Sonic Adventure
Dreamcast
9.9.99. I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited for a video game console release date.
At the time I was a senior in high school. I’d worked a part-time job over the summer. I’d saved my allowance money. Any money I got for my birthday I saved. It all went into my Dreamcast fund. Did I go out and buy a Dreamcast the very second it hit store shelves? You bet I did. This was the first and only time in my life I’ve ever purchased a console on day one.
Up to this point in my life, I had always been loyal to the Sega brand. I had a Genesis, I had a Saturn, I even had a 32X. Of course I was going to get a Dreamcast. The main reason for getting a Dreamcast, aside from brand loyalty, was because of Sonic Adventure. Being a Saturn owner, I had never gotten the next-generation 3D Sonic title I’d been pining for (no, Sonic 3D Blast does not count). I was a huge fan of Super Mario 64 and I considered it to be one of the greatest games ever made. Mario’s leap from 2D to 3D was absolutely groundbreaking, and I expected the same thing from Sonic the Hedgehog. Let’s just say I ended up very disappointed.
As much as I desperately wanted to like Sonic Adventure, it left a bad taste in my mouth. It wasn’t half as good as Mario 64. In fact, it wasn’t even half as good as the older Sonic games for the Sega Genesis. If anything it was a giant step backward. The graphics were terrific, but that is where my praise of the game ended. The story was laughable, the voice acting was flat out bad, the camera was broken, the flow of the game was very disjointed, and it contained none of that sense of exploration and adventure of Mario 64. It just wasn’t a good game. As much as I wanted to love it, I didn’t. There were good things about the game, but like they say even a broken clock is right twice a day. Little did I know at the time, but Sonic Adventure signaled the decline of a once mighty franchise.
21 years later, I have decided to return to Sonic Adventure. Had I been overly hard on the game when it first came out, or would I find in retrospect that the game wasn’t as bad as I’d thought? Let’s find out.
Story:
Ugh. It’s so bad. I mean, Sonic games have never been known for their storylines, but in past games you could always just ignore the game’s storyline and focus on its gameplay. Sonic Adventure shoves its ludicrous story down your throat with countless cutscene after cutscene. The game begins with a giant blob creature known as Chaos causing havoc in the middle of a human-filled city. I guess it makes sense that there are humans in the Sonic universe, seeing as how Dr. Robotnik is a human, but it is still slightly unsettling to see Sonic among human characters. I digress. The police empty several rounds of ammunition into the creature to no effect. But wait! Sonic to the rescue! Sonic drives Chaos away and saves the day.
Playing as Sonic, you head out to take on Dr. Robotnik, who was seen controlling Chaos during the attack. A mad battle for Chaos Emeralds ensues. These Chaos Emeralds give Chaos, the evil blob creature, power. Makes sense I guess, as they are both connected by the word Chaos. Anyway, your adventures take you through a wide variety of stages. At the end of each stage you collect a Chaos Emerald. Seems like every time you get your hands on one, however, Robotnik swoops in and takes it from you. As a result, Chaos gets more and more powerful each time you have to fight him. At the end of the game, you wind up at Robotnik’s Egg Carrier where you defeat him and Chaos and save the day. Yay!
But wait, we aren’t done yet. This is just Sonic’s Adventure. There are still five unlockable characters for you to play as. Tails’ quest is basically a retelling of Sonic’s adventure, but from Tails’ perspective. Knuckles’ quest has him collecting Master Emerald shards, which when assembled are used to control the Chaos Emeralds and keep Chaos at bay. Amy’s quest has her being chased around by a giant robot. You then play as the giant robot as he gains a conscience and rebels against Dr. Robotnik. The final character is Big the Cat, who is chasing after a frog who has swallowed a Chaos Emerald. These quests tie together to tell the story of Sonic Adventure. Completing them all brings the Chaos Emeralds into Sonic's hands, where he becomes Super Sonic and defeat Chaos once and for all.
If you want to dig deeper, there is some kind of lore out there explaining the history of the island and its native echidnas and the Master Emerald and Chaos and all that. Some of it is shown in the game through flashback sequences, but the particulars aren’t fleshed out very well. There’s always the Wikipedia page if you want to read up on this stuff. I say no thanks. After playing through six different in-game scenarios, I’ve had enough. Heck, I’d had enough back in 1999. The story is ridiculous and just isn’t worth the effort of researching.
Gameplay:
This is really what we’re here for. No one plays a Sonic game for its story. Unfortunately the gameplay isn’t very good either.
The game is at its best during its action stages. From a behind the back perspective, you control Sonic as he races through the stages and collects an Emerald at the end of each one. The action is fast, the controls seem to be spot on. Some of these action stages can be quite good. It feels like what a next generation Sonic title should feel like. My problem is that there are only about eight or nine stages, and only some of these stages are any good. The casino stage for example: terrible. And that’s only pertaining to when I played with Sonic. Playing as the other characters is much, much more of a mixed bag.
Tails’ journey is just a rehash of things you’ve already seen and done with Sonic. I actually don’t mind Knuckles’ stages, as they are collection oriented and take place in non-linear stages. They bring to mind in Mario 64 when you have to find all the red coins, or Banjo-Kazooie when you have to find the Jinjos. Amy, Big the Cat, and the robot (whatever his name is) all have terrible stages that are either extremely easy or extremely tedious.
