The 35th anniversary of Sonic continues, as does SuperPhillip Central's look back at the series in both good and bad forms! We're moving on to Sonic Adventure, and this is notably not just for being Sonic's first fully 3D adventure, but also being for SPC's very first Sega Dreamcast review! I know, I know--we just got under the buzzer on that one! At any rate, here is a retro review of Sonic Adventure.
"Can't hold on much longer..."
I never had the pleasure or privilege of owning or even much less playing a Sega Dreamcast growing up. The system might have had an early demise due to a one-two punch of various fumbling by Sega, as well as the PlayStation 2's launch, but even in its short lifespan, the Dreamcast certainly left a positive impact on gaming.
My experience with Sega's lead mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, dates back to the blue blur's debut on the Sega Genesis, but I wouldn't get to dabble with the 3D version of the franchise until Sega went third party and released Sonic Adventure 2: Battle on Nintendo's GameCube. I recall greatly enjoying my first full-fledged 3D Sonic that I played; even going as far as getting all of the emblems in that. Then, a year or so later, Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut hit the GameCube, and I remember liking that, too, though not as much as its sequel.
My point in traveling down memory lane and talking a bit of my past experiences with Sonic the Hedgehog is that opinions change over time. Call it youth naivete or whatever you'd like, but back in the day, I found Sonic Adventure, at least on the GameCube, to be a competent enough game. Now, that I played it on its original version on the Dreamcast, well... I refer back to my previous statement of "opinions change over time."
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| You can't have a screenshot of Sonic Adventure without this set piece on display. |
Sonic Adventure is comprised of six individual campaigns, though you start with only Sonic's unlocked. As you play through his story, the other five characters' campaigns become available. The campaigns themselves are interrelated, crossing over with each other multiple times. You'll consistently see familiar scenes, but you'll get the perspective of the other characters, or learn some backstory and character motivations.
There are three hubs or Adventure Fields in Sonic Adventure: Station Square, Mystic Ruins, and the Egg Carrier. These connect the game's numerous stages together and are able to be explored. Needless to say, while these Adventure Fields offer some nice ideas, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. I feel it's a great thing that most future Sonic games trimmed the fat, so to speak, and removed these entirely.
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| Sonic gets the most amount of action stages in his campaign, coming in at ten total. |
As for the individual campaigns, Sonic's story is understandably created as the longest in the game, made up of ten stages. He does get top billing after all. Sonic's stages are speedy thrill rides through obstacle-laden, loop de loop-filled, enemy-infested romps where the goal is to simply make it to the end of the stage. This was before the boost formula made its way into the 3D series. There is no boost gauge to be found. It's running around at the speed of sound... if the speed of sound isn't too terribly fast by comparison to future games, and jumping and spin dashing your way through stages. The homing attack debuted here, and it doesn't always hit its intended target--like the Sonic series itself, there were some growing pains involved.
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| The intermittent boss battles are mostly harmless, but the ones that stink (not pictured) really stink. |
The stages themselves offer plentiful shortcut opportunities, though a lot of these can be difficult to pull off on first blush. Part of that, and this is no matter the campaign you play as, is because the camera is absolutely atrocious. While it's intended to be left untouched--serving as an automatic camera of sorts, where it follows along the player and gives you its opinion of the most ideal camera angles--sometimes you have to turn it with the shoulder buttons, or else you're really at a disadvantage, needing to make ridiculous blind jumps. Unfortunately, upon doing this, you'll discover the camera loves to fight you, forcing itself back into position when all you want to do is get a proper view on where you're going.
Another playable character with his own campaign is that of Sonic's trusty friend and sidekick Tails. Tails has the power of flight, though its not infinite flight unlike the cutscenes he's featured in would have you possibly believe. Tails' version of stages are races against Sonic, who no doubt is holding back to give his foxy buddy some confidence. Sonic's a good pal with a good heart through and through. Tails plays through a given section of Sonic's stages instead of the entire stage itself. This is pretty much true for every characters' campaign in the game when they venture into locales already ventured by Sonic.
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| Though in his final stage of his campaign, Tails is in a race against Eggman (and time, for that matter). |
Knock-knock, it's time to talk about Knuckles and his campaign. The watcher of the Master Emerald, when a mysterious creature shatters the oversized green emerald into pieces, Knuckles glides and otherwise wanders about to find three pieces in each of the stages he visits. These are essentially scavenger hunt games of "hot and cold" where there is a beep as Knuckles gets close to a Master Emerald shard. The closer he gets to one, the more the beeping intensifies. These were nice changes of pace, instead of just rushing from point A to point B like most other characters' stages--moving about an open, non-linear area in search of Master Emerald shards.
