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Hey everybody Master of Puppets is back after 5 months, writing reviews,
and using very bad grammar. Anyway, it's here, it's finally here. The sequel
to the game that made the Dreamcast look like it was going
to be successful. Sonic Adventure 2; that's right. The blue headgehog's back in an all new adventure
with completely original action stages and three new characters. But do these
glittering generalities live up to be what's called a "masterpiece?" Honestly, I don't know.
Set Me Free.....Please?
In Sonic Adventure 2 there are six characters. Sonic the Headgehog, Tails
the fox, Knuckles the Echidna (You know, what the hell is an echidna anyway?), Dr. Eggman (Yes! You do
get to pla the bad guys.), Shadow the Headgehog (New character), and Rouge the Bat (Also new character). Each
of the good guy characters has a correspondence to the bad guy character. For example, Sonic
has the same controls as Shadow, Tails has the same controls as Eggman, and
Knuckles has the same controls as Rouge. The corresponding characters also have the same level goals. For
example, with Knuckles and Rouge, find 3 pieces of something (emeralds, keys, etc.) to beat
the level. Sonic and Shadow must reach the end of the level. Ditto with Eggman and Tails. OK, so correspondence is out of the way, now levels.
Unfortunately, there is no adventure mode; the game just progresses level by level, with an explanation of the story between
levels. Also in this game, instead of six separate stories (A.L.A Sonic Adventure 1), this game
only has two: hero and dark. The hero story lets you play as Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, trying to save the world. The dark story lets you play as Eggman, Shadow and Rouge, trying to save the world.
(Just like they said in the extremely stupid-ass commercial). However, you can't choose characters, just the story. Characters will switch off as necessary. By the way, for all players, don't expect
this game to be a walk in the park like the first game. Sega has up the ante; Sonic Adventure 2 is much, much, harder.
Cruisin' at the speed of sound
The graphics suck.........HA, HA, just kidding. There's not much I can say about these graphics.
Backgrounds are beautifully rendered and can be considered visual masterpieces, all the way from earth to space.
The characters are also really good, but due to some blockiness , the graphics rating goes down just a bit but not much. That's
about all I can really say, and if anybody has a problem with that, WRITE YOU OWN DAMN REVIEW AND SEE HOW FAR YOU GET!
Listen and Learn
Here's where the game starts to get weak. The music in
the game rocks, of course, and each song makes up the energy of each level.
However, I have to say that music isn't everything. The voice-acting is absolutely
TERRIBLE. You either have whiney-squeaky voices or you have the dark-cool-sounding
voices that you can barely hear. Turning the language to Japanese with English subtitle helps a lot, but in the ending's, there's no
subtitles, so you might not understand what they're saying. Sound effects aren't much better. Sonic can now grind rails, but when he does,
sparks fly out and it sounds like a drill press. Other sound effects aren't awe-inspiring either, as most (most, not all) sound like they
came out of the third grade.
Can it get any worse?
Yes. Unresponsive controls plague this game, which becomes quite apparent in the Knuckles/Rouge scenarios. Gliding
is a pain. Sometimes, the controls don't respond and Knuckles/Rouge finds himself/herself falling which is completely unecessary.
Sonic's/Shadow's controls aren't much better. Using the homing attack from jumping is a pain since you have to be right next to the enemy to pull it
off. While Sonic has all new moves, half of them are a pain in the ass to pull off. Tails and Eggman are the worst. They pilot these weird tank-looking
suits where they can lock onto enemies and shoot them with missiles. There lies the problem. Locking-on is not easy to do and it si more frustrating than it should be.
Attacking physically with any character is a waste of time. They fly all over the place and often miss the enemy. See people, graphics aren't everything.
Overall
Rent, don't buy. Hell I would say don't even rent. Good graphics
don't make up for the sloppy controls, and bad sound. Shame on you Sega.
--Master of Puppets (By the way, Alvin thinks I'm being too harsh on the overall score and the quote shame on you Sega).
Graphics: 9.5
Sound: 6.0
Gameplay: 3.0
Satisfaction: 5.0
Overall: 6.1
