RadioSEGA Review: Dreamcast Collection (Xbox 360)

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RadioSEGA Review: Dreamcast Collection (Xbox 360)

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If there is one thing SEGA has done that I can't complain about it's their last "collection" game. The SEGA Mega Drive Ultimate Collection was a surprisingly decent package filled with a fair amount of quality games all accessed through a pretty well designed menu with some extras. So naturally I expected the same from a Dreamcast collection.

If you were to ask someone who has played a Dreamcast what they thought of the Dreamcast chances are they would tell you of the good old days, the golden era of video games, of searching for sailors and being a sky pirate. In fact that may even be you, you would do that and don't even deny it. Yes, a collection of the masterpieces that graced the Dreamcast would be the greatest thing and here it is!

SEGA'S MOST BELOVED DREAMCAST GAMES IN A MUST-HAVE COLLECTION!

Not my words, SEGA's. Sadly this is a flat out lie. For one there are only four games, for two I would not consider any of these the most beloved, and I wouldn't consider this collection a must have either.

So what are the games you ask? Well first off is Sonic Adventure, the obvious choice since it's Sonic's first outing in a fully 3D game. Next up is Crazy Taxi, certainly one of the more famous Dreamcast games along with Space Channel 5 which is also on the collection. The final game is the famous SEGA Bass Fishing a... wait what? Of all the games they put a fishing game on here? What the hell.

I'll get into the games individually in a second, for now I need to bring up the collection itself. When you boot up the collection you're greeted with what is most certainly the worst menu I've ever seen from a large company. It's basically the four games logos on a background that changes depending on which game your selecting. The thing is though that the images are all low quality and the thing looks more like something from a homebrew emulator I would put on my Wii. One thing that's worth mentioning is that all the games are or will be available on PSN and XBLA, and the collection treats them as such. Exiting the game you're playing will not take you back to the game selection menu but will knock you back into the dashboard which can be rather irritating when I just wanted to move on to the next game. On the flipside at least you can access the games individually through your game library if the disc is in.
So how about them games huh?

...

In the next post!
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Sonic Adventure (DX)
Yea I'm going to get this out of the way right now, first off this isn't even the Dreamcast version, it's the broken mess PC version with all the new glitches and ugly graphical update. What makes this even better is that even though it's blatently the DX version SEGA decided to cut the DX extras out of the game so they can sell them to you for 400msp. Suddenly I don't mind Capcom charging the same so I can play as Jill in Marvel vs Capcom 3.

So Sonic Adventure is a really bad game, I'm not going to sugar coat that. I never once found myself enjoying this game while playing it. Between deaths due to the game bugging out and just general bad controls and gameplay it's a surprise I even cared enough to play through it all.

Gameplay is seperated through characters, play more or less the same apart from a few exceptions. All characters share the same levels apart from one which Sonic never goes to and one bonus level for Tails. One thing I really disliked were the boss fights which for lack of a better term I call "Crash Bandicoot bosses" which basically means you have to avoid them while they do their annoyingly long attack patterns and you can't attack them until the game says so. I've never liked this and I really hate that all Sonic games after also decided to do this (except the Advance games which found their own way to ruin bosses). The only exception to these boss types is when you fight one of the playable characters and most of the bosses for one character but since I'm about to do a quick run down of each character I'll mention it then.

All characters also have their story modes seperated between adventure field and action stage. I'm not going to explain action stages because I'm going to assume you're not a massive idiot, but adventure fields I will. Adventure fields are basically the hub world like Grunty's Castle in Banjo Kazooie, which means it's a pointless chore just to get from one stage to the next. You can talk to NPCs chilling around but they don't have anything interesting to say OH HEY I GUESS IT'S AN RPG NOW GUYS. There's also a glowing ball of light which will tell where you need to go, which was good for me because I was skipping the hell out of all the cutscenes.

Sonic the Hedghog
He's the dude with 'tude or whatever awful slogan SEGA gave him because he constantly looks angry, had he been created today he would probably just been called Angry Hedghog. He has the most action stages of all characters (a whopping 10) and unlike Sonic Adventure 2 you never have to play any of the other terrible stages to get to his. The thing is though... Sonic isn't very fun to control making his stages actually pretty crap. He jerks around at the slightest touch of the analog stick and he also seems to have a big wall fetish and will gravitate towards pretty much any wall while he's running. Probably to rub one out over it or something, either way it's really annoying when the game will sometimes decide walls shouldn't be solid and whoops there goes Sonic down another bottomless pit. All his stages pretty much involve running from A to B, so at least it's simple. But of course like Mario you can't drag a mascot kicking and screaming to a 3D game without giving them some new moves. Sadly unlike Mario Sonic's new moves suck and barely work, which is great because a lot of the time they're actually necessary to get around. First off is the homing attack... I'd say it does exactly what it says, but that would be a lie, more like it tries to do what it says but usually fails. The game will line up enemies for what I call homing attack bridges but sometimes Sonic will go for the wrong enemy and fall or his attack will miss and fall or he'll circle the enemy for a while and give up... and fall. The other new move is the light speed dash where after charging he'll apparently follow a trail of rings... guess what usually happens (if you didn't guess he'll mess up and fall then I don't even know what to say to you).

