Review By

Gene Park 5.0 RATING

This may be the easiest review I've ever written. Mostly because GameCritics.com alumnus Ben Hopper already reviewed this game when it first appeared on Sega's now defunct Dreamcast system. Sonic appeared at the dawn of the current generation, and so did the failed console. Although the game's graphics competently trumpeted in the 128-bit era, Sonic Adventure had a fair share of problems to keep it from being great. It was far from the greatest launch game ever, no less the greatest game featuring Sega's infamous mascot.

Here's the same game again, but apparently it's the director's cut. In film, a director's cut is the version of the movie the director intended before the final cut. Maybe this DX is redefining film grammar for videogames. Because in this case, director's cut means the same damn thing, complete with glitches and issues of the first game. The game follows the exploits of Sonic and his friends as they stop an evil plan by Dr. Robotnik from destroying the world with Chaos, a destructive life form with its own plans. If you think that's good, check out the voice acting and lip-synching. Rather than talking, the characters look like they're doing mouth exercises. Of course, this is all faithfully ported from the "Dreamcast classic."

The game may seem slightly less linear than Sonic Adventure 2: Battle because it incorporates an adventure mode. Controlling one of six characters (five being unlocked in time), you navigate a safe zone with small tasks and missions for you to do. After these small event triggers are done, you'll unlock the action stages, each unique to the character. Sonic and Tail's stages are the trademarks of the Sonic series: Fast roller coaster rides complete with tear loops, impossible jumps and upside-down running, all at ludicrous, cheek-inflating speeds. The Knuckles stages have become infamous for their repetitiveness, being treasure hunts in enormous stages. These sequences wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the rabid camera, which I'll get to later.

Amy, Sonic's "girlfriend" with a hammer, has standard platformer stages that are tolerable because of the slow pacing of her levels and her steps. Robot E-102 Gamma's stages are mindless shooter stages in lieu of Panzer Dragoon with auto-targeting missiles. And finally, Big the Cat fishes, while the player thanks whomever made the decision to restrict his areas to a scant four.

Keep in mind that besides the first three, the other characters' stages are all short and far from plentiful. Some of them barely take longer than five to 10 minutes to complete. Of course, beating all the levels unlocks the "all-new mission mode," as screamed by the back of the case. These mission modes take place in the adventure area of the game, and a faux-historian of Sonic the Hedgehog games would do well to complete these. The reward is a huge back catalogue of Sonic Game Gear games, including the excellent Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, a Sonic-ified version of the great Puyo Pop.

The games hardly warrant the full price admission of a brand spanking new GameCube game though. The game remains the same, and the camera still is in a perpetual state of movement and vibration. The direction of the camera decides the direction of the player, at least only sometimes. Often times the camera would be in front of the player, or zoomed away at 10 percent, making the player very difficult to see. Other times, the camera would be stuck behind a wall while Sonic would fall to his death. But thanks to the glitches, his death can look as dramatic as a Hitchcockian psychedelic spiral of 20th century textures until the game finally decides you've vomited enough.

Facetious descriptions aside, the most shocking and disappointing flaw of this port was slowdown. The game is running on a much more powerful system, but despite the game bragging 60 frames-per-second, the game begins to stutter like a Super Nintendo game with one too many sprites on screen.

I have no qualms about playing this game again. The Dreamcast release was fun for its time, and the level design is still fresh enough to look comparatively good to other platformers. With this port, there are no new gripes about the game that weren't there before, and therein lies the problem. Sega had plenty of time to tweak the refinements, and the cries and fits of frustration gamers voiced for the previous games surely couldn't have fallen on deaf ears. Sega is a house full of ideas and innovations, some often too quirky for mainstream gamers to enjoy. So for all that creativity and gusto, what inspired the house that Sonic built to give us something that wasn't wildly successful in the first place? As a port and as a historical artifact, Sonic Adventure DX just doesn't make the cut.

GCN Game

GCN Game

GBA Game

Movie DVD

Book

Music CD