This is one of the greatest games of the 3D era of video gaming. Fast and with more actual replay value than most.
User Rating: 8 | Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut GC
Graphics The textures are diverse and detailed almost all of the time, in every Action Stage, and in the Adventure Fields. There is rarely a blurry texture to be seen up close, and the mip mapping seen in the Dreamcast version is replaced by a much cleaner (tri-linear?) filtering method for far away textures. There is quite a lot of detail in the polygon department as well, eyes move, facial geometry moves, mouths open to reveal teeth and a tongue, hands are animated, and characters are drawn with fairly rounded edges. Character models are slightly modified from their Dreamcast originals, as they replaced the texture mapping with whatever that smooth skin texturing thing they started with Sonic Heroes (technically started here). The Gamespot reviewer says it looks like Cell shading, but it looks nothing of the sort. On the Dreamcast version the characters were lit and had a very fine texture map over them, and on the Gamecube they upped the polycount to make them more rounded off, adjusted the lighting effect to that of the Gamecube's standard light, and took off the texture map. Pop-up is very rare in this game, even over the Dreamcast game. They seem to have upgraded or changed most to all of the world texture maps as well. You can see all the way out into the horizon all the time and see with virtually nothing popping into view. On top of this, the standard framerate was upped from 30FPS in the DC version, to 60FPS, and, again, nevermind what the Gamespot review says, the drops in framerate are in no way worse than the DC version. Later levels which dipped into the teens on the Dreamcast launch game, apart from the occasional stutter, now maintain at or above 30FPS in the most wide open areas (a fact that makes the platforming sections *much* easier). It is still the sensation of insane speed though, that would be the prime attraction in the graphics of this game. Never before have you played a 3D action/platform/adventure game as fast as this one is. That's all I can say about that, you have to play it, and I mean all the way through, to really see it for yourself. Sound Audio in this game is identical to the Dreamcast game. The music is clear and crisp, and depending on your tastes, quite motivating and exciting. Music styles very from traditional Sonic style music to Rock, Pop or just plain funky tunes. You have an option to change the voices between Japanese and English in the option screen. The Japanese voice actors are good, and not grating to listen to at all if you can appreciate the Japanese language, while the English actors botch many lines, and in some cases can actually be annoying to listen to. This is undoubtably where the complaints against this game's story come in. Playing the game with subtitles and the Japanese actors alleviates most of the quirkiness of the storytelling. All in all the sound for Sonic Adventure is great, with a few shortfalls here and there that might bother some folks. There were some cases of sound glitches in the Dreamcast game that are cleared up here as well. Control There are seven characters to play as in this game, Sonic, Amy, Tails, E102, Big, Knuckles, and after you beat the game with each of them, Super Sonic. All of the characters have a bit of a learning curve when trying to control them, but rest assured that the control is pin point accurate. The only changes I've noticed between the original and DX is on Speed Highway. For some reason the higher framerate messed up the timing of the first section right after the platform that slides on a rail. In the Dreamcast game here, the highway would shoot you sideways onto that building that's in the background, and you'd run across the side of it to get to the next highway section, while in the Gamecube version you fall off the building to a lower section of the level. Not a big deal, and I haven't tried more than a few times to stick to that building face instead. So it's possible that you can still get to that higher section, but even the game demo mode doesn't go that way. There has been mention in other reviews, especially the joke of a review on this site, of the camera being a real problem in the game. I know that the reviewer just didn't play the game long enough to get used to it. While the camera is still glitchy on the extreme rare occasion, most of time when the camera moves, it is because you are supposed to go somewhere else. The camera does on the rare occasion cause accidental deaths by swinging around wildly, and this can especially occur if the player is trying to run perpendicular to the actual track. These extreme instances are very rare, and can be completely eliminated in the beginning process of practicing where this game really shines, mastering the levels and trimming off time. People were finishing these levels in less than a minute on the Dreamcast, and they are *easier* thanks to the framerate boost here. Most of the complaints are just because the camera is very dynamic. It swings to a side view when you run through loops, and keeps track of bosses when you're fighting them, but the whole time you have pin point control on your character. I've had Sonic spring high up into the air, and while he was falling past the camera, I was able to position him to land on a floating island barely three times Sonic's size, I could even pick exactly where on this small platform I wanted him to land. I've moved Sonic to fall off of the first platform in Windy Valley, and made him land three levels down to make a shortcut in the level. The control is very smooth and manageable in this game, it just takes a little patience, you haven't played a game that plays quite like this game before. This still holds true, even when compared with the best games of this generation, and I challenge anybody who thinks the camera is actually a problem, even in SA DX, to message me and I will provide you with a movie file showing you that it is not the game, or the camera that's preventing you from being able to play it as it was intended, and glitch free. Story It's hard to really explain the story without spoiling it for anyone who hasn't played through it yet. Let me just say that the story in this game goes above and beyond the typical stop-the-megalomaniac story that curses many other mascot games. The story is centered around the six main characters, though three of them are really side stories to the main plot. Robotnik, or as he is called in this game Dr. Eggman, is trying to take over the world with an ancient being known as Chaos. I don't want to go into too much more detail since the development of the Chaos character is one of the key plot points of the game, but rest assured that this game has a great story to tell, it's just a shame that they couldn't find better voice actors to portray it with, or that more Americans can't enjoy reading subtitles and listening to the excellent voice actors in Japanese. This has been the second mode of criticism from the press and message boards, so I'll add a comment here as well. It is inarguable that the gameplay premise of one main story (Sonic) and a series of side-stories that flush out the perspectives of everybody else involved is rarely, if ever, done in video games. Furthermore, the *perception* of the story being convoluted is due to the poor English voice acting, and not the script itself. My advice is to play the game with subtitles and the original Japanese actors, and play the game entirely through the Super Sonic conclusion. If you still think the story is terrible after that, well, I'd have to point out that the 2004 Sonic cartoon used the exact same story and nobody complained there. Features Every level you complete will become available to practice on separate of the regular adventure. You can also play through the Mini games in separate of the adventure field. There are a total 130 (I think) emblems to collect in this game's diverse action and adventure levels. You don't get anything special for getting all of them, aside from knowing that you are Sonic Adventure's absolute master. ;) Chao, which are the A-lifes, or virtual pets that you can raise and breed separate of your adventure, are the other major feature of this game. www.gamefaqs.com has more detail on these little creatures under the Sonic Adventure FAQ section. My Opinion I think this still is one of the greatest games of the 3D era of video gaming. Never in my wildest hopes did I think this game would turn out as well as it did on Dreamcast in 1999, when all the opposition was slow, low framerate, and even cumbersome despite media claims to the contrary. Sonic Adventure is fast, diverse, has great music(depending on your tastes), great gameplay and a great story to boot. It is my opinion that every Dreamcast owner should own this game, and Gamecube owners who never had a Dreamcast should be ashamed of themselves. You should be looking to Nintendo's 3rd place status, and non-game company dominance of the market, and know that you had a hand in creating this situation. I would have to warn that if you didn't like the 2D Sonic games, or if you didn't even notice that the level design of the Sonic games was actually already 3D in concept (how else would you have branching paths?), you probably won't like this one either. It has more Sonic speed and personality than all of the previous installments combined. Video game companies should look to this game to see what a true sequel should be. A true sequel is to take the idea to the next level, limited by the hardware only, it is not to edit the levels and re-release the same game (even with a different story).