Tails
Oh hey it's Sonic's annoying sidekick, he's back again to kick some tail. His stages are, except for one, cut down Sonic levels and he has to race Sonic. This seems really unfair since Sonic is apparently the fastest thing alive (ignoring the fact that he gets outrun by pretty much anything) but I guess Sonic gave Tails a chance because he was constantly a good ways behind me. Tails is probably one of the more fun characters to play as, he still jerks around like Sonic and also has some attraction to walls but he can fly and you can use that to your advantage and cut corners or find special speed boosts, his last stage in particular is alright.

Knuckles
YOU RUN AROUND SMALL LEVELS LOOKING FOR PIECES OF THE MASTER EMERALD I HATE PLAYING AS KNUCKLES I WILL NOT WASTE TOO MUCH TIME TALKING ABOUT KNUCKLES BECAUSE HE'S A PRICK. At least none of his levels contain terrible rap.

Amy Rose
I don't know which idiot thought anyone would want to play as Amy but someone did... and they're an idiot. Amy is so slow SO SLOW, thankfully she only has 3 stages but jesus fuck they're way too long, probably because Amy has to haul her slow ass around everywhere. Conceptually Amy's stages are supposed to be different as she's being chased by some sort of super invincible robot... but he's barely a threat so you're basically just running to the end of the level. You can do stuff like hide in barrels... but theres really no point.

Big the Cat
First original character for this game... and he's pretty bad. He's also slow both physically and mentally, but that's alright because he's fat and therefor I guess being retarded is hilarious. Though I guess I should give props to SEGA for not going with the cliched smart cat thing. His stages are actually really weird, unlike everyone else his goal... is to fish! Heck yea, the fishing mechanics are solid enough and it means the bodies of water in the game get populated and I have a massive boner for well populated water, probably why I liked Endless Ocean so much.

Gamma
He's a robot and he shoots stuff. Unlike the abysmal Eggman and Tails stages in Sonic Adventure 2, Gamma's stages are more fast paced with a timer constantly ticking down which you can refill by killing enemies. It's probably the best character to play as in the game, even better is that only his last boss uses the "crash bandicoot boss" thing.

Super Sonic
You fight a boss, it's boring.

Of course all characters are also plagued by the awful camera which seems more inclined to show you how nice the wall textures are than what you need to see.

Graphically the game is pretty bad, I mean beyond the fact that it's an old game, the DX upgrades are just flat out bad. They made eveything slighty darker and gave all the characters this weird shine like they've been waxed and polished. If the character select screen is anything to go by I think they were trying to go for a sort of celshaded look? Either way it doesn't look like that in game.

The sound is quite decent, some of the music is good and the sound effects are very Sonicy and nothing seems to have been lost during the port, voice acting is really bad though but that's fine as I skipped all the cutscenes because...

... I don't give a shit about the story, I don't care about some stupid tribe of Echidnas, I don't care about Eggman releasing some sort of water monster. It's not interesting and the cutscenes and pointless flashback bollocks just wasted time.

Port Quality
I don't know how much of this is DX based but this is an awful port, graphics will occasionally bug out but the biggest problem is the load times, load times between adventure fields suck and what sucks even more is load times when you pause the game. I had to pause the game to sneeze and I was ready to resume before the game had even shown the pause menu. Also it doesn't run in full screen and has two uglyass borders down the side, I image I could change it but I shouldn't have had to.
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Crazy Taxi
Are you ready to make some CUUUUUUUUUURAZY MONEY? I am which is good because that's what Crazy Taxi is all about. Actually it's all about getting people to their destination as quick as possible while driving as dangerously as possible. Now I'm no expert on taxis, I can't even drive, but I'm pretty sure taxi drivers want to take as long as possible so they end up being paid more... but then real taxi drivers don't get like $300 per fare plus extras if they jump ramps or cut through traffic like a maniac. Crazy Taxi was ported from arcades so it's pretty simple and all about the score, but since this is the console version it has a few extras. First off there's arcade mode and original mode, the difference is pretty much just the maps both modes have the same options of arcade rules (earn extra time for each fare) or just to play for a set amount of time. The other option is the Crazy Box which is like a series of challenges, it's pretty decent but some of them are so hard.

