Awful Archives: Sonic Adventure DX

Sonic Adventure is the one game that has had every possible opinion thrown at it, and therefore every possible response at the ready. You think this is a good game? That’s because you’re a blind fanboy who can’t accept you grew up playing trash. You think the game hasn’t aged well? You’re just a NEET with impossibly high standards who can’t simply play video games anymore. Think the game is fine but nothing special? Ok, boomer. Short of talking politics, sharing an opinion about Sonic Adventure is the fastest way to become the Meg Griffin of any group of people.

But with a sizable audience who strongly dislike/hate this game, Sonic Adventure does qualify for an Awful Archives review. And oh boy, outside of when I eventually get to Dead Rising 4 this’ll probably be my longest one. However, before jumping into things I need to get my biases out of the way.

 

• I’m not a Sonic fan. I don’t dislike the Blue Blur, it just so happens that most of his titles don’t interest me, and even fewer manage to keep my attention. My outlook on Sonic is actually comparable to my outlook on Star Trek: I respect it more than I personally enjoy it.

 

• I grew up on this game. Well, this and Sonic Adventure 2. And Sonic Heroes. The point is, I have a lot of experience with this game, and as such am more… let’s say well adjusted to it than someone playing it for the first time might be. This also means I’ll have more to comment on for the playthrough, and as such this might be one of my longest reviews I end up making.

 

• I played it on the PC for this review. And while I’m overjoyed my friend gifted me this game on Steam… I cannot recommend this version. Because the analog stick on a controller replaces the four direction keys rather than having full analog control, controls lack a certain precision that the game had on Gamecube and presumably Dreamcast. It’s not unbearable – in fact it’s not even that bad – but it’s not optimal. I can’t claim how much of a difference Better Adventure DX (a mod for the game available on PC that makes the game closer to the Dreamcast release) makes for this release, however.

 

 

 

Presentation

Glitches like this are Dreamcast Exclusive

 

This section is more for a general overview of the game’s presentation; several elements will be delved into when talking in the upcoming sections. Also, most images used in this article are being done for comedic affect.

Sonic Adventure DX’s visuals are very similar to the original visuals, with the only differences being updated models for the main characters (minus Gamma) that has them more closely resemble their artwork (most noticeable with Sonic) and a change in the lighting to make the characters more vibrant. Between these two, the lighting is the stronger contribution; the original Dreamcast release was fairly dull in terms of coloring (which is very noticable when compared to the Genesis/Megadrive games of old). The new lighting engine is prone to bug out during nighttime cutscenes and gameplay, resulting in the characters getting an unnatural glow to the point of looking like happy meal toys. Overall though, the sharper colors of DX do a good job of making the game look more “Sonic” than the original release. 

The new models are significantly less helpful as Sonic Adventure’s presentation issues were never the models. At their worst, they were N64 and PS1 quality; at best they looked like early test models for Gamecube and PS2 games. In DX the updated models now look on par with character models of the time (or are just below it). No, the actual problem was the animations, and what I blame for the sole reason Sonic Adventure is visually dated. Each character has about 10 or so stock animations that can fall into three categories: Single use (Sonic shrugging), static (any given standing animation) and forever looping (walking animations). There’s a few unique animations for single cutscenes (like when Chaos 0 pimp smacks Knuckles down a flight of stone stairs, or Gamma’s “Eww, cooties” animation in the jail cutscene with Amy) but those are few and far between. And those three types all have their own flavor of awkward. Single use animations are almost always off timing, with Sonic’s aforementioned shrug being the worst offender (it’s always a good second or two behind the conversation he’s shrugging at). Static animations do a good job to reveal that the lip syncing isn’t bad but non-existent, and the looping animations never seem to end their looping naturally (In Gamma’s story, Eggman walks away from him but when he stops moving, the walking animation continues for about a second). So yeah, the cutscenes are a bit jank.

While the raw visuals are a mixed bag, many of the aesthetics have aged very well. The designs introduced in Sonic Adventure and finalized in DX have stuck with these characters to this very day with only minor changes. Sonic is taller than tails, all characters have colored eyes, and Eggman has a considerably more “villainous” design to him, trading out his ironic superhero outfit for that of a fat dictator. The only design I’m not crazy for is Amy’s new outfit – the backless dress with really stupid for a character with fur (her different hair style is nice, though).

Sound Design

When it comes to the sound design (especially with Sonic Adventure), two things come to mind: voice acting and music.

