Repetitive - but it's a good ride. The PS2 version is no way near as bad as people say
There are four teams you can play as in the game. Team Sonic (consisting of Sonic, Tails and Knuckles), Team Dark (Shadow, Omega (a robot) and Rouge), Team Rose (Amy, Cream and Big) and lastly Team Chaotix, which uses old school characters from Knuckles' Chaotix (Espeo, Charmy and Vector) Each team has their own story, but all go through exactly the same levels in exactly the same order.
The game has your three heroes all on screen at once. You control as the leader, who can be switched anytime using the triangle and circle buttons. There are three types a character can be, and one character of each type is presant in the teams. Speed types (Sonic, Shadow, Amy and Espeo) can run really fast, spin round poles to reach certain ledges and cross large gaps with loads of enemies using their homing attacks. Flight type (Tails, Rouge, Cream and Charmy) can fly over gaps and up to certain ledges. Their "Thundershoot" attack paralyzes enimes. Power type (Knuckles, Omega, Big and Vector) have the strongest attacks and can break obsticles in your way.
Gameplay involves getting from point A to B. In the level your characters can level up, increasing attack power making the stage slightly easier. These levels are reset if you die or finish a stage. After every two stages there will be a boss fight. The game gets repetative fast as each team handles the same, the levels are more or less the same apart from difficulty and there are few levels thayt have level specific gimicks to help separate them from the other levels. (Though they are all uniquley themed) The levels are also really long, some of which took me over 10 minutes on my first playthrough.
Team Sonic are on a goal to stop Eggman firing his "ultimate weapon." Their gameplay difficulty is medium.
Team Dark have the exact same routes in the levels, there are more enemies and other changes that make them harder, but they're more or less the same.
Team Rose are on a mission to find their lost animal friends, Froggy and Chocola Chao. They go through a segment of the level, making their gameplay very short and easy compared to everyone elses.
Team Chaotix are a slight exception. Their gameplay is mission based. But all it amounts to is finding things hidden within the level.
With all the teams you have a chance to collect chaos emeralds, you have to find a key and keep hold of it till the end of the level. If you do so, the "second segmant of the level theme" for lack of better vocabulary, will enable you to do the emerald challange. Basically you're in a tube and you have to collect power spheres and mash the square button to pick up speed, whilst avoiding spikes. You need to catch up with the emerald, which is magically speeding through the tube.
In the game there are three types of bosses. An Eggman fight, team fight and an endurance round. The Eggman fights involve the typical smashing his giant robot to peices. Team battles involve you fighting in a small area trying to knock the opposing team out of the round. These can be over within 20 seconds if you're good. Endurance rounds involve battling a set amount of robots. In the haunted castle theme world, the lenght is rediculous.
At the end of the day Sonic Heroes' gameplay is a fun ride, but it's quite repetative. The game is harder than it should be because of a faulty camera and very slippy controlls. They often lead to unfair deaths because you can't always see what you're meant to be doing.
As for graphics, the back grounds look nice, the models look really shiney and have considerably larger heads than they do in past Sonic games, but they still look okay.
Music - The music for the first few levels is awesome, but I find as you get further into the game, it deteriates. The themes for the teams are good. And "What I'm Made Of" is an awesome song.
I own the X-box version of this game, but I have played the PS2 version when I offered to get all the emeralds for one of my friends. And you know what... it's the same game! Seriously this PS2 version is not horrible in comparison to the X-box version (granted I've never played the GameCube version) In terms of PS2 ver VS X-box ver, this version has less vibrant colours and noticeably more slow down, but not to the point it renders the game un-playable. Personally, I prefer the small version of the X-box controller over the PS2 controller. But seriously there are no definitive differences between the two versions
So if you haven't played this yet, I recomend picking it up if you see it. I would like to see another game like this in the future if Sega fixed spome of the problems.
Milesprower2k9 original reveiws