Sonic Heroes (PS2, GCN, XBX) Retro Review

This marks the 35th anniversary of the Blue Blur himself, Sonic the Hedgehog. At SuperPhillip Central we're going to look back at all facets of the fastest hedgehog alive, both good and bad. We partook in the good with Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds earlier this month. Unexpectedly, and against memories from my youth, now we're going to be looking at the bad with Sonic Heroes. 

What goes up, must come down. And wow, does it come down hard!

Sonic Heroes originally released on the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox back in 2003. I remember being incredibly hyped after coming off of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, greatly enjoying that GameCube release, and then feverishly pouring play after play of the first level of Sonic Heroes as part of a bonus demo disc released alongside some copies of Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. Then, the game came out, and I actually ended up enjoying it.

That said, my gaming habits and preferences have decidedly changed since 2003. For one, I was in high school then, and had so much more free time and patience in general. As an adult, I definitely have much less of both to dedicate to games that try said patience. Sonic Heroes is one of those games nowadays, and it's an unfortunate reminder that nostalgia can blind. What one might have considered a fantastic game back in the day, or one worth challenging themselves to overcome, nowadays is an effort of utter frustration. 

Sonic Heroes is a unique game in the 3D line of Sonic the Hedgehog games, as it features teams of characters running, jumping, and otherwise moving through the game's 14 stages. There are four trios in all: Team Sonic (Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles), Team Dark (Shadow, Rouge, and Omega), Team Rose (Amy, Cream, and Big), and Team Chaotix (Vector, Espio, and Charmy), the latter of whom returned after last being seen all the way back in Knuckles Chaotix on the SEGA 32X. 

While Team Sonic and Team Rose are like Seaside Hill Zone, great for beginners and getting their feet wet...

Each team has their own story set of stages to play through, though the stages have similar designs with some changes here and there across all campaigns. Whereas Team Rose features shortened stages and even a tutorial level at the beginning of their story, Team Dark is more focused for veterans of the game, containing longer, more difficult stages with more tricks and traps to watch for and persevere against. Meanwhile, Team Sonic is your "standard" difficulty, while Team Chaotix is a mishmash between Team Sonic and Team Dark. Team Chaotix's story stages all tend to have a specific mission to complete: whether that's finding 10 hermit crabs in the opening Seaside Hill Zone, or defeating three specific gold-shelled turtles in the Power Plant Zone.

...Team Dark and Team Chaotix's stories are better left for later playthroughs, as the levels can be long and unforgiving.

It's recommended to start with Team Rose or Team Sonic to get your speed sneakers wet and obtain a taste of what you're in for with Sonic Heroes. Playing each team's story means 14 zones with seven boss battles interspersed after every two zones for a total of 21 per team. Multiply that by four, and you get a general idea of what awaits. Unfortunately, each level strikes a resemblance to other teams' levels, so it can feel like a lot of retreading and repetition. You can't play the final story featuring all four teams without playing through and completing each teams' story mode. This took me about 12 hours to do all in total.

If the idea of three characters bantering back and forth for most of each level 
doesn't sound like hell to you, then Sonic Heroes might be worth checking out.

As for the overall story, each team has their own reasons and motivations for setting out for adventure. Whereas Team Sonic gets a letter from Eggman revealing a three-day plot to rule the world, Team Rose has each member wanting to track someone down: whether it's an amphibious friend suitably named Froggy for Big the Cat, a missing Chao for Cream the Rabbit, or simply Amy's fixation, Sonic and his love. Across each story campaign, the characters occasionally cross over, but seeing as boss battles are the same, just with different dialogue, it can be confusing to try to keep up with any kind of a cohesive, canon plot since some of the stories have conflicting, contradictory elements with others. Eh, it's a Sonic game, so I won't rack my brain over it.

"Froggy?" No, this one's unfortunately a little too large, Big...

When getting to the game itself, Sonic Heroes takes the formula and foundation of Sonic Adventure and its sequel and attempts to expand upon it. Innovative is the team-based mechanic, having players press one of the top face buttons to switch between the two other characters on the fly. Speaking of which, each of the characters in each trio conveniently enough has their own ability type. For instance, Sonic is speed-based, Tails is flying-based, and Knuckles is power-based. Thankfully, most of the guesswork is eliminated in needing knowledge for what character to use at a specific moment in a level, as helpful floating monitors with words like "Speed", "Fly" and "Power" readily indicate the best character type to utilize. 