The choices for the English voice actors were pretty good, everyone sounds the way that they should. In fact, while Sonic has never had outright terrible choices for voice actors, I’d say the pre-4Kids era of voice actors were the overall best fit (besides Rouge the Bat, but that’s next game). But the actual voice acting is rough. Overall, every character has at least a few lines that come off as either first takes or emotionally drained from too many takes. On a more individual scale:

• Knuckles and Tikal have it the worst. Even at their best they sound like this is their first voice acting gig (although in Tikal’s case, it literally was), and at their worst they sound more robotic than the literal robot.
• Big and Tails don’t fare much better. Big’s voice may be fitting, but there is no range to him at all beyond sounding big and stupid. Tails has more range but the choppy performance hampers a lot of it (he was voiced by a kid, after all) and his first four sentences in his personal story might be the worst voice acting in any Sonic game.
• Sonic and Amy give solid performances. While there are a decent number of lines that could have stood to try and get a better take, both characters have their personality traits (Sonic’s cockiness and Amy’s concern and confusion of the adventure she’s been thrusted into) come out just fine, even in their weaker line deliveries.
• Gamma is surprisingly good. Despite being intentionally monotone, his voice actually does convey small bits of emotion that showcase his reactions to what’s going on around him, which is important since he’s literally a robot who develops a conscience.
• Dr. Eggman is great here. His voice has a lot of range and can go from being jolly, to egotistical, to shocked, to angry, and loop back again with ease. Mike Pollock may be the best voice actor Eggman has had, but Deem Bristo is why that’s an accomplishment.

I’ve never personally found the Sonic Adventure voice acting to be that bad, but even I admit that some retakes might have been for the better. The most distracting thing are the recycled voice clips. Sonic Adventure starts the annoying trend of Eggman only having 2-3 voice clips for his boss fights, resulting in them getting repeated a lot if the attack is spammed. Top that with these lines being used in cutscenes as well, and it’s not hard to see how “get a load of this” became as memetic as it is. 

The game does this with sound effects as well, although not quite as noticable. The Egg Hornet’s missiles exploding sounds no different than when they’re launched (resulting in a mess of noise) and in the cutscene after said boss fight, the explosion sounds used for the Egg Hornet crashing are the cartoony sound effects for badniks. Rather than the Egg Hornet suffering from several critical failures at once, it instead sounds like Eggman sat on his hoggie he was going to have for lunch.

That said, the game’s soundtrack has barely aged a day. While the vocal tracks are shamelessly corny, they all fit the characters they’re used for and the stage tracks are all aesthetically appropriate. From Windy Valley to Final Egg and literally every step in between, Sonic Adventure’s soundtrack is something I legit have nothing to say about other than how much I love listening to it and how complimentary it is for the stages.

Story

The story in Sonic Adventure is presented as being a single story split into six parts, with the player having to go through them to get the “whole” story. Once all six stories are cleared, the final storyline with Super Sonic is unlocked. The overall story is actually very simple, and it’s the individual character plots that have most of the meat to them. When one gets right down to it, Sonic Adventure’s plot is just a more fleshed out version of the typical Genesis/Megadrive era “stories”. Dr. Eggman (this game cleverly states that Robotnik is his real name whereas the Sonic cast call him Eggman as an insult) unleashed a natural monster on top of building some dastardly machines to stop Sonic and Tails from stopping him. Eggman plans to use the Chaos Emeralds to power Chaos up, destroy Station Square and in it’s rubble built Robotnik Land (at that point, it’s free real estate). That’s the skeleton of the plot as well as Sonic’s overall plot, and the six stories add the meat.

• Tails gets a confidence building, how the Tornado 2 was built, and what Eggman was doing while Sonic farted about in Lost World
• Knuckles shows how Chaos and Tikal were released (shattering the master emerald) and why he attacked Sonic and Tails (thought the green emerald was part of the Master Emerald)
• Amy doesn’t contribute much to the main plot beyond a conversation with Gamma, and is more focused on character development after the fact.
• Gamma is mostly just about showing what happens to him after the “boss” “fight” with him.
• Big reveals that Chaos once had a tail… yep.

Clearing all six stories will unlock the final story with Super Sonic, in which Chaos swipes all seven emeralds (turning on Eggman in the process), turns into Perfect Chaos and destroys Station Square. Sonic uses the positive energy of the Chaos Emeralds (and presumably 50 rings) to go super and save the destroyed city. Tikal and a now calmed down Chaos then depart into the afterlife (Although Sonic Battle would retcon this in order to let Chaos appear).

I’ll cover the character plots and personalities with their own sections, but the overall plot works just fine. While the plot is among the simplest in Sonic’s 3D career, there’s a few callbacks to the previous games plots and story moments (Sonic CD is recreated via flashback, Sonic makes a nod to Knuckles getting tricked back in Sonic 3, etc); so the game does make use of what little story the series had beforehand. The game’s choice to use the Chaos Emeralds as plot McGuffins is a natural fit for them: only 1 of the 6 characters could make use of them, they always were needed for the best ending, and they were turned into the Dragonballs (functionally speaking) in Sonic 2. Intentionally or not, they also have the benefit of helping players keep track of time across the six plotlines (not that it’s hard to figure out either way).

Speaking of which, the stand out element of the story is the character perspectives. Each character gets different lines for the story, presumably because it’s the character’s outlook on the situation. For example, Sonic sees Amy as an annoying airhead, and his lines in reference to the robot chasing her has him going on about how he’d easily trample it. In Amy’s side, Amy is more confused at everything going on, and Sonic is considerably more reluctant to be around her rather than actively avoiding her; he’s also far more protective of her in regards to the robot ZERO. This is at it’s most pronounced with Eggman himself: Sonic’s story sees him be egotistical and grandiose, Tails has him menacing, Knuckles sees him as a schemer, Amy just sees him as a jerk, and Gamma has no bias beyond “he built me” (which when toppled with how often no one else is around, Eggman is very expressive in this story).

