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Sonic Adventure 2 HD |OT| googoo g'joob googoo g'joob

I think most of the people who say they didn't like the game were probably past childhood when they played it.

I was 19 or 20 when I first played it and I loved the shit out of it to the point that I thought that the first game paled in comparison. I don't feel as strongly about it now (I actually think Heroes is a better Sonic game), but its awesomeness is still undeniable.
 

Slygmous

Member
Finished A ranking Shadow's levels, no prize :(

Apparently its not possible to buy all the different colored eggs from the black market on one save. It blocks some from you, I guess so you have reason to trade with other players... only you can't. No red chao for me then.
I wish they would've caught that.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
Now after both have been rereleased and most of us aren't 12/13 anymore which game do you prefer Sonic Adventure 1 or Sonic Adventure 2?
Neither. If you held a gun to my head and made me choose, though, I'd have to think about it a little. Like, SA2 has some alright mechanics and some nice art design and the grinding system. I lurve SA2's soundtrack, though, much to the chagrin of certain people. But SA1 kind of feels a little more... cohesive? Maybe that's not the word I'm looking for. Let me think about it a little bit (prolly need to play SA1 for a bit).

Sometimes I feel like that it wasn't until now they finally nailed down a working/ok formula for Sonic and they should try to improve on it (also Hedgehog Engine is awesome as a graphics engine and is horribly, horribly underrated and I think a modified version of it is being used in PSO2), tbh.

I also HATE the level ranking system in Adventure 2...for a game geared towards children it's sometimes impossible to reach an A ranking.
Perfect runs. Like. Really really really perfect runs, to the point of restarting when you do one tiny little thing wrong. If I liked SA2 a ton, I'd go for the A-Ranks and get all the emblems and stuff, but I don't think I'll do it. It'll take some time investment; time I don't really have and time I don't care to spend on SA2.

I think it may have been changed to make it more immediately obvious what it is.

"You're not good enough to- |SA2 OT| I'LL MAKE YOU EAT THOSE WORDS" is, sadly, not obvious. :(
Sometimes I pretend that's the thread title. Everyone liked it in the other thread and I feel like we should acknowledge it somehow.

Yoshi said:
I ended up posting your post in the Sonic Community thread, actually, because I felt like the discussion would be better there, and it's something I've wanted to bring up in that thread for a while after playing a bit of SA2HD.
 
Hero Story 1: It's all downhill from City Escape
Hero Story 2: MEANWHILE IN THE MOUNTAINOUS REGION
Hero Story 3: Tails is the biggest villain of all
Hero Story 4: Suicidal Shuttle Shenanigans
Hero Story 5: Just a guy who loves adventure!

Dark Story 1: The base so obvious it becomes hidden

Dark Story 2: The world COULD be yours
Dark Story 3: Wet shoes=Death
Dark Story 4: TRAGIC PAST
Dark Story 5: Where are my detonators?

Right it's time to hit the finishing line, it's time for THE LAST STORY!

Last Story is a game starring some British sounding folks who want to be knights and leave behind the grim life of mercenary work, there’s some leader guy called Dagran wearing a strange chaps and hot pants combo, some drunk tart, a miserable mage, this one horny dude, a quiet lass whose voice makes me melt and a pretty bland main character who has the hots for a princess, wait no, that’s a different Last Story entirely.

Sonic’s Last Story is the thrilling conclusion to our saga so far, we begin our final foray into SA2 with Eggman bemused at the lack of laser destruction from the eclipse canon, understandably he’s pretty pissed at this turn of events but before we go any further pre taped footage from Gerald Robotnik appears on screen. Back on the bridge Sonic and most other characters get word from Rouge about their current situation and all sit back to watch Prof Gerald’s ominous message of doom taken from inside the very same prison cell Sonic was shoved in long ago.
Now before I go any further, taking from the Mama Robotnik story description from the opening post, why in the bluest of blue hell is he allowed to record this message?! on top of thos odd event within the message he gives away his evil plan of death and destruction and the military are just cool with that? “oh you guys, he’s just talking Gibberish, he’s gone mad, never mind that we stopped him in the first place because of his dangerous research, go on, lets ask him if he anymore pearls of wisdom left so we can laugh some more”, good going GUN.

