Review: Sonic Adventure XBLA

[Ulquiorra4sama]

If no one has been able to come up with an idea that could redeem sonic for this last sinful decade by now then i doubt they ever will.
This franchise died out a long time ago and i really think people should start realizing that.

Oh, and yeah... If even the editor in chief of an online gaming magazine can't scrape up enough enthusiasm to make a game sound remotely interesting then i really think some director out there should reconsider what he's doing.

 

[Blind Sight]

You sound really bored, is it really that bad? Or did you pick the short straw and got stuck doing the review?

 

[Knoxy]

(If) you've got just a burning desire to sate your need for... (no)stalgic overload then, Sonic Adventure on the Xbox live arcade is (a) good game to try unfortunately I can't really recommend... buying it for any other reason.

The words in brackets up there are the ones that aren't really heard on the voice over but that one should assume are there in order for the piece to make sense.

Now can someone please explain to me why, on a site which usually has such high standards in voice recording and delivery, a review from the editor in chief sounds like it's being spliced together from a bunch of disconnected snippets? Poor form Russ, poor form.

 

[mjc0961]

"Arguably the best Sonic title ever made" is right. As in, I'd argue a whole hell of a lot that it isn't even close. Maybe the best 3D title, okay easily the best 3D title (SA2, Heroes, Shadow, '06... Come on, no contest there). Maybe the last good game in the series before it started its constant decline into worse and even worse crap. But the best game of all of them? Hell no. We have this console called the Genesis you see...

See, to make Sonic Adventure better is easy. Just cut Amy and Big from the game as playable characters, and blammo. Game is instantly better. Amy is just Sonic but a lot slower which is completely unnecessary to play as, and Big was just really stupid pointless crap that shouldn't have ever been allowed to ship. That leaves you with Sonic who had really good stages for his first try in 3D, Tails who also had really good stages (basically Sonic's but shorter) and his abilities (instead of putting him in a fucking mech), Knuckles who felt like he got the short end of the stick but ultimately it still worked okay considering you still got to climb and glide all over the place, and E102 who was an amusing side mechanic who didn't overstay his welcome.
So yeah, cut Amy and Big, tighten up the controls, sort out some glitches, get better voice acting, and you have a rather solid game on your hands. Sadly, SEGA just went for the "lazy port" route. That works okay if your game was great to start with, but if it wasn't, that's when you go for the remake instead.

One final thing to say about this port... I personally find it rather sad of SEGA to release it in two parts: You have the $10 regular game, and for $5 more, you can have the DX part. Stupid. The game is over 10 years old, just give up the whole thing for $10 and be done with it.

No matter what the price though, this would always be a bad deal for me. If I want to see how bad the game is by today's standards, I have a Wii and a copy of the GameCube version of this.

Also, Sonic Adventure 2 sucked canal water. Sonic Adventure started the "let's chuck extraneous characters in here" trend, but SA2 really ran with it. Rouge the Bat, people. That's all I'm saying. (Not as bad as Charmy Fucking Bee, but still pretty damn dreadful.)

Not just Rouge the Bat, but the extremely poorly done "love" plot between her and Knuckles. Especially that song in one of his levels, oh lord. It turns that level into a time trial: Finish really fast or suffer under the might of the really dumb lyrics.
And then there was the president. And Shadow, although it would have been a lot better if they just left him where he was at the end of the game instead of having him return, but I guess that's not really Sonic Adventure 2's fault. But I can still blame it for introducing the character.

Now can someone please explain to me why, on a site which usually has such high standards in voice recording and delivery, a review from the editor in chief sounds like it's being spliced together from a bunch of disconnected snippets? Poor form Russ, poor form.

Because he's playing Sonic Adventure and you feel really really really bored after playing it? Yeah I'm going to go with that.

 

[heamrh]

Russ, sonic adventure sucked, sonic adventure battle 2 however was pretty damn good

 

[Kiereek]

Why did he sound so lathargic this whole review. You may not have liked the game, but you're in the business of entertainment. Entertain us.

 

[Charli]

Really? People LIKED this game? When it came out I was horrified.
Me and the rest of my British gaming posse agreed. What the hell happened to Sonic?

Mouth movement and voice acting made the cutscenes' like something out of a nightmare to behold. The universe was small and obtrusive between you and getting to the next sodding level. And controls were clunky and irritating for those few sparse seconds of free falling exhilaration.

If this IS the game they've been remaking over and over then no wonder Sega's Sonic Team are flopping around like a bunch of blind baby seals on a mountain top.

Maybe I was a spoiled for choice PC gaming baby but playing that game felt wrong. So very very wrong. And I was unclean for it.

