The sound effects are very solid and have a nice use of the classic effects from the original games. This does however, add a bit too the game’s aforementioned cheesiness which actually goes well with the corny dialogue and overall ridiculousness of the whole thing. The way the lines are read often sound similar to how the lines are read off in a Charlie Brown special as if they were read by young children. This voice acting is very poor and stiff as well. This was Sonic Team’s first attempt at 3D animation and it really shows. However, the facial animations are really awkward with characters eyes randomly bulging and their eyelids shifting positions every time there is even a remote reaction to something. There is a nice variety of different level designs and the game has a nice pleasant look to it. It also has what was a surprisingly emotional ending.īy today’s standards, the graphics in Sonic Adventure are clearly dated, but I have always made it a point to not focus too much on technical quality and more so on artistic quality. This serves as a surprisingly deep deconstruction of the main concept behind Eggman’s method of creating robots since the first Sonic game.
SONIC ADVENTURE GAMECUBE SERIES
One story of note was E102 Gamma’s storyline, one of Robotnik err Eggman’s (this was the point in the series where they started calling him Eggman in North America as well) robots that becomes sentient and turns against him to free the animals inside his brothers. Unfortunately the Tikal flashbacks during each of them got quite repetitive and broke up the flow of the storyline, especially during Knuckles storyline where there were three of them. The way that you have six separate characters that you play as and see how their stories individually intertwine into the events of the main storyline was a nice approach.
However, it still does not change that there are some aspects of the storyline that are interesting on their own merits. The way that Sonic says, for instance, sounds like something out of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, the way how each character’s leitmotif is a vocal song with lyrics about their back story and motivation, and the general lack of subtlety just gives off a really charming feeling to it, and is one of the few things I’d describe as “so bad it’s good.” It is hard to not have a smile on your face due to the sheer corniness of the game’s dialogue and presentation.
Despite this, the game held a unique charm to it that drew me to it. Even as a kid I was able to understand the problems with the game’s writing and easily understood what others criticized it for. The writing is very stiff and basic, oftentimes to the point of being laughable. The story in Sonic Adventure is mostly a mixed bag. The flaws were more grating, but the good parts of it were more apparent and I still had quite a bit of fun with it. After replaying it, my opinion is mostly reaffirmed except that I found them more emphasized. Looking back on it, I always noticed that there were some flaws with it but still felt nostalgia for it anyway. Sonic Adventure was a game that I grew up with, and recently took the opportunity to replay through its steam port that I got on sale.