Written by: Joseph

 

 

 

 

"Sonic Adventure" began the spiky blue hero’s inexorable decline. Moving away from straightforward speed-platforming into a fully 3D world, drained the fun out of a franchise which once vied with Mario for video game supremacy.

 

 

At least that’s the conventional wisdom, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Sonic’s debut Dreamcast release. Despite its obvious flaws, I had a blast with Sonic Adventure the first time around and looked forward to mining some gentle nostalgia from this XBLA update.

 

Immediate disappointment greeted me as I booted up the game. The aspect ratio has been left unchanged, leaving frustrating black columns on screen, rather than crisp widescreen graphics. Jumping into Sonic’s first ‘Action Stage’ was a little more successful.

 

 

The controls are twitchy and the camera obstinate, but the sensation of speed that made the original games so popular remains largely intact. Although these levels began a trend which resulted in likes of 2006’s Sonic the Hedgehog, this first incarnation of 3D Sonic platforming is moderately enjoyable.

 

 

As Sonic charges around for our amusement, a pack of slobbering idiots follow in his wake. Progressing through the game unlocks five additional characters, with their own stages and perspective on the story. The first is Sonic’s long time companion, Miles ‘Tails’ Prower. The twin-tailed fox uses the same stages as Sonic, with added flying shortcuts. They aren’t too diabolical, but a terrible fear of the cut-scene horrors that completion would surely unleash made me hesitant to finish each level.

 

The voice acting in Sonic Adventure is ear-destroyingly terrible. Stilted animation is passable in a game from 1998, but there’s no excuse for such poor vocal work. Tails is the most notable offender. It’s as if his lines are being delivered by a child held at gunpoint. Cutesy Pink creature Amy is marginally less horrific, but her squeaky shrieks are still distasteful. Depicting the only female character as a useless sap who pines after a male hero and spends all of her levels running from a monster is an insult to women.

 

 

I remember Sonic Adventure with great fondness, so this patent lack of quality really hit me hard. I felt like SEGA were reaching back into my childhood and repeatedly punching the 13-year-old me in the face. We haven’t even mentioned Big the Cat. An obese feline so mentally deficient that he wears a belt, despite having no clothes. Who knows what possessed the previously sharp minds at SEGA to include a series of dire fishing levels.

 

Fishing for Froggy is just one of Sonic Adventure’s confusing design decisions. All of the levels are accessed by moving through an open world, with which there is almost zero interaction. It does make it a lot easier to get lost, but seems to serve no other purpose. If you enjoy wandering about for 10 minutes in between stages with no obvious clue about where to go next, then you are insane and should seek professional help.