The grainy CGI is back with a vengeance where Gerald dooms the human race to a death sentence, we see horribly grotesque individuals resembling humans from the world over quaking in fear from this message that managed to broadcast itself worldwide on every tv, actually some of the chaps here clearly have no televisions in view to witness this message but maybe they took notice of the ARK currently speeding towards them in the distance. ARK is falling out of orbit to impact Earth which will totally kill everyone on Earth, look I’m no science guy so maybe such an event is more deadly than it looks but looking at the size comparison of Earth versus ARK it kind of looks more like that ARK would hit a small area of Earth decimating it but not much else, maybe the Biolizard is going to hop out and eat everyone. Well whether I’ve missed something here or not the important issue to take into account here is that our heroes are on ARK and in trouble.
We get the final parts of barmy old Gerald’s mad ramblings about ungrateful humans who took everything away from him, yep, those guys down on Earth definitely snitched on you old man, better kill ‘em all for being such spoilsports. Then I guess at the end of the video he’s gunned down by a firing squad, hey there’s that one guy going “ready”, I have to imagine aim and fire are next in line but the video cuts out before Gerald’s brain gets blasted over the back wall obscuring the many rude drawings he no doubt scribbled up there.

Eggman joins the party on the bridge bragging about his insane lineage, then in a moment of sheer bitterness he says that he would have done what Grandpa Gerald has set up a long time ago if he could, stick around because later on Eggman goes all hypocrite here, I’ll just assume he’s still miffed and not being able to fire his big old beam. I should mention that collecting all seven emeralds actually sets off this mad Gerald stuff and not the laser it seems, making the laser a nice ruse to activate his revenge program? I can think of better ways to ensure his revengeance being kicked off but hey it worked.
At this point Eggman has only just noticed that Sonic is in fact not dead, by now it’s so expected he drops one line regarding this and just carries on, deep down he knew Sonic would deus ex machina his way out of it. Sonic remarks that Knuckles shuttle piloting was more of a threat than Eggman himself, not sure if that’s a burn on Eggman or that Sonic just completely backhanded Knuckles, possibly both because Sonic is in fact a bit of a dick.

Eggman hands Gerald’s video diary to Rouge and they pop it in the VCR, hey remember how this space station was zooming towards Earth so fast in that one cutscene that they should be dead by now? Rouge starts narrating the diary, first of all Gerald created the ultimate lifeform to benefit mankind but maybe it was a MISTAKE! Mainly because it rustled the military’s jimmies and they went full out murder on everyone on ARK including Maria so we finally get confirmation that they gunned down an innocent girl because that’s being thorough, once again 3+ rating everybody!
Gerald went bananarama upon finding out Maria got riddled with lead due to his research and gets consumed by revenge, the ultimate lifeform project apparently sorted itself out and he leaves everything up to Shadow now, not sure if he actually means Hedgehog or space Lizard, neither of which have the perfect and pure minds he speaks of, unleashing this pure and perfect mind is equal to unleashing destruction on the world, I guess Gerald and I have different ideas of what pure entails.

Back to the fact that they’re all about to die, since the process can’t be stopped they need a more convoluted plan, Rouge comes up with the idea of using the master emerald to stop the chaos emeralds before Knuckles himself can by using info she got from Knuckles back at the start of the game, missed the boat there Knucklehead, you could have had this plan making glory. Knuckles literally pulls the Master Emerald out of his arse and it’s a lot smaller now, crunched down by those toned Echidna buttocks. Eggman formulates a shortcut to get to the core and Sonic says that he’ll take control of this since being fast is kind of his deal, oh yeah lets do this, Blue loading screen, it’s a fast paced Sonic stage coming up now and…..wait TAILS? TAILS?! WHAT THE SHIT?!

