after playing it again on this release i'm pleased to report that Sonic Adventure 2 HD is the absolute best version of the game. It's a phenomenal port and i'm going to write an insanely lengthy post about why this game is, in fact, excellent, and all of you are going to roll your eyes and scream at me about how wrong I am because sonic adventure 1 is apparently better (despite having piss-poor level design, terrible physics, and all of the problems that sonic the hedgehog 2006 ended up making far worse in almost the exact same form)
ok here we go
I've talked before about how much I like Sonic Adventure 2. Not in great detail; often my points about the game are sparse and boil down more as reactionary
(o no u dint etc) than anything valuable.
Not so here, I hope.
Sonic Adventure was a [censored]ing mess. That's the simple truth of it. Going back and playing it now is mortifying. Nothing works. The layouts are confusing and slapdash, the load times are unforgivable, and the story- although decent in theory- is excruciating in execution. It doesn't hold up to any conceivable standard of quality one can deem of it. It's only better than Sonic 06 because Sonic 06 was stupid enough to do it again.
The engine glitches with more regularity than the frequency of sickness of pregnant passengers on a carnival ride. It would be hilarious if not tragic; this is not Sonic. That's the long and short of it.
But Sonic Team did get one thing right in Sonic Adventure, and that was the homing attack.
Let me talk to you about the homing attack. Nay, let me nigh-
worship it.
So many people complain about the homing attack. Entire mods and fangames are built around removing it; it might just be because I don't give two [censored]s about Final Fantasy, but I've actually seen more attempts to 'fix' the homing attack than I've seen attempts to 'fix' Aerith's death.
But taking the homing attack away from a 3D Sonic (or putting the homing attack
in a 2D Sonic) fundamentally misunderstands what works about Sonic the Hedgehog and why the original games play so much like a dream.
Sonic is based entirely around two things:
friction and
momentum. The 8-bit Sonics - the Game Gear/Master System Sonics - are terrible Sonic games. They play nothing like Sonic the Hedgehog. They might be good
games, don't misunderstand. But they're terrible Sonics.
Say you're playing Sonic 1 and you come across a badnik. You're running full speed.
If you want to avoid it, you have three choices:
1- jump
2- roll, or
3- run the other way
if 1, you keep moving the direction you were going without a hitch.
if 2, the same, except now the badnik is destroyed.
if 3, you
have to build up resistance before you move the other direction. Sonic does something Mario never does. Sonic
skids. In Super Mario World you come to a complete stop by stopping. In Sonic, you have to deal with inertia.
Sonic the Hedgehog is therefore frictional. The game rewards momentum and punishes the lack thereof. If you can't keep things going, then, quite simply
you're too slowwwwLet's go back to 1; if you jump, you can theoretically hit that badnik, no problem, causing the same scenario as in 2. In fact, that's easy. That's
simpleton. It's positively
babytown frolics. Hitting an enemy with a jump in Sonic 1, 2, 3, or CD is child's play. It's
actually the literal meaning of the term "child's play."But if you put a z-axis on that [censored] it falls right the [censored] apart.
Trying to do that in 3D is a goddamned nightmare. Mario doesn't have this problem; he doesn't move at the speed of
physical inanity so his plumbery rear can stomp goombas in 3D without any trouble.
Sonic tries to do that and he becomes the visual equivalent of pizza ingredient.
So they gave him a homing attack.
Sonic with a homing attack in 3D is like Babe Ruth with an aluminum bat. It's not quite 1:1 but it's remarkable how well it works. With the homing attack, Sonic can have momentum in 3D.
Sonic Adventure doesn't allow for it, though. Sonic Adventure is a poor, poor game. Sonic rarely is able to play in a truly momentum-based way.
At least the music's good.
Sonic Adventure 2 is an entire meal made out of homing attack pie. Now that the game works- now that it has physics that make some kind of sense and layouts to match - it is a massive extension of a Sonic 1 level. A Sonic 1 level is an obstacle course built specifically for rolling and scratching.
Sonic Adventure 2 takes this philosophy and warps it into a twistedly beautiful example of 3D trial-by-fire do-or-die game design.
Much of this is in the ranking system. The ranking system is a thing of [censored]ing beauty.
Getting an A-rank is borderline insane. You have to be
perfect. If you slip up, you're done. That's it.
Done.
So you try again.
You learn every single choice throughout the level. Every few seconds in a Sonic Adventure 2 level you are given a choice to make. You have a half a second to figure out which choice you're going to make, and that choice will determine your path for the rest of the level.
The game rewards risk up the wazoo.
It's [censored]ing frustrating. But you prevail.
Sonic Adventure 2 is Spelunky without the randomness.
Actually, that's not quite true.
Hunting stages are random.
Everyone hates the hunting stages. The camera isn't that great. Sonic Adventure 2 fixes most of what went wrong with the first game but it can't get the camera down (among other problems that remain: it still relies on scripted loops; it still occasionally (although with far less regularity) will allow you to glitch through the level; it still has Crush 40; it still has a super-form end battle that takes no effort) and that can make finding the emeralds/emerald shards/keys/your journal/your false teeth/your car/a baby that much more awful.
But if you can move past the camera and learn how to use it correctly these stages too become harrowing for the
right reasons. Move around the level hardcore. Find the beepy. Get the beepy. The second you get the first whatsit within the time allotted for a Perfect you don't think "thank god;" you think "wow I really hope I can do that again." It's terrifying to play as Knuckles and Rouge.
The Hard mode stages they play through are absolute brilliance, incidentally. For the most part, the puzzles they have to go through are brainy enough to be enticing without wrapping back to being
stupid. You often can find the emeralds but not know how the [censored] to get them, or at least get them in the time necessary for an A-rank.
There are baffling things, and then there are things like being confronted with the emerald shard in the wind tunnel.
Shooting, too, is a thing of wonder. It's Virtua Cop without being on rails. Running around in the mechs, though, not so much. The hover negates most of this issue- and it is a
big issue- but it's still the least polished part of the game. The walkers control like tanks. That might be the point, but this is a
Sonic game. This isn't Tail's Tank Patrol. Sonic gotta go fast.
The shooting stages inherently fail to match the rest of the game because they don't gotta go fast. They're methodical. They're as difficult as the rest of the game- and as inherently brilliant- but they lack the core mechanic that makes Sonic work. They're not frictional. There's no momentum to the walkers if you're not in mid-air.
Their stages have brilliant shooting mechanics but terrible controls.
But they're still arcadelike and they still have score momentum. If you're on a streak of Perfects in a mech level you can still
approach, if not cross, the line the other parts of the game reach.
Arcadelike is really the operative word. Sonic Adventure 2 is arcade game design writ large and broad without the quarters. It's free gambling.
It's horrifically frustrating when you're down but immensely satisfying when you're up. When you win it's orgasmic.
Not that I ever said the game was
perfect.Note 0: yeah I know. amazing. i'm wrong about this. thanks for telling me, i'm glad
Note 1: the music, which I didn't touch on, is a mixed bag between amazing and terrible.
Hunnid-P's Knuckles raps are a horrible thing of absolute beauty.Note 2: I'm not going to talk about Chao herein because I'm tired and need to get back to work, but my general opinion is that Chao represent one of the best metagames I've ever seen. It plays like a version of Farmville wherein you have to actually play a video game instead of perform meaningless tasks.
Of course, a video game
is, ultimately, a meaningless task.
As is reading this and as was writing this.
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