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| Search high and low for those Master Emerald shards, Knuckles. |
Next, we have Amy Rose, whose stages see her pursued by a giant green mech who seeks to capture her--or at least the Flicky bird she's taking care of. Her stages have her running away from this mech at intermittent intervals, evading her chaser while making progress through the levels. Amy--as well as the other two characters--get an exclusive stage venue within the Hot Shelter, a place Sonic doesn't get to explore in his campaign. Amy's Piko Piko Hammer is meant to not only bonk foes that stand in her way, but she can also run and slam it down in order to somersault, giving her the ability to reach higher places.
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| Amy and her Flicky friend can hardly get a moment's peace from their mechanized stalker. |
The penultimate character is that of E-102 Gamma, an Eggman robot who comes to question its programming upon seeing its fellow robots destroyed by Eggman for their mission failures, as well as meeting Amy Rose. Its levels see Gamma marching through stages, having the player hold down and release the action button to target and launch missiles at enemies respectively. The more targets that are hit, the more seconds are added to the level timer which unlike every other campaign in the game, it counts down instead up. If it hits zero, the stage is failed. It is pretty difficult to fail stages this way, but it changes things up all the same.
Finally, and coming in with just four or so stages mercifully, is that of Big the Cat. Like the aforementioned Adventure Fields, there's most likely a reason Big's focus on fishing for his campaign was not made as a requirement for future Sonic games. Heck, it wouldn't even be a gameplay mechanic again until Sonic Frontiers, though as something optional. Big's stages feature fishing. You slowly saunter around as Big, avoid the minimal amount of enemies in each level, and cast your line to attempt to fish up Froggy, Big's friend. I appreciate the mechanics being there and capable enough--having to pay attention to the tension of the line and how fast or slow you reel--it's just not fun and not what I want as mandatory to do in a Sonic game.
After the initial six campaigns are completed with credits rolled for each--by the way, I did not particularly care for having to sit through the credits six separate times since you can't skip them (nor any cutscene, for that matter)-- you unlock the final campaign, that of Super Sonic's. This wraps up the individual stories and puts Super Sonic against the final boss of the game. It's quite a spectacle of a boss, and one that I can't say failed to impress me, especially when considering the time of the game's release. Sure, like everything else in the game, there's plenty of jank in this battle, but it's fun all in all. Having Super Sonic rushing along Station Square's flooded city streets, collecting rings, evading the boss's attacks, and boosting with enough speed into the boss makes for some cool moment-to-moment action, and ends the game on a fairly nice note.
When the battle is done, Tails unironically (at least the voice direction makes it come across that way, in my defense) utters, "I guess all's well that ends well!" This is all the while as Station Square is now a flooded wasteland, and who knows how many of its denizens perished from the now-defeated boss's arrival. Then, of course, the unskippable credits roll for the seventh time. The final "FIN".
Even still, while the Adventure Mode was complete for me, I periodically entered into the Trial mode, which gives new takes on each stage and characters' missions. Whereas each character's Mission C is simply to complete their respective stage, and this is done within the Adventure Mode itself, other missions, B and C, are more challenging. For Sonic, his B and C missions require him to collect 50 rings while reaching the goal and clearing a stage within a strict time limit respectively.
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| Time to go up and down and all around in Speed Highway. |
Each mission completed earns a Sonic Emblem, of which there are 130 total to earn and collect. However, unlike Sonic Adventure DX, which added an incentive to do this, there really is nothing earned from collecting all 130 Emblems in the OG Sonic Adventure. I'd say other than a job well done, but it's less that and more... "a job well done for not throwing the game in the garbage after suffering through the game so much." Because it's through these missions and attempting to clear them where the biggest flaws and worst aspects of Sonic Adventure come shining through. I'm talking about the junk camera, jank platforming, buggy glitches, and having to contend with the Chao Garden and its pain in the patootie races--the latter of which are horribly explained within the game.
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| Sonic's bouncing about at Emerald Coast. |
After 17 hours and 115 Emblems, I definitely had my fill of Sonic Adventure. Heck, I feel a bit vindicated in my opinion after playing through the game much more than I had to, if only because it furthered my thoughts that--at least with this Dreamcast original version of the game--Sonic Adventure is a terrible offering.
Where Mario jumped into the realm of 3D with absolute grace, Sonic failed and performed a faceplant in the process. There is a lot to love about Sonic Adventure, to be fair--the ideas are well intended and somewhat clever, the music is some of the series's absolute best and one of my favorite soundtracks in gaming, and the presentation, especially for 1999, is terrific--but as a cohesive package, the game flails and otherwise fails. Sonic the Hedgehog said a mouthful when he uttered, "that's NO good." He wasn't talking about Sonic Adventure, of course, but if the red sneaker fits...
[SPC Says: D]
