People have a sort of love-hate relationship with Sonic the Hedgehog. I mean, sure, he's not as well-known as Mario and Pac-Man; or perhaps he's just not as universally-accepted a character like the Italian everyman or Namco's well-rounded mascot. For the life of me, I don't know why, though I think it may have something to do with unresolved "Blast Processing" issues that older gamers may still be harboring (and suddenly I've become Dr. John, the Game Psychiatrist). But, whatever the reason why the Blue Blur is on relatively rocky ground, Sega has done very little to alleviate this unevenness.
Sonic Adventure DX is, of course, a remake of the breakthrough Dreamcast title Sonic Adventure, released in 1999. Rather than the tired old "Dr. Robotnik has stolen the Chaos Emeralds, get them back!" storyline, SA chooses to take a more cinematic and convoluted storytelling path by giving you six interweaving missions to complete. You start off with only Sonic's story available, but as you meet new characters in the game, such as Tails and Knuckles, you unlock their story. Each character's missions have a unique objective-- Sonic has only to run like hell through his missions; Tails's goal is to beat Sonic to their objective; Amy has to make it to the goal balloon without getting captured by a robot running amok; E-102 Gamma (a Robotnik baddie) has three minutes to destroy his brothers in arms; Big the Cat (do I really need to explain what this character looks like?) has to fish for his lost frog; and Knuckles has to search for lost pieces of the Master Emerald.
There's a reason I saved Knux's description for last, and that's because quite frankly it's the single most irritating of the game's modes, with Big's fishing simulation coming in a very very close second. The whole point of a Sonic game is to go fast, and in only about one-third of the game can you actually do that (Sonic and Tails' missions). In another third of the game you're stuck with slow-moving characters in combat (Amy and E-102), and in the last third of the game you're standing damn near still. To be fair, Knuckles only has five missions and Big only has four, but Knuckles deserved a better goal than just dig around and punch stuff. Still, the addition of a kart-racing mini-game and a couple Rez-like shooter stages do sort of make up for it, but it all still smacks of "We need to fill space. Think of something!" Which I can totally understand, being a DC launch title and all.
Sega has made a few minor changes to the title in the interests of updating it for the GameCube audience. First, the game's online components are gone-- the Dreamcast original allowed players to go online and download patches which created new challenges for players to find, such as hidden Sonic Team emblems in certain areas. Ultimately, the online bits were irrelevant in the larger scheme of the game, so there was no reason to add them into the GC version. The online setup is replaced with an emulator and a handful of GameGear Sonic titles, which are unlocked by obtaining the main game's emblems and/or completing tasks in Mission Mode. Mission Mode is completely new for the GC version, consisting of random RPG-like objectives to undertake (ie "put Widget A in Location B"). The biggest problem with the GameGear games is that, for the large part, they're mostly not very fun. Still, they're welcome diversions if you don't have Sonic Mega Collection Plus for any of the other systems.
The game looks damn spiffy. I had been plenty impressed with the Dreamcast version, but there's almost no comparison. Textures are clean (you can even read some background signs on the walls-- you could do this on the DC, but it's much, much easier here), there's no undue polygon-popping, and everything runs at a nice, smooth framerate. You know, come to think of it, I really don't think I've come across a GameCube game that looked downright awful. You'd have to really be trying to make the Cube look bad. Also, despite some of the Escher-like twists and turns that the game takes, Sonic and company are rarely disregarding the laws of gravity (accidentally, anyway).
Of course, you'll be lucky to see it all. The game has a somewhat uneven difficulty level which isn't mitigated at all by the fact that the camera still doesn't work right, goddammit. It is possible to set the camera to a "free" mode, but it won't help because that setting can be overridden by the game at will (ie in places where you really really need it, the camera won't budge, and Sonic will plummet to his doom). There are also a couple glitches where Sonic or Tails will hop onto a booster into a loop-de-loop, lose speed halfway through, and drop like stones into the void below.
Normally one of the best things about a Sonic game is the music, what with the catchiest music in almost all of gaming. Sega decided to set Sonic apart from other "mascot" games by setting up Sonic Adventure's score to be fully loaded with driving metal and rock tunes. It works really well-- the character themes are exceptionally well done, and the stage music (there's often two songs per stage) is nothing short of phenomenal. The voice acting, however, is less than stellar. Sega again left a glaring bug in the game from the DC version-- sometimes the soundtrack drowns out the dialogue. But that's all right, because the English voice acting is terrible. The only saving grace, really, is that it could have been a lot worse.
With all its flaws, and given that hard-core Sonic fans (like myself) have played this before, you're probably going to go through the game once and be done with it. However, the emblems and now-familiar Chao breeding make it a good way to kill a few more hours here and there, so there's some amount of replay value. Completing the story modes will earn you a 100%, but each story stage has multiple objectives which can be completed for emblems. These range from "Complete the stage" to "Get x number of rings" to "Complete the stage in x amount of time". Again, it's all a matter of how die-hard you are in squeezing absolutely every ounce of fun from a title.
Players new to Sonic will do better to play his 2D outings, as has been said before. Still, Sonic Adventure DX is a good way for Sega to make up for the whole "we canned the Dreamcast because it wasn't popular in the US, but we had some really good titles on it that the US liked" thing. If you've got $20 to blow and a need for speed, it's worth your while to pick up this title.