Cannon’s Core
The final stage of the game that brings almost all the characters together for an outing that I still finished faster than Cosmic Wall.
So we get the worst out of the way first with Tails, this stages big gimmick is time stopping switches. Tails has to make it through a standard and straightforward path and shoot a door open. Next we get Eggman and do the same but with slightly more interesting stage design that makes greater use of combining time stop switches with moving blocks.
Now that the mechs are out of the way it’s treasure hunter time, Rouge is up in a brief outing that opens up the floodgates for a Knuckles swimming spectacular, really hope you nabbed the oxygen necklace because if not I imagine this is quite the pickle, Knux has the longest section and honestly I like it the most, swimming through laser beams, part of me wants to try this without the air necklace for TENSION because this stage is actually pretty simple.
Finally we get the Sonic stage we’ve been waiting for except it lasts like a minute and most of it is hurtling down a slide like it’s the lost world from SA1 complete with similar sounding music and ruin structure, intentional?
The stages main theme used for the mech sections is actually one of my favourite tracks in the game and the remix for the first half of Sonic’s stage is pretty good as well. For a final stage it’s pretty ho-hum, Sonic could have got more use and the fact that Shadow isn’t here since he’s denied stage based gameplay whenever possible stings that little bit more.

Next time, the conclusive conclusion.
 

qq more

Member
Now after both have been rereleased and most of us aren't 12/13 anymore which game do you prefer Sonic Adventure 1 or Sonic Adventure 2?

I would still say I lean a bit more to Sonic Adventure one...mostly due to it just simply being fun. The level layout isn't frustrating, the soundtrack is amazing, and with the DX upgrades it doesn't look too shabby. I would say that Sonic Adventure 2 took the Sonic gameplay and made it a bit more fun due to the grinding system, however there's just something about the gameplay of one that draws me to it.

I also HATE the level ranking system in Adventure 2...for a game geared towards children it's sometimes impossible to reach an A ranking.

I'd pick SA1 as well. SA2 has the better engine and a very refined presentation... but the game designs were just so wrong it's hard to enjoy more than half of the game. (Talking about the downgrades in Shooting/Emerald Hunting and the fact you're forced to switch characters.)

If I was in the mood for the Chao Garden though, SA2. What was the Chao Garden in SADX missing from SA2B again? I haven't really bothered with it much. I know school was missing.
 

Christopher

Member
Plus the open your heart remix from generations is slaying me. I hope if they do make a sonic adventure 3 they refine the sonic adventure 2 engine and use the anime style they had with it too for consistancy...I still can't believe how the engine in 06 was so horrible an the story super serious...blah they'll fuck it up but I still it's cool their even entertaining the thought
 
Last time on SA2 we...oh sod it, it's literally like a few posts up there, you know the drill...

Amy stomps around the ARK wondering why she can't do anything here despite proving herself competent enough with a giant hammer and then spies Shadow also doing bugger all and thus she feels a connection with him and goes to start up a conversation, that'll show Sonic! So is Shadow brooding once more? No actually he’s just watching the plan unfold, Amy asks for his help but Shadow is pretty content with all this, after all he promised REVENGE, because that’s what Maria wanted right?
Well Amy goes off on a vomit inducing spiel to get shadow to accept that those Earth peoples are in fact nice guys and that saving them is quote “a good thing”. This suddenly causes Shadow to flashback to his TRAGIC PAST and this time he actually listens to Maria’s sentence before he got blasted out of ARK, turns out Maria wanted those people on earth to have a chance at a better future and not killed in the name of revenge, BOY WHAT A MISINTERPRETATION, Shadow must look quite the fool now, he was doing the complete opposite of what she wanted all because he has a selective memory. Now armed with this revelation he must go keep this promise after he went and fucked it all up and he immediately goes to help out, Amy just saved the day with the lamest speech ever, congrats, or maybe it was thanks to her eyelashes.