Port Quality
The game looks fine, it runs in full screen and nothing stands out as being too bad. There is some pop-up and wall textures are pretty bad but you won't be looking at the walls for too long if you're playing it right. One thing that is missing though is the soundtrack by The Offspring, now I really don't like The Offspring but it's really hard to imagine Crazy Taxi music done by anyone else. Somehow SEGA managed to make the music even worse by apparently giving instruments to monkeys who seem to just jump on them and occasionally ook into a microphone. Oh and none of the destinations are real stores like Pizza Hut. The announcer's voice is also really quiet and almost impossible to hear in game.

Space Channel 5 Part 2
Space Channel 5 is up there with Back to the Future 2 as reasons to why I will find the future a massive disappointment, I'll never ride a hover board and the news will never be reported by sexy space women who have dance offs with dance terrorists. Space Channel 5 Part 2 is the improved sequal to Space Channel 5, which makes me wonder why they didn't do the same with Crazy Taxi as the sequal to that is also much better. The game has you play as Ulala who is a swinging space reporter for space channel 5 set during the space 60s as she space reports on space terrorists who force people to space dance on space stations. Also Space Michael Jackson is in this game. Anyway Space Channel 5 has pretty much everything I'd want from a game, lot's of extras, secrets, unlockables, costumes, and a really cool feel to the whole thing... so imagine my upset when I realise how awful I am at it. Space Channel 5 is a Rhythm game, much like Parappa the Rappa on PS1, the only difference and what ruins it for me is that Space Channel 5 has no button prompts, you actually have to figure out using rhythm which is great because I have the rhythm of a drunken bull after several blows to the head with an iron mace, just to clear the first stage I had to take the loading screens advice and assign all the moves to the same button since it's the closest thing the game has to an easy mode.

Space Port Quality
The only problem I have with the space port is the space fmv cutscenes are really blurry and it's hard to see anything.

SEGA Bass Fishing
Yet another port of an arcade game, I'm really not sure why this game is even on this collection, who the hell is asking for this? It's a fishing game! There are a few modes, arcade mode which has you gain time for big catches and original mode which is almost like a story mode. It has no story but since I've been reading a lot of Shonen manga recently I just made on up on the spot. It's about a guy whose Grandfather was the King of the Fisherman when he was alive and the main character, blessed with his Grandfathers haunted rod is out to reclaim the title by entering all the fishing tournemants. I can't even say much about this... it's a fun enough distraction I guess? Some of the fishing controls seem abit jerky and to be honest I'd rather just be playing the fishing minigame in Zelda.

One thing I did like were the graphics, it's still a really nice looking game and there's lots of detail underwater and it's pretty well populated which as I mentioned before is something I really like.

Port Quality
Game still looks fine the only problem I had was, like with Crazy Taxi, the announcer being really quite.

So that's all the games, outside of Sonic Adventure they're still pretty fun to play buuuut ehh, it's really hard to recommend this collection as it'd be cheaper just to get Crazy Taxi and, when it's finally up, Space Channel 5 on XBLA and PSN since they're the best games on the disc. If you're some kind of freak and actually like all of these games or if you just really like low quality menus then knock yourself out, for everyone else? I wouldn't bother.
2/5
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Post by Killer French Bread »

Bass Fishing was a legendary game in the arcades, and pretty badass on the Dreamcast with the plastic rod. Now everyone seems to have forgotten it and sees it as some irrelevant oddity on thie collection though.
Tic Tac, sir?
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Post by Reknoc »

I thought this was the game that used that accessory. Probably would have been more fun with it.
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Post by Killer French Bread »

Yeah it probably would have been, I haven't played it on this collection yet so I'm only guessing. But that's my point, instead of reviewing it like that, most people's reaction just seems to be "what the fuck is this doing here?". It was fairly popular when it came out, got good reviews. I'd rather play it than bloody sonic adventure yet again.
Tic Tac, sir?
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Post by Reknoc »

I can agree with that, but Sonic Adventure was to be expected. But when it's only four games it seems odd when SEGA Bass Fishing gets chosen over something like the Virtua games. I guess, at least, they're filling a niche.
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Post by Killer French Bread »

Can you just release a game with Tim Henman's face in it without going through a load of licensing issues? Sounds they had enough problems with Crazy Taxi.
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Post by Reknoc »

Probably not but then they are making a new Virtua Tennis so it might make it easier.
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Post by Quills on Wheels »

Well, I'm not going to argue about you saying that Sonic Adventure DX is a shit game (Since we did that before and you aren't really what I would call.... a normal gamer), isn't Sonic Adventure DX for PC and original Adventure game for Xbox? I looked at the covers and the Xbox one seemed to be the original one.
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