One of the greatest arrivals to the 3D world, rivaled only by Super Mario 64.
User Rating: 9.6 | Sonic Adventure International DC
Sonic fans have had to wait a LONG time before Sonic Adventure came out. Around a decade actually. While many other great franchises have seen their 3D counter parts such as Mario 64 and Final Fantasy VII, Sonic has been left out of the picture for a LONG time. Too long if you ask me. The hardcore Sega fans were always hoping that someday Sega would bring it's spiky blue hero back to sweep them off their feet. That time is now. Sonic Adventure is one of the most anticipated titles since Ocarina of Time, and trust me, it's not going to be that different in greatness from it. Because Sonic is now in a new adventure, it's only fit that he'd be given a new story. Well, after kicking Dr. Robotnick's body to the curve a large number of times, he appears to be back, once again for the Chaos Emeralds. But this game starts out with you simply walking around when you come up against an aquatic looking creature known as Chaos. It immediately attacks you and after you take it down you find out that Robotnick is somehow behind this freaky creature. Eventually, you find out that Chaos is an evil creature that gains a lot of strength and power from the Chaos Emeralds. Robotnick wants to harness that power and use Chaos to take over the world. Of course, it's up to Sonic to take him down, but he won't be alone. To help him along the trip are 5 other playable characters: Tails, Knuckles, Amy, E-109 Gamma (mysterious robot of Robotnicks), and Big the Cat (a fishing cat with a best friend that's a frog). Sonic Adventure's gameplay is an innovative and awesome new turn for Sonic and Co. It's pretty much three genres intertwined within each other that come together to make for an awesome game. This is an action game, a platformer game, and an adventure game all in one, with a small twist of raising the cute pets known as Chaos. It's pretty obvious as to why some people consider this an action game. After all, half of what you are doing each level is taking down enemies. Sega has stayed true to Sonic's routes, making sure that the only way Sonic can actually kill a robotic enemy is by jumping on them. Seriously that's how you damage everything. Sometimes it amazes me that Sonic probably only weighs like 90 lbs. and yet all he has to do is jump on a huge machine for it's bolts to fly out and have it explode. You tap the A button and you jump. Pretty simplistic. Just jumping gets boring in the 3D world though so they put in a neat feature where when you tap A in mid-air you perform a homing attack which goes for the closest enemy. This is a much more advanced method to 'jumping' on robots which adds some extra spice to the game. Also, it's safe to say that Sonic can run VERY fast, which is enough action in itself. If half of completing each level is attacking enemies, the other half would obviously have to do with reaching the end. Which is where the platformer genre comes into play. The very first level you'll be introduced to Sonic jumping all over Emerald Coast and it's islands. You'll be jumping all over the friggin place, whether it be climbing mountains, treading through the snow, or even spending a hectic day at an insane theme park, there's a lot of platforming to be found in this game, and it shows. Now as for a large portion of the game, the adventure genre. Why else would they call it Sonic Adventure if there wasn't some adventure in it? First let me say happily that you can go anywhere! Most of the game you'll be running around the big city, or in the vast Mystic Ruins (which leads you to the famous Floating Island). There's exploration to be done. Levels can be entered by running to the area where they are found and simply entering it. Sometimes, you'll be forced to do an annoying task such as carry the Wind Stone to the Wind Altar in order to enter Windy Valley. It's an extra annoying part of the gameplay, but you'll get it done within 10 minutes anyways. Traveling where ever you want to is great fun for the most part and is a great place to start for future Sonic games. However, it's not all about Sonic. As much effort that's put into Sonic is put into other characters. And each character has a different goal in each level. For one, Sonic only has to get to the end of the level and that's it. Tails, has to actually race and get to the end of the level before Sonic does. He can do this by flying ahead of him and getting some speed boosts from floating rings. Knuckles has to do something completely different. Since the Master Emerald is shattered, it's up to him to retrieve the broken shards conveniently located throughout many levels that other Sonic characters will play through. It's also pretty cool because sometimes you will play a different variation of the same level with multiple characters. Knuckles finds the emeralds through a sort of emerald radar at the bottom of the screen. When you get closer to an emerald, it will flash green. When you get within pretty clear sight of the emerald it will turn yellow, and when you are practically right next to it, it will flash red. A little awkward at first but good nonetheless. The less popular characters however, have much weirder forms of playing. All Amy is doing throughout the story is looking for Sonic. So what you have to do is play through each of her levels until you get to the end. But there is a catch. There is an invincible robot chasing after you and if it grabs you