Back in the Lost World which is in fact the core Knuckles and Sonic are racing to put the master emerald in the shrine down here just so made in case of an emergency, actually it’s designed this way to harness the chaos emerald power, it’s a nice throwback to SA1 regardless but maybe if Gerald wanted this to be irreversible he'd have done well to leave out the whole master emerald middle area. But before they can start performing Echidna magic they are attacked by flying screens of doom containing Gerald calling them ungrateful humans (jokes on you Gerald, these guys aren’t human at all), suddenly SPACE LIZARD OUT OF NOWHERE, damn I guess that boss placeholder arena was there for a reason.

Shadow has sped down to the core so fast that it’s a shame he wasn’t there for this plan in the first place, I bet it was one hell of an awesome action stage but no we can’t play that, instead we get a boss battle.

BioLizard
Don’t much care for this boss at all, you run from its wagging tail or goofy head as it shifts after you in a circular arena, there are two gaps in said arena you can get swept down if you’re not careful and the camera is positioned in a pretty shitty way that makes these little gaps in the floor pop up at the last second so you have to keep your eyes open. Eventually Lizard boy (that’s how you insult creatures in this game, call them their species and gender, not that I can really tell what gender this lizard is) will stop and shoot projectiles to jump over and roll under, i'd say it’s pretty important to roll left and right but not forward because then that makes evading two in a row a gamble and moves you close to the potential death gap in the circle, after it tires you can grind up the tube sticking out of its mouth and attack the big glowing weakpoint shelved on its back. Towards the end you have to homing attack up a bunch of sphere things that may also attack you to reach the weak point and following this a random air current keeps you up as you shift through the sphere things once more to reach the weak point, I feel you’re sort of at the mercy here of which spheres decide to shoot at you because if you get unlucky these two bits can really bugger you over. Music for this boss is oddly calm, still has some murmuring Shadow lyrics snuck in but it’s one of his better themes. Anyway six odd hits stops the beast and we get back to our thrilling plot.

Sonic and Knuckles make it to the shrine, Knuckles uses the old chant Tikal never shut up with in the previous game to halt the chaos emeralds, sadly for them we’re not done yet as Biolizard uses chaos control through its sheer power to head outside and seemingly drag the colony into earth by force, that pure and perfect mind at work. Sonic and Shadow gaze longingly at each other while Knuckles pulls a hilariously drawn out derp face.
Then hedgehog masturbation, oh so that’s why Knuckles was so creeped out. Actually this jerking motion is all part of the ritual needed to build up chaos emerald power and explode with energy, actually it still looks like masturbation, especially with way their eyes bolt open at the moment of powerful climax. Not sure when Shadow learned that he could become Super Shadow as no dialogue between the two hogs is had here, they just know, perhaps when he was finding out about that one government spy called Rouge the Bat. I feel sorry for Knuckles here, he comes all this way and they just go all super without him, this scene right here is Knuckles realizing that Shadow is replacing him as a more central character and it’s sad times.

Final Hazard: The prototype of the ultimate life
No that’s no typo unfortunately, the game subtitles things as such. Super Sonic fight time so you lose rings as you go so you best hurry up, Sonic and Shadow take turns hitting big glowing weak spots while the Biolizard spams lasers and those homing spheres from the previous battle in an attempt to stop you, this fight is either incredibly easy or you get knocked back by a single attack and have trouble gaining speed to make it back over before running out of rings, if this starts happening the characters mention being able to switch hedgehogs to get more rings but can you even do this? Characters throw dialogue at you all fight long but thankfully no one mentions anything about things that look like a homing attack even though many opportunities present themselves for it.

Time for the true ending, Sonic and Shadow perform a double chaos control, I guess they use the sheer energy they possess in super mode to do so, Shadow keeps having Maria dialogue running through his head beforehand, keep your head in the game dammit! When they are done warping the colony elsewhere Shadow dies for like no reason falling into a ball of light but Sonic is fine and dandy like sour candy, this must be the power of being a guy who loves adventure, Shadow evidentially does not and died for it.

