Sonic and Mario, when it comes to platformers, those two know their stuff. I prefer Sonic over Mario because of his speed and level design. I have heard from many people that Sonic Adventure 2 is the best Sonic game ever made, and since it finally got released on Xbox Live, I had to get my hands on it. Sadly, it wasn't the experience I had hoped for.
The game gives you two stories to choose, the Hero or Dark path. Both have three characters with the same gameplay style as the other team. Sonic/Shadow are speed characters, Knuckles/Rouge glide and climb walls, and Tails/Eggman ride around in mechs.
Sonic and Shadow's levels are pretty good, but unfortunately, Sonic only has 6 levels and Shadow has 4. The game has 31 levels, which means you play as Sonic for only 1/5 of the game, and Shadow for less than 1/7 of it. That's right, the characters that are front and center on the cover of the game get barely any game time at all. I don't even have to say how idiotic that is (oh wait, I just did).
Knuckles and Rouge do treasure hunting missions, and trust me, they will frustrate the heck out of you. Each of the items they are searching for always has a random location in the level. On top of that, the radar system has been severely nerfed from its predecessor Sonic Adventure. Instead of letting you know of whether you're getting close to any three of the items, it only lets you know of the first one the game wants you to find. That is beyond unacceptable, especially when they got the radar system right in the previous game. You could pass up an item you're supposed to find time and time again. I got stuck on a treasure hunting mission for more than 20 minutes.
Tails and Eggman use mechs. Eggman, I can understand. But, Tails, why him? He is out of his mech in the Chao Garden and controls pretty much the same as SA1, except with unlimited flight time for some reason. The mechs control extremely stiffly and the camera will screw you over many times when you have to make big jumps and lock-ons if you don't know when and where to do so.
This brings me to my next issue, the camera. What ticks me off is that the camera wasn't really much of a problem for me in Sonic Adventure. I had some camera issues, but none like this. On Sonic and Shadow stages, it's mostly fine. However, with the mech and treasure hunting levels, it will drive you insane. The camera is horrendous in this game. It's inverted, so if you want to move it left, you have to hit right on the control stick or the right trigger button. That's awkward. When Knuckles or Rouge are climbing walls, you continuously have to adjust the camera to see what you're doing, whether it's using the camera to find an item, or to straighten it out entirely, and the camera adjusting is extremely stiff, you can't adjust it in certain parts of the game. Also if you want to move the camera 360 degrees, once you move your character it will just switch back behind him or her, which is awful.
It's what many people call the greatest Sonic game ever made, and coming from a guy who knows both of the most well known platformers, this one is far from the best. It has not aged very well at all. I'm giving it a 7 out of 10.