The problem with Sonic Adventure

Sonic Adventure is a mixed bag with the Sonic community. Some herald it as being one of the only good 3D Sonic games, while some call it the beginning of the downfall into Sonic's dark ages. Hell, some even say that it's just as bad as Sonic '06. It's just that nobody can ever seem to agree on what to think of this game or what opinion to hold on it. Nobody but me that is. At first, I was just like them, thinking it was okay one minute and terrible the next.

Nowadays, I realize that it was okay. For Dreamcast. Every re-release of the game has failed to address and fix any problems of the original, and has somehow actually succeeded in bringing about more problems to the game. I wish to use this time to address every single problem I had with Sonic Adventure and all of the remakes. We'll be splitting this list of problems into 5 categories: characters, glitches, cutscenes, storylines, and the re-releases.

Characters
We're going to talk about the individual characters and their play styles and how they're important to Sonic Adventure, but first we must look at Sonic Adventure and it's goal in the first place. Sonic Adventure, being a Dreamcast launch title, is supposed to showcase specific features of the console to show the consumer what it can do. As a result, each character is there to showcase a set of specific features. Below is a list of what I think each character was meant to showcase based on observations while playing.

• Sonic the Hedgehog: He's the main star, and he's obviously here to show that the Dreamcast is faster than any other video game console around. His complex and intricate levels show just how detailed levels can get, with loop-de-loops and rollercoaster like hills galore.

• Miles "Tails" Prower: Sonic's lovable little sidekick, and he's here to show how multiple entities can be used in the same instance along with the complex and intricate levels while still maintaining the same amount of speed. As a bonus, he could also showcase the complexity of models, due to his constantly moving tails.

• Knuckles the Echidna: Sonic's rival and one of his best friends. I would have to say that he's here to show how far the reach of certain instances are and how they can all interact with one another with his treasure hunting levels. Other than that, he's really just an overglorified game of hide and seek that's just there for the story.

• E-102 Gamma: A robot created by Dr. Eggman, and he's here to show how many instances can be recognized by the system at once due to his complex targeting system. I would also say that he's here to make everyone sad with his story, but that's something else.

• Amy Rose: Sonic's self-proclaimed "girlfriend", she's here to show how complex cloth physics can be with her dress, along with some model transparencies with the balloon. The balloon, to my knowledge, was semi-transparent in the Dreamcast, but was not in the re-makes.

• Big the Loser Cat: A big purple cat that isn't even crucial to the story at all. He's really only here to show how textures can be set so they aren't affected by lighting conditions. In the Dreamcast version. In the remakes, they took this feature out, making him completely useless

 Glitches
Apparently, the engine used in Sonic Adventure is incredibly unstable. This is made clear by all of the game-breaking glitches that are all over the game. I could spend an eternity writing down all of the various glitches I've ran into but I figured that pretty much all of them boil down to being collision bugs. Some are intentional and can be used to get characters to places they aren't supposed to be, and some are accidental, being triggered by going too fast or not fast enough in certain areas, or through abuse of certain moves. The glitches were bad in the dreamcast version, but only get worse with the remakes. Bugs that plagued the Dreamcast version were generally not fixed in the remakes, and new ones were added in!

Cutscenes
This is, in my opinion, one of the biggest flaws of Sonic Adventure and its many port-overs other than the glitches. Characters do the same motions over and over, they walk in place, and the lips do NOT match what they're saying when you have the english voices. On top of that, the way lines are delivered occasionally sound...off and could only be rectified by re-doing the entire voice acting. Tails seems to be the biggest culprit for this, though Sonic and Knuckles also do it some times. Once again, this was NOT fixed or even changed one bit during the remakes.

Storylines
The storylines do not tie in together at some points, mostly due to the way it's set up. For example, when playing as Sonic and fighting Gamma, Sonic wins while Tails watches. Playing as Tails makes Tails win while Sonic watches, and playing as Gamma makes it look like Gamma is about to destroy Sonic. However, Amy's story skips the entire fight and it makes both Gamma and Sonic look like they're at even odds. This calls into question which account was the correct one. Another issue is that Tikal, a character that gives characters exposition on why the monster of the week is going nuts, gives information to characters that do not need the information in the first place. Gamma dies at the end of his game, why does he need a moment with Tikal during his storyline? Big only interacts with Sonic and Tails about once or twice during his storyline, why does he need a moment with Tikal during his storyline? I understand that they wanted these characters to be tied in to the game so that they wouldn't feel like throwaway characters, but THAT'S ALL THEY WERE! Gamma's entire goal was to kill his brothers and finally himself so he could free the flickies, making his appearance a one-game only deal. (Chaos Gamma in Battle doesn't count because it isn't the original Gamma.) Big was so unpopular that he was playable in other main games as a re-skin of more popular characters. (Dr. Robotnik in SA2 and the typical power character in Heroes.) Aside from a few cameos though, he just isn't used in games.

In short, the storyline for this game is a mess, and like every other problem, the remakes did not do anything to fix this.

Re-Releases
Sonic Adventure has been remade twice, under the name of Sonic Adventure DX and Sonic Adventure HD respectively. Sonic Adventure DX was a remake for the Game Cube and the PC, which upped the polygon count, added a mission mode, removed all of the internet, and added a new lighting effect that made everything look like it was made of plastic. There's one problem though, the upped polygon count only goes towards 4 of the 6 playable character models, and not towards ANY of the environments. (I.E. Things that were supposed to be circles, but were hexagons or octagons on the Dreamcast are still hexagons and octagons in the remake.)

It's not the lack of any real change that bothers me, it's that they called it Director's Cut, which would imply that they fixed problems and restored lost content, but it doesn't. It's a ploy to get fans of the original to buy the game all over again by making them think there's new stuff. In fact, the remake actually includes LESS content from the original Dreamcast release in return for the things they added! The remake lacks any of the holiday based DLC, which is still available to this day on mirroring websites.

As for the HD version, it lacks true HD support, creating this big purple box around the screen. Other than that, it's just SADX with the original Dreamcast title and menus and the removal of Mission mode. As it is, you can ALSO download some DLC which restores the mission mode and the DX titles, but it's extra.

So next time you see Sonic Adventure being "remade" for a new console, it probably means they're just going to port the PC version of SADX and remove all the extra shit. While I would like to see an actual remake of Adventure that adds in widescreen support and improves upon the glitches, I truly believe that Sonic Team is too busy with their so many other projects to do this, and will port SADX until the end of time.