Sonic arrives back on the bridge to solemn piano music and the credits roll, Rouge asks where Shadow is and Sonic just shakes his head, probably because he has no idea either where he is or why he died, but he hands Rouge a ring (I think?) that I guess belonged to Shadow, Rouge wonders if Shadow was really created to exact Gerald’s revenge, to be clear she means the hedgehog and not the space lizard, Sonic’s only knows that Shadow was a brave and heroic hedgehog despite him basically setting up this whole situation to begin with.

Eggman has a rare moment of non cartoon villainy as he tells Tails how much he looked up to Grandpa Gerald but shows almost terror and disappointment at the idea that Gerald meant to kill everyone in the end….wait, but earlier in this last story you said you would have done the same thing if you could right? Did I miss something here? Before I can continue pondering this question Tails creates a perfect distraction with him suddenly ruining everyone’s controlled and sombre voice acting efforts with a cheery “we all did it together!” in like the most awkward tone possible.
Then Knuckles and Rouge have a chinwag, knuckles has a rather pleasant normal speaking voice it seems, Rouge is giving up theft and replacing it with something much better, I’m not sure if they’re supposed to be hinting at some Knuckles and Rouge pairing here but I’m not sticking around to find out.
Amy finally gets a word in interrupting Sonic’s mental breakdown at the lost of his new BFF Shadow who he was chummy with for all of 15 minutes, Sonic saves his cool guy reputation from being soiled by immediately cheering up and delivering an awful quip about heading back to the planet as cool and blue as himself, so much for Sonic having a moment of empathy.
Or maybe he does as he leaves the room and utters the words “sayonara Shadow the Hedgehog”, get it?! Because Maria said the same thing back in the day! WOWEE! WHAT A CALLBACK! *Manly Tears*

And thus the journey is finally over, Shadow is dead never to return until the very next game where it turns out he is a robot or some shit and then the next game where he’s in fact created from some alien I think. Well that was exhausting, typing this up was more effort than it was worth and will be read by very few but it was kind of amusing.
SA2 is a game that I can't call good, but I can't call it outright bad, it's like it exists in the are somewhere between containing elements of both good and bad, almost like it's mediocre.
 
Even when I was obsessed with this game as an 11 year old, I always found the final boss being a giant lizard with the nose of the ARK shoved up his ass hilariously surreal.
 
I just played the demo, and I actually enjoyed playing more than I thought I would. Goddamn it.

I did let out an audible 'wow' at the sight of City Escape in HD widescreen, having not played any other version than the Dreamcast original. Anyway, now I'm a little angry at myself for actually considering a purchase. I just cant stand those Knuckles/Tails stages. And that plot. *grumble*
 

TheOGB

Banned
Nothing feels better than getting that Extreme near the end of Metal Harbor

NOTHING
Oh GOD yes, thought I needed to change my pants when I finally pulled that off (consecutively!) on Missions 4 and 5.

Now after both have been rereleased and most of us aren't 12/13 anymore which game do you prefer Sonic Adventure 1 or Sonic Adventure 2?

I would still say I lean a bit more to Sonic Adventure one...mostly due to it just simply being fun. The level layout isn't frustrating, the soundtrack is amazing, and with the DX upgrades it doesn't look too shabby. I would say that Sonic Adventure 2 took the Sonic gameplay and made it a bit more fun due to the grinding system, however there's just something about the gameplay of one that draws me to it.

I also HATE the level ranking system in Adventure 2...for a game geared towards children it's sometimes impossible to reach an A ranking.
Adventure 1, definitely. And I agree, fuck SA2's ranking system. Always makes me feel a bit shitty when I get hit in the last part of the level and lose all my rings, or when I find out despite getting 200 rings there were 200 more that I missed. :/

And SA1 was jank just like SA2, but SA1's jank had a respectable, ambitious charm about it.

