Sonic Adventure 2 Battle Review

'It goes so fast you'll hardly even start'.

Imagine Sonic Adventure (DX) was a doctor, and gameplay was it's patient. Sonic Adventure decides to do most of the job, without making it truly great. Then another doctor, Sonic Adventure 2 decides to come along and screw it up. Yep it's that kind of game.

Despite being a shoddy port with graphics no where near the Gamecube's standard, it is boring and repetitive to play. The story is involving, but messed up by tedious levels. Basically, Eggman is trying to blow up the Earth using the Eclipse Cannon on Space Colony Arc. It's up to sonic and his friends to save the day. There are 6 characters, belonging to 2 teams. Team Hero, with Sonic (who basically just runs around everywhere), Tails (who basically just shoots everything) and Knuckles (who just digs everywhere). Then there's Team Dark, with Shadow (same as Sonic), Eggman (same as tails) and Rogue (same as Knuckles). The game revolves around different characters doing different things on similar levels. The progression is extremely linear, complete a level, go to the next, get an emblem.

By the time you've finished the first few levels, you'll have realised that there are only 3 types of gameplay in the single player mode. Sonic and Shadow levels involve you running through bland, lifeless environments, basically defeating the same enemies over and over again, smashing boxes and jumping a couple of times. Just tap forward on the control stick and press A every 5 seconds and you can complete. Sometimes the speed can really be addictive, sometimes you'll be doing boring, slow coach button hitting that dosen't live up to the name Sonic ADVENTURE. Tails and Eggman's boring levels involve shooting stuff, shoot some baddies, shoot some switches, shoot some boxes. That's it, there's no depth at all. You just shoot, jump and press the occassional switch. It's slow, boring and too repetitive. But the worst missions, are Knuckle's and Rogue's missions. I'm sorry Sega, but there is no excuse to make gameplay that boring. You have to collect pieces of the master emerald, by digging under ground or jumping up to find something while listening to an ANNOYING beep-beep-beep sound. It's so boring and really annoying, gameplay has never been so slow paced.

So, the gameplay's messed up, the story's messed up. What about the graphics, surely they can rescue it from a bad score. Nope, clearly not even tiny amount of effort has gone in to making the graphics acceptable. Despite looking like a rushed N64 game, the animation is pretty bad even in the cut scenes. The backgrounds are lifeless, with the same God-awful Government boxes making up the background on every level. The characters look rushed as well, the lip-sync is awful with characters moving their mouths with no speech at all. In cut scenes you'll see characters walk on the spot for about 10 seconds before stopping, what's the point in that? Every time a character turns, changes direction or moves themself in anyway, the legs have to move. It looks shoddy and cheap. Why didn't they release this on the PSOne when the graphics would have been acceptable. That shows how useless and lazy the Gamecube version staff where.

Mabye the only thing even half - acceptable about this game is the music. Knuckles and Rogue levels go for a classy, 70s hip-hop, funk tune while Sonic and Shadow levels have easily the best music in the game. The rock, rap style music is the only thing that makes the game come alive and makes the gameplay feel fast. Eggman music is hideous, but you won't have to listen to him much. What could have been good voice-overs are ruined by three problems. One, the lip sync is dreadful and it becomes increasingly apparent. Two, it gets repitive with 'Let's go' or 'Playtime is Over!' being said over and over again. Three, while Sonic and Shadow have good voices. Other characters like Amy and Eggman suffer from terrible voices, Amy is loud and annoying and Eggman is so quite and fake, you'll only hear him if you turn the music off.

Two player mode also helps to rescue this from the depths of a terrible score. While there is a good selection of modes, the game's repetitive gameplay is carried over. There are a lot of characters, but some can play only play certain modes. Racing is really good, because you can choose between the fastest characters. It's sweet, simple multiplayer fun. Unfortunatly, some levels suffer from millions of boxes and horrendously animated enemies but if you find the right level you can have addictive fun. Shooting is alright, but dull, as always collecting emeralds is a boring as ever and it feels like your searching for air because of the lifeless environments. There are modes you can unlock but you probably won't try them because they're just as dull as the main mode.

Shoddy, dirty and spoilt. That's what happens to most ports, this is no exception.

Best Bit:
The 2 player mode is class, with varied gameplay styles and a lot of characters. However, the main mode's repitive nature is carried over. Boxes will be boxes, baddies will be baddies and emerald missions will be crappy.

Worst Bit:
The single player, the two player is where the speed's at. The single player is slow-paced, useless and incredibly repititive. The two-teams don't make any difference, Shadow is a clone of Sonic, Eggman is a clone of Tails and Rogue is a clone of Knuckles.

Graphics 61% 'Not Super Sonic'
Haunted by lifeless backgrounds and bad animations, this certainly does not amaze in the characters department. Hardly anyone owned a dreamcast, even though it was powerful at the time. If that was so, why does this embarrass some GameBoy Advance games?

Sound/Music 85% 'Tough as Knuckles'
Rock and rap make up this game. Every character has his own tune, own voice and own levels. The music is excellant, but spoilt by terribly lip-synced voice overs and pretty old sound effects. Rogue has a lot of 70s music in her levels, weird but true.

Gameplay 57% 'Shoot, run, dig'
Running at light speed collecting a couple of rings, jumping on bounce pads and defeating the occassional enemy is cool. Walking around crashing into objects because of poor-handling, smashing box after box, shooting 1000 badly animated clones and digging for stuff isn't. Why not stick to the addictive Sonic formula rather than producing this trash.

Value 43% 'Sonic runs, the end'
It'll take you a couple of hours to finish the game, thats if you can stand playing it that long. Before the first level is finished, you've already seen all there is to see. Multiplayer is quite good, but the novelty wears off when you realize it's just the single player mode with 2 people.

Overall Score: 61.5%.

Verdict:
It links up with Sonic Advance! Whoops! I forgot to mention that, why? Because that's pretty crap as well, raising a Chao is like raising a Pokemon, except without the fun or gameplay. Actually, that pretty much somes up the rest of the game as well.

What the game lacks:
Variation. Every 3 levels is the same thing. Sonic or Shadow runs to the end of the level. Eggman or Tails shoot their way to the end of the level and Knuckles and Rogue dig their way to the end of the level. It needs something inspiring, the flat, dull gameplay has to stop. But what the heck, even the original Sonic games were repetitive (in a good and addictive kind of way).

What could make it better:
Being able to use all the characters in Single Player, at least that would have created some more variation. I mean, C'mon, 6 characters and 3 linear gameplay styles, get real (or at least more original), Sega.

What it has:
- Terrible...
- L...ip... Syn
- c... Poor Gr...aphics

What it doesn't have:
- Variation.
- Bad music.
- Good cut scenes.

This review was added on 6th February 2005 by nGaming user ProReviewer.