RadioSEGA Review: Sonic Adventure 2 (Dreamcast)
Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2010 12:10 pm
(Considering I'm supposed to be the "retro" guy my only other official review is for a game that came out this year. So here's something abit older.)
Looking back on Sonic Adventure and I realise that it's not very good. But it's more of a first game in the series jank, there's the potential there for something quite decent it just needs some refining and fixing. Sonic the Hedgehog had this and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was what happened after, a much much better game. So logically Sonic Adventure 2 should be as good as Sonic 2, right?
Well no. Instead of taking what was good and improving it while fixing or removing what was bad, Sonic Adventure 2 seems to have done entirely the opposite, taken what was bad and making it worse while breaking or removing what made it good. That said at least they did remove the awful hub world rubbish.
So in Sonic Adventure 1 you chose Sonic and as you played through his story mode you unlocked other characters you can choose to play as for their own story. This was a pretty good way of doing it because each character played quite differently. In Sonic Adventure 2 you choose between Team Light and Team Dark, and you shuffle through different character's levels in the team. Unfortunatly 4/6 characters (2/3 for a team) had some absolutely awful levels. So in Team Edward you have Sonic, Knuckles and Tails. Sonic and Knuckles stages are more or less the same as what they were in the first game but Tails' stages are more like Gamma's in Sonic Adventure 1 only without the time limit, on longer levels with a slower robot. Team Jacob consists of Eggman and two new and pretty awful characters Rouge the Bat and Shadow the Hedgehog. Rouge is some kind of horrible sexed up thief and Shadow is a mopey rubbish redesign of Sonic with hoverskates. They all have their Light Team equivelent; Eggman plays the same as Tails, Rouge as Knuckles and somewhat obviously Shadow as Sonic.
So then gameplay happens! First let's look at Sonic and Shadow's stages, easily the best of the bunch and also funnily enough the least common. So Sonic Adventure had some jank, Sonic didn't always control well and some of the "advanced" techniques were kind rubbish to pull off. Now couple that, make it abit worse and also make sure sometimes the stages would just glitch out and not let you hold on to something you need to, or let you fall through the floor and you basically have the running stages. Of course the ring dash thing also makes a return and is natually incredibly choosey about letting you actually do the move instead of just falling into the bottom less pit that most of the stages consist of.
Next up are Knuckles and Rouges, the treasure hunt stages. Big boring areas where 3 items will be hidden in random locations from a selection of several. The stages tend to be just way to big making most of them a massive chore while you search around for items, some of which require the wall crawling Knuckles is somewhat known for (Rouge can also do it as well as gliding) which is, suprise surprise, sometimes abit glitchy.
Now for the worst offenders. Eggman and Tails' awful mech stages. These seem to be twice as long as everyone elses stages, with painfully slow characters. Oh and let's not forget that there's platforming, do your tiny jumps and hope you make it and that the floor is actually there this time instead of just looking like it's there.
After you do both teams theres a special stage which has you go through as all of the characters bringing along all of the problems with their stages. Totally not worth the hassle.
There are also some badly thought out driving stages.
Graphically it's not bad, it's certainly an improvement over Sonic Adventure and can sometimes look pretty decent. There's not much else to say about it since it's alright for the Dreamcast but was nothing mind blowing.
Sound, haha, oh dear. Voice acting was awful, but that's not surprising. What is surprising however is just how bad most of the music is. Some of it's so bad I can't help but kinda like just because of how awful it is (Pumpkin Hill). Sound effects are about what you'd expect, but in the DC version the ring sound would sometimes cut out.
Story is a Sonic story, awful awful awful. Next.
Oh... well. So there you have it a Sonic game where for the most part you don't play as Sonic but his stupid friends with awful gameplay. A massive waste of the potential Sonic Adventure had shown a little of.
1/5
Looking back on Sonic Adventure and I realise that it's not very good. But it's more of a first game in the series jank, there's the potential there for something quite decent it just needs some refining and fixing. Sonic the Hedgehog had this and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was what happened after, a much much better game. So logically Sonic Adventure 2 should be as good as Sonic 2, right?
Well no. Instead of taking what was good and improving it while fixing or removing what was bad, Sonic Adventure 2 seems to have done entirely the opposite, taken what was bad and making it worse while breaking or removing what made it good. That said at least they did remove the awful hub world rubbish.
So in Sonic Adventure 1 you chose Sonic and as you played through his story mode you unlocked other characters you can choose to play as for their own story. This was a pretty good way of doing it because each character played quite differently. In Sonic Adventure 2 you choose between Team Light and Team Dark, and you shuffle through different character's levels in the team. Unfortunatly 4/6 characters (2/3 for a team) had some absolutely awful levels. So in Team Edward you have Sonic, Knuckles and Tails. Sonic and Knuckles stages are more or less the same as what they were in the first game but Tails' stages are more like Gamma's in Sonic Adventure 1 only without the time limit, on longer levels with a slower robot. Team Jacob consists of Eggman and two new and pretty awful characters Rouge the Bat and Shadow the Hedgehog. Rouge is some kind of horrible sexed up thief and Shadow is a mopey rubbish redesign of Sonic with hoverskates. They all have their Light Team equivelent; Eggman plays the same as Tails, Rouge as Knuckles and somewhat obviously Shadow as Sonic.
So then gameplay happens! First let's look at Sonic and Shadow's stages, easily the best of the bunch and also funnily enough the least common. So Sonic Adventure had some jank, Sonic didn't always control well and some of the "advanced" techniques were kind rubbish to pull off. Now couple that, make it abit worse and also make sure sometimes the stages would just glitch out and not let you hold on to something you need to, or let you fall through the floor and you basically have the running stages. Of course the ring dash thing also makes a return and is natually incredibly choosey about letting you actually do the move instead of just falling into the bottom less pit that most of the stages consist of.
Next up are Knuckles and Rouges, the treasure hunt stages. Big boring areas where 3 items will be hidden in random locations from a selection of several. The stages tend to be just way to big making most of them a massive chore while you search around for items, some of which require the wall crawling Knuckles is somewhat known for (Rouge can also do it as well as gliding) which is, suprise surprise, sometimes abit glitchy.
Now for the worst offenders. Eggman and Tails' awful mech stages. These seem to be twice as long as everyone elses stages, with painfully slow characters. Oh and let's not forget that there's platforming, do your tiny jumps and hope you make it and that the floor is actually there this time instead of just looking like it's there.
After you do both teams theres a special stage which has you go through as all of the characters bringing along all of the problems with their stages. Totally not worth the hassle.
There are also some badly thought out driving stages.
Graphically it's not bad, it's certainly an improvement over Sonic Adventure and can sometimes look pretty decent. There's not much else to say about it since it's alright for the Dreamcast but was nothing mind blowing.
Sound, haha, oh dear. Voice acting was awful, but that's not surprising. What is surprising however is just how bad most of the music is. Some of it's so bad I can't help but kinda like just because of how awful it is (Pumpkin Hill). Sound effects are about what you'd expect, but in the DC version the ring sound would sometimes cut out.
Story is a Sonic story, awful awful awful. Next.
Oh... well. So there you have it a Sonic game where for the most part you don't play as Sonic but his stupid friends with awful gameplay. A massive waste of the potential Sonic Adventure had shown a little of.
1/5