Even when I was obsessed with this game as an 11 year old, I always found the final boss being a giant lizard with the nose of the ARK shoved up his ass hilariously surreal.
I still don't get it

How did he go from giant unholy lizard to 3 ft tall hedgehog
 

ezodagrom

Member
I still don't get it

How did he go from giant unholy lizard to 3 ft tall hedgehog
Something about Eggman's grandfather experimenting with creating an ultimate lifeform based on lizards (due to regeneration and whatever), but then finding an ancient mural with an hedgehog design and so he used that as a new base for the ultimate lifeform project.

(Don't ask me where I heard this, I honestly don't remember where, it might even not be accurate at all).
 
Something about Eggman's grandfather experimenting with creating an ultimate lifeform based on lizards (due to regeneration and whatever), but then finding an ancient mural with an hedgehog design and so he used that as a new base for the ultimate lifeform project.

(Don't ask me where I heard this, I honestly don't remember where, it might even not be accurate at all).

I think this is a theory based on one of the final levels of Sonic & Knuckles, that shows an ancient creature that looks like Sonic on a mural.
 

TheOGB

Banned
Something about Eggman's grandfather experimenting with creating an ultimate lifeform based on lizards (due to regeneration and whatever), but then finding an ancient mural with an hedgehog design and so he used that as a new base for the ultimate lifeform project.

(Don't ask me where I heard this, I honestly don't remember where, it might even not be accurate at all).
...Oh god, I remember that now

Yeah, people tied it into the mural from S3&K's Hidden Palace Zone, the room where you fight Knuckles. I forget, was something similar in the mural in SA1's Lost World, or did that only show Perfect Chaos?
 
Okay, now that I've properly played through the game for the first time in a decade, I can conclusively state that the reason the franchise fell apart after Sonic Adventure 2 is because they gave Knuckles some lame sunglasses instead of a boss pair of goggles.
 
Nocturnowl, just wanted to say that I just read your entire journey, and quite enjoyed your writeup.
This makes it all worthwhile.

Adventure 1, definitely. And I agree, fuck SA2's ranking system. Always makes me feel a bit shitty when I get hit in the last part of the level and lose all my rings, or when I find out despite getting 200 rings there were 200 more that I missed. :/
When you die in a terrible and accidental way near the end of a stage and loses all your points, happened to me in Weapons Bed on this run.
Also when you think you did decent and then get an E "woah, just made it", no, screw your high standards Sonic!

Okay, now that I've properly played through the game for the first time in a decade, I can conclusively state that the reason the franchise fell apart after Sonic Adventure 2 is because they gave Knuckles some lame sunglasses instead of a boss pair of goggles.
Plus that necklace ain't got no style.
 

Forkball

Member
This game certainly has it's flaws, but I enjoyed the GCN version. The Sonic/Shadow levels are obvious highlights, but the Chao raising was a good diversion as well. I had a friend who was obsessed, OBSESSED with Chao raising.
 
I think i'm tapped out for now, Sonic Adventure 1 would have me going through the dreaded adventure fields, which in fairness I loved back in the day but not so much now when I just want to get on with things, perhaps Sonic's story at least somewhere down the line.

I will make special mention for strolling Knuckles though, there's like so much wrong with this walk here.

Also what the hell was up with that scene were after being separated from Sonic for like 5 minutes Tails starts having mad hallucinations in the jungle to this miserable music power walking after a jogging phantom Sonic? cutscene direction in SA1 is like all over the place.
 

RobbieNick

Junior Member
Been playing through this one and it reminds me of why I like SA1 so much better. GUH! The game's worse than I remember.

I will say getting through the Knuckles/Rouge stages seemed easier this time around. Maybe it's the widescreen and camera controls on the right analog that helped. I dunno.
 

WillyFive

Member
I finally got around to playing it, it seems like it was lazily and cheaply put together; especially the loading screens. The game itself seems to be mostly accurate, with the exception of some places were the responsiveness of the button presses don't match up with the original.