Chaos serves as the one-off villain for this game, and he gets the job done. His design is striking despite being literally nothing more than a “water monster” with a brain, and each of his forms do a good job of making him more monstrous from his humanoid base form. The whole “God of Destruction” angle has been dropped since this game’s release in favor of Chaos being a mutated Chao (small creatures appearing in the story but not really having that large an impact 95% of the time), which is a better fit for him. Most of his backstory is handled via flashbacks: he’s supposed to have been the previous guardian of the Chao, the Master Emerald, and the Chaos Emeralds according to the Sonic Wiki. I had to resort to the Wiki, because the game doesn’t do a good job making any of that beyond the Chao clear.

Which is the biggest problem with the story: Tikal is not well implemented. Tikal (who is revealed to be the ball of energy who guides the playing during gameplay) will regularly interrupt each character’s plot to show them a flashback to explain her backstory to the player. First of all, this hurts the pacing of each story, from Sonic’s big adventure to Big’s non-story. It’s done this way so the player has to play through all 6 stories to get the whole story, but there’s no appropriate order to play these six characters in, and there’s no repeating events across the flashbacks to help get an idea of what happens when. And since no one gets the whole story, everyone reacts the same way.

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Time doesn’t stop either, the final story comments that Sonic just zones out during the flashback, which also goes against earlier cutscenes that have character teleport with them not being sure how (imply it’s more time travel instead of being shown flashbacks). She approaches Gamma like a threat who wasn’t supposed to be there, has a casual conversation with Tails like a new friend, directly asks Sonic questions about what’s going on in her flashback, and completely ignores Knuckles and Big during their time warp. And to top it all off, she shows up right before the final battle to just explain everything the player actually needs to know but all those flashbacks still fail to provide some crucial information.

The narrative lowpoint for sure; she’d be the biggest waste of time plot wise if Big’s campaign wasn’t mandatory. A better way to have done this would have been to limit her to Knuckles, since it’s logical for him to actually be shown this (seriously, why are Big and Gamma shown the past?). Finally, and this is more so speaking in hindsight, I really wish Tikal stuck around past this game. It may be hard to believe after those past 3 paragraphs, but I do actually like the character; she’s a logical addition to the franchise, she’s a good Yin to Knuckle’s Yang and given that Knuckles would go on to be used more liberally in later games without acknowledging the Master Emerald, having a second Echidna to guard it when Knuckles was out with his new friends would have gone a long way. (Let’s say that, after Sonic beats Chaos, Tikal gives her spirit powers to Chaos so he can move on to the afterlife upon learning that the Chao managed to survive without him).

Tikal’s mishandling is a prevalent issue, but not a crippling one. For Sonic’s first cutscene-driven plot, I found this to be nice, suffering more from sloppy presentation and missed potential over anything else.

Gameplay

Right. Took longer to get there that originally planned, but better late than never.

Going on gameplay experiences that are true for all characters, this game has some camera problems. Not so much with Knuckles and Amy (Knuckle’s ability to climb tends to keep the camera away from things it could get stuck on, and Amy has more traditional gameplay to begin with). But I’ve had at least one death with the other four where the camera did get me killed; Sonic and Big were a result in me farting around out of cockiness and boredom, respectively. As for Tails and Gamma, the camera just stopped following me as I approached a ledge, which severely hampers my ability to know how close I am to it, especially when it starts to spaz out in an effort to catch back up. The camera did have a lot more cases of getting stuck, but the rest was more so me stopping for half a second while going “Hey, camera?” and then the problem sorted itself out.

In terms of glitches I never really had any major ones beyond some graphical hiccups, and then it was nothing compared to the horror stories I’ve seen of the Dreamcast. Despite the game’s glitches being something it’s infamous for, I rarely notice anything going wrong. Maybe I’m just absurdly lucky?

Power Ups return from the classic games, and work about as one to one as anyone could expect. The one thing I wish this wasn’t true with is the shield. The elemental shields return from Sonic 3, or rather the electric shield returns. It’s understandable as to why: the elemental immunity would break a lot of the level design here, the jump attacks are either something Sonic already has (homing attack) or doesn’t need (bounce attack), and the ability to draw in rings is far more useful. However, it also means your shield can downgrade back to the normal shield with no benefits if you accidentally pick it up (which is very easy to do since Sonic could end up blocking the player’s view of the capsule). I think it would have been better if there was only one shield power up: it gives a normal shield the first time, and upgrades it to an electric shield if a second one is grabbed without getting hit, and further ones give large ring bonuses (or maybe invincibility, that sounds fun). Also, the capsules don’t respond when the player dies, which means a lot of alternate routes are literally do-or-die one-shots.

Finally, the game controls well with each character, even with the less than ideal PC version. Nothing more, just wanted to say it controls fine and end this section on a high note.

