"It seems fitting to review Sonic Adventure while listening to Jon Bon Jovi"

OPENING STATEMENT
I had high hopes for Sonic Adventure. I loved the early games in the Sonic series, and, Sonic Adventure being the first original game in the series, excluding Sonic R, since Sonic 3D Blast for the Sega CD in like 1994 it was a long time in coming. Unfortunately, Sonic Adventure does not live up to the hype, or my expectations.

GAMEPLAY--7
The transition to three dimensions still is not a pretty one with Sonic Adventure. Everything that I loved about the original Sonic games is changed. Sega does show that they have learned since Sonic 3D Blast some more about that mystical third dimension.

The biggest problem is that, unlike what Nintendo did with Super Mario 64, Sega really could not abandon what made the Sonic the Hedgehog series a hit in the first place. Nintendo just started over from scratch. They made the game feel like Mario, but they did not get hung up on similarities with the earlier games in the series. Sega, on the contrary, decided to make everything as similar to the original three games as possible. The result is a two dimensional game set in three dimensions.

Sonic the Hedgehog is filled to the brim with jumping sequences. These jumping sequences were very prevalent in the earlier Sonic games, so I can understand where they were coming from. However, in three dimensions, with all the different views you must now use to complete everything effectively, these jumping sequences really should have been left out.

Another favorite thing in Sonic Adventure are races. There are races throughout the entire game. These races are mainly between Sonic and Tails. Depending on which character you control, you must race either Sonic or Tails to a certain location, or to complete a certain action first. These races are filled to the brim with jumps and leaps. Unfortunately, in a high speed race, you do not have time to change your view, so many of the jumps you make are blind. You will lose countless lives in these races just because you will just have to guess where the platform that is your destination is.

There are six characters that you can play as in Sonic Adventure. Many of them you will have met before. Sonic the Hedgehog, Knuckles the Echidna, Tails the whatever he is. There are also some new characters that round out the line-up. These are Amy Rose, E102Y, and Big the Cat. I believe that Big the Cat was in a previous Sonic the Hedgehog title, but he was never more than a bit character until now.

There are countless levels in Sonic the Hedgehog. These levels are all reached by train from the game’s main city. There are hundreds of locales inside the city to explore as well. Once you enter a level, you will notice there are Action Stages and Adventure Stages. Adventure Stages are fairly boring. There are no foes or enemies, and your only real objective is to find the next Action Stage. Action Stages, however, fit their name to a tee. Every objective you must complete in Sonic Adventure is in an Action Stage. All of the races, enemies, items to find, jumps, and most of the coins are found here. The Action Stages are what really make Sonic Adventure click.

GRAPHICS--7
I must admit the graphics are very good, but I am nowhere near as enamored with them as some other reviewers here at GameFAQs seem to be. The environments, especially the buildings look fantastic. These buildings are what I was most impressed with about the graphics in Sonic Adventure. Part of that may be because buildings are the only thing I can draw. The vehicles also look rather good, but they look quite a bit more cartoonish than the buildings, setting off an interesting blend of realism meets the Cartoon Network.

The character models are fairly nice as well. E102Y looks just like the robot that you would want to have as your very own. Unfortunately, E102Y especially, although this applies to all of the characters somewhat, does not move very fluidly. You will probably not notice this at first with any character except for E102Y.

The biggest problem that I have with the graphics, though, are the views. The views are horrible. The really sad, and scary thing, though, is that these views are very much improved over the Japanese version of Sonic Adventure. I am afraid to know, or learn, what they had to suffer through to play Sonic Adventure. These views, even when you change them, do not present you with a clear view of the action. Instead, just like the nosebleed seats at a fifty thousand seat baseball stadium, many times you will be looking out from behind a pole or a fence. Sega really should have spent more work on making the views workable.

