"A game that is so easily attacked it's almost laughable."

"This game seems good at first. Then you beat it." Those two, seemingly vague sentences perfectly sum up the entire Sonic Adventure experience.

GRAPHICS: 10/10

Yeah, the graphics are some of the best I have ever personally witnessed in my entire life. Moving on to more important areas...

MUSIC: 9/10

The composing is very good in some areas (Red Mountain, Speed Highway, Chaos' Theme, Robotnik Theme, E's last boss, etc...) but in some of the areas, I dunno, it just turned me off. More points are marked down due to the fact that the voice acting in this game is pretty lame, and sometimes annoying. If I hear Sonic spout out some hip-hop, "cool" pop phrase one more friggin' time... :P

GAMEPLAY: 4/10

Sonic the Hedgehog: (4/10)

If someone were to ask me what the meaning of "linear gameplay" was, I would tell them to play Sonic's action stages. Now, I admit, I've seen some pretty linear stages in my playing career, but Sonic's stages take the cake!! My idea of next-generation gameplay is NOT -- I'm afraid -- holding forward on the analog stick and watching as the CPU controls my fate on the fly, while I sit here watching the scenery fly by at eye-melting speed. And that's all you do -- hold forward on the control stick. Sure, every once and awhile, you need to tap the jump button, but aside from that, nothing. The only stages you really didn't do this to were Egg Carrier and a few areas inside of the Lost World.

Tails the Fox: (3/10)

Hah! What a lame excuse for an quest. You basically play Sonic's levels and try to beat the 90210 reject to the end of the stage.

Knuckle's the Echnida: (5/10)

I was thinking about giving it a 1, but I was feeling nice and gave it a 5 for effort and a slight twinge of originality. It tries to mimic the style of "other" 3D platformers (Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Croc etc.) where they slap you in a large world and tell you to find a bunch of items. However, they stuck a nasty hot/cold system in there that even a five-year old wouldn't have any problems solving.

Amy the Hedgehog: (3/10)

Hold the control stick forward, and easily avoid the robot that chases you. The most difficult puzzles in the game await you -- pushing colored blocks to their color-coded squares. Hah! Is Sonic Team intentionally trying to make me dislike this game?

Bigs the Cat: (0/10)

You read it here first, ladies and gentlemen, I have given something in my reviews a WHOPPING ZERO! We're really scraping the bottom of the barrel this time. Now, fishing is bad enough, but when you make a fishing game with a bad engine added in...things get horribly, horribly messy.

E-102 Gamma: (2/10)

I do so enjoy shooters. Give me some interesting enemies, a difficult challenge that requires skill (as opposed to a lot of ammunition), some nice weapons, and Hell, I'm in pure bliss. This quest fails on all three fronts, quite miserably at that I may add. Enemies pose no difficulty -- point and aim. Challenge is non-existent. You only get a simple gun that you can upgrade, making it more powerful, even though the "weak" one is more than you need in the first place. Throw me a freakin' bone here! If you're going to try to make shooter fans happy with this sad little quest, at least put in SOME effort!

Super Sonic: (3/10)

After completing all the quests, you get this bloated adventure. After watching a ridiculously long cinema that you can't skip, and then seeing a very nice FMV, you get to battle the last boss of the game. Now, when the last boss of a game is cheesy, I feel ripped off, unless the game was just of such unquestionable quality that it doesn't matter (the only examples I can think of off hand would be Mario 64 and GoldenEye)...but this trout was just so pathetic I winced in pain. It had so much promise! I mean, sheesh, just look at that hulking beast! There's so many possibilities it's not even funny -- but they just flush it down the tubes.

More Points:

* You can NOT lose at the sub-games. I repeat, you can NOT lose at the sub-games. No matter how pathetic your gaming skills may seem, you can't. A perfect example would be the skiing in the ice and desert worlds...Crikey, it seems like they're just there to show off DC's graphical capabilities.

* Speaking of all around difficulty, if you want a game to test your gaming skills, Sonic Adventure ain't the game to get. I can't even conjure up a sentence to display how mind-boggingly EASY this game is. Some games are easy, but enjoyable...this game lacks the latter.

* The bosses (Mostly Chaos) were well designed, but their fighting attacks were wretched. If you had given me 10 minutes with the design team, I would have come up with some crazy battles...but it seems like they didn't even try to make the bosses interesting.

EXTRA BONUSES AND REPLAY VALUE: 6/10

You can earn some 130 or so Emblems by beating levels on certain times, or by completing certain objectives. Let me put it simply: these Emblems are not hard to get. Usually, you can get them by getting to the end of the level as fast as you can...but when the level has a few easy-to-find shortcuts to help you along, it doesn't exactly take much to get them. It's just added in to keep you playing.

On a final note, does anyone understand why they added the Chao races? I mean, raising them up is boring enough, but when you finally go to race, it's all pre-determined. Not exactly my idea of action...not to mention it screams, "Chocobo", "Pokemon", and "Tomagotch" so loudly I need ear-muffs.

OVERALL GAME RATING: 5/10

I would buy it for $30 or maybe even $40. But for $50? Puh-lease. I own it, and got it pre-owned for $25 (sweet deal, eh?), and can say that I did enjoy myself some. When you first get it, *BAM* you will have fun. But when you start to get close to the end...you look back, and realize it was the graphics that made it so enjoyable.

In the end, Sonic Adventure is a rushed game that Sega frantically threw together just to make their launch look better. It's sad, really. A delay or two, and this game could've been drop-down amazing...I look forward to Sonic Adventure 2, if it exists.

Sincerely signed,
marshmallow

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/05/99, Updated 12/05/99