Sonic

Sonic gets the most story and gameplay out of any character in the game, likely taking up a third of the playtime. As far as his personal story goes, it’s very straightforward. In fact… there’s really nothing to say about it, other than it’s refreshing to go back to a time when Sonic didn’t have to constantly be a wise cracker who can borderline on being a G-rated Deadpool. He comes off as a genuine friend to Tails, is surprised when Knuckles is attacking again, and does care for Amy’s well being (however annoying she may be to him). It’s one of his more balanced appearances as a character, honestly.

Gameplay-wise, this version of Sonic is the closest the series has ever gotten to a classic game in 3D. He can spin dash to some quick speed, roll up into a ball to hurt enemies, and his jump is about as floaty as it was in the 2D games (if not a bit more). His new feature is the homing attack, and even then it’s main purpose is to make jumping on badniks and springs more precise in a 3D space (badnik bouncing isn’t really something Sonic can do this time, though); In fact, homing attack chains aren’t really a thing in this game (it’s SA2 that introduces that design element).

However, Sonic Adventure also adds permanent power ups to the series (assuming one doesn’t count Super Sonic as a power up). And I gotta say… Sonic gets the short end of the stick. All three of his power ups relate to his other new move: the light speed dash. The first upgrade unlocks the move itself, allowing him to follow a trail of rings at lightning speeds. It’s a glorified set piece move with the one or two examples of it providing an alternate route. When you combine it with it’s fairly long charge up time to actually use, and it’s a “only when necessary” ability. There is a second ability that cuts the time to charge in half, but it doesn’t make it any less of a pace breaker. And finally, there’s the Light Speed attack. You’ll use it on the one enemy it forces you to use it one, and against the one boss weak to it if you know that Chaos 6 takes double damage from it. Shame, honestly. If they gave it to Sonic earlier and did double damage to every boss, it could create a risk vs reward of limiting Sonic’s movement to deal more damage to a boss. Oh well.

Luckily, Sonic’s base moveset is enough to carry his gameplay. With the boost formula being stretched as thin as it has, and with every Sonic Adventure style game after this one trying to be more it’s own thing, Sonic’s simple game has stood the test of time fairly well.

Tails

Tails in the classic games was Sonic’s sidekick, and who’s gameplay abilities allowed him to take alternate routes and was generally considered the easy mode of Sonic 2 and 3. How does Sonic Adventure tackle these elements?

The former is tackled in the story; although not very well. For starters, Tails has an identical plot to Sonic’s with two points of change: after Sky Chase Act 1 and before Chaos 6. The former has tails build the Tornado 2 (was the old Tornado getting destroyed considered a big deal back then?) and the latter has Tails muster the courage to stop Eggman from literally nuking Station Square. All this is nice, but these two elements are honestly explored more in Sonic Adventure 2 than here; the Tornado 2 doesn’t seem to do anything plot wise or gameplay wise to give the duo an edge (Tails just now knows about Dr. Eggnog’s laser) and the character perspective actually has tails come off as confident and upfront rather than scared; a fun change of character dynamics to be sure, but kinda shoots that angle of his story in the head. In the end, his story is conceptually good, but fairly underwhelming.

As far as gameplay is concerned, this is also the only time Tails is pretty one-to-one with his classic gameplay. The only changes is that he can’t swim (not that any of his stages would be able to make use of that) and his flight duration is shorter to make up for being able to move in 3D, but he’s otherwise the two tailed fox of old. The bigger change is his level design: he only goes through a smaller section of the stage that Sonic does, and has to race Sonic (or Eggman in the final stage) to the end to clear the stage. This seems to be done so to have the player take short cuts with the aid of flight to get there faster. All stages contain green floating rings for Tails to use boost through while flying (mid-air dash panels, basically). The AI doesn’t even try to hide that it cheats, but I’m also not convinced it’s actually possible to lose (even in levels where I died, I never lost). I guess that’s worth mentioning: it’s easy to get carried away with Tails with how free-flowing it is.

Tails only gets two upgrades, but both are a lot more useful. The jet anklet allows him to fly faster and therefore go further before tiring out, whereas the rhythm badge allows Tails to use his tail swipe attack without stopping (makes the final battle with Eggman much easier).

The weakest part of Tails’ gameplay is honestly how short it is. Sure, you can replay the levels, but it would have been nice if the DX version added some extra stages to partake in after beating his story, like Emerald Coast and Red Mountain. But as short lived as it is, Tails is still a character I enjoy playing as. Just not one of my favorites.

Knuckles

Rounding out the original trio is Knuckles, the only one with no changes to his moves yet has the most drastic gameplay shift. But first his story. Eggman shatters the Master emerald and Knuckles sets out to fix it. Is there more to it than that?

Knuckles gets tricked by Eggbread again (did he know that Sonic got a green emerald, or was that just luck on his part?), and he does finish off Chaos 6 and take the emeralds back to his Island, but honestly not much actually happens in his story. That’s the other reason I want Tikal’s plot to be strictly a Knuckles thing: there’s really nothing to interrupt here. The story also brings up Knuckles being isolated, but it never goes beyond referencing the idea.