Where the game REALLY falters is in its hub world. I got completely lost so many freaking times because the game does such a poor job at letting you know where to go next. This isn’t as bad when you are playing as Sonic, but with some of the other characters like Amy and Big the Cat, it can be an enormous problem. There are little floating orbs that give you hints as to where to go next, and oftentimes they are very straightforward, which is good. Other times, however, they are extremely vague and don’t give you any help whatsoever. My favorite is when they told me I had to go to the Egg Carrier. I’d already visited the Egg Carrier, so I went back to try and revisit it again. Could I get back in the way I came? No. I wandered around aimlessly for half an hour looking for an alternative entrance before I finally broke down and looked online. I thought I had somehow broken the game. But oh, guess what, I had to go the Mystic Ruins and take a tucked away, hard-to-find boat that I’ve NEVER ONCE USED BEFORE AND HASN’T BEEN REFERENCED ONCE THE ENTIRE GAME!! to get to the Egg Carrier this time. Makes perfect sense. Not. I could have been looking for hours.
The bosses in this game are laughably easy, with the exception of Robotnik’s final form, which kept killing me in incredibly cheap ways. I died only a handful of times the entire game, but ended up burning through ten plus lives on this one boss. So irritating.
I feel as if I should mention the Chao Garden, even though I haven’t bothered doing anything Chao-related with this game since 1999. The makers of this game tried to cash in on the whole digital pet craze that swept the world in the late 90’s. In this game, you can visit Chao Gardens, where you can hatch and raise your own little Chaos. If you have a physical Dreamcast, you can save these creatures to your memory card, which has a screen on it, and take the memory card with you to look after your pet when you are away from your Dreamcast. Cool concept, I guess, but the one time I took my memory card with me (on a camping trip) its power died almost immediately before I could even do anything with my pet. I basically threw up my arms and said “fuck that!” and never bothered with the Chaos ever again. On my most recent playthrough, I ignored any and everything Chao related. It adds nothing to the game. I can’t imagine anyone wasting their time on something so useless.
Graphics:
Sonic Adventure’s biggest strength is its visuals. I remember looking at screenshots of this game when I was a youngster and thinking that it looked SO GOOD. It still holds up, too, 21 years later. The characters are big, sharp looking, and well-animated. The environments are bright and colorful. Visual effects, like water and lighting effects are very well done. Stages are creatively designed.
When I envisioned Sonic making the jump from 2D to 3D when I was a kid, this is exactly what I had hoped for. It’s just too bad the rest of the game doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain.
Sound:
Oh boy. This game’s music and sound effects are the definition of a mixed bag. Some of the game’s tunes are really good, like the theme songs from the Mystic Ruins, the Red Mountain, and the Emerald Coast. Most of the other ones, unfortunately are very mediocre. I wouldn’t say they are bad, but certainly not up to the lofty standard set by the Sonic the Hedgehog series.
Sound effects are good. I like the ring-collecting sound, and the sounds that Sonic makes when he jumps, gets hit, or damages enemies. No complaints there.
That voice acting though. We have to talk about that. It is bad. So, so bad. Not charming bad like Resident Evil. Cringe bad. Where did they find these voice actors, particularly Tails? I wince just thinking about it. Maybe the bad voice acting could have been salvaged with some better-written dialogue, or perhaps with a more interesting storyline. But alas it is just not meant to be.
Overall:
There are good things about this game. It’s not a complete failure. Like I said before, this game is at its best during some of the high-flying action stages when you are playing as Sonic or Tails. Even Knuckles’ item collecting stages can be a decent amount of fun. The graphics are great. The sound effects are authentic Sonic the Hedgehog. The levels are creatively designed. Some of the music is good. There is fun to be had here.
But the things the game does poorly, in my opinion, outweigh the things it does well. I’ve already ragged on the storyline, the voice acting, and the easy bosses. I didn’t even mention the game’s camera yet. It is very poor and hard to control, and every once in a while it would end up leading to a very cheap death. That stage where you have to line up the mirrors to light up the dark ruins = ugh. I don’t think I’ve ever been “cheap death’d” more times in a video game before because of the camera.
I already mentioned Amy, Big the Cat, and the robot (Z-980X or something like that) and how their quests suck. Amy’s, you just walk around running from the robot and solving puzzles and hitting things with your hammer. It doesn’t feel very much like Sonic the Hedgehog at all. The robot’s is laughably linear and easy. All you have to do is tap the fire button as you walk around and most likely you won’t take a lick of damage until the final boss. Big’s quest though… ugh. Whose bright idea was it to put what amounts to a fishing mini-game in a Sonic the Hedgehog title? Who plays a Sonic game to go fishing???
I like the fact that you can play as several different characters. It does add a bit of replayability to the game, I have to give it that. But it’s only a good idea in concept, not in execution. When half the characters to pick from aren’t any fun to play as, what’s the point in playing as them at all?
Therein lies the problem. Too often this game felt like a chore to play rather than a fun time. I hate to say this, but aside from Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails' quests, which were all pretty short, I didn't get much enjoyment from this game. Even the enjoyment I got from their quests is questionable. I should have beaten this game in a couple of days. Instead it took me a couple of weeks to complete because I kept pushing the game to the side in favor of other things.
I wanted SO HARD to like this game when it first came out. The first true 3D Sonic game, the game I had been waiting for for what seemed like an eternity... it couldn’t possibly be bad, could it? Could it?
Well, I don't know about bad. Sonic Adventure is certainly a playable game, and it has a lot of good qualities about it. It tries. As hard as I try, however, I can’t fool myself into thinking that this is a great game. Couldn’t do it in 1999, and I certainly can’t do it now.
Overall:
D+
A complete index of all my game reviews, located
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