Sonic Adventure
Reviewed by Dale Kulas
The Game
Sonic is back in his first full adventure game since the
little known Sonic 3D Blast a few years ago. Just about
everyone from the Sonic world is here to join in on the fun
for this launch title, so will it be as breathtaking and exciting
as past Sonic games? Let's get onto the review and find out.
The Story
Well, Dr. Robotnick (now known in North America as his
Japanese name, Egg Man, I believe this is one of his last
games to go by Dr. Robotnick) and a host of other famous
bosses are up to their usual antics, and you must stop them,
and beat various levels in a real time 3-D world. Your
objective is to collect all the emblems before a brand new
boss gets a hold of them.
Graphics
Well, Sonic is finally in gorgeous 3-D environments, which
look way better than the stuff I saw from Sonic 3-D Blast
and Sonic R on the Saturn. Everything looks great, the
opening movie really got me into this game. The environments
look just marvelous, and you can tell the smallest things
apart like skyscra*ers, and the shadows of people in them.
The palm trees, lakes, docks, highways and everything look
really darn close to the real thing. All the Sonic character
are beautifully updated in 3-D models, Sonic, Tails,
Knuckles, and the rest of the gang look great, and just like
the did before, but more realistic and polished off. The
game moves at a really fast rate, and I believe I didn't
even run into any slowdown at all in the game. The only
thing I believe I had a problem with was the camera angles,
on occasion they got in the way of game play and it lead me
to a few missed jumps and spins, but this wasn't major, and
the visuals are really impressive for a first generation
Dreamcast game.
Sound
All the main characters talk throughout the game and you
have the option of having a text box and voice, or voice
only which makes the cinematic give off a feel for the Sonic
cartoon show! And yes, Tails is annoying as ever as he keeps
on shouting for Sonic to be with him all the time. The
background music is excellent, maybe a little bit on the
kiddy side, but fits the theme for this game well, but
there's this one tune that is tedious where it repeats the
lyric, 'I wanna fly high!' with some tune you'd find off
an episode of Reading Rainbow, which combined, is the most
annoying tune I ever heard. Plus in some of the racing
tracks if your racing as Tails, Sonic gets annoying when he
keeps on saying, 'Alright Tails' whenever you pass him.
But for the most part, the audio is really impressive for this game.
Game play
The game controls fairly well, and reminiscent of past sonic
games. The control stick allows you to move in true 3-D,
which I prefer a lot more than the past Sonic games. The
four main buttons allow you to do the basic Sonic Stuff like
spin and jump. The game plays just like the rest of the
Sonic games where you collect rings which act as your life
bar, and lose them when you make contact with an enemy. You
explore a 3-D world, and in certain parts you go into
'stages' where you race through a stage and try to beat as
fast as possible, some of these might be your basic stages
where you try to make it to the end, or in some cases, a
race where you try to beat your opponent first (like in one
fun part of the game you go snow boarding).
You start off only playable as Sonic, and you have to beat
action stages with certain goals to complete the stage,
after doing so you'll unlock Tails, and after beating a
couple of stages with him, you'll unlock Knuckles, and the
rest of the crew, including some new characters. The action
stages are fun to play, and it's amazing how they manage to
pull off so much animation at once, there's also some cool
racing stages you can do where you have to beat Sonic by
either in a running competition or on snow boards! I don't
know about you, but I'm pretty good at adventure games
without using strategy guides, and I found myself getting
lost multiple times and taking forever to find the next part
in the game, which makes it a little frustrating. All your
progress is saved on a VMU, so you can continue where you
left off at anytime.
Replay Value
If you save a Chao (a new character to the Sonic world,
similar to a Tamigoutchi or PokŽmon) to your VMU after
'harvesting' it from the Chao garden, you can play the
mini game, 'Chao Adventure', on your VMU, it's much like
Tamagotchi or Pocket Pikachu, where you raise your Chao,
building up his strength and so on. You can upload your Chao
in the game and take part in Chao competitions like races!
You can also go to the official Sonic Adventure web site
where you can post high scores. And I'm sure you'll be
playing forever trying to beat this game and find
everything, so Sonic Team managed to stuff lots of stuff to
keep your hands tied.
In Brief
+: Superb visuals, Nice Voice Acting, the whole Chao raising
side quest is pretty neat
-: Awkward camera angles causes some bad game play, game can
get a bit frustrating at moments
The Final Ratings Rundown
Graphics: 9. 0
Sound: 8. 5
Game play: 7. 1
Replay Value: 8. 2
Overall: 8.2 out of 10
Comments
A really great first Sonic game on the Dreamcast, which is
flawed a little bit, but still fun to play. Most Sonic fans
should buy this game because it will most likely live up to
their expectations, if you're not a Sonic nut, I recommend
renting first. Oh, and I'm sorry if I missed some elements
of this game in this review, because it's been several
months since I played because I sold it to Roadkill (hey, I
needed the $20), but when I consulted him to borrow the game
for this review, I found it he too was a bit frustrated
about the game play and really didn't like the game, so he
sold the game for a measly $8 to Premier Video. But I
believe I got everything about this game down accurately,
just make sure you got a strategy guide while playing.
OR
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