Game Review:
Sonic Adventure 2.
Action Platformer on SPEED. Or with speed. I don't know.
1-2 Player, with 8 player chao races
Main story is about 5-10 hours. The extras can concievably go on forever!
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| Double the Hedgehog, Double the Fun |
Sonic! Sonic the Hedgehog! You're cool!
10 years ago, those words brought a new kind of side scroller. A game about speed more than exploration. Sonic the Hedgehog. 10 years later, he's still around, and his latest game kicks serious spoon.
The game's story is split into 2 sides- instead of the six in SA2. Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails make up the Hero story, and Dr. Eggman, plus newcomers Shadow and Rouge, make up the Dark story. Yes, the bad guys are playable! You can play as Eggman, Shadow, and Rouge as they try to take over the planet! DIE KILL DEATH.. ahem. Or play as the other side, and stop them. Instead of having the SA1-Style character selection, you select a story and you progress through each stage as the character who finishes that stage. For instance, Hero starts with Sonic's escape from a military helecopter, then Knuckles once again searching for the Master Emerald shards, and then a Tails stage in Prison Lane.
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| Railgrinding is fun! |
The stages are broken up into 3 basic styles- Knuckles and Rouge do treasure hunt stages- made harder this time by the HUGENESS of the stages, plus the hintballs are replaced with puzzle clue monitors. And when I say huge, I mean huge. It's like.. Huge. You know what big is right? Larger than that. Shadow and Sonic play speed-based stages- long stages with rails galore. Tails and Eggman take to walking robots with lock-on homing missles and hover boosters- similar, but much cooler, than Gamma's stages in SA1. Each character and his or her rival have similar moves along with similar stages. Sonic and Shadow have familiar speed, homing attack, and dashing abilities, along with rail grinding (like JGR) and a new Light Dash that doesn't require charging up; Tails and Eggman both have similar locking and boosting abilities; Rouge and Knuckles can both climb, dig, and glide.
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| Shadow also grinds. Woo. |
By far, the coolest stages are Sonic and Shadow's. Fast and even FASTER if you know what you're doing- they can be completed in record time if you know the best paths. Hit an enemy, light dash from midair, land on a rail- each stage has a way to finish it without even stopping. It's old-school gameplay in 3D, and that's what people want. The stages are varied as well- some like City Escape have a little of everything, while others like Final Rush are nothing but rails- and let me tell you that highspeed jumping gets difficult.
Tails/Eggman stages are for the most part pretty cool. Early on the stages aren't that interesting, but later on you have shots firing everywhere as you decend through a gauntlet of enemies and lasers. The cool thing is that, unlike in SA1, the stages are all designed for that character, so it's a lot more entertaining. Of course, the levels are slow and too big and the mech doesn't jump high enough, but what can you do- Eggman will always be second to a Hedgehog.
The kind of level that most people complain about is the treasure hunting stages. I find them a nice change of pace and a pretty good brain workout- they're not THAT difficult to figure out but it's not uncommon to spend upwards 30 minutes on a single stage- especially some of the later ones like Mad Space.
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| Like every other Sonic Team game, there are references to other Sonic Team games. |
There are also other levels that differentiate from the norm. Every character has bosses- either large enemies like Egg Golem or their rivals. Also, some levels have different goals than normal- there's a car stage with Tails, for instance. It's all interesting, at least.
Once you finish the entire story you unlock some new features. Every stage you finish you can access from Stage Select and work to get extra emblems on them. Also, there is boss attack and- this is really cool, a Scene Selector, allowing you to play a completed Story from any point in the game. Liked the first meeting between Sonic and Shadow? Replay it!
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| Love them or hate them, Chao raising is here to stay |
The wealth of extra modes will keep you busy for a long time. A more advanced Chao raising subgame is included as well- Hero or Dark Chao can be raised and raced, and can be powered up using either Chaos Drives or animals. The thing about finding animals in this game is that most of the robots you fight aren't Eggman creations- they're government robots on auto-pilot and are powered by Chaos Drives. There are some Badniks in the game, however, including some E-series swatbots- they DO drop animals, but most animals are found hidden in the stages. Most of this must sound confusing if you arent' an SA buff.. but truthfully I'm not all that interested in Chao rasing. They're like toothaches.
Now, this wouldn't be much of a review if I didn't go over the bad points. There are some timing issues with the voices- and the american voices are largely those used in SA1- if you hated Sonic's, Amy's, or Tail's voices in SA1, you'll hate them here, too. A Japanese voice track is available, with subtitles, if you want, though. Plus, there are a few minor camera issues- nothing as bad as SA1, however.
All in all, it's an excellent game no DC owner should be without. That includes you, Al-Azif.
Let's give it... Pi stars, just because I can!
-webrunner, who is less blue and spikey then one may be led to beleive
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