Sonic Adventure in Retrospect

I played Sonic Adventure again after so long, on the Dreamcast. I have to say that yes, it's still a grand game, and that's without using nostalgia goggles. I played the PSN port of SADX just before playing the Dreamcast version, and I have to say that the PSN/XBLA ports are absolutely embarrassing and make the game look and feel much worse than it really is. It suffers not just from playing but looking worse than the original, which says alot considering Sega went through the trouble to retexture and remodel some stuff in the game only for it to not look as good. The bugs are more apparent in the nextgen port and happen more frequently, and the controls are wobbly and near uncontrollable. Going to the Dreamcast version I had no problems at all.

As I've already said though, Sonic Adventure has aged better than the ports tend to make it look like (minus the pretty awful voice acting and cutscenes). However it still falls flat thanks to it's own glitches, the only areas I can say SA1 truly failed at was how Big's gameplay AND story was completely irrelevant to the game and stuck out like a sore thumb as an excuse to broaden the "variety" for people getting it as a Dreamcast launch title. Amy's gameplay was second worst, but that's not saying much since her gameplay was fairly decent yet a bit on the slow side. Gamma's gameplay was surprisingly very good and represented a good balance between a third person arcade-style shooter and a Sonic game (that maybe a certain game featuring a black hedgehog should've taken notes from). Knuckles' gameplay was sort of aimless and boring, but it was merely testing waters for potential gameplay that wasn't exactly the same as the remaining two characters. As for the semi-main character, our buddy Tails, he played well although flying was really easy to to take advantage of the level design with; and racing is a decent concept but I believe it would've best been left for a multiplayer title.

After getting those out of the way I can finally focus on Sonic and I can say it right here and right now that this is probably the closest Sega has ever got to a real 3D Sonic experience. I really hate how true that is, but it is and I really love Sonic's stages just for that. The level design, while rather linear in the first couple of stages, later on branches to multitiered routes, and features a good mixture of platforming and speed segments. The fact that you can use the Spindash and the spin attack makes the gameplay all the better, although the Spindash is nerfed to a tool that can really break the game, and the questionable physics and collision makes Sonic's reactions to slopes rather awkward at times. But since this is the first complete outing for Sonic in 3D, I give it some leeway in design, since the entire game was one big experiment.

In the end, Sonic Adventure has aged only a tad worse than Super Mario 64, and still remains to be a good game. Sonic Adventure DX and any other future ports of said game, however, have aged as well as leaving a loaf of bread in the open for 8+ years.

 

There is a good compromise somewhere between Sonic Colors and Sonic Adventure that hasn't been found yet. All they need to do is take the good from each and make a good game out of it. If they took the tighter 3D controls and multiple characters (MINUS UNNECESSARY GAMEPLAY TYPES) from Adventure, with the 3D segments of Unleashed, with the 2D sections and the environments of Colors, we would have a damn good game I think.

As it stands alone, eh, it's ok. Sonic Adventure 1 at least had some different paths to take (SA2 is one of the most linear Sonic games ever). If only it was just Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles playing through all the main levels in the game though. The rest of it was just stupid. Also those cutscenes are just horrendous. Whether it's the mouth movement not syncing to anything, the awful voice acting, or the whole walking in place shit, it's just awful.

 

Sonic Adventure was a nice game that felt right, at least as long as you were playing as Sonic. The Adventure Fields weren't too big, and they weren't simply composed of city blocks, but I agree with Psi that they had some untapped potential for optional secrets and side quests. Not the kind of side quests where you talk to people and they send you back and forth to this place and that like a spiny gopher, but rather ones where its the environment that catches your attention, and makes you want to explore. Simple rewards like the powerups you got in that game were a brilliant way to reward exploration and interaction within the varied and interesting fields you visited with each character ... except Big. And Amy. Gamma I don't mind as much. They weren't boring. The design of the fields and the cinematography with which it was presented to me made me want to explore the limits of where I was, and it wasn't different in the main stages at all.