While the story itself may not be all that… existent, this is the best characterization Knuckles has ever had. Many people like to say Sonic Boom has the best portrayal of him, but I object and reject. Boom Knuckles is one of the funniest things the franchise has ever seen, but he’s not Knuckles; he’s Big the Echidna. Here in Adventure, he’s naive instead of outright stupid, and is more no-nonsense than raw muscle. This is what I think of when the character comes to mind. He’s not the comic relief, if anything he’s the character where laughter stops.

As far as gameplay goes, Knuckles retains the ability to glide and climb walls with no limitations that weren’t present in the classics. On top of that, he can outright punch enemies if the player wants to. The big change is that he doesn’t have point A to point B gameplay like the other four characters do. Instead, Knuckles has to find three pieces of the Master Emerald hidden in the stage to clear it. Naturally, his level is much more exploration based than the others, and greatly compliments his gliding and climbing.

Knuckles from an upgrade standpoint gets the drill claw to dig underground. It’s possible to go an entire playthrough without an emerald piece being underground, but Knuckles can randomly acquire power ups like shields or speed shoes by digging if he’s lucky. He also gets the fighting gloves for the Max Heat Knuckles Attack. It’s the Light Speed Attack, but for Red Sonic.

In terms of raw gameplay, Knuckles is my favorite character to play as. I can’t say that he’s my favorite of the six scenarios, however; despite having the best characterization, it’s hard to deny that 50% of his cutscenes is him talking to a Jolly Rancher.

Amy

Amy Rose makes her first playable debut in a game that I’ll actually acknowledge.

Amy herself doesn’t have any relevance to the plot, and instead a bird with a Chaos Emerald drags her into the fray. Even after Humpty Dumpty gets the glorified Ring Pop and feeds it to his pet puddle, the giant robot ZERO still goes after them (presumably, it only knows that it needs to bring Eggman the bird, but doesn’t know why). The big character moment is when Amy finally gets mad and decides to fight back and defend the little Flicky.

I’ll cut to it and say the biggest problem with Amy’s scenario – gameplay and story wise – is the sheer number of cutscenes. Amy gets a stupid amount of cutscenes for her lackluster story, and doesn’t even get a lot of characters to talk to as a trade off. Amy’s story can become draining from cutscenes alone even when skipping them, if only because it shows how short her three-stage campaign actually is.

It’s a shame too, I like this version of Amy. While her attraction to Sonic is certainly present, the game has her spending more of her time looking after the bird. In fact, after finding him in station square, the attraction angle is mostly dropped beyond the “cute couples get into Twinkle Park free” bit. This is also a nice role reversal from Sonic CD: from only being in the plot because she got kidnapped to only being in the plot to protect an animal. Despite this game having no real friendship speeches, I can honestly buy that this character was the one to instil the value of friendship into a literal death machine (although the bird played a big role in that as well). 

While Sonic Heroes and Sonic 2006 would portray Amy as thinking about Sonic and Sonic alone, I can’t help but wonder how much of the disdain for her comes from the shipping wars the cartoons and comics brought to the games. You couldn’t pay me to care about the shipping wars with Amy and Sally one way or the other (although you’re welcome to try). But if we ever see Amy return to the series as more than cameo, more of this version please. Caring Amy is best Amy.

All that is well and good, but this character does actually have some gameplay to her. Unlike the fast paced nature of the other three characters, Amy trades high speed for high agility. Her Piko Piko hammer returns from Sonic the Fighters. Rather than spin dashing, tail swiping or punch, Amy stops and smashes anything in front of her. It’s not terribly helpful. However, if Amy gets enough momentum going then the hammer swing doesn’t stop her and sends her high into the air, second to only Tails’ ability to fly. She can hit the ground again with her hammer to bounce back up again, and can get even more height if she manages to hit an enemy (yeah, Amy can actually badnik bounce in this game). She might be distractingly slow, but Amy has a lot of acrobatics at her disposal.

…kinda a shame that the level design doesn’t make use of this. At all. 

 

In theory, Amy’s gameplay should be the player having to keep up her momentum to make risker jumps that Sonic couldn’t easily make and Tails/Knuckles would likely overshoot. Instead, her levels are about her avoiding ZERO, who serves as a Nemesis in this story. As such, the game has a lot of roadblocks to stop Amy from reaching the escape balloon at the end of the stage. This becomes annoying thanks to Amy’s lack of a start up speed, and the levels rarely offer a means to use her skills other than a few changes in elevation that a full speed hammer wack can allow you to overcome a bit more quickly. It’s a shame, too. There’s hints of this in Final Egg with sections that lack Zero and focus on Amy platforming. And Twinkle park even gives Amy so unique level design to go through. But no, avoiding Mr. Z is the only challenge her levels are often built around. Shame, really.

Amy at least gets better upgrades than Sonic. Or rather, a better upgrade; the warrior feather isn’t very useful as an attack, so most players will see it as a cute little cosmetic and nothing more. But the long hammer can make her keeping her air momentum a bit easier. I personally don’t go for it, though. It’s optional, it’s ugly, and I don’t need it.

