I’ve now played Sonic Adventure for a good number of hours and I’m now 80% through Sonics quest and have completed Tails and Knuckles sections. Overall the experience has been a good one.
The open world (adventure field) parts are so basic and straight forward I really wonder how I managed to hate them so much first time round. The areas are very small and the little glowing ball things tell you almost exactly where to go should you get stuck. Easy.
Then we have the action stages themselves. Obviously the core of the game are the Sonic levels and, while they are fun, they present little challenge (something that will prove to be a recurring issue), have a few camera and collision detection problems and the most fun parts are ‘played’ with little (if any) user input which is something that has always bothered me about Sonic games generally. Aside from the vanilla Sonic levels – the highlight of which is running down the side of a skyscraper – there are also a nice set of sub-games. So far I’ve snow boarded, raced a dodge-em f-zero style, indulged in some starwing inspired dog-fighting and played some sonic pinball.
Apart from Sonic himself you get the opportunity to play through the story from the view point of one of the other five characters. Tails levels primarly involve racing Sonic or Eggman to the end of the stage and are good fun but over too quickly. Knuckles is searching for the missing parts of the master emerald which this involves treasure hunting around levels with a handy master emerald detector to guide you. Again good fun but far far too easy.
Next up I will playing as Eggman’s renegade robot – Gamma, Amy the annoying pink thing and perhaps the worst character in gaming history – Big the Cat. Lastly there is also Sonic’ adventure itself to polish off having left it on the “Lost World” level where the camera does its best to ruin your day.
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