. The game looked very promising when it first came out, I even waited this long to express myself as the game truly sank in. But this game is just one of the Sonic series' low points. Oddly enough the counterparts of this game (Xbox, and GCN version) are executed in a decent way, still not a fantastic game, but it's playable and enjoyable. This game is almost unplayable. But a big reason you might want to play it if you have no choice, Metal Sonic makes an appearance in this game, and he's truly awesome. You can still find some joy if you are a big Sonic fan, which I continue being, even after this catastrophe. Just test the game out first so you don't end up wasting money.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/30/05, Updated 07/21/06