Speed characters like Sonic, Shadow, Amy Rose, and Espio have the fastest running capabilities, can generally homing attack from enemy to enemy, and also sport the ability to create a tornado, used to remove shields and other defenses from foes, as well as spin up special poles. Meanwhile, Flight characters like Tails, Rouge, Cream, and Charmy understandably can fly, though for limited amounts of time before running out of stamina, dropping to the ground without any momentum left over whatsoever (which screwed me over plenty of times), and can also throw their teammates at other enemies from afar. Lastly, Power characters in the vein of Knuckles, Omega, Big, and Vector are great for busting through walls, blocks, and swarms of shielded enemies with relative ease. You can also hold the jump button to have the characters tag up with a Power character to ride up wind shafts and hover across gaps.

The bigger they are, the more throws it takes from Vector to beat 'em.

Throughout stages are colorful orbs, either in blue, yellow, or red quantities (for Speed, Fly, and Power characters respectively) that not only add to the player's score at the end of levels, but also boost that given character type's abilities. Throwing your teammates as Tails against foes generally just stuns the enemy, but getting two yellow orbs will level up Tails' throw to deal damage. Each enemy has a health gauge, showing a number beside it (its HP). Some foes, like more powerful baddies and also the godawful bosses, possess high HP, requiring you to whittle away at them. Usually best saved for a Power character. 

Finally, as rings--the livelihood of all teams, as if they get hit with at least one ring stored, they won't die--are collected and enemies are vanquished, a gauge for screen-clearing attack using all three teammates known as a Team Blast fills up and can eventually be used. For each team, this Team Blast shows a unique animation as well as a bonus. For Team Rose, an activated Team Blast will give the team invincibility for several seconds, while Team Dark's Team Blast will freeze everything on screen, including the timer, while Shadow, Rouge, and Omega can run around freely during all this. 

After seeing Team Blast animations like this one ad nauseum, I decidedly won't be checking out your record, Team Chaotix.

Levels in Sonic Heroes essentially follow the classic 2D Sonic games approach in design. And I don't just mean in the "two acts per themed locale then a boss battle" approach, either. No, these levels tend to feature plenty of alternate paths, with the higher paths being the most challenging to stay on, but also the fastest way to skip parts of stages entirely. Not every level is full of these, with Rail Canyon, for instance, having a more linear design with less in the way of detours--but something like the opening Seaside Hill and Ocean Palace possess a plethora of paths to take and uncover. 

...And here we go!

I feel the level design in Sonic Heroes is pretty commendable, honestly. There's lots of secrets, lots of hidden-away elements and pathways, and well thought-out concepts. Unfortunately, it's the actual gameplay that sort of betrays the competent level design. So many set pieces that are meant to be cool in both spectacle and fun, in theory, occasionally just don't play well in execution. Seemingly automated sections of stages more often than I'd care to have happen, resulted in my team jerking out of the path, falling into the abyss. Oh, and how each team seemingly LOVES to fall off levels. It's the number one way I died without question in Sonic Heroes. Between homing attacks that wouldn't register properly on enemies, the slippery feel of characters sliding off stages, and camera issues, deaths by pit was the number one way hedgehogs perished in 2003. ...I believe I remember seeing that statistic in National Geographic back in the day...

At any rate, the camera is a constant problem throughout the adventure, oftentimes resulting in less than ideal viewpoints. I felt like maybe one of the Eggrobos might have been controlling the camera as a means to mess my teams over, like a corrupted version of Lakitu in Super Mario 64. More of a hindrance than a help! 

This extends to the absolutely awful boss battles that infest the game. Here, the boss is public enemy number two, right behind the camera and other gameplay quirks of Sonic Heroes. The hit detection is off the charts in being bad, homing attacks, and just any attack that hones in on a foe usually goes after the wrong target, oftentimes ending in a premature and anger-inducing death. Plenty of times I got stun-locked where my characters were flat on their backs, given just enough invincibility frames to stand up, and then get attacked again. This occurs especially in the "Team Battles" where two teams from the story take on each other. These basically end up being battles of mashing the attack buttons to win. It's random, sure, but so is actually attempting to play them seriously and how they're how ever "meant" to be played. 

I'm having flashbacks of an unsettling variety just by glancing at this screenshot!

While it can be tempting at first to play Sonic Heroes as a score attack game, earning coveted "A" ranks from scoring high, beating levels with a fast timer completion, all without dying--it's simply not worth the aggravation. You're playing a Russian Roulette of "which glitch or gameplay quirk will potentially screw over your run" each time you play a level or boss battle in Sonic Heroes. Seeing as stages, especially with Team Dark, can take upwards of ten minutes just to beat, it's just not something I want to do nowadays. In 2003, I do remember getting all emblems from beating every level, clearing every post-game challenge (like clearing levels in a limited amount of time as Team Sonic, or collecting a set amount of rings as Team Rose), and obtaining every score-based "A" rank, and all I got for it to my incredibly diminished excitement was a super hard mode and some lame competitive multiplayer options. 

