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Review: Sonic Adventure | PSNStores

Review: Sonic Adventure

Posted by on October 1st, 2010 | 5 Comments | Tags: , ,

Developer: SEGA
Publisher: SEGA
Release Date: September 21st
Availability:
Price: $9.99
Players: 1
Demo: Not yet
Rating: Everyone

What I Liked:

  • The music is nice and peppy
  • It runs at a smooth frame rate

What I Disliked:

  • Frustrating gameplay
  • Aggravating controls
  • Game hasn’t been “spruced up” for HD

When Sonic Adventure first came out, people loved it. The graphics were some of the best anybody had seen on a home console, the music was fun and peppy, and the game was an epic adventure, with multiple “in your face” characters populating a world that isn’t quite “open”, nor is it what might be called a “hub”. Now that the dust has settled, and the Dreamcast sadly departed, is there anything left to have fun with in this instalment in a franchise that has long since been ground into the dirt by yearly iterations?

Short answer? No. Long answer? No, not in the slightest. Sonic Adventure may have been considered “good” when it first released all those years ago (heck, I even have extremely fond memories of the game from when I first played it), but the PSN version simply doesn’t do the game any favours, with an air of laziness permeating into almost every asset of the port itself. Rather than take the time to remaster the game in the fashion that has become so very popular in the past year, SEGA has opted to leave the game untouched, except for the slight improvements given to the game when they brought it to the GameCube, such as improved character models and additional challenges (though you’re going to have to pay for those via DLC). Whilst the game seems to be running smoothly, all the glitches and frustrations of the original product haven’t been tamed in the slightest. In my time playing Sonic Adventure, I passed through walls, became stuck on the environment, and generally found the game to be working against me. The controls also serve to further my frustrations with the game, as the right analogue stick is almost entirely unused, leading to many unnecessary deaths as I battled with the camera (controlled via L1/R1) to give me a good vantage point during some of the game’s more heated moments. Needless to say, I often ended up losing this battle.

While the presentation may be unappealing, and the game itself bordering on unplayable, it is the other characters in the game that will really push your patience to the test. Whoever thought going fishing in a game was a good idea needs to have his or her head examined, along with whoever had the ideas for levels where you are constantly being pursued, levels where you have to race a character, and, worst of all, levels where you have to find pieces of an emerald. These levels all combine to make Sonic Adventure a master class in poor game design. They just aren’t fun to play, and the rest of the game seems hell bent on frustrating you if you even attempt to play it.

Sonic Adventure hasn’t aged well, and the game’s PSN release is extremely lazy, with none of the glitches and frustrations having been fixed for the game’s re-release. Save your money, and don’t play this game. It just isn’t worth the heartbreak.

Click Here to purchase Sonic Adventure from Amazon.com

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