flash-hammer's Full Review: Sonic Adventure for Dreamcast
When Sega needed to launch it’s revolutionary Dreamcast console with a bang, they turned to the character and the franchise that brought them their greatest success: Sonic the Hedgehog.
But, with the age of 3D upon the gaming world, and Sonic’s main rival Mario already in 3D via Super Mario 64, the Sonic team would have to come up with something special to help Sonic make an impact.
The game’s story goes like this.
Dr.Robotnik has awakened some sort of monster named Chaos that feeds off of the infamous Chaos emeralds. Naturally Sonic and Tails are out to stop their archenemy. Meanwhile, the floating island on which Knuckles lives upon has sunk from the sky into the ocean, this happened after Knuckles fought a strange blue monster and the master emerald that sat atop the island was shattered. Amy is out to protect a small bird that one of Robotnik’s robots is out to capture, and naturally her path crosses with Sonic, newcomer Big the Cat is trying to find his friend Froggy, who mysteriously grew a tail after eating a chaos emerald. And E-102, Dr.Robotnik’s latest creation, is on a mission to destroy Sonic, only for a chance encounter to alter his plans…
Sonic Adventure is a 3D platforming game that takes in many other playing styles as it goes. You start the game as good old Sonic, fighting crime in the city of station square, but as the game goes on you unlock other characters who each have their own sub-quests and gaming styles.
With Sonic you are simply out to reach the end of the level, and collect the Chaos Emerald or liberate the captured animals. With Tails, you have to do the same but you are to race against a computer controlled Sonic to complete them.
Knuckles levels see him hunting out pieces of Emerald or other artefacts, Amy’s see her trying to avoid capture from an evil robot, Big’s involve him fishing for his friend Froggy (I really wish I was making that up) and E-102 Gamma’s involve him shooting everything in sight.
However, within each quest are sub games that alter the playing style. Sonic and Tails both have to do Sky Chase levels, in which you take Tails’ Emerald powered aeroplane and mount a siege on the evil Dr.Robotnik’s ‘Egg Carrier’ and both having Snow/Sand-boarding levels to contend with to name a few.
Once you complete the game with each character, Super Sonic is unlocked, it is only through playing as Super Sonic that all the elements of the plot are revealed.
The game controls fairly simply. A is jump for all the characters and X, Y and B perform their special action e.g. Sonic’s spin dash or Big casting his fishing rod. Big’s fishing takes on a whole other scheme of controls, but it really is a case of getting the fish to bite and mashing A.
The Analogue stick controls your character, and the D-pad changes the camera view.
The game is incredibly easy to pick up and play, and is also pretty damned fun. Instead of just jumping from one stage to another, you have to run and solve puzzles as to how to get to the next stage. The ‘Adventure Fields’ in which you run about looking for the next level are impressive, with cars driving around people walking about.
The graphics, for being a first generation DC game, are pretty great. Even nowadays they aren’t by any means poor. Some of the cut-scenes are actually quite spectacular even compared with Xbox stuff.
It contains some impressive scenes that you get the feeling were really just there to showcase how powerful and cool the DC could be.
The only major complaint is the camera, which can be horrible, and the D-pad will not always let you change it.
The sound is also quite impressive. Some of the music is irritating, while some is simply irritatingly catchy. Each character has their own distinctive voice, although Robotnik constantly repeats the same phrases (“get a load of …this” ”I don’t believe it”, “he’s not going to get away with this”).
The controls are all good enough in the way of responsiveness.
One aspect in which the game is slightly disappointing in is difficulty. Apart from camera angle induced death and the horror of fishing levels, the game is a bit simple. Although I’m sure it was made with kids in mind so it can’t be held in too low a degree for it.
I would also like an explanation as to the point of Big. why does Tikal give him a mad flashback?why is he at the last battle?, he hardly has anything to do with the story.
At the end of the day, Sonic Adventure is a fun little game that a few camera angle issues aside, is one of the best platform games since the 16-Bit era.
While some of the things in the game are hardly original, Super Sonic is essentially what would happen if Sonic went Super Saiyan like the folks in Dragon Ball, and Perfect Chaos is just a watery version of Godzilla’s 1989 plant based foe Biollante, but these are done in more of a homage way than a rip-off (I read somewhere that Sonic team were all Godzilla fans, so that explain Aquallante)
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