It’s-a me, Dane Bond! Now, let’s cut out the cheesy act and get right down to business.

Anyway, in the strangest twist of fate ever in video game history, Sonic ended up a Nintendo character. So I shall be reviewing his second Nintendo game, Sonic Adventure 2, on a 1-5 scale.

Story: ****

This game has a better story than most Sonic games. It begins when Dr. Robotnik (Eggman) releases a superpowered hedgehog named Shadow. Shadow is apparently “the ultimate life form”. For some reason Shadow wants Eggman to bring him the seven chaos emeralds. Meanwhile, Knuckles and the new bat character Rouge are fighting over the master emerald, which has the power to cancel out the chaos emeralds, which leads to it being broken. Meanwhile the extremely stupid military force that’s more of a hindrance to the people than a help has confused Sonic with Shadow and they are chasing him. Sonic manages to escape the prison complex with a little help from Miles Prower (Tails) and Amy. A very cool thing about the story mode is that you can pick if you want to play as the good guys or the bad guys. That makes the plot more complex. For instance, you might be playing the Hero mode and encounter one of the bad guys and then play the Dark mode and encounter a good guy where you encountered the bad guy in the Hero mode so you’d think something like “Hey! When I was doing that, she was following me!” or something along those lines. Anyway, it’s really cool.

Graphics: *****

Now these are what I call graphics! The walls and floors look like they’ve been taken out of photographs, the water looks realistic, and, while the characters look a little polygonal, the graphics are excellent.

Sound: ****

Very good sound. Each character has his/her own theme song. Sonic has something that sounds like the Backstreet Boys, Tails has soft rock, Knuckles has rap, Shadow has heavy-metal, Eggman has techno, Rouge has Latin music, and Amy has… something. I’d give this a 5 but Knuckle's rap music and Amy's theme really get on my nerves after a while. Actually, Amy's theme is annoying right from the start! I really like how the music in this game has lyrics in it. Of course, the lyrics in the music correspond to the game. I mean, a song that starts out “Rollin’ around at the speed of sound” could only correspond to a Sonic game. Also, there’s voice acting in this game. That’s a plus.

Gameplay: I’ll go with CPF and break this category down into multiple categories.

Action Stage: ****

Blow through the stage as fast as you can with either Sonic or Shadow, Smashing military  robots (and Eggman’s robots if you’re Sonic), runnin’ through loop-the-loops, going of jumps, hitting spring pads, and grinding rails. This is the regular Sonic-style gameplay, only in 3D! Oh, and sometimes there’s a time limit.

Shooting: ***

Either Tails and Eggman are paralyzed from the waist down or Sega just wanted them to stomp around in robot-thingies because that’s what they do. Unlike Action Stage, Tails’s and Eggman’s robot walkers (the Cyclone and the Egg Walker) go kinda slow. In order to earn bonus points, you must lock onto and destroy a lot of robots with your lock-on laser. You must be quick or the homing device will burn out after a bit and the targeted enemies will not be targeted. The more enemies you hit with a lock-on laser the more bonus points you get.

Treasure Hunting: ****

My favorite! Playing as Knuckles or Rouge, you must find three master emeralds shards/keys/chaos emeralds. This is sort of like exploring the worlds of SM64 because you’re on the lookout for three special items hidden in the stage. Even when you beat a stage once, don’t think you can just blow through it on the replay menu because you know where all the items are, because their locations are scrambled before you play the stage, hee hee hee. Also, you can glide and climb walls.

Chao: ****

Raise cute little creature called Chao in between stages! It’s like a virtual pet, but better!

Multiplayer Mode: ***

Interesting. You play in stages that mimic the three gameplay styles (Action Stage, Shooting, and Treasure Hunt) against an opponent. You can also pick your character. There are the two characters that do that type of gameplay in the Story Mode, (Action Stage: Sonic and Shadow, Shooting: Tails and Eggman, Treasure Hunt: Knuckles and Rouge) and you get two new characters in each gameplay style! In Action Stage you get Amy and Metal Sonic (from Sonic CD), in Shooting you get Chao and Dark Chao (which are both in robot-walkers like Tails and Eggman), and in Treasure Hunt, you get Tikal the Echidna and Chaos Zero (both from Sonic Adventure 1). There’s also Chao Racing and Karate, but I don’t play those much. I would've given this a higher score if they'd had 1-player VS the computer, more stages, and if more than just two players could play it at once.

Kart Racing: **

You drive around in kart, racing with the other players. It’s impossibly hard and you can only go forward, never reverse. I really wish they had put in stuff like weapons and items, but then it would be a Mario Kart ripoff. Also, why can’t they have more than just three bridge themed levels? I would’ve liked to see races in the city, on the space colony ARK,  Eggman’s base, Angel Isle, and the military complex. Also, why is Eggman racing with Sonic and friends?

Difficulty: ****

Most of the stages are pretty easy, while some are hard. ($#^@ Cannon’s Core!!!) But the real challenge is collecting little things called Emblems, which unlock cool stuff and are sort of like SM64’s Stars, DK64’s Gold Bananas, Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Twoie’s Jiggies, and Mario Sunshine’s Shines. If you get all 180 Emblems in the game, you can play the first level of the first Sonic game! Other goodies you gan get from Emblems are Amy and Omochao themes for the menus, new stuff to buy for your Chao, etc. But it’s really hard to get all 180.

Controls: ***

They are okay. I really would’ve liked it if you had complete control over that camera and stuff. Oh well, at least you get used to ‘em over time.

Secrets: ****

This game has a nice load of secret stuff waiting for you, but the big, bad, mother of all secrets is a third storyline that you get after- no telling.

Overall: *****

This is a really good game. I know Lemmy’s going to hate me for complementing a Sonic game, but this game is really good!

Recommendation: This game is excellent! The realistic graphics, the awsome sound, the gameplay, and everything else (well, except Amy's theme) is worth the $50! Some people probably won't get this game because of the Sonic theme, but then they'll be missing out on one great game!

And now, for a limited time only, I shall list some good stuff and bad stuff about the games I review! This service will cost you 50 coins for the first review and 20 for every additional Review. … NOT!

The Good:
+ Great graphics, storyline, and sound.
+ There’s voice acting.
+ One word: CHAO!!!
+ You can play as the bad guys as well as the good guys.
+ The multiplayer mode is good for a while.
+ First game to use the GCN/GBA connector.

The Bad:
- Amy’s theme.
- Knuckle's rap.
- The camera is really wacko at times.
- Why does Sonic get more levels than the other characters?
- When the characters talk, their mouths don't match what they're saying.
- Omochao is very annoying.

Want to review a game yourself? Email me!
Go back to Lemmy's Reviews.
Go back to my main page.