Oh well, like the game itself, the SA2HD port is better than the laughable SA1DX 'HD' port; by virtue of it actually being HD and widescreen.
 

Christopher

Member
I can't wait until this is 4.99 definite buy then I wish they would go to sonic adventure one and retroactively correct the character models so they look like sonic adventure 2 models so they have more of a connection I bet the PC moddets will be on tht once this hits steam
 

Emitan

Member
I can't wait until this is 4.99 definite buy then I wish they would go to sonic adventure one and retroactively correct the character models so they look like sonic adventure 2 models so they have more of a connection I bet the PC moddets will be on tht once this hits steam

... you forgot those!
 
Well this is rather interesting, let me know if this has already been discovered.

Was playing cosmic wall in story mode, grabbed a chao key about half way in and at the end of the stage... went to the test area map.

vr9gK.jpg
 

Roto13

Member
Well this is rather interesting, let me know if this has already been discovered.

Was playing cosmic wall in story mode, grabbed a chao key about half way in and at the end of the stage... went to the test area map.

vr9gK.jpg

Huh.

I wonder if there's a way to force that to happen. I'd like to try that.
 
Well this is rather interesting, let me know if this has already been discovered.

Was playing cosmic wall in story mode, grabbed a chao key about half way in and at the end of the stage... went to the test area map.

http://i.imgur.com/vr9gK.jpg[IMG][/QUOTE]

[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zU75M7lX2U"]I'm sure this was Eggman's response.[/URL]
 

WillyFive

Member
My NiGHTS review occupied most of my week so it took me a bit to get to this SA2 review, but here it is.

http://www.tssznews.com/2012/10/14/review-sonic-adventure-2-xbox-live-arcade/

I don't understand how you thought that boss battle with Eggman was the hardest boss in the game, when it has always been a push-over to everyone I knew. And then you yourself beat it in one go with a couple of seconds after it started. You were like "huh, did they make it easier?".

Nope.

Also, spending 45 minutes in a hunting stage? That's crazy, Blaze. What happened?

As for your review, although it's true that the themes that appeared in the poor Sonic games that followed can be traced back to SA2; I don't believe it's fair to blame SA2 on those games. Those games that came after were poor games period, with poor gameplay, poor polish, and poor decisions; the use of the Adventure characters and storylines weren't a problem at all (unless you felt those kinds of stories to be alienating from the original Genesis games, in which case it would be irrelevant to the game's quality unless you are a Genesis kid).

Anyway, great review; love TSSZ.
 
I don't understand how you thought that boss battle with Eggman was the hardest boss in the game, when it has always been a push-over to everyone I knew. And then you yourself beat it in one go with a couple of seconds after it started. You were like "huh, did they make it easier?".

Nope.

Also, spending 45 minutes in a hunting stage? That's crazy, Blaze. What happened?

As for your review, although it's true that the themes that appeared in the poor Sonic games that followed can be traced back to SA2; I don't believe it's fair to blame SA2 on those games. Those games that came after were poor games period, with poor gameplay, poor polish, and poor decisions; the use of the Adventure characters and storylines weren't a problem at all (unless you felt those kinds of stories to be alienating from the original Genesis games, in which case it would be irrelevant to the game's quality unless you are a Genesis kid).

Anyway, great review; love TSSZ.

Zuh? When did I say anything about Eggman's boss fight? I agree, I did wonder if it was easier - Eggman vs. Tails and Tails vs. Eggman near the end of the Hero/Dark stories was always a major bottleneck for me back on the Dreamcast, but I cleared both on my first try in the XBLA version.

Mad Space and Meteor Herd are big levels. Really big. Bigger than any other space in the game, I'd wager. If you caught my livestream of SA2 last week, I literally covered what felt like every inch of Mad Space multiple times and my radar never pinged once. After ten minutes and/or a couple laps around the whole level, I'd deliberately kill myself and start again just to move the emerald shard somewhere else. It ended up taking 30-40 minutes total - and that's 11 years after SA2 came out. My very first time through something like Mad Space or Meteor Herd, we are talking 60+ minutes easily.

