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Sonic Adventure DX

Nearly four years ago, Sonic Adventure was a launch title for Sega’s Dreamcast. At the time, most people were so thrilled to see a real 3D Sonic game (Sonic R was just a racing title, afterall) that they overlooked its problems and the fact that the graphics really weren’t as good as they should have been. After Sega scored big sales of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle for the GameCube, they decided to give the public more of what they want and thus Sonic Adventure: DX, a somewhat enhanced version of the original, has arrived on Nintendo’s system.

Compared to the Dreamcast original, the textures are noticeably cleaner, the character models are more detailed and the framerate has been boosted. More often than not, the game runs at 60 fps now (the DC version only ran at 30), but it does dip well below that at times. Some of the old levels look much better thanks to these improvements. Sadly, the terrible camera and death-causing glitches of the original, like falling through solid floors, have not been fixed. It’s hard to believe that Sonic Team left the collision and camera bugs in this game as they definitely detract from the experience.

The sound, music and voices remain unchanged. The music has taken a lot of flack, but I think most of it is pretty good and stylistically gels with onscreen action and the previous Sonic games in general. The effects are true to the series and sound very similar to the original Genesis titles, a few them are even a little cleaner in DX than they were in the DC version. Where the sound takes a hit is in the awful voice acting. Much of it is truly cringe-worthy.

The core gameplay is identical to the DC original. Initially, you can only play as Sonic. As he meets the other characters in the adventure field, their own stories are unlocked and they become playable characters. The adventure field is a quasi-rpg affair that has your character of choice walking around and talking to people in order to figure out what to do next. The adventure field is cumbersome and boring, unfortunately. Numerous cut scenes and short FMV sequences advance the story at key points in the game. Thankfully, Sonic Team was kind enough to let us skip them with a few presses of the start button. Kudos to them for not forcing us to sit through the terrible voice acting and boring “story.”

The action stages are what this game is all about. Sonic’s levels are by far the most interesting and unlike last year’s Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, he has twice as many levels as any other character. The supporting cast of Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Big and E-102 have between three and five levels each. Many gamers were upset than in SA2 Battle you were forced to play as other characters in an unalterable sequence, meaning you might have to sit through two Tails levels and a Knuckles level before you could play as Sonic again. In SA DX this restriction doesn’t exist and as long as you’ve unlocked a character you can play as them at any time, with the only hitch being you can’t see the true end of the game until you beat each character’s own game. The other characters have unique mission objectives and no two characters’ games are alike.

One of the new additions, the Mission mode, is pretty pointless. You can’t enter it with a character until you’ve beaten their game and some of the tasks are beyond mundane. The missions are often simple fetch quests that take place in both the adventure field and action stages. The first mission, for instance, has Sonic grabbing a mannequin and bringing it to a certain spot in the adventure field. A more complicated mission for the blue blur has him popping eight balloons while running down the side of a building.

As you complete level objectives with any character, you earn emblems. You can also find emblems scattered about the adventure field or win them by doing well in sub games like snow boarding or the whack-a-mole variant Amy plays. Collecting all the emblems is a monumental task that will suck up loads of your free time, anywhere from 20-40 hours depending on your skill. This time around, Sega added a little extra incentive. As you collect emblems, you can unlock 12 Game Gear Sonic titles. You can also unlock Game Gear games by completing tasks in the Mission mode. The Game Gear was essentially a portable Sega Master System with a larger color palette and lower resolution so don’t expect these games to wow you with impressive graphics or high quality music. But, if you’re into the classics (and not-so-classics) most of them are enjoyable. The emulator is NOT perfect however, and some of the games suffer from slowdown that wasn’t present in the originals.

Much as in the previous Sonic Adventure releases, you can raise Chao in Sonic Adventure DX. These little virtual pets develop all different types of personalities, can breed and after a time grow into adulthood and eventually die. Don’t worry though, if you are good to your Chao, which in this case means feeding them properly and petting them, they will come back from the dead with all of their stats intact. Be cruel to them and when they die, they’re gone forever. The main point of this little breeding sim is to earn a few emblems by winning the Chao races.

To get the little guys strong enough to win races, you’ll need to pump up their stats by giving them food and animals or by raising them on a Game Boy Advance. You can transfer your Chao to and from Sonic Advance, Sonic Advance 2 (once you unlock the Tiny Chao Garden) and Sonic Pinball Party. If you don’t have those games you can transfer a copy of your Chao to a GBA with no cartridge in it, but you can’t save its progress, you’ll have to upload the copy back to the GameCube in order to reap the benefits. It’s worth noting that the Chao raising has been vastly improved over the original DC Sonic Adventure with elements borrowed from Sonic Adventure 2’s Chao system. You see a Chao’s stats when you pick it up or feed it, can inspire them to be heroic or dark and more.

Sonic Adventure DX is certainly a flawed game. Some characters (like Big) just aren’t much fun to play as. The adventure elements are inane. The framerate is inconsistent at times. The camera system is truly one of the worst ever conceived for a 3D game. The collision detection between the characters and the backgrounds is often faulty. Big the Cat’s game suffers most from the latter two failings, but they show up in the other characters’ games as well. I know that sounds like a complete recipe for disaster. Yet, the gameplay is strong enough that it overcomes many of these problems. Even with every glaring mistake slapping you in the face, Sonic Adventure DX is honestly a much better game than Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. And despite reports to the contrary, this game looks considerably better than its Dreamcast counterpart.

Is Sonic Adventure DX a game that everyone can appreciate? No, it’s not. But it’s still light years better than similar fare like Crash Banidcoot: The Wrath of Cortex and Spyro: Year of the Dragon. It’s disappointing that Sonic Team didn’t do more to address the four-year old flaws of the original but this game is undeniably fun to play and offers hours of replay value for those who want to collect all the emblems, raise and race chao or unlock all the Game Gear titles. If Sonic Team had ironed out the camera, collision and framerate problems, recommending this one would have been a no-brainer. As it is, however, I suggest giving it a rental first to see if you stomach its inadequacies.

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Posted by Larry McCormick on Aug 20th, 2003 and is filed under Game Cube Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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