But that’s Amy. Not terrible, but truly underwhelming. It’s a shame that we’ll likely never see a good version of Amy playable; the Sonic fandom only wants her to be a Sonic clone gameplay wise.

(E-102) Gamma

Being Dr. Robotonic’s greatest creation in the past 48 hours, E-102 is a playable character and the first playable badnik in a Sonic game that I’m willing to acknowledge.

Gamma’s story isn’t much more connected to the overall plot than Knuckles or Amy is. In terms of the grand story, he grabs a frog and opens a cell door. Gamma’s appeal narrative wise is that he has a proper character arc. All of the events in his story (and life) can be defined in 5 key moments:

• Eggman bringing him online and programming him as his creator
• Gamma discovering his older brother Beta being torn apart and rebuilt, meaning Eggman’s line of “we could always use some spare parts” was literal
• Eggman sending away the other E Series after a single failed mission
• Amy protecting a bird that is of no use to her, and shortly afterwards protecting him for no reason beyond seeing him as a friend.

After leaving the Egg Carrier before it crashes, these four moments flash before Gamma’s eyes, resulting in him deleting Eggman’s master programming and categorizing the E Series as friends. He sets out to save them, or more accurately the birds inside them. This leads to a final battle with his now upgraded brother. Gamma wins but is badly damaged by a surprise blast from Beta MK II. Upon having a mental flash of a family of birds (the blue bird being the one Amy is protecting) Gamma allows himself to be destroyed to free the bird. The family reunited in Amy’s story.

It’s not fancy or introspective, but it helps make Gamma a fleshed out character, which is fairly important for a one-off like him. It also helps that the poor presentation doesn’t hurt him nearly as much; as a robot, his voice is supposed to be monotone and the stiff animations aren’t nearly as distracting with him. However, the biggest support for his story is that his change of heart happens halfway through the game, rather than at the end. This both fuels the second half of his campaign, and gives the player time to cement this as part of his character rather than a twist in the plot. Given how easy of a mistake this is to make (and one that would be made in the next game), it’s nice to see it avoided.

As for the gameplay part of Gamma, he’s a bit faster than his hulking frame would lead you to believe (I’ve more than once ran into an enemy because I got too careless with his speed). His unique gameplay quirk is his gun: Gamma can lock onto targets and blast them with homing missions. In order to give purpose to feature, Gamma must accomplish his mission within two and a half minutes. This becomes a problem when the levels start going over that timer, so Gamma can actually earn extra time exponentially by locking onto multiple targets and destroying them in a single chain. This goes a ways to making his cannon more than the “I Win” button.

As a time attack mode, Gamma’s not that great. The first two stages are so short you can just run through them without firing once, and the third stage gives way too many 10+ hit combo enemies that add another minute to the timer. And even when the game demands effort, it doesn’t demand much – if you just try to get a few good combos, you won’t run out of time. Casually speaking, Gamma is more power fantasy than strictly challenging.

However, as a score attack mode Gamma’s gameplay can be quite addicting. While the threat of running out of time is incredibly rare, seeing how high you can get a combo or the overall timer is an ever present challenge, and levels are never short on enemies to shoot. Players with this mentality will find his levels to be a game of risk versus reward, since Gamma can’t keep the lock-on beam up forever and getting hit causes him to lose track of all targets. It helps that his Jet Booster lets him part take in more risky platforming (shame his gun upgrade is worthless, since the larger blast radius is still too small to ever hit anything beyond the target).

I mentioned earlier that Knuckles had my favorite raw gameplay. With Gamma, I’d be lying if I said I went back to his stages on their own very often, despite the fact I really enjoy them. Gamma’s gameplay won’t click for everyone (especially those who are more hardened in what Sonic “needs” to be or “should” be), but it has fans (like me) and at its worst is completely harmless. Top that with an effective narrative, and Gamma is my favorite of the six campaigns.

Enlarged The Feline

 

I don’t like Big.

Right, story. Big barely has one. His pet frog swallows a part of chaos and a chaos emerald. Big then fishes him out of Chaos 6 and then goes home flying Tails’ plane. Everything else is irrelevant. Literally. Big has no impact on any of the other stories, in fact he doesn’t really talk to anyone else in cutscenes in his own story. Just him catching and chasing a frog that I’m convinced he thinks is a dog. Not helping is that he has the weakest vocal performance in the game. Very rarely does Big the furry whale get a line of dialog that does emphasis that he’s big and stupid, and as such all his lines of dialog blend together. I’m chalking that more up to vocal direction, but it doesn’t make him any easier on the ears.

Gameplay. You fish for Froggy. For some reason, he gets four stages. Why does he get more stages than Amy? Everyone has commented on how out of place this is for a platformer, let alone Sonic. So allow me to take a different route. Big’s gameplay will play out one of two ways.

When you don’t know what you’re doing, he’s the worst. His fishing mechanics require you to know how Sega Bass Fishing works and the game doesn’t explain it to you. This is kinda important because if the line breaks then Big dies of embarrassment, so knowing how to not suck is kinda important. This also means that players who learn of the line breaking, they will be terrified of interacting with the fish unless there’s NO risk of it breaking and resetting where Froggy is in the pool.