And Sonic Adventure 2 was a very "serious" game, and Sonic has always been at his worst when he is taking himself too seriously. Sonic Adventure 2's foundation is almost directly responsible for both Shadow the Hedgehog in 2005 and Sonic 2006. Destined bad games or not, they built off of characters and concepts born from SA2.
 
I feel sonic team just didnt keep up with the times on 06. I got flash backs of sonic 06 while playing through SA2. Even though it shouldve went the other way around. SA2 aged horribly. It was good at the time and for that reason is one of my fav sonic games, but it is ass now. Straight up.
 

WillyFive

Member
Zuh? When did I say anything about Eggman's boss fight?

Your livestream a few days ago. Thanks for having that, by the way.


And Sonic Adventure 2 was a very "serious" game, and Sonic has always been at his worst when he is taking himself too seriously. Sonic Adventure 2's foundation is almost directly responsible for both Shadow the Hedgehog in 2005 and Sonic 2006. Destined bad games or not, they built off of characters and concepts born from SA2.

My point is that even if Shadow 2005 and Sonic 2006 had cheerful stories, they would still be terrible games. Shadow would still have terrible controls, and Sonic 2006 would still be an unfinished mess.
 

Emitan

Member
My NiGHTS review occupied most of my week so it took me a bit to get to this SA2 review, but here it is.

http://www.tssznews.com/2012/10/14/review-sonic-adventure-2-xbox-live-arcade/

I love the comments for this hahahaa. "You should be scoring games out of 600 points because GAME GENERATIONS"

"I'm going to ramble on about my Chao and then say 7/10 without discussing the game!"

EDIT: WHAT IS THIS

I don’t like complaints like: “You are forced to play this and that. The story forces me to play etc.”
The game does not force you to play it. In Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, I felt I was forced to play Sonic. Sonic games developed a bad habit of having favorite and hated characters. Isn’t that a bit boring to play only a only Sonic, over and over again? While it is true, that the play-style is different and sometimes not very enjoyable, it is not an easy task to discover that in the development of the game.
The worst thing that could happen (and eventually it did) is fear. The fear of not meeting the players expectations. The easiest solution while facing the fear is to run away. And that in this metaphor means not trying anything new and practically stick only with Sonic jumping on enemies the whole level – forever.
If you think that the story is so laughable, that you can’t write the word story without quotes, you have probably never played any other Sonic game before. The story was much more complex and believable than ever before, and ever after. Also has many qualities which keeps you playing. It is one of the very good reasons why it was and why it is still praised.
How come that nothing was improved since Sonic Adventure and still, SA2 is better reviewed? Maybe only the better story is the reason. That confuses me a lot. I don’t know why SEGA, instead of improving technical issues and keeping the good things decided to no longer consider the story important enough to give some serious effort into it. Or what happened was the real opposite. They thought, that the story is what is now interesting. However, they overestimated themselves, not believing they could screw it up next time. The story continued (well, kind of), but the technical and design issues lasted, in the hopes, they would be overshadowed.
It is probably since the Japanese people are a little bit different in evaluating the game qualities. They don’t consider technical difficulties and logic accuracy that big of a issue. If the characters legs look like they are sliding on the ground instead of running, it is a big issue overseas. But in Japan, if they are told that this representation is supposed to mean that the character runs, they accept it like that. Another example – some (I don’t know which) video-game character was supposed to be Japanese in origin, but he had green eyes. While oversees fans were making a big issue out of this and started serious flame topics about it, Japanese gamers never understood it – the game developers say, that he is Japanese, so he is, regardless what his eyes look like.
So while certain issues are very superficial, other can be still very annoying as they affect the gameplay. Especially for American gamers, who are known to be really aggressive and tend to be very loud. They always need to get what they want. If they do not get that, they will throw they console out and sue the game company for breaking their window (it is a slight exaggeration, but that’s literally what I have been told on the course for video-game programmers and designers).
 
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