I know it's been out for a while and this might be a little overdue, but with Christmas fast approaching, some of you may get points and may be wondering what to buy, so here's my two cents about one of my favorite games of all time, Sonic Adventure.
My first memories of this game were at the tender age of 11, when i got a Dreamcast for Christmas along with a few games, one of which was Sonic Adventure. I wasn't really a massive Sonic fan at the time and had really only played Sonic & Knuckles for the Sega Genesis, so this didn't really catch my attention to start with and was promptly left to sit on my sideboard for a couple of weeks. Once i had eventually ran out of things to play i decided to pop it in and at least have a look, just to alleviate some of my boredom. What i ran into was something that completely blew me away. I was totally gripped from the start, everything grabbed my attention; The intro cinematic, the game play, the music, the story. It sang to me on so many levels that games had not done previously, it was and still is, one of my must play games of your lifetime. So i'll begin.
The Demo:
The demo game on the XBLA does not do this game any justice whatsoever. It slaps you into one of the driest parts of the game with no storyline whatsoever and a little bit of a spoiler and, being a dated title of Dreamcast origin, the game play is not enough to draw you into its world. While the game play of the game is fantastic it remains a little bit clunky and, at points awkward. Like i said, it's a dated title but it's a solid title, nonetheless.
The Sound:
The soundtrack for this game is amazing, it even got its own section, see? We aren't talking about just mere stage themes here, we're talking about full blown, studio produced audio by the now fairly well known Crush 40. Each of it's stages themes are beautifully composed and fit each location perfectly and the theme songs for some characters will have you bobbing your head more times than not. While some of the voice acting can be a little on the dodgy side, most of the voice acting is brilliant and each of the voices perfectly mirror the character. 10/10 for the sound.
The Story:
As you are most likely aware, Sonic games have never been to great for the storyline until the subsequent stream of 3D games that have graced the consoles. The story for this one, however, is somewhat special. It's completely unique and rings back to Sonics old glory days. The story feels like a narrated and scripted version of one of the 2D games, which carries a great amount of immersion just in itself alone. It also gives you 6 playable characters, each with their own story and viewpoint of the events that occur, some play a pivotal role, others break away from the main story to provide back story on the character or to provide decent filler story. The only thing that is a bit of a disappointment is that some characters stories will seem more like rigmarole than actual canonical inclusion, as if they were put there just to make you play for longer. 8/10 for the story.
The Game Play:
Like i said a little earlier, it's a little bit clunky, but what would you expect from a dated console. The only thing that will really piss you off beyond measure is the sometimes awkward camera angles, where you won't actually be able to see what you're trying to get to or anything, but this can be quickly rectified with the triggers. Sometimes you will slam into a wall and come to a complete stop, which can be annoying at times, but it isn't really that much of a problem. If there is one thing in this game that will most likely cause you to stop playing, that would be the final boss of Sonics storyline, not for the fact that it is hard, but sometimes the game has actually done me over and I've dashed straight through the final bosses hit area on the final hit and to my death in the bottomless pit below. Certain portions of game play (AKA Big the Cat's story/Amy Rose's story) will make you want to gouge your own eyes out with a rusty spoon, because it's just overbearingly boring and tedious. Overall it gets 6/10 for game play, controls are great, but there are things that can really make you an unhappy camper.
The Graphics:
Now i'm not a graphics gamer, but this is pretty mandatory, because some of you are. The graphics for this game are pretty outdated but the cinematic scenes (Such as the intro) are fantastic and almost puts some of today's game cinematic sequences to shame. In game however, that is somewhat of a different story. I wouldn't say that the graphics suck, because they don't, they're just outdated and may look crappy to some of the younger gamers out there. The characters are beautifully designed, but the animation during cut scenes can be a little shoddy in appearance, but this is only due to the fact that the mouth movements were originally animated to talk in Japanese and not English. 8/10.
In any case and it's definitely worth a look at if you like platformer titles. All in all it's a solid title with a fairly large amount of mandatory play time required to complete it. It's a worthwhile distraction from actual Xbox 360 titles and well worth the points, even if you buy the basic version and on that note, i recommend that players with less time just buy the basic version and not the DX add on DLC because you won't actually use it and you'll definitely be wasting points. That's all from me for this time, cheers!
Buy my games kids! Or Sega will feed me to the dogs. D:>
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