Sonic Adventure Has Aged Better Than Its Sequel

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:James Lucas

Published May 15, 2024

Followed

Summary

Sonic Adventure 2 is more of a chore than its sequel thanks to the tedious gameplay of its non-speedsters.
Only one-third of the game is Shadow and Sonic, the rest is clunky mech suits and radar detection minigames.
The first Adventure has much better momentum and rarely drops the ball.

TheGamer is full of Sonic fans. The Blue Blur spins circles around their heads more regularly than he releases good games, but I get it. When I was a kid, as bad as the titles I played and the shows I watched were, there was something so endearing about these characters that it didn’t matter. So, I decided—after hearing so much about it from colleagues—to finally go back and play the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Adventure games.

I’d heard time and time again that Adventure 2 was Sonic’s magnum opus. It introduces Shadow (AKA the best character) and features 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a banging soundtrack from Crush 40, so it’s only natural it stands out even 20 years later from myriad games Sega has thrown🐽 at the wall, dwarfing its predecessor.

But it hasn’t aged well. Hell, I don’t even know if it was considered good at the time. Reading about frustrations I had on old forums, I found people from two decades ago moaning about the same things, but the slithꦍer of good seems to have washed away the rest as time march๊ed on.

Dreamcast's Sonic Adventure 2

In Adventure 2, you jump from Sonic/ဣShadow to Knuckles/Rouge to Tails/Eggman. The speedster levels are incredible, and easily some of the best 3D platforming out there. But that only makes up a third of the game. The rest is split between frustrating treasure hunting, in which you follow a janky detector in wide-open levels that take an age to complete, and a clumsy tank shooter that, when it tries to sprinkle in platforming, falls at the first hurdle.

Tails and Eggman are in giant mech suits kitted out with miniguns and rocket launchers for some reason, so when they jump, they’re tediously slow a♛nd cumbersome. So, when a l𝔉evel remembers that this is a Sonic game and needs platforming, you’re doing it with six cinder blocks strapped to your shins.

The other characters are grating chores that you have to push through to get to the good stuff, which is a strong way to sour the entire experience considering th🤪ey makeไ up two-thirds of it.

Many boss fights are just the equivalent character from the opposite story, i.e. Shadow vs. Sonic, which is prettღy dull since you can just spam leap on their head to win ✃most fights.

On the other hand, Adventure focuses solely on Sonic, before moving on to the other characters’ stories. There’s an overworld that you explore between levels, and it’s here where you gradually uncover new characters.𝄹 Once they’re unlocked and join the gang, they aren’t mandatory to play as, but you can dive into their perspectives and play th𝔍rough their eyes whenever you want.

Sonic going through Speed Highway in Sonic Adventure.

The flow is never disrupted. While Adventure 2 takes time out of the excellent platforming to have you go hunt for gems in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pumpkin Hill or whatever, Adventure hasꦆ some incredibly slick 3D platforming of its own and the game keeps the focus squarely on it for as long as possible. It’s nice that you don’t have to worry about being thrown into the nail-grinding halt that is the other two playstyles eꦑvery five minutes.

Speaking of the overworld, it’s a much better con✃nective tissue for the story. In Adventure 2, you enter a liminal hub that leads to the Chao Garden after each level, so there’s no sense of place, making the story feel increasingly disconnected. On the other hand, in the first game, I fell in love with Station Square, this comically American metropolis, as I broke into its enormous casino and delved into its sketchy sewers.

Sidenote, the casino is the best 3D Sonic level. Turning him into a p♎inball was a stroke of genius.

Each level snaps together so satisfyingly, and by introducing new keys and powers that unlock areas we’d only glimpsed at earlier, there’s a powerful sense of progജression without ballooning the world to an unintuitively bloated size.

Knuckles from Sonic Adventures standing in frame

It’s easy to see why Adventure 2 holds such a grip on Sonic fans. It introduced Shadow, has one of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the most memorable stories ♏thanks to Maria, and is easily an early peak of the series’ 3D platforming. But people are looking back with rose-tinted glaꦺsses, because the majority of the game revolves around sไide characters who feel awful to play as.

Adventure reaches similar heights with its gameplay, and while it might not be as refined or slick as its sequel, it isn’t weigheღd down by gimmicks. So, it’s aged a helluva lot better, and easily stands tall as the peak of 3D Sonic. The only thing it’s missing is Shadow.

Followed

168澳洲幸运5开奖网

TheGamer

Sonic Adventure Has Aged Better Than Its Sequel

Summary

Your Rating

168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Sonic Adventure

WHERE TO PLAY