Sonic Heroes is a piece of sh*t!!

User Rating: 3 | Sonic Heroes GC

Now I may not exactly love the Sonic franchise; mainly because of how mediocre or crappy the games are and because I have had a hate for the blue hedgehog, but I know there are good Sonic games when I play them. Examples include Sonic Colours, Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. Unfortunately, Sonic Heroes isn't one of those games and I can explain why.

Sonic Heroes is a game which takes place after Sonic Adventure 2: Battle when the Sonic characters are put into 4 teams of 3. The teams include Team Sonic (Sonic, Tails and Knuckles), Team Dark (Shadow, Rouge and E-123 Omega), Team Chaotix (Espio, Vector and Charmy) and Team Rose (Amy, Cream and Big). The gameplay is different from other Sonic games as you now have to use the power of teamwork to get through the levels. each character in each team has a certain type with certain abilities. The Speed type can run fast and use various moves like Rocket Boost, Homing Attack, Light Speed Dash and a Tornado related move. The Power type can smash certain objects and the Fly type can fly across certain areas.

The things I like about the game would have to be the team's storylines (except Team Rose's story) and how they were all going after Eggman for different reasons whether it was just to defeat him once and for all or they want to find out about their past, the awesome soundtrack, the cut-scenes with my favourite being Team Chaotix' ending where they beat up Eggman for tricking them, the colourful graphics and the sense of speed you get when you are running through the levels.

And now for the flaws of this game.

The controls

If there is one thing that I know Sega cannot get right in a 3D Sonic game, it would be the controls. The controls are more slippery than Sonic Adventure 2: Battle to where if you make a jump and you slightly move the Control stick to the right, when you land, you will go flying in that direction, which can make you fall into a pit which is freaking annoying because I really think that Sega do not even try to fix the control issues in their Sonic 3D games. Even when you land after a jump and you do not press anything, they still move automatically! Another instance is when you are moving and you accidentally hit an enemy or fall off a platform which again is infuriating considering how much times the game screws me over with all the cheap deaths.

The Special Stages

The special stages in this game are really frigging annoying because of the terrible controls and sometimes, the game sends me going upside down and when I try to re-adjust myself, it's like the game will not let me, which is goddamn frustrating because you need the emeralds to reach the Last story. And another thing, why the f**k is the Yellow Chaos Emerald so freaking hard to obtain?! What the crap was Sega and Sonic Team on??!! I hate the Special Stages in this game!! They are as bad as Sonic Lost World 3DS' stages!!! Honestly, I don't care about the Last story, as it's not worth the torture of going through those sh*tty stages just to get the keys and then go through those crappily made Special Stages.

The glitches

In my whole play-through of Sonic Heroes, I have encountered a fair number of glitches in the game. Some of those glitches include the Light Speed Dash move, the glitch I found in Hang Castle where you fall through a moving platform, the glitch where the Homing Attack doesn't home in on the enemy, the glitch in Lost Jungle when you are escaping from the alligator and you use a fly type character on the ropes and they jump backwards which sends you to your death and the Invincibility glitch where you take damage even when the Invincible song is playing. The point is the game is filled with a couple of glitches that should have been fixed in development.

The team gameplay

As I have said before, I do not like the teamwork type of gameplay brought into Sonic Heroes as not only does it slow down the speedy gameplay of an actual Sonic game, but Sega did some retarded things like putting in a lot of sections where you tedious tasks like have to fight waves of robots, smash objects, go on a treasure hunting mission or fly through certain areas. I never want this kind of gameplay to return in any future Sonic game as it just slows down the high speed action with time-wasting tasks. Although it was a good idea at first, it was poorly executed and I am disappointed that it was done this badly.

The level design

The game's level design is boring and unoriginal because all Sega just did was rehash the same levels with very little differences. The only differences I found was Team Rose's story where the levels are as short as the average level in New Super Mario Bros 2, Team Dark's story where there are more enemies and platforming to do and Team Chaotix' story where you have to go treasure hunting which is annoying because I like Team Chaotix, but their gameplay was just annoying. Otherwise, there is no originality in level design, it is just Team Sonic's levels with very little changes.

The boss fights

The boss fights are also in lack of creativity as for some bosses, you have to fight Eggman's robots in hordes. You have to do this twice throughout the team's stories which lack creativity and are just plain boring. Another type of boss fight is when you are battling other teams. I like the initial confrontation scenes, but when you fight them, it is nothing but a disappointment because it feels like a 'Spam B to win' type of mini-game. The other boss fights are the Eggman boss fights where you fight Eggman himself. The first one is okay, but the second fight is boring as it is just an update on the first one with no creativity at all and as for the Egg Emperor... that boss is ANNOYING AS HELL!! the reason why is because how poorly programmed the boss fight to where if you go on a Jump Panel too early, you will get hit by the Egg Emperor and fall to your death. Another stupid thing they did was if you are too far from the Egg Emperor, it will charge at you constantly until you lose a life. These two flaws have been the cause of my constant deaths in the game which make me think that Sega weren't bothered to get rid of these problems in the first place.

The voice acting and dialogue

Sega aren't very good at picking good voice actors/actresses to fit the roles of their Sonic characters, whether its Amy Rose's current voice actor Cindy Robinson who sounds like either Minnie Mouse or at times Cream the Rabbit or Shadow's current voice actor Kirk Thornton who makes Shadow sound like either a female or in Sonic Free Riders, Raiden from Metal Gear. However, this game has some of the worst voice acting I have ever heard in my life!! Especially Tails who has the most crappiest voice actor I have ever heard!! Tails sounds like a toddler who has an advanced vocabulary and even the dialogue in this game can range from cheesy to very poorly written where the characters are just stating the goddamn obvious during the levels. Eggman's script was also badly written, especially with the cut-scene where Eggman says "Don't get too excited, boys, those were the EASY ones!!", even when you are playing as a team which have female characters as well!!! What the damn hell were Sega thinking at the time?! This is just horrible!!!

The camera

The camera can be very erratic or very uncooperative as it spins around constantly while you are performing the Blue Tornado/Dark Tornado move as either Sonic or Shadow or the Homing Attack is glitching out. When you want to turn the camera a different angle to see something, it normally does not let you turn the camera so it moves back to the default position, which is frustrating because of how it can cause some cheap deaths/fails if you cannot see what you are doing. Even SA2: Battle's camera system was better than this sh*t!!

On the whole, I think Sonic Heroes is a piece of crap. It may not be the worst Sonic game, but it is definitely in my opinion one of the worst Sonic games to be released. If you are a gamer who doesn't like Sonic that much, then I suggest you avoid this game. I think that Sonic fans would appreciate this game more than non-Sonic fans but I could be wrong in saying this. I honestly do not see much good in this game at all. The truth is that this game was in my opinion, the parent game of Shadow the Hedgehog, yet Shadow the Hedgehog gets more negative reviews than this game!

I also heard that Shadow the Hedgehog uses a video game engine called RenderWare which was "modified" from Sonic Heroes, so I know i'm not gonna expect 10/10 quality gameplay from that game either!