Tantalizing the player and challenging them to look for secrets, hidden rooms, and basically explore the game world by designing the environments with a very natural, creative, and organic layout, and then tuning its presentation well with the camera, is what I loved about Sonic Adventure, and it's something that it shares in common with arguably the greatest Sonic game ever made: Sonic 3 & Knuckles. The levels were huge, and you had enough incentive to explore every well-placed nook and cranny with the Special Rings or the TV powerup boxes. The level design in that game also felt very organic, natural, and organized in such a way that its distinguishable from its predecessors. Now, Sonic Adventure may not have been as well put together as Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and not as polished or tested as most of its predecessors, but it had that unique impression of what a good 3D Sonic game looked and felt like, and it was a start. The physics were a bit dodgy, but nothing too distracting, and it could've used some more content in the levels and the adventure fields, but Sonic Adventure is a good meaty package that always makes me smile whenever I go back to it.

That's why sometimes I might bandy around Sonic Adventure 3. For all of the original game's flaws that ended up infecting the franchise, it was still a fun game that did things which weren't really well replicated outside of SA2, which I'd argue just comes closest rather than successfully duplicates. The controls for Sonic Heroes and Shadow were slippery and loose, and the level design for the former felt too much like it was trying to be a 2D Sonic game in 3D and ending up being not a very great example of either, and the camera placement was unexciting for the most part. Also, I didn't like the team mechanic, the story was a decent concept that was utterly let down by the basic trying-to-be-2D-Sonic flow and laughably narmy script, and it pretty much ruined Metal Sonic as a character. Also the Chaotix. And those sound effects ... and the talking ... !!!

Sonic '06 could've been Sonic Adventure 3. It had most of the telltale characteristics of a game after Sonic Adventure's design: it had hub worlds, it had multiple characters across three story arcs, you could move around more freely during levels with unfortunately jerky precision, and it introduced new characters while reemphasizing the presence of humans in the franchise. The problem with calling it the final nail in the Adventure franchise is twofold: it wasn't called Sonic Adventure 3, and most of what it did that mimicked the Adventure games it did terribly wrong. Oftentimes the levels were way too big and sparse (more disk space equaled bigger emptier levels to fill it?) while your characters were relatively slower than they've ever been, which is coincidentally a nice set up for Sonic Unleashed's boosting and Hedgehog Engine solutions. It also had a really boring camera set up for the most part, especially in the hub worlds which were also too big, full of empty space with little that made you want to interact with or explore it, and had too many people to talk to with too many boring side missions. Some people you even had to talk to in order to progress. Silver was unbelievably narmy, and he moved slower than my grandma. Oh, and the physics and control were all mostly shit.

The story did seem a lot like Sonic Adventure 2 though, and it could've been all right, but I wouldn't compare it to Sonic Adventure. Adventure wasn't dark at all. It was comical and cliched at best, and really badly written or voiced at worst, but not too much I don't mind sitting through or skipping. Out of all the 3D games before Unleashed, outside of Heroes, Sonic Adventure's story was actually mostly light-hearted and executed with a pretty silly detachment. At least that's what I play it with, and I find it more bearable and entertaining than Heroes. Really, it wasn't much darker than the subtext for Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

 

While I do enjoy SA1, it just took Sonic in the complete wrong direction for over a decade. Yeah most parts of the game are fun but as a Sonic experience I find it unsatisfying and lacking. Any good points, such as levels with actual platforming, where scrapped for SA2. Instead it continued the cancerous infection of one route over a bottomless pit. Sonic's decline started here with Iizuka's directorship.

And they threw away a major part of a Sonic game's identity when the didn't include special stages and why not? Fucking plot device. Loss of special stages in the 3D games is a huge loss. Just another example of the questionable or out right wrong design choices that SA1, and what followed it, are filled with.

 

Trying to play through this on XBLA recently (the first exposure I've had to this game), I was actually amazed at how decent it turned out to be. All I've ever heard is how 3D Sonic games suck, and I was surprised at how Sega managed to get it right this one time.

Well, right as in "it looks good, and it's fun to play" - Sega's inability to bugfix a game is still blatantly obvious.

I've even grown to enjoy Big's levels (except the aforementioned Level A emblems...) now that I know what to do. And even there, Twinkle Park was the only major pain in my ass.

 

Not that huge. That is, unless you really liked the Special Stages in Sonic Heroes. :/

I kid. Special Stages, while totally optional, are one of the biggest distinguishing facets of classic Sonic gameplay, and arguably half the fun. However it also bears the lion's share of classic Sonic frustration, so it wins some and loses some. I'd still play them though, and they could've and should've been in Adventure, but that's the least of its problems.

