The past week or two some friends and I have been getting pretty
into Sonic the Hedgehog. Not like, marathoning every game or anything,
but we’ve been talking about some memories with the games, listening to
the music again, etc. One thing that would come up a lot was Sonic
Adventure vs. Sonic Adventure 2. The comparisons were…really strange,
but we eventually came to the conclusion they both had some advantages
and disadvantages over the other. I was in support of SA2 completely.
While I had loved SA as a kid, SA2 I had loved even more.
You see, I never had any Sega consoles as a kid, so my first
experience with Sonic was Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, which I looooved as a
kid. I got SADX shortly afterward, and loved it as well. So in 2010
when Sonic Adventure was rereleased and got abysmal reviews, I was
shocked. What had happened?! I remember that game being awesome! Was it
just because it was an older game? But even then, when games like Banjo
Kazooie and HD Collections of other 3D platformers from that era were
released, they were praised to the moon and back and sales were
terrific. How was SA any different than those other 3D platformers from
the time? And when SA2 was rereleased late last year, people gave it bad
reviews too. But how?!
Well, I was curious, so I purchased the HD version of SA2 on 360.
And…well…yeah, it’s bad. I don’t know about 3/10, but the game’s
teeeerrible by today’s standards. And judging a 12 year old 3D
platformer by the same standards of every other game out today isn’t
exactly fair, but even compared to other platformers from the late 90′s
and early 2000′s, it’s literally painful to play. Why did I like SA2 as a
kid? Well…because I was a kid. It’s absolutely perfect for a kid’s
game, but nothing more. How? Well, it’s got everything. Giant trucks,
rock music, huge robots, and characters that try so hard to be cool it’s
hilarious.
Playing through the game again being older and arguably smarter than I
was as a little kid, there were a lot of parts I really couldn’t stand.
But before that, there were also a lot of parts I liked. The
Sonic/Shadow levels are a really good time when they work properly,
running and blasting your way through hordes of robots is awesome. Some
people say they prefer SA1′s Sonic levels since they’re less linear and
have more to explore, but I think I like linearity better for this kind
of game. I get a lot more fun out of running fast than I do searching
around for something that’s mostly meaningless anyway. The soundtrack is
absolutely awesome. As much as I want to make fun of the cheesy rock
songs like City Escape and Live and Learn, I honestly can’t get enough
of them. While the story is ridiculous, it’s actually surprisingly fun
to keep up with and can keep you playing. There’s a lot of diversity in
the levels, from cities, to space, to jungles, to pyramids, you end up
going just about everywhere, which is always a good thing.
But beyond that…wow. The Sonic/Shadow stages are awesome when they
work, but again…only when they work. Grinding is really annoying,
because rails are reaaaally tiny. If you’re an inch off, you’ll more
than likely fall to your death. While it isn’t always a big deal, in a
level like Sky Rail where the entire point is grinding through the sky
with nothing below you, it gets really noticeable. The homing attack is
fun to kill enemies with, but you have to be pretty darn close to make
sure you actually land the thing. Sometimes you’ll be just a hair too
far away from the next enemy you’re meant to attack, and end up flinging
yourself to your own death instead.
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Dr. Eggman in one of his earlier levels.
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The Knuckles/Rouge levels are also pretty bad, but not as bad as I
remember them. As a kid, I absolutely dreaded these levels, because they
were super slow and confusing. I understand them now and how they were
made, but it’s still not very good. Basically, the premise is that
you’re going around a large, open world searching for emerald shards.
How do you find them? An emerald radar at the bottom that flashes green,
yellow, and red as you get closer, and flying TV screens in the levels
that give you hints (that vary from being either completely useless or
beyond obvious.) The emerald radar only lets you see the location of one
emerald at a time, making it even more slow and obnoxious finding them
all. Again, when you know what you’re doing they aren’t huge wastes of
time and can actually be fun to explore and mess around in, because
Knuckles and Rouge actually control better than the other characters in
the game, moving very quickly but also having very precise controls.
However, the huge size of the levels is often more frustrating than fun,
especially on gimmicky levels like Mad Space where you have to go
between huge planets with crappy controls and Security Hall where you’re
on a 5 minute time limit. Overall, these levels sometimes have
potential, but it’s often completely thrown away as a result of
obnoxious level design and a radar that barely helps at all.
