The Swan Song of Sonic The Hedgehog

User Rating: 8 | Sonic Adventure 2 DC
The Run down: Sonic Adventure 2 (or in as the call it in Japan Sonikku Adobenchā 2) is a platform video game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the Dreamcast console. It was released in North America, Europe, and Japan in June 2001 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Sonic the Hedgehog series. The game is the last Sonic the Hedgehog title to be released for the Sega platform. Due to Sega's exit from the video game console manufacturing business, the game was ported to the Nintendo Game Cube and re-titled Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, Which Boros is to review. This game has a wonderful story but I will get into that when I speak on the many good things about this game. This game introduces two of my favorite sonic characters and gives a little girls voice to my favorite sonic character Rouge the bat. Also in this game is Knuckles the Echidna, Tails (I refuse to call him by that insidious name they gave him) Amy Rose (as a NPC in story mode) Dr.Eggman, His cousin Maria Robotnic and his Grand father Gerald Robotnic, The then new character shadow the hedgehog. There are two story lines that you have to play through and use multiple control schemes. This is very tedious but I will get into that type of stuff in the bad and the ugly. The story of this game is very complex and may take you a day or so to wrap your head around. I will sum it up but I worn you this summery contains spoilers and may ruin playing the game for you. So The following weighting that is italicized and colored on certain cites contains spoilers. YOU HAVE BEEN WORNED! The story begins if you chose to do the heroes first (I did both simultaneously) with sonic in side of a helicopter and he jumps out of it to escape custody of gun soldiers. From there you ride a piece of meatle down a street and into a bus and then the classic sonic game play takes off. You then run through the city and run into shadow who has stolen a choas emarald. After this if you chose to play the dark story first wich explains why every thing happens in the hero side shadow runs to the space colony arch. Any way long story short the bad guys get all the emeralds put them in the arch and send it into the earth unwittingly. If you want to know more play the game.

The Good:
This game has a vivid color scheme to it. The levels make you feal like you were in the real world environment of the jungles, space ships. The game fast paced game play the interesting back ground stories of all the new characters. Shadow may have the most interesting as his is filled to the brim with tragedy. You find out that he is a synthetic life form that was engineered to be the ultimate life form by Gerald Robotnic 50 years before the story is set to have occurred in a top secret space colony called arc. He was trying to tap into the taboo thought of immortality because of his grand daughter Maria. Maria was diagnosed with a terminal illness, he wanted to heal her with his science. So shadow was created. Shadow and Maria became very close friends (kind of a brother a sister relationship) Well the Government of the fictional Nation did not take kind to this thought and wanted the project terminated. And like a mirror of the nation this Nation is supposed to represent instead of just getting cutting funding and paying people to keep their mouths shut they just send a death squad up in the arc and start spraying the place with bullets and blood. The kill Maria in the process but she is able to get shadow off the arc. In a unexplainable arc of the story they arrest Gerald rather than making him part of the blood bath that occurred else were on the ship. Drown into madness by the brutal murder of his 12 year old grand daughter, he plotted his revenge. Using shadow to execute his plan Gerald then sat in a super security prison that was under water. After he finished his revenge shadow was captured by gun and put into a cocoon never to be heard from or seen again. After this Gerald was executed by firing squad. If you want to know more play the game. This game also had a mini game called the choa garden. Once you start this expect to spend many hours of your life playing in it. I'm sure my counter part Boros talks plenty about this in his review of the game cube version. Also the treasure hunting levels are fun and if your into it the mech shooting portion of the game is fun as well. The Bad: Since I am doing the dream cast version of this game I will say that it had some graphics issues, as well as some really stupid glitches and narcissistic characters. Sonics arrogance almost gets him kill. Also there are a bunch of glitches that lead to you dieing. These glitches also can get you killed. The brest bouncing of Rouge as she runs is rather inappropriate for game that is supposed to be for kids. Also the very dark story and multiple deaths of humans are very inappropriate for children. But all these are more than ok for us older gamers.

The Ugly:
Ok I said before that this game was tedious. If you don't like certain parts of this game you just have to grin and bare it. To some the shooting levels are ignorant and even retarded. To others the aggravating treasure hunting levels can make any one not like this game. A side bar of ugliness is how Game spots "professional Reviewers" gave this version a good report but then turned around and bad mouthed the game cube version. Band wagon much? And they complain about how Sega's "latest game" has very little to do with the blue blur? These game spot pro reviewers are talking out of their asses. Conclusion:
This game was made to be the last in the sonic series. Looking back now I would not have mind if they would have done this. But there is no use crying over spilled milk. As Lupe Fiasco says the show goes on. The made a few good ones after this one but if you ask this game reviewing vet that been around longer than this site that calls me a paper boy right now this was the Swan song of sonic. And so you kids who are just now coming up this is what a swan song is, "Swan song" is a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement. The phrase refers to an ancient belief that the Mute Swan is completely silent during its lifetime until the moment just before death, when it sings one beautiful song. There were many other wonderful games which this legendary hedgehog in it before this one this was the best. I don't give a flying **** about the rating system on this site. Ima give it an 8 because it had its falts even though it was on a defaced system. You punks can bad mouth sonic all you want but this game deserves to be held high and praised as the master piece it was. Sonic never will return back to his former glory but this game should be remembered as his hits. No one every remembers some ones hits just their misses. So In my book this game was a major hit. Live and Learn.