Strangely enough, Sonic Team actually did make a great implementation of Special Stages in 3D before even Heroes. It was in Sonic 3D Blast on the Sega Saturn. That was the only part of the game that was in 3D, and it actually looked really, really.

 

Sonic 3D Blast Saturn had the best special stages of any Sonic game ever made.

Also I think one reason people like Unleashed and Colors more than the Adventure series is the amount of polish that those two games, particularly Colors, had. Colors also had the classic environments helping it out, and a much better soundtrack. It's a much better looking and sounding game, and it doesn't suffer from things like horribly made cutscenes and the stupid dark plot and all that crap. Granted the technology has helped but still.

 

Agreed. Colors is the most fun I've had since Adventure 2, and it's the most polished, but then it still has some flaws carried over from Unleashed and introduces the wonky jump with double-jump. And yes, the cutscenes and visuals were overall very nice and enjoyable, but I think they went mildly over with the lightness and the bad jokes. It's not that light-hearted is bad, but there's could've been a better balance between being light-hearted and bringing the player in with some plot tension. Also better jokes. The cutscenes for right after you complete the last world were all actually great. The only cutscenes I minded at all were the pre-boss battle ones, except the one where Tails got zapped. That's where the story could've gotten more interesting, but ran out of steam when Robotnik ran out of juice.

Some parts, but for most of the game I enjoyed the overall camera placement, just not so much the way my controls didn't quite agree with a given scripted path.

I encountered a funny glitch with him one time. I thought he was a real guy and tried to talk to him, but then I ended up picking him up. So, I figure I'd go into the diner and sit him down in one of the booths, at which point he sank through the ground and reappeared outside. Wiggy.

 

Yes! The statue is primarily used to glitch Knuckles and Amy into Emerald Coast! (not that Sonic Team intended that...)

Kinda ironic how IMO, the character in Sonic Adventure with the most emotional impact is Gamma, a fucking robot with no emotions.

Gamma is a girl because the Flicky that's inside him is pink

I actually had fun playing as her him, her his stages and controls were better designed than SA2 Tails/Eggman.

 

Sonic Adventure was cool in 1999. Now, it blows.

Thread over.

 

Gamma's levels were short and to the point. Tails/Eggman's levels just dragged on far too long. I think that is something they got right in SA1, level length.

 

I felt like the Special Stages from Rush were also great, (I always thought of it as a "spiritual successor" the ones in Saturn 3D Blast) because they took the "get rings down the half pipe" concept from S2 and 3D Blast, and then implemented the DS's touch screen technology in a good way, that positively added to them.

 

That was the worst "fix'd" in the history of this forum.

 

Sonic Adventure was very fun for me. I love the adventure fields, I love taking care of the Chao, I love the multiple point of views that arises in the cut scenes depending on your playing character. Multiple (forced) gameplay options keeps the game from going stale. And I love its non linearness.

Sonic Colors, like most other people have said, is way too linear.

 

It's one of those games that test of time does not shine a kind light.

It was great for what it was back in the day but now its flaws are clearly there and what you're left with is a game that was obviously rushed to meet a deadline. You have some unpolished elements in the presentation that makes it look like a budget game. The content is recycled to make an incredibly short game longer, sometimes in a good way (Knuckles exploration) or in a bad way (Big fishing). Most important of all though is that it really didn't bring anything into the genre that would make it truly memorable in the gaming community. All Sonic Adventure has going for is that it's the first actual platforming Sonic game in 3D. That's pretty much all there is to the game.

 

I'd say hardly (if) any of those count. 3D Blast wasn't even true 3D (most of the time) and a spin-off game made by a different developer (with the Saturn version made just to make up for the lack of X-treme). Sonic R was a racing game from the start. Sonic World does seem to be a demo of what could've been, but it certainly wasn't a compete jump. Sonic X-treme was held back by the Saturn, yes, but there were a multitude of other development problems involved in its cancellation that had nothing to do with it being on the Saturn.

Not necessarily. I still hold that Flicky might be a boy considering male birds are usually the more colorful ones in real life.

But yeah, Gamma's story actually did work well emotionally. The fact that he's got no mouth to have goofy animations and his voice actor was supposed to sound monotonous probably helped.

"...This is the wrong room."