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| Sonic Adventure returns |
That said, Sonic Adventure isn't entirely a bad game. There are a lot of really good ideas at its core, but it's surrounded by a lot of things that keep it from being the classic it could have been. At its best, this game could (and probably should) have been an arcade game. The reason the game wasn't released as an arcade title can be summed up in two words and a number: Super Mario 64.
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Eliminate the open world:
In-between the meat of the game (the action stages), there are open world sequences. These moments feature the playable character running around trying to get to the next level. Occasionally, there is a puzzle where players will have to pick something up and put it somewhere, but that's all that you can do here. The only thing that tells you there might be a puzzle are these red hint orbs that feel tacked-on at the last second.
These orbs tell you where to go in the most boringly direct way possible: "Go to the mystic ruins" and "The Casino is in the alley." These are prime examples of lazy writing in a game. It's lazy writing in an empty open world that would have been better if it were left on the cutting room floor. Sega couldn't leave it though. Sonic Adventure had to compete with Mario 64.
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Remove any friendly NPCs:
This isn't a way to get rid of Tails or any of the hedgehog's friends, but any character or object that Sonic must interact with can be a frustrating moment. The problem with this is that the game's mechanics are based around moving fast. Sonic has a lot of trouble slowly and precisely approaching these objects; making it much more frustrating than it needs to be.
When approaching the statuesque people in the game's open-world, Sonic must line up directly with that character's fiend of view. Once the player has themselves perfectly lined up, they must press the interact button, which also happens to be the dash attack. If Sonic wasn't lined up perfectly, he just dashed past the NPC and the players must try this again.
These characters don't serve much purpose in the game and they don't provide any real flavor to Sonic Adventure. It's not impressive in any way, but we now live in a post-GTA III world. Maybe it was more impressive on 9/9/99.
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There's no Sonic the Hedgehog style:
Sonic Adventure surprisingly fails the Sonic the Hedgehog test. Let me explain: Back when the first game came out, one of the coolest thing the character would do is tap his foot and wait for you to control him. If you didn't push a button, Sonic would impatiently wait for you to do so. It was freaking incredible in the early nineties.
It seems that Sega forgot about that at the dawn of the new millennium though because that feature is absent. Sonic just stands around if you don't push a button. There's no impatient animation from the blue rodent. He just stands there. No attitude, no flavor. Nothing.
Wanna know who did something? I'll give you a hint: He's the main character in Mario 64.
This non-player controlled action does appear in Sonic Adventure, but in the worst way possible. There's a segment in the first action stage with the killer whale. Sonic is running down a dock with a giant killer whale chasing him! Isn't that awesome?
However, this segment has no player control. If you put the controller down during this segment, Sonic keeps running. Apparently Sega thought it was too cool to have the players risk dying during this sequence.
If Sonic Adventure was an arcade game, these action stages would be at the game's forefront. Players could choose one of the five characters and play to their heart's content.
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Like I said earlier, I do honestly think that Sonic Adventure isn't a bad game; it just tried to be something it isn't. The action stages have very fun moments hidden in them. It's just issues like these that keep the experience from being really good. For example, without the development time on those open worlds, maybe some of the clipping issues wouldn't happen in the action stages.
If you didn't play Sonic Adventure back in the day, you don't really need to now. The game seems to serve as the beginning of the end in terms of quality Sonic games. Sonic 4 will hopefully fix this issue, but we'll see. *Taps foot*
The Official Verdict: 2 out of 5
This review is based on a copy of the game provided by the publisher.
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