Each character type has a different formation the other team members get into.

Outside of glitches both technical and in gameplay, Sonic Heroes remains a relatively good looking game to this day. The zones definitely have that Sonic feel and look to them--colorful, vibrant, and it's something I definitely appreciate--something much more than Sonic Frontiers' drab and dreary approach to its art style (not to say Frontiers is objectively bad there or as a game). Meanwhile, the soundtrack is full of awesome rock tunes, and honestly, even with the cheese factor dialed up to 11 with some of the lyrical tracks, Sonic Heroes remains one of my favorite Sonic soundtracks even in 2026. The voice acting and cutscene direction are all over the place, offering lots of characters enjoying talking over each other or not giving each other enough pauses, and the audio balance is up and down as well. It was standard fare for Sonic games of that era, for sure. 

My fondness for Sonic the Hedgehog as a character and series remains to this day, despite replaying games like Sonic Heroes. Ideally, I would have started this celebration of Sonic's 35th anniversary on a higher note. Well, technically, I did with Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds earlier in the month! That said, the positives about Sonic Heroes--the level design, the colorful visuals, and superb soundtrack--greatly are betrayed by the game's poor controls, obnoxious mission design with Team Chaotix, abhorrent boss battles, awful camera, and glitches aplenty. Even despite all of these negatives, I did enjoy rolling around at the speed of sound, flying high, and throwing my weight around with this cast of 12 playable characters. Does that make Sonic Heroes an enjoyable game overall? Absolutely not. 

[SPC Says: D+] 

Donkey Kong Bananza (NS2) Review

We move from one 3D platformer from an indie to a 3D platformer that is decidedly NOT an indie: Nintendo! Donkey Kong Bananza swung onto the Nintendo Switch 2 last June, but of course in true SuperPhillip Central fashion, I'm not getting to reviewing this game until the following January. 

Kept you waiting, huh? Regardless, no time like the present, better late than never, and any other cliche you can think of aside, we have a new review to get to, so let's banana slam it! 

Ooooooooh, Bananza~!

If you're like me--and as always, God help you if you are--you might have been expecting a new 3D Mario released close to, or along with the Nintendo Switch 2. But if you're also like me, then you realize that one should always expect the unexpected when it comes to Nintendo. That doesn't just ring true for the company's games, but also its release strategies as well. 

That said, what we've ended up with instead is an utter delight. Not only is Donkey Kong back in the limelight in a big way with a brand-new 3D platformer, but it's one from Nintendo's top team at EAD. Donkey Kong Bananza takes Nintendo's grand gorilla on a fantastic deep dive--literally--through magnificent worlds to explore and packs a mighty massive punch too in the process. Methinks Mario can wait!

Donkey Kong Bananza sees DK with his glorious new design as first seen in Mario Kart World, teaming up with a young, precocious Pauline. Legend says that deep in the planet's core is a root that will grant the wishes of anyone that lays claim to it. Pauline wishes to return to the surface where she can have her dream come true of becoming a singer, while Donkey Kong, of course, dreams of bananas and nothing more. Of course, it's easier said than done, as a group of villainous Kongs under the Void Company stands in their way, obstructing them at every opportunity that they get. 

Donkey Kong is back and more expressive than ever before!

The story is relatively light when all is said and done, but when it comes into full swing, it definitely delivers. The character development of Pauline is a highlight, as she's understandably visually and audibly timid and nervous around a massive thousand-pound gorilla through the first quarter or so of the game. As she opens up and gets more comfortable around DK, her excitement and ability to let loose and get gung-ho shines through. It's a nice touch that more importantly feels natural as opposed to feeling forced. 

The world of Donkey Kong Bananza is your oyster. Well, technically, it's less of an oyster and more of an onion since it has literal layers and sub-layers that form the levels of the game. At any rate, these layers show off one of the most impressive parts of Bananza--the amount of delightful, wanton destruction that DK can inflict on the environment. Punch a bunch as you please, DK, as he can smash swaths through rock, cement, and other materials to create makeshift pathways through levels. I was utterly astonished by the tech involved here--something that truly couldn't be done on Nintendo's Switch 1 without serious concessions to the design ethos of Bananza.

The locales known as layers are lovely to explore for goodies and meet new friends along the way.

