Reviews VideoGame / Sonic Adventure 2

One-third Great

Sonic Adventure 2 provides gleeful, fast-paced, undeniably cool action. Or at least, one third of it does while the rest of the game is almost unplayably dull.

In the first level, Sonic tears off part of an airplane, jumps out, and rides the metal down city streets like a snowboard, doing tricks and knocking cars away. And the level only gets more fun from there, culminating in a Crash Bandicoot-style chase into the screen, running from a massive military truck.

OK, next level. Mechs! Those are awesome, right? In theory. The thing is, they are slow, dull, and feel out of place after Sonic's City Escape. The mech is not at all agile, but at least you're shooting stuff, which is inherently fun. Sorta. But nowhere near as fun as the speed levels, so the mech levels end up dragging the whole package down.

The mech levels are easier to muscle through than the unbearable treasure hunting stages, at least. You have a large area around which to glide, climb, and dig to your heart's content. Your heart's content will be reached in about two minutes, at which point you will have found, if you are lucky, one or two shards. And the radar system has been, erhem, updated, so that the radar only beeps for the shards in order. You could be standing right on top of the third shard and the game would not tell you to dig until you have found the first two. And these levels, particularly later in the game, are massive, and you will be spending a huge chunk of time gliding around the level, searching and searching… hey, remember those speed levels? Those were fun. They're your motivation, in fact, and without them you wouldn't even be playing.

In a nutshell, the speed levels, which take up about ten of the game's thirty or so levels, are the only fun part of the game, and they are the only reason to try trudging through all the others. Thankfully the game has a solid soundtrack, with the last two boss fights having suitably epic songs. But is it all worth it? Maybe once. Just so you can open all the speed levels, get A-ranks in all of Sonic and Shadow's missions, and never touch any of the other levels ever again. If the game were just the speed levels, it would be a spectacular yet short game. But with all the gunk in between them the game is a low point in Sonic's saga.