Sonic Adventure

September 19th, 2010 at 5:25 am -

It’s a surreal feeling, reviewing a game that is over a decade old – especially when I’ve completed said game multiple times for multiple consoles. I know I’m not alone in saying that Sonic Adventure was a very important game for me. It was an indicator of what the Dreamcast was capable of, a proper 3D Sonic game and perhaps the only 100% successful use of the extended Sonic cast since the Sonic and Knuckles games to further the gameplay beyond ‘run and jump’.

But it is also very difficult to go back. The brain has a way of enhancing the memory of things and, in my mind, Sonic Adventure was either going to live up to my memory of 10/10 or it was going to fall flat and I wouldn’t be able to look at it in an unbiased way. If the 360 port wasn’t perfect, I was worried that I’d be so put off that I’d feel like giving it something completely unfair and uncalled for.

The truth is that Sonic Adventure is unchanged by the time. It is still an excellent game and, along with 80% of Sonic Adventure 2, the only really well-balanced example of Sonic in 3D.

The important thing to remember when buying Sonic Adventure is that it isn’t a remake. It’s just a straight port, bugs and all. There are a few levels, Sky Deck springs to mind, that are still basically unplayable at any sort of speed and overall there is a general clunkiness to the camera that will get you killed.

That said, this game is far from broken. Controls are fine once you get used to the looser feel and anybody who says otherwise (I’ve spent this morning reading reviews…) really hasn’t given this game the time it deserves before turning to their laptop to write their review. While Sonic’s homing attack has a nasty habit of hitting things you hadn’t planned (Occasionally leading to the loss of a life.) this is fixed simply by playing better.

If you’re relying on the homing attack in any sort of built-up area and from any sort of distance, it won’t work. You’re forced to get in close if you want to destroy a specific enemy.

Graphically, Sonic Adventure looks fantastic. There are odd animations and the lip sync generally carries on for seconds after the line has finished, but the bigger picture will remind you just why we were all so blown away back in ’99.

The biggest problem, graphically, for me is the two lines either side which, I presume, have to do with aspect ratio and the like. This static border shrinks the screen and can be quite distracting at first. While I can’t imagine it was an easy task, porting Sonic Adventure to both the PS3 and the 360, getting the picture to fill the whole screen should have been a priority when porting to the HD consoles, I feel, and it seems like an odd decision.

While there may not have been any way around it, it’s easy to excuse the graphical problems of a game that is 11 years old; it’s less easy to forgive a problem with the port, no matter what the reasoning behind it is.

The game features a host of characters, most of whom add to the story line fantastically. Because of the excellent way this was handled in the original version of the game, barely any of the characters feel particularly redundant. Playing through as each character garners the full story as a reward, and the actual ending.

Playing through the whole game is made easier by the fact that each character has their own special skills. Sonic, Knuckles and Tails all move at similar speeds and in similar ways. BUT, and here is why I believe fans still love Sonic Adventure to this day, their own individual skills make each level different for them. You can approach the same part of a level in a completely different way. Knuckles can glide to a part unreachable by Sonic, for instance. And that’s what I think is special about the level design and the way in which the characters compliment one another in this game.

Big (played by Duke Nukem himself, Jon St John) is stil what I believe is politely called ‘special’. He has no real point in the story (A tagged on bit involving Chaos’ tail) and, while the fishing levels aren’t exactly bad, they seem out of place.

They certainly aren’t all that intrusive, either way. Big probably has the shortest adventure in the game and you’ll have finished the whole thing before you get too annoyed.

Voice Acting ranges from the fairly good to the so-bad-it’s-good. Part of the problem for the voice acting is that the character model’s acting hadn’t quite caught up, turning even the best delivered lines into some kind of farcical parody. A panicked hedgehog whose mouth opens slightly as he screams is simply hilarious to look at.

Not that I’m excusing what is, at times, a very poorly acted game.

In all honesty, Sonic Adventure probably doesn’t live up to your memory of it. A lot of games have been and gone in the intervening years and everything that Sonic Adventure did really well has been improved upon countless times since then.

It’s easy to have this fact mar your enjoyment of what is still a pretty strong, if not occasionally frustrating, outing for every-bodies favourite Sega Hedgehog. And at a measly 800 points (1200 if you want all the extra DX missions and Metal Sonic, available as DLC now.) Sonic Adventure is a steal.

Let me know when Sonic Adventure 2 is coming.

8/10