Alternatively, the player could be aware that you need to manipulate the control stick up and down to relieve stress on the line, and swing the fish side to side to tire it out when it tries to get away. Once the player learns this, his levels become interactive loading screens with relaxing music; they really do become that mindless. Especially since right before the second level the player gets a pool floaty to allow Big to raise to the surface of any body of water and get right next to Froggy. Unfortunately, Big was raised to never catch anything with anything that isn’t a fishing rod and he shall not betray his heritage. So get back to sitting and fishing, fatty.

At his worst, Big is a massive roadblock to a game that’s otherwise fairly well paced. At his best, he’s such a non-element that his inclusion is pointless. I’m glad he went on to see better days in Sonic Heroes and some of the spin offs, because I think I would have rather had Bubsy as a character in this game, playable or otherwise.

Super Sonic

I already went over what Super Sonic entails narrative wise, so this is a quick cover of the final boss. Perfect Chaos is in two phases, although they’re only separated by difficulty. As Super Sonic, you have to build up enough speed to be able to ram into Perfect Chaos, climb up his neck and out the brain. And that’s it. Yeah, it’s actually that simple. Perfect Chaos will gain more attacks as you go on, but it’s otherwise a fairly standard Super Sonic Final Boss™️ in 3D; collect the enough rings or Sonic loses his super form and falls into the water. Still not sure why Open Your heart plays during the first half, I guess because the second half is supposed to be Chaos getting angry and desperate?

All in all, Super Sonic’s final boss is more of a boss-tier stage rather than boss fight, but it’s a good one.

Stages, Adventures, Sub Games, and Bosses

Now that the characters have been discussed, some quick thoughts on the stages which come in the form of Action Stages, Adventure Fields, and Sub Games with the occasional boss fight.

First of all, Action Stages. These basically combine the Acts and Zones of the classic eras into one, resulting in levels that have three sections (with Sonic getting two if not all three of them), with the sections being isolated and modified for the playstyles of the other five.

• • Emerald Coast is Sonic’s first level, Gamma’s second level, and Big’s third. The level has a very unique style to it, starting out on a commercialized beach and becoming more nature focused as you move away from the resort. Doesn’t feature much gameplay wise beyond establishing things like bounce pads, speed panels, and orange number panels. The third section is exclusive to Big.
  • Windy Valley is the first bottomless pit heavy section in the game. It’s also the first stage for Tails (his flying REALLY breaks this one if you know how to manipulate the game). This serves as Gamma’s third stage, and it’s the only stage to set traps for the player (bridges can be destroyed if Gamma shoots the badniks on them). Also, as someone with a crippling fear of tornadoes… this stage would make me a tad uncomfortable for the longest time.

 

• Casinopolis takes the traditional casino theme of Sonic games and turns it into something much more literal. Sonic must collect 400 rings in order to beat the stage (either on the pinball tables or in the dumps) to beat the stage. Tails just races in the dumps, and Knuckles is just after the Master Emerald pieces. The Nights table is pretty cool, even if I prefer the slots myself.

 

• Ice Cap is the stage that has the most “classic” elements to it; fitting, since it’s returning from Sonic 3. From icicle hopping to snowboarding with kinda awkward controls (or more accurately, the game not knowing how to handle the uneven terrain). Ah, returning stages in Sonic. Remember when that was novel? Also, Big has a stage here.

 

 

• • Twinkle Park opens with a bumper kart track before opening to the rest of the park, although Amy gets a run through the funhouse section. There’s a bunch of amusement park themed set pieces to mix things up, but it’s otherwise normal after the bumper to bumper track.

 

• Speed Highway is considered the best stage in the game, and I agree. Sonic gets multiple pathways, Tails has a dangerous race with Eggman, and Knuckles gets Until Dawn as the backdrop to his first level. There’s a reason this stage was the Adventure representative in Sonic Generations.

 

• Red Mountain is another hard hitter. It only has two acts, buth those two sections are a bit longer than average. The first half is open, giving Sonic and Knuckles a lot of movement options. The second section… kinda looks like Hell, honestly. Probably the point, but it’s jarring. Music is also much more low key than normal.

 

• Sky Deck is the worst stage in the game, and Sonic has it the worst. The first act has railings that Sonic constantly gets stuck on and the camera will get you killed for trying to do anything fancy (an issue Tails doesn’t have since he can fly), the second stage has high speed winds and constant turret fire; either these will have no effect what-so-ever and the stage will be over in seconds, or trying to respond to one results in the other killing you. And the final section results in gravity shifting constantly (thanks to Knuckles, who is doing that to look for Master Emerald pieces) and it forces you into a set path. The level forces you to play it the same way every time and tends to kill you for trying anything differently.

• Lost World is a nice reprieve for Sonic and a solid level for Knuckles. It’s a little too puzzle heavy for my liking, but the only part I really dread is the giant stone snake (the camera doesn’t like this section either). But it’s fine for the most part.

