365//365: Day 270 – Sonic Adventure (360) [PP]

The game that helped launch the vastly underrated Sega Dreamcast makes its third appearance on home consoles. Our blue hedgehog friend has had quite a rough time in his last several outings, but it’s good to know that after eleven years, Sonic Adventure is still the last great Sonic game on a console. While the title hasn’t aged particularly well, it’s still leaps and bounds a better built Sonic title on the home consoles when compared to such tripe as Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 and all the inane Sonic titles on the Nintendo Wii. The music is still some of the best in a Sonic game, with everything fitting just right, and a pulse pounding intro to boot. The YouTube “video” up top will demonstrate the absolutely killer main theme (taken from the Dreamcast version). Sadly, mostly every other aspect shows its age. While the graphics are not an eyesore, a lot of texture pop ins occur during cut scenes and random moments of running through each area. There are issues with terrain blocking your field of view on some occasions, which would be solved by camera controls, but since this is more of a port than a revitalization of the title, camera controls remain mapped on the trigger buttons. This can downright frustrate with many of the free roam areas, especially with the overly limp speeds of which the camera moves. The overall controls are absurdly touchy, sending your characters off at speeds you’d wish you could limit. There is plenty of content though, with several different characters you can unlock throughout your journey. While the aging process regressed a once mighty title, Sonic Adventure still holds enough incentive to venture forth and invest your time in, with some highly creative stages….so long as you can accept and work with the present deficiencies. If you have a Sega Dreamcast or Nintendo Gamecube, you can probably find Sonic Adventure for less than the 800 MSP price tag, but if you don’t, try the demo first to see if you’ll be able to live with the problems.

Rating: 6.2