Sega have decided that Xbox Live Arcade will play host to the rerelease of a number of classic Dreamcast titles, the first of which being Sonic the Hedgehog’s original 3D romp, Sonic Adventure. This downloadable version is a vanilla port of the original, polishing the graphics a little to suit modern sensibilities, but adding very little else.
Before Sonic Adventure, the blue hedgehog and his cohorts were mostly a mute bunch, and their stories whooshed past without stopping to bother about the plot much. This was the first time that Sonic opened his mouth in a video game, and from that mouth, storyline came out. It went kind of like this: Dr Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik is a big fat jerk who wants to take over the world. To do this, he enlists a rather weedy-looking ‘god of destruction’ called Chaos, who he reckons is the ticket to fulfilling his megalomaniac wishes. According to Robotnik’s expositional rants, Chaos gets more powerful with every chaos emerald he eats. Sonic reasons that, hey, if Chaos can’t get his grub on, then Eggman can’t take over the world, and we can all get on with our lives and pretend none of this ever happened.
So off we swan on a 3D platform adventure as Sonic tries to gather the emeralds before that obese loser gets his mitts on them. There are two main types of level in Sonic Adventure – the Adventure Fields, namely the city of Station Square, the Mystic Ruins and the Egg Carrier, are explored between Action Stages. The Action Stages are the good bits – fast and unique levels where Sonic can run about with gay abandon and take part in some cute level design, including an epic snowboard race, a frantic killer whale chase (or is it a dolphin?) and a NiGHTS-themed pinball table. The inbetween exploration bits are plodding, repetitive and confusing, with the only relief coming from an obvious help icon that points you in the right direction. In short: actual levels – good, stuff inbetween where Sonic picks up keys and runs about aimlessly – bad.
Progress through the game’s ten levels will unlock five of Sonic’s friends, who each have versions of the game to play themselves. Tails is first. His game is focused on beating Sonic to goals, although most of the entertainment comes from seeing Tails’ version of the cutscenes, where he is portrayed as infinitely more useful compared to the suddenly simpering and useless Sonic. Way to boost your own ego, Miles. Knuckles’ story sees him trying to protect the chaos emeralds, and it’s definitely the most interesting one. Amy Rose’s levels show her running away from a rather angry robot, and Big the Cat is an idiot and you shouldn’t even bother looking at his pointless fishing games. These levels, which run parallel to Sonic’s story in the narrative and show the story through a different pair of eyes, add some longevity and variety to the game, which will fly past for anyone who doesn’t want to take their time and perfect everything. More levels (from the Gamecube version of the game) are available in a DLC pack, which stinks pretty bad as repackaged games like this should come with extras like that as part of the standard package without requiring an additional payment.
Some extra fun can be found in the Chao Garden, where Sonic can take some time out from saving the world from an urgent threat in order to raise freaky blue Chao characters (not to be confused with Chaos, mentioned earlier.... I know, I know). This is a sweet virtual pet game, but it is a shame that this version lacks the VDU compatibility of the original Dreamcast game, or the Gameboy Advance compatibility of the Gamecube port, which made it so unique in the first place.
Sonic Adventure has not aged well, and the game handles very poorly. It was a little tough to play in the first place, but resurrecting it in this day and age only highlights how erratic the controls are. On top of that, the camera serves as an unseen enemy, flying about when you don’t want it to and zooming into the floor beneath your feet for no reason. Sonic will, on occasion, just fly off a ramp or something and die through no fault of your own. Don’t blame yourself. The graphics are ok, I suppose, but the voice-acting is horrendous. It’s not even ‘funny bad’. The screen ratio is frozen to 4:3 and can’t be tweaked – that’s frustrating and amateur. About the only thing that is still worthwhile presentation-wise is the soundtrack, which is packed full of memorable tunes.
What is disappointing here is the missed opportunity that Sega had, where they passed up the chance to tweak the buggy camera and spastic controls and produce a fresh, new version. If you’re a sucker for rigidly authentic Dreamcast experiences, or if you just need some more Sonic, by all means knock yourself out with this one. For most gamers, playing this will only reveal how bad some early 3D games were and how they verge on unplayable nowadays. With only a legendary soundtrack and some genuinely impressive level ideas saving it, Sonic Adventure receives 4 out of 10.