It's not just mindlessly bashing and brawling your way through the environment, of course. Not all walls, floors, and ceilings are destructible. This is given an in-game story reason as Void Co. has deliberately turned specific materials as impossible to punch through. It also makes it so you can't just beat and bash your way everywhere through the game, completely disregarding the level and puzzle design within the environments. Sure, there are points where you can punch your way through soft walls to create a tunnel to a destination all by sheer force--and many times this is shrewdly highlighted by a telltale sign in the environment--but you can't simply bypass everything in a level for little reason.

DK gives a new definition to the term "mudding".

Truly, Donkey Kong Bananza feels like the next, natural evolution of the foundation that Nintendo EAD's previous work, Super Mario Odyssey, laid. You have your open, playground environments to explore and multiple collectibles to obtain--with the most important of which being that of Banandium Gems, giant crystallized bananas in single and banana bunch forms. Gems are ALL over the multitude of layers and sub-layers in Bananza--hiding in alcoves, earned from completing platforming and puzzle-based trials, entering obstacle course-centric Challenge Rooms, and battling bosses. These Gems serve the Power Moon role from Super Mario Odyssey. However, whereas Moons were merely abundant in quantity, essentially being required to progress to new kingdoms, the Banandium Gems are less needed for progression purposes and more for powering DK up. 

Donkey Kong and Banandium Gems go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Donkey Kong Bananza contains plenty of power-ups and abilities for DK in a skill menu of sorts. For every five single Banandium Gems collected (big bunches of five are usually earned after beating bosses or after a special story progression-based sequence), DK earns a skill point. Simpler skills require less skill points to spend, while the more useful abilities demand more points spent on them. These range from adding hearts to DK's health, expanding his radar range (when DK slams his palms to the ground, the nearby area shows hidden goodies like Banandium Gems and Fossils), supplying him with a further inventory of health-restoring juice, granting him the ability to plow through stronger surfaces, and also upgrades to his Bananza abilities. More on those in just a little bit!

Apart from Banandium Gems, there are Fossils to be found all throughout the landscape, walls, floors, ceilings--you name it. These can be spent at shops to purchase new costumes and outfits for DK and Pauline. Each costume piece, whether a pair of suspenders or a tie for DK, or a full fledged outfit for Pauline, grants different bonus benefits--whether allowing DK to stumble upon more random treasure chests when smashing through surfaces, greater affinity against hazards like lava so he takes less damage upon being burned, or granting DK longer Bananzas.

No doubt if you've yet to play this Switch 2 exclusive and have no concept of the game, then you might be wondering if the "Bananza" in the game's title is more than a clever play-on-words. Well, yes, it's much more than that, indeed! Throughout the game, Donkey Kong learns new transformations that take him from Goliath gorilla to caked-up Kong gorilla, speedy zebra, flying ostrich, among others. Whereas the Kong Bananza is terrific in utility for smashing the crud out of enemies and the environment quickly, something like the Zebra Bananza has more finesse required, as that form is fantastic for running across water as well as walkways that would otherwise have DK fall through as soon as he steps foot on them. 

Many challenges both platforming and puzzle task players with optimizing one's time with each transformation. Sometimes, you'll need to switch between forms on the fly (as easy as a tap of the D-Pad) to overcome trials and tribulations the game throws at you. Like with being able to pound through surfaces and the environment with ease to get where you want to go, a lot of the time with some ingenuity and a little strategy you can complete tasks and objectives by some creative use of these Bananza abilities and forms. That really speaks to how open ended the design of Donkey Kong Bananza is, really. You're seldom locked to a set in stone way of doing things. That said, you're also not able to just completely disregard the game's design, whether intended or unintended, either.

Each Bananza form gets its own theme song, sung by the incomparable Jenny Kidd as Pauline.

DK is worthwhile even without his Bananza forms, as well. He's freaking Donkey Kong, after all! His repertoire of moves is more impressive than ever before, but never overwhelming either. For example, take his ability of being able to rip chunks out directly from the ground. He can swing the chunk around to beat and bash baddies into submission, but he can also chuck the chunk to hit faraway switches or enemies. Even more interestingly, he can perform a Turf Surf, riding the chunk like a snowboard, using his massive mitts to pull the turf forward along the ground to keep his momentum going. Not only is this great for picking up speed and crossing expansive areas of the environment quickly, but it's also paramount for getting across hazard-laden ground, such as that of brambles, electricity, and more.

No, seriously. The Kong Bananza is caked up, for real!

