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Jul. 24th, 2002 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishIin place of the promised Nobilis review, I offer you my opinion of Sonic Adventure, which I finished early last week. Coming up next in the review queue will probably be Jet Grind Radio, a surprisingly cool rollerblading and graffiti-painting game. Yeah, I'm putting off writing about Nobilis because its content is huge enough that I haven't really got my thoughts in order.
For the most part, very cool. Occasional very irritating bits (the mirror room in Lost World comes to mind immediately, as does trying to navigate in the Mystic Ruins jungle), but an excellent platformer. You have six characters, and they each have their own story (well, more or less... Tails, as you might expect, basically tags along with Sonic), but there's an overarching story that involves all of them. Events that multiple characters encounter are shown slightly differently each time they're encountered, making it feel like you're viewing the situation through the character's eyes, which is a nice touch. The storyline is ... well ... yeah, it's there, but it doesn't get in the way of gameplay too much.
Some of the characters feel very right-- Sonic's goal in each stage is to complete it in under X time, while Tails's goal is to finish faster than (preprogrammed) Sonic. Others feel very extraneous-- Big the Cat's fishing game in particular feels kind of tacked on, and Knuckles's emerald-hunts are obnoxious. But none of them are *bad* as such.
Tons of replay value-- you can progress in the story by finishing a level at 'C' grade, but you can also get 'B' and 'A' grades in each stage. And levels feel much different the second time through-- knowing what shortcuts to look for, or what secrets you can find.
The Chao-raising sub-game is kind of cute, but I didn't really get that much out of it. Then again, I was never really into 'virtual life' type simulations anyway. YMMV.
Once you finish the six basic stories, you get to beat up on the final boss as SuperSonic, which is quite cool. Speaking of which, the boss fights are mostly pretty good, although some of them are far too easy. Then again, if they hadn't been I'd be sitting here whining about how I couldn't get through them, so...
The camera occasionally decides to suck a lot, and certain levels made me want to tear my hair out. Even so, Sonic Adventure gets an A-.
For the most part, very cool. Occasional very irritating bits (the mirror room in Lost World comes to mind immediately, as does trying to navigate in the Mystic Ruins jungle), but an excellent platformer. You have six characters, and they each have their own story (well, more or less... Tails, as you might expect, basically tags along with Sonic), but there's an overarching story that involves all of them. Events that multiple characters encounter are shown slightly differently each time they're encountered, making it feel like you're viewing the situation through the character's eyes, which is a nice touch. The storyline is ... well ... yeah, it's there, but it doesn't get in the way of gameplay too much.
Some of the characters feel very right-- Sonic's goal in each stage is to complete it in under X time, while Tails's goal is to finish faster than (preprogrammed) Sonic. Others feel very extraneous-- Big the Cat's fishing game in particular feels kind of tacked on, and Knuckles's emerald-hunts are obnoxious. But none of them are *bad* as such.
Tons of replay value-- you can progress in the story by finishing a level at 'C' grade, but you can also get 'B' and 'A' grades in each stage. And levels feel much different the second time through-- knowing what shortcuts to look for, or what secrets you can find.
The Chao-raising sub-game is kind of cute, but I didn't really get that much out of it. Then again, I was never really into 'virtual life' type simulations anyway. YMMV.
Once you finish the six basic stories, you get to beat up on the final boss as SuperSonic, which is quite cool. Speaking of which, the boss fights are mostly pretty good, although some of them are far too easy. Then again, if they hadn't been I'd be sitting here whining about how I couldn't get through them, so...
The camera occasionally decides to suck a lot, and certain levels made me want to tear my hair out. Even so, Sonic Adventure gets an A-.