Sonic Adventure 2

Original release: 19th June 2001
Developer: Sonic Team USA
Publisher: Sega
Original Platform: Dreamcast
Version Played: Xbox 360

There’s a face searching far, so far and wide, There’s a place where you dream you’d never find, Hold on to “what if”! Hold on to “what if”!….the songs in Sonic Adventure 2 are definitely some of Sonic’s best. Sonic Adventure 2 gives you two stories (then some final missions if you complete both) to work through, playing as six different characters.

The Sonic and Shadow missions are the highlights, with some fast paced action and mostly fun platforming. There are some sections where the wonky homing attack or bad camera angle will cause some unfair deaths, but they’re still mostly good fun with some great spectacles. One small thing I really like is how Shadow moves, like he’s skating rather than running. For an “evil copy” of Sonic, they’ve done a good job at making him different enough to not be part of the “Dark Link” kind of trope. They still play the same, but the levels are also different.

Knuckles and Rouge have treasure hunting sections, which I quite enjoyed. TV screens give you hints, while you have a beeping detector (although it’s a bit loud, it’s nothing compared to another sound effect I’ll get into in a bit). You have to climb and glide around each level finding three objects. I wouldn’t want to redo any levels, but for the first playthough they’re decent padding.

The Tails and Dr Robotnik sections are just bad. The shooting mechanics are boring and you have a very loud high pitched beep whenever you aim (which is most of the time). I ended up actually muting my game because it got that annoying. These levels also have some of the worst platforming sections in Sonic Adventure 2, with really bad camera angles.

Sonic Adventure 2 is a mostly great game, even if it does show its age a bit, but the Tails/Robotnik sections pull it down a bit. I think they could have added some alternate ways to play after you first complete it, such as playing through Sonic/Shadow levels only.