• Final Egg is Sonic and Amy’s final level, yet serves at Gamma’s first. Needless to say, it’s really dangerous. A lot of bottomless pits and hazards. I’m not crazy for the fans towards the end, but it’s surprisingly manageable.

 

 

 

• Hot Shelter reminds me a lot of Pac Man World 2 and 3 – probably because the stage was designed with Amy and Gamma in mind (it’s the only stage Sonic never visits). Certainly a nice change of pace, and can be a bit more demanding than the others.

One bad stage aside, Sonic Adventure’s level design is consistently good; the gameplay styles tend to affect the quality of the stage more if I’m honest.

As for Adventure fields, they do the job. They serve as an interactive bridge between story to gameplay in the form of the player going to the next destination. They have some solid detail in them (The Egg Carrier has a lot of rooms for little reason beyond making it feel like Eggman’s flying fortress), although the NPCs themselves are barely a cut above cardboard. Shame, they have dynamic dialog based on how far into the story they are, but beyond a girl who develops a crush on the burger joint cashier, there’s rarely anything of note going on with these people. But they do prioritize being functional hub worlds that are easy to navigate above all else, and that’s what’s important (although the forest in the Mystic Ruins is kinda crap).

The Sub Games are a low point. While the Bumper Racing is a nice distraction, the sandboarding and the two Sky Chase acts don’t control too well, and Sky Chase Act II goes on forever.

Finally, the boss fights. Sonic bosses rarely impress me, and Sonic Adventure fits into that very well. (Side note: not counting character battles)

 

• Chaos 0 is supposed to teach the player about rings and the homing attack, so it gets a pass.

 

• Chaos 2 is fought by Knuckles. This version has the largest set of moves, but rather he’ll actually use them seems to be RNG.

 

• Chaos 4 is the worst fight in the game, and you fight him 3 times. I legit have had fights where he’d only ever do one attack.

• Chaos 6 is okay. Decent attack variety, and changing up the weak point was a smart move. Although the ability to kill it with two hits kinda makes the fight limp.

• Egg Hornet honestly feels like a boss fight that’s there to give Eggman another battle. Also, Sonic can end this fight in 15 seconds if the player spams the homing attack.

• Egg Viper is good, but make sure that on the final two hits, you use the control stick to direct Sonic’s Homing Attack at Eggman or you WILL fly off to your death.

• Egg Walker is a fight that actually makes use of Tails’ tail swipe. Even with the rhythm badge, this is a solid fight, even if it’s not too hard.

• E-Series are an absolute joke. Gamma can just spam his canon and kill them. Most of them don’t even require Gamma to move.

• E-101 MK II on the other hand requires Gamma to juggle blasting missiles with avoird attacks, and Beta can now block head on attacks, with the time Beta leaves himself open not being too long. My vote for the overall best boss in the game, actually.

 

 

 

None of them beyond the Base E-Series are bad, but they aren’t a strong point of the game either.

Chao Garden

Oh right, this. I thought I was done with this article, actually. The player can, at any time with any character, head to a Chao Garden (there’s one for each adventure field) and raise Chao. You do this by feeding them fruit (better fruit can be bought with rings from stages) and giving them the animals from the badniks you defeat. This will raise/lower their stats in accordance to what said animal can and can’t do, and then ya take them to race. I didn’t bother for this review; it’s a massive time sink for what amounts to a few more emblems, and Sonic Adventure 2 does it better.

Emblems

And finally, Emblems. These are rewarded throughout the game after the player does anything of note. Beating a level, clearing a campaign, finding them in a hub world, etc. There’s a total of 130 of them in the game, and collecting them all unlocks Metal Sonic to be used in Sonic’s Stages in Trial Mode (free Play).

It’s nice that there’s a decent reward for 100% completion (something that took Mario over a decade to accomplish), but it’s also something I can’t say is worth the effort. Simply put, going through these stages 3 times per character, and playing the sub games until I’ve literally perfected them, to just how long it took to find them in the hub world (that one I did) is just draining. Maybe if there were progressive unlocks at milestones, I’d be more up for it (like “You got all of Big’s Emblems, now you can play as him in a fishing vest” or “You got all the Adventure Field Emblems, now you can change the time of day in Adventure Fields).

Final Thoughts

Almost every review I’ve read/watched goes on about how dated this game is. Honestly, I think that beyond presentation, this game hasn’t aged nearly as badly as everyone else does. Plus, I find it’s far too often used as a gateway a lot of the time, either to downplay any problems people actually have with the game or to focus in on said problems and deny anyone actually has a reason to like it. While the presentation was lacking, I chalk that up more to lack of experience with 3D modelling over anything else. Personally, I find the biggest problem with Sonic Adventure is to be how it doesn’t live up to its full potential. As I’ve laid out here, nearly every element of the game could stand to be improved upon a little (or a lot), yet none of the game’s re-releases have done much to fix any of these things beyond the most game breaking glitches the Dreamcast version had (or so I hear).

Sonic Adventure has a series of little problems that for some add up to an annoying game, and to others add up to nothing. It would seem I fall into the middle; It’s a game that I can enjoy from beginning to end, and every step of the way I keep noticing how uneven the journey is. And that’s no good.