SONIC ADVENTURE 2 (DC)


Fast, fun and furious: it's a cool game

By WILL BARKER

It's so sad when we only ever a Dreamcast game once every month. Sadder yet - the fact that by this time next year, there'll be no Dreamcast games appearing on the shelves. Woe - woe is me!

However, the worst thing to do is dwell upon these things, so without further ado let's have a look at Sonic Adventure 2 (SA2).

The platform game hasn't been neglected to the extent seen in the adventure genre, for example, but since the advent of more powerful bit-rate RISC processors in consoles, the move to 3D has been swift. The result is that most platform games that were sprite-based classics don't seem to work as well in three dimensions. Most.

SA2 is far from two-dimensional - it's a dizzying, psychedelic ride unlike anything else you've ever seen before. And a word of caution - don't let a just-fed (supposedly) trained monkey watch the action - it will blow chunks.

True to its heritage, the latest Sonic game is fast. So fast, in fact, that I'd recommend anyone with even a slight nervous twitch should avoid it. From the very first level, to raising the virtual-pet Chao (pron: chow), to defeating the evil, albeit rather likable, Dr. Eggman, SA2 is a blast. There's no better way to describe it.

It's really quite stirring to see how good this game looks, seeing as the Dreamcast is out of circulation (i.e. they don't sell them anymore). In terms of visuals, there's nothing here the PS2 couldn't do, it just seems that Sega is the only developer who seems to want to push the realms of colour and motion.

At first glance, the game looks very comparable to the original Sonic Adventure, which came out in, oooh, late 1998 in the Nihon. That makes it about three year's old. It wouldn't be right for a Sonic Team title to have similar graphics to games made last decade, would it? Bet your ass it wouldn't!

As such, I scrutinised the visuals while James Anthony tried in vain to beat my fastest stage times.

The small experiment proved a couple of things. First impressions do give the sequel a familiar feeling, but when you look closely, there's so much more going on, more moving, dynamic objects - plus it's much smoother too. Who would have thought? Sonic - going faster yet?

Secondly, James got nowhere near my times - it was folly for him to even try. Thirdly, the end and mini-bosses are amazing to look at. This time around they are much more creative. In fact, this sense of creativity seems to pervade the entire game - it's very fresh.

The polygon count has been increased, as is evident in Sonic's much smoother and rounded appearance, plus the fact that his facial expressions are more pronounced indicates this. Other tell-tale signs abound - every single new level contains at least one 'brown-undies' section - these are the sections where trucks chase you down crowded streets and where you must run down the side of building plus other retina-charring activities.

However, the game isn't all rolling hills and fluffy white clouds. In fact, the problems that many gamers complained of three years ago still plague the game. Granted, they're not hard to overlook, especially with the brain-mushing speeds you'll be flying around at, but they are there and, frankly, they shouldn't be.

The three major gripes of the original game were the dodgy floating camera, crappy voice-acting and to a lesser-extent, confusing gameplay processes. Personally, these three things failed to irritate me in the original and the same goes for SA2.

However, it's fair to say that the camera issues aren't as acute as they once were. Sure, the floating camera can get stuck in certain places for no apparent reason, but moving Sonic around usually remedies this.

The original game used a hub-based system for exploring the different levels and this confusing system caused many head aches. You actually had to constantly explore the hub sections, which, at times, became both annoying and baffling. This time around the whole in-between-levels hub-system has been scrapped in favour of a more user-friendly and traditional method of progression.

The voice-acting, sadly, has gone downhill in the three years between drinks. But you want to know something? I love crap voice acting. No, really, I do! But that doesn't mean you will - so be warned.

The streamlined level structure has been given a digital injection of variety, with two team to choose from. Both teams have three players - the good guys have Sonic, Tails and Knuckles. The bad guys have Dr. Eggman, Shadow and Rouge. The Sonic/Shadow levels are the ultra-quick ones where you can take time out to explore, but blasting through at highly illegal speeds is much more fun. The Knuckles/Rouge levels involve finding things, aka scavenger hunts and the Eggman/Tails levels involve lots of gadgets and robots and shooting stuff.

Sonic Team went to great lengths to improve upon the original and it has done so, in every conceivable way (barring the speech). Even the mini-games and extra features are better. Many of the extras can only be unlocked once you've finished the game, but it's well worth the time. There's kart racing, boss mode, versus mode, chao gardens, downloadable events, extras and more.

Sonic Adventure 2 eclipses the original easily, with better graphics, more varied gameplay and is quite possibly the most tip-top game I've played on the Dreamcast. For those who haven't thrown their DC at the wall in disgust, flushed it down the toilet or perhaps replaced the innards with custard, go get this game.

ORIGINALITY 90%
SOUND/GRAPHICS 90%
PLAYABILITY 90%
ADDICTION 95%
ENJOYMENT 95%