Game #1119: Sonic Adventure DX - Director's Cut

  My Sonic adventure continues

 Well, unlike with Adventure 2, this isn't my first rodeo with Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut, as I had played the PC port years ago... and decided I really didn't like Sonic. But it's a new, older me, one that is giving Sonic a honest try and discovering that these games I've blindly lambasted for so long.... aren't half bad. The original 3-D Sonic game, as Jam doesn't count, is next in the chopping block.

 Adventure wasn't just the first true 3-D Sonic game, it was also the first game that started adding separate campaigns. Sure, Sonic 3 did it with Knuckles and Tails, but it wasn't the same deal as they played pretty similarly all things considered. You get 6 campaigns in this one. Sonic is 10 stages worth of platforming, easily the most fun and lengthy of the bunch. Tails is a bit weird, because his 5 or so stages are about racing and beating Sonic Knuckles was surprisingly fun too, you get medium-sized areas you must explore while searching for 3 Emerald shards, all three radars are active at the same time, so it's better than in Adventure 2. Gamma's stages are mediocre 3rd person shooters. Amy is a bit interesting, as they are platforming stages, like Sonic and Tails, but she is being chased by a robot. Lastly, Big the Cat, easily the most boring, in which you must fish for a frog. Thankfully, his is the shortest campaign, at 4 stages and a boss that is very easily defeated. Big the Cat's campaign was the only one I really despised, as the others went from mediocre to fun, so I'd say that the variety is relatively welcome. If anything, Sonic's Casino stage was really boring and borderline chore, but it was the only part of the game I actively hated.

 The game plays as you'd expect, movement is a bit slippery and clunky too, as it's easy to lose your acceleration or randomly stop in your tracks because you ran to close to the side. Despite how it may sound, it really isn't too bad, and it seems like the levels are designed with these shortcomings in mind, as they won't cost you a life. The camera, however, is a bit spotty, as it tends to get stuck on parts of the environment every now and then. Oh! And one time I slipped through the ground out of bounds. So yeah, it's not the most polished game ever, I mean the talking animations are awful, but the game is fun all things considered. There's a lot of spectacle and the game definitely veers into style over substance, but I think it works.

 The story is not very good, at times it can be laughably bad so you can get a few kicks out of it. Finishing every campaign unlocks a final Super Sonic stage that brings the whole thing to a close. But that's not necessarily the end of the game, you can replay stages, with every character, to get alternate goals that will reward you with more emblems. The more emblems you get, the more unlockables you get, which include old Game Gear Sonic games!

 While not quite as good as Sonic Adventure 2, this first game is pretty fun. When it comes to platformer, I like them slower-paced but more precise, so it speaks well of this game since it managed to win me over. The audiovisual presentation is very dated, no doubt about it, but all gameplay styles, sans Big the Cat's, still work well to this day and I do feel like the variety works in the game's favor, making for an entertaining romp through Sonic's world.

 7.0