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Knuckles in an exciting battle with King Boom Boo!
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One thing that I also feel is worth
mentioning is the boss battles. They come in two forms; huge enemies and
character fights. The character fights, well, suck. You basically fight
your character’s rival (Sonic vs. Shadow, Tails vs. Eggman, Knuckles
vs. Rouge) until one of you dies. This could’ve been really fun, but it
comes down to pressing buttons and usually lasts no more than 15 seconds
because your enemy’s AI is beyond stupid. The huge enemies however, are
some of the most memorable bossfights I can think of. The GUN robots
Sonic and Shadow fight in the beginning are pretty lame, but the music
and atmosphere are cool and make for a memorable fight. The Egg Golem
and King Boom Boo are both reaaaally cool fights, and the Final Hazard
(the Super Sonic/Shadow boss) is one of the coolest video game moments
ever. The only really bad one that comes to mind is the fight with
Biolizard (seriously, whoever decided adding a random water slide in the
middle of the arena was a good idea is a horrible human being.)
But there’s also a lot to do besides just the main stories. The chao
garden is an awesome, very deep pet simulator that comes with a few cool
minigames like chao karate and chao racing, there’s multiplayer that
can actually be pretty funny if you aren’t taking it too seriously, and
there’s even a kart racing minigame (that’s…well, pretty much useless.)
You can go back and select individual levels to play, and they actually
all have 5 missions you can go do, so if you really like the game
there’s lots of replay value.
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Rolling around at the speed of sound…
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In the end, it’s…a really, REALLY weird game
to look at. The Sonic/Shadow stages are awesome when everything works
with them, the Knuckles/Rouge levels feel like they could’ve been ok but
end up being frustrating, and the Tails/Eggman levels feel almost
completely like wastes of time. The music is awesome, the graphics are
alright, there’s a lot of bonus features like the chao garden and kart
racing, but a lot of it feels useless when a big chunk of the game is
either boring or super glitchy. This game came out after Super Mario 64
and Banjo-Kazooie, and came out the same year as Jak and Daxter. How did
those games live on for years to come, while SA2 gets nothing but
backlash when it’s brought back? I…I honestly don’t know. I had fun
revisiting it, but if I hadn’t played it a lot as a kid I don’t think I
would’ve enjoyed much of it at all besides parts of the Sonic/Shadow
levels.
Everyone should play this game. Not because it’s amazing, not because
it’s terrible, it’s just a really, really interesting game to look at.
There are some parts that are absolutely unforgettably fun, and others
that make you seriously want to just stop playing. As much fun as the
Sonic levels are, trudging through the emerald hunting and shooting
levels to get to them is a real pain. The game has a load of charm to it
and a surprisingly good atmosphere, but do those really do much for it
when there are so many bugs? Putting it as simply as “Sonic levels are
good, the others suck, so only 1/3rd of the game is good” isn’t really
fair, because some of the treasure hunting levels can be a lot of fun
actually, and even the shooting occasionally has its highlights, not to
mention bonuses like the chao garden. If you’re going into something
like game design, this game can really teach you a lot, I think. It
shows what happens when you try to bring a handful of different genres
together, throw them into one game, and put way more focus on some parts
of the game than others. What the game does right it definitely does
right, but what it does wrong can sometimes be REALLY annoying.
It’s hard to give a score to a game like this, but I think a 5/10 is fair.
Did you actually write this? There's no way you could have possibly written this. I call bullshit.
ReplyDeleteCame for the lulz but stayed for the content. Holy shit, nice job man.
Requesting Kingdom Hearts and Pikmin
Everything on here so far is just stuff I've either had saved in word documents for later or put on other sites, but I really did write everything word for word. Glad you like it!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I've never actually played the first Kingdom Hearts, but it's coming out in HD later this year I think so I'll probably check it out then. As for Pikmin, I don't know about reviewing the original one but the third game is coming out in just a couple of weeks and I'm planning on picking it up at launch and hopefully reviewing it shortly afterward. Thanks for the encouragement!
review Dunkhunt. I want to see how many expletives there are. If you don't have it, you can borrow mine.
Deleteyou shoot shit
Delete9.5/10