MUSIC--3
SOUND--9
The music in Sonic Adventure stays, unfortunately, with Sega’s bread-and-butter music -- guitar rock. Many of you, if you have read previous reviews of mine, know how much I detest guitar rock, especially Sega’s guitar rock. Believe it or not, this guitar rock is worse than usual from Sega. Now, Sega is trying to blend its classic guitar rock with heavy metal, hard rock, and rap. And the end result is kind of a really bad Jon Bon Jovi song without words. Hence my synopsis.

The sound effects, however, are excellent, superb, and nothing short of a miracle compared to the music. The launch pads that Sonic and company can hurtle off of sound wonderfully like cartoonish springs. The noises that are heard when a character loses all of their rings, are exactly the same wonderful, classic sounds that were found in the first few Sonic the Hedgehog games. They are the exact same sound bites, except they have been upgraded to digital quality sound.

The voice acting in Sonic Adventure, though, is really what makes the game tick. The voices seem to fit the characters, especially Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, perfectly. Tails sounds just like the whiny fourth grader that I thought he was. Knuckles sounds just as obstreperous and rebellious as you could imagine. And the voice for Sonic blends his heroism and his arrogance into one sound that screams “I am Sonic!” The other voices are not as candid or expressive as these three, but they are impressive nonetheless.

CONTROL--7
Although I do not think the control is that impressive, I believe that the horrible views hampered it somehow. Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, and the whole gang do handle very responsively. It did take me some time to get used to controlling the characters on the Dreamcast controller. The Sonic series blended so well with the Genesis controller, it seems kind of weird playing a Sonic game anywhere else. All of the button’s functions are exactly what you expect, and would want them to be.

FUN--5
Sonic is just not all that fun. It is not fun for many reasons. One of which is that there are no multiplayer capabilities, something I really cannot understand. Most games of this genre these days do have multiplayer capabilities, and Sonic could have easily jumped on the bandwagon and hiked this rating up a few more points.

The Action and Adventure Stages are also very, very frustrating. The repetitiveness hardly helps either. The views help make Sonic Adventure less fun as well. There really is not all that much to do in the levels. In each of the Action Stages you have a very specific goal. Your goal is not variable like it is in Super Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie. In each Action Stage you have a specific task. If you do not complete that task, then you are just stuck trying until you run out of lives. You cannot decided to complete another one, because there is only one per each Action Stage with each character.

The most fun thing about Sonic Adventure, is the Chao Adventure, the game that you can load into your Visual Memory Unit, or VMU as I will call it from now on. I played this game for hours while driving around in the car. There really is not much of a point to the Chao Adventure but it is very fun an addicting anyway. You just load a Chao from Sonic Adventure into your VMU and then watch it walk along, fight other Chaos, and play games, especially memory games, with it to raise it’s statistics. It is a trillion times more fun than I made it sound.

CHALLENGE--MEDIUM TO HIGH
Sonic Adventure is also much more difficult than its predecessors. The Action Stages mainly rate about a medium difficulty. But there are a few stages, the Action Stages in which you must race another character among them, that have a difficulty level that is off the chart. For instance, in one Action Stage, in about the fourth world, that has an objective to beat Sonic in a race while you are controlling Tails, I tried for about three thousand times before finally defeating Sonic. Even then, I could only defeat Sonic by flying to the destination.

REPLAY VALUE--LOW TO MEDIUM
There is absolutely no incentive to beat Sonic Adventure once you have beaten it once. There are no multiplayer capabilities to make you want to play it again. The only reason that Sonic Adventure scored halfway to medium in the replay value category, is because you will play the Chao Adventure VMU game over and over again.

PROS
*The first real Sonic sequel since about 1994.
*The voice acting is superb.
*The Chao Adventure is the most worthwhile VMU game to date.

CONS
*The music is Sega’s worst ever.
*The horrible views will make you want to commit suicide.
*There is no replay value, except for the Chao Adventure.

CLOSING STATEMENT
Sonic Adventure may have been a long time in its coming, but unfortunately, all of that time was not spent making a spectacular game. Since it was launched with the Sega Dreamcast, Sonic Adventure seems very rushed, and there are many better ways to spend your money. There were even better ways to spend your money at launch.

OVERALL--6

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/28/00, Updated 07/18/01