These abilities are especially a big deal during the boss battles--especially the bashing, smashing, and otherwise destroying that DK does. Boss battles really show the might of Nintendo's main monkey, and instead of the typical "three hits and they're beaten" battles that Nintendo EAD generally likes to employ for their platformers, instead, bosses are bestowed with health bars. Bosses are beaten rather quickly and few truly felt overly tricky or challenging. It was mostly learning their moves, how to evade, when they're left open to attack, and bam! Punch-a-bunch party of two was ready to be seated. While most of the fights were fast and rather effortless, by no means were they anything less than fun. Of course, fights near the endgame as also post-game definitely put DK through the wringer, and certainly took me plenty of attempts to overcome. 

Most boss battles, especially early on, won't get you sweating too much, but eventually they do escalate in difficulty.

As for the layers--or levels--of Donkey Kong Bananza, these are extremely creative and full of secrets, challenges, and things to do. Some are larger and lengthier than others, as some do not possess sub-layers to speak of. Instead, they're merely what you see is what you get, being one area apiece. However, the more involved and decidedly more interesting layers feature lots of sub-layers, many times changing up the atmosphere and locale entirely. The Freezer Layer mostly takes place in a wintry wonderland home to the Zebra tribe, but deeper down in a sub-layer is a hot, scorching, lava-filled furnace that threatens to melt one's face off!

A view of winter in the Midwestern U.S. or the Freezer Layer? You be the judge.

VoidCo causes trouble wherever they go, and each layer requires DK and Pauline to right the wrongs, help out various characters through the kindness of their hearts, and beat down those aforementioned bosses standing out as progression points to advance the story.

Really, one can opt to make a beeline for the story, and merely progress from one plot point to another without scouring the levels for their massive amounts of collectibles. It makes the game more difficult, as a player wouldn't have the skill points to invest into making DK considerably stronger, but that is a nice option to have! I found a mix of exploration and progression to be great for me, as I discovered that attempting to nab every Banandium Gem and Fossil on each layer before moving onto the next was burning me out on the game. Heck, I took multiple breaks from Donkey Kong Bananza because of it--hence the tardiness of this review! That said, once I found a cadence that worked for me, Bananza became even more addicting to me than it was previously. Even still, being able to teleport to various fast travels points and layers quickly through the clever eel teleportation service known as "T-eel-eporting" made collectible cleanup much more manageable for me.

Look at that goofy grin! How can you NOT love Donkey Kong?

A helpful map, too--which in incredible fashion displays real-time damage of the environment and landscape--was a tremendous help in noting which Banandium Gems and Fossils were collected, which still needed finding, and scavenging for other goodies and points of interest. The ability to easily track your progress this way across each and every layer was super beneficial, something that Mario Kart World picked up on with a recent update, thankfully, too.

With Donkey Kong, Nintendo hasn't always pulled too much from DK's history, particularly the Rareware era. However, any fears that I or anyone else may have had with Donkey Kong Bananza are long gone. No, Nintendo made Bananza a celebration of all things Donkey Kong and his 40+ year history with odes to every era. From the opening area of the game, Ingot Isle, featuring the familiar pink girders from the original Donkey Kong arcade game, to specific 2.5D challenge rooms modeled after levels in Donkey Kong Country (especially one that perfectly captures the Bramble Blast-themed stages), DK's history is fondly encapsulated in this game. 

DK says "gay rights"!

And really, Donkey Kong Bananza stands tall, thumping its chest with both fists proudly, as a love letter to all aspects of this long-standing franchise. It takes the modern approach to its design while providing plenty of callbacks to not leave enthusiasts out in the cold. Everything from the colorful worlds that DK stomps around in, to the extremely expressive Donkey Kong himself and other characters like Pauline--it all looks absolutely masterful in animation, design, and presentation. Perhaps the only gripe I can find with Bananza is that of the frame-rate, offering steadiness most of the time, but slight drops do happen. That said, some minor concession with the frame-rate are a small price to pay for the amount of destruction in the environment--again, something that Switch 1 could not do without altering the design of the game considerably. 

He's the leader of the bunch for a reason, and he apparently also led Nintendo's first-party platforming efforts on its Switch 2 for a reason, too. It was a bit of a risk to have DK lead the charge on Nintendo's new system, but Donkey Kong Bananza gives the grand gorilla a fair shake, time in the spotlight, and successfully moves over Mario (even if briefly) from his usual starring role as the lead 3D platforming star for a Nintendo system. While minor frame-rate issues and most of the boss battles being rather breezy might make for some modest moaning from myself, those complaints are quickly diminished by the absolute amount of fun that Bananza delivered in banana bunches to me. This 20 hour epic is one that constantly escalates the action, and keeps it going through the finale and beyond. Donkey Kong Bananza delights and delivers a 3D action-platformer that offers enough open-ended design to kick some serious potassium. 

[SPC Says: A]