I have not enjoyed a Sonic game since Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Finishing that game to completion made me feel awesome. And going back and playing it all the way has never diminished that feeling. Good game, was good.

 

[TundraStalax]

but, what of the chao?

 

[nYuknYuknYuk]

I will buy Sonic Adventure 2: Battle if they release it. It was the only Sonic I actually enjoyed other than Sonic the Hedgehog 2. But this one, no. It wasn't very good in the first place...

 

[Swifteye]

Why did you do this review? Was there really a point? Certainly if you was you didn't mention any of them. You should have reviewed anything else. Sonic adventure exist to be downloaded any played for the same reason one would download the first spyro game.

 

[justnotcricket]

I know exactly what Russ means by finding things painful now that you thought were wonderful when you were younger =P A case in point for me is the Sailor Moon anime that ran on weekday mornings when I was in primary school. I LOVED it, and used to get up early every morning to watch it before school. I rented a DVD of it recently for a nostalgia trip, and although in many ways it was exactly as fun and campy as I remember, the English voice acting (which was of course all that was broadcast on TV here) nearly made my ears bleed. Also, Sarina/Usagi is almost unbearably annoying when you're a grownup. You just wanna shake her! =P

Nostalgia trips are fun, but sometimes you do come back from them wishing you'd never left in the first place =)

 

[Grand_Marquis]

Man, Russ...I'm really sorry you had to go through that. Even for just a quick "yep, it's the same game", I could see that being soul draining. I mean, there are games like Sonic 3 and Knuckles that age well. And then there are games like Sonic Adventure...that just don't.

As a side note, I always held that the Chao you raise should be pronounced "Kay-oh". Think about it - the word "chaos" is all over the damn game. Everything is "chaos" this and "chaos" that...and then there are these creatures called "chao", which is "chaos" without the "s". But they pronounce it "chow"? What.

 

[PhunkyPhazon]

You know, I always kind of liked Big the Cat. Yeah, I know, he's a dreadful character, I'm not going to pretend he isn't, but there was something about his patheticness that I found oddly endearing. That and his affection for Froggy.

Also, Sonic Adventure 2 sucked canal water. Sonic Adventure started the "let's chuck extraneous characters in here" trend, but SA2 really ran with it. Rouge the Bat, people. That's all I'm saying. (Not as bad as Charmy Fucking Bee, but still pretty damn dreadful.)

Oh god, Charmy. They RUINED the Chaotix characters. I mean back when they were first introduced, Sonic characters were judged more on their different abilities then anything else, and in that regard none of them were that bad. But they just had to bring them back and make them some of the most annoying characters in the series. And like you said...Charmy. I rather liked playing as Charmy in Knuckles Chaotix, but once Sonic Heroes rolled around I was wishing for a flyswatter.

 

[antipunt]

Poor Russ sounds like he's falling asleep. It's not the poor guy's fault, either

 

[Verrenxnon]

While I can appreciate your opinion on the game and the roll it played in stagnating the franchise, this review wasn't informative, elegant, or journalistically objective.

Hold your readers to a higher standard; we hold you to one.

 

[Caradinist]

Honestly, i don't know what you guys are talking about. It feels like Louis C.K just gave you a Review of a game, minus the whole going off topic and throwing in a funny story, of course.

"Hey, you know, if you grew up on this shit, and you like it...hey, great! But hey, otherwise, raising a couple of shitty animals might not hold your attention long enough."

I'll be honest, Sonic Adventure is the last Sonic game i ever played, it was pretty good, and to be real honest, the same voice he's projecting? is how i felt when i played the game for the first time in like a decade.

 

[Firia]

My first roomate back in the day of the Dreamcast had this, and I loved it to BITS! In fact, when it came out for the ps2, I bought it up instantly! (I was sad that the Chau were bugged. They'd wipe your saves.) I haven't really bought or played another sonic game since. At first, I kept my ears open, and heard things like, "trying to be like Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast, but just bad," for its sequels, so I'd skip those. Then sonic just started getting crazy, and I stopped caring.

Still loved Sonic Adventures to bits! For its time, it was a great game.

 

[Snotnarok]

I disagree with the review the part that Sonic team has been making the same game since then because that's a complete lie. They're abysmal little buggy clones that are unbearable at times. The exception being Sonic Unleashed's day levels. (half of that game being unbearable mind you)

Adventure isn't exactly amazing but it's a good romp and far better than most of Sonic's 3D games...like Sonic Heroes. This coming from a big fan of Sonic, I love his old games, but want most of his 3D adventures to just go far far away.

Or Sonic 2006, or Shadow the Hedgehog, you know the two worst platformers ever and aren't even playable with the number of glitches in them.