you're done. You can slow it down by hitting it with your hammer but be careful. It will eventually grow immune to this. E-109 Gamma has simple levels. He has to get to the end of the level within a certain time limit. He can add time to the time limit my blowing up enemies he meets along the way, to make sure that you don't run out of time. Big the Cat has the worst gameplay of all though. He fishes. Yep, you heard me. He fishes. All you do is fish for his froggy friend until you catch him and once you do, he runs away anyways. It's annoying and pointless. The story actually probably would've worked without him anyways. Overall though, you way you play is similar to the olden days. You don't die unless you have 0 rings and then get hit by an enemy. Pretty standard Sonic stuff. But they've added a new system to the characters of Sonic Adventure. They can now upgrade themselves by finding various items found throughout Sonic Adventure. For example, finding the Light Speed Shoes allows you to charge up and then when you release, you attack every single enemy on the screen at the speed of light. This doesn't work too well though because a lot of the time he'll miss enemies. Tails' upgrades includes a rapid tail attack, Knuckles a digging ability, and Amy a huger hammer, although there are much more upgrades to be found, these are just a few you'll come across. What will keep you coming back for more are the Chao. These are cute little pets that you can transform and grow to whatever you want. They start out as eggs you can hatch (there are secret silver and gold eggs found throughout the game) by either throwing them or just letting them hatch on their own. When they do hatch, they are completely influenced by you in their Chao Gardens. You feed them with fruits from the trees, you change their overall look by taking the animals you found in various levels and giving them to your Chao. They will absorb their abilities and looks (skunk tail anyone?) to make them look very unique compared to other Chao. Keep up the hard work and you might end up with an immortal Chaos Chao. One of the greatest features of this game is the ability to transfer your Chaos into your VMUs. When you throw your Chao in there, you can play with it by watching it walk around and trip (kinda comical). Eventually a Chao bully will come along and it's up to you to beat the living crap outta that Chao! Punch it all over and hope that you eventually win before your Chao gets beat. Throughout your Chao's virtual journey he will come across items that will help him by adding certain stats to his abilities which will improve him in the awkward Chao races! These races are a little...odd. You send your Chao off to race and as the race starts, your Chao might actually be asleep. Heh, seriously the whistle could blow and your Chao could be sleeping. The increased abilities your Chao gains from it's absorbed animals and stat increases in it's VMU journeys help it to win these races which seem to have no meaning what so ever. Still fun and enjoying, just a little boring. Up to this time, Sonic Adventure was without a doubt the greatest achievement in terms of graphics the platforming genre has ever seen. The level designs are just fantastic for one. Any level you are in shows a superior environment (such as the Lost Woods) that really shows off Dreamcast's true power. The characters themselves look brilliant too. You can see the reflection of light off of Sonic's spiky head.Compared to any other game you've ever played, if you played this game around the time Dreamcast came out, you'd know that these graphics crush the competition. Everything about the visuals of this game are just incredible. The Mystic Ruins especially looks very real and organic. There's plant life everywhere a long with a waterfall and even more hidden areas. A great test of a game's graphics could be how well the water effects are. And just by looking at it you can tell this game breaks grounds graphically. It's only drawback is that the camera can move wildly from time to time. But you'll get over it. Also, the screen hardly ever slows down in terms of framerate no matter how fast Sonic moves. By far the most graphically impressive platformer until Rayman 2 would come out. The songs are spectacular and jammin' and really bring the attitude and tone of Sonic games to Sonic Adventure. All of the levels are well musically tuned and addictive. The sounds effects too, are dead on. When Sonic charges up and takes off you hear SHEEYOO! and you even hear helicopter sound effects when Tails is flying. Unfortunately, with the good comes the bad. The sound acting is pretty bad. Not that the characters themselves sound that bad (except tails), but for one, you can hear different actors for hte same character come in half way through a scene which will make you say "What happened to Knuckle's voice?" Also, sometimes the character's mouths can't quite keep up with the words coming out of them so it looks a little silly and distorted. At least the music is good though. There is a lot to do here also. Beating the game with every character could net you 25-30 hours in itself. Combine that with the Chaos and you might find yourself with well over 40 hours of gameplay time. Well worth the $15-20 that you'll pay for it. This game is great. Exactly what you'll be looking for in a Sonic game and a great mascot for the Dreamcast. It's the greatest platformer out since Mario 64 and well deserves recognition as one of Dreamcast's masterpieces.
