Sonic Heroes (Gamecube) Review
Introduction Now if ever there was a game with pressure to perform it’s Sonic Heroes. Sonic has fallen behind previous archrival Mario in recent years and Sonic Team has promised to get the series back on track. We’ve already seen the ports of the Sonic Adventure series on the GameCube and have come to the strife conclusion that 1) Sonic just doesn’t work in 3D, and 2) Hunting for treasure is stupid when you’d rather be out running fast. Sonic Heroes is a game that promises to take the series back to its roots, do away with the mini-game style crap and deliver pure high-paced Sonic goodness. So does it deliver? Look away if you’re a Sonic Fan, or better yet bolt the doors and shut yourself out from the world outside, because you aren’t going to like the result.
Gameplay Normally when I begin the review of gameplay I provide a brief overview of a game’s storyline and objective. Not this time though, as the game in general lacks what you could call a story or plot. You’ll see as soon as Sonic and Shadow fight over who gets to go after Eggman. Each of the 4 teams in Sonic heroes has it’s own sort of objective. The stories of the Dark and Chaotix teams are actually all right, but the Hero and Rose team stories are shocking. While the Dark story involves Shadow trying to regain his memories, the Chaotix team are hired detectives working for an unknown operative. Hero team just runs after Eggman cause they hate him and Rose team are looking for a missing frog and chao. I’m sure most people will be familiar with the concept of Sonics high-speed action, but the difference this time around is that you control three characters at once, plus you can switch formation to use each of their attributes to your advantage. Each team has a speed, fly and power character and a subsequent formation for each. Speed formation is faster, fly formation can be used to fly to new heights and power formation is good for killing enemies.
While switching between formations your goal is to speed from one end to the other of huge multi-pathed levels, which in a rather disappointing way, is much harder than it sounds. Things seem to go well enough in the earlier levels. You get the hang of the controls and learn the finer points of some of the game’s mechanisms, but things soon begin to go haywire. As the levels become more advanced the gameplay slips further and further away. One of the reasons why people proclaim Sonic doesn’t work in 3D is because the previous adventure games were a bit glitchy in some places. Heroes, rather than fix the problem, have made things 100 times worse. No exaggeration either. The further into the game you go the more frequent glitching becomes, ultimately removing any enjoyment you would have otherwise got out of the game. You could be fighting an enemy only to have knuckles dive straight into the abyss below or mysteriously be jettisoned out into certain death when trying to switch between two sliding rails. What makes this worse is that the levels are long, and if you’re that perfectionist looking for all A ranks you’ll be sadly disappointed as only one death can cost you the rank; A common occurrence throughout the glitchy stages. In short the game is not fun and will cause you more pain and annoyance than it’s really worth. On top of this the team system intrudes on gameplay, which should be pure Sonic.
To put it more clearly the game has you stopping too much for the boring flying or power sections when all you want to do is run fast. I can say that this is far more annoying than even the treasure hunting in the adventure series. You’re also babied as you play with TV monitors appearing every few seconds to tell you which character formation to use. Sega has hindered the high-speed action we know and love. Easily the worst Sonic game ever created gameplay wise.
Graphics I still don’t know about that shiny sonic look that makes him seem to be covered in some sort of lubricant, but the many environments you’ll visit in Sonics adventure are rendered quite nicely. Each world has a CG cut scene intro which often makes no sense whatsoever buts looks great all the same. Character animation is also nice. Sonic and his enemies look how they should, plus the many locales you’ll visit along the way are very appealing. You probably won’t be noticing too much as you scoot through the levels though. Overall, no problems with the graphics.
Sound This one is a mixed basket. First off we have the game’s musical soundtrack. Yes, it’s all the past paced tunes you can expect from a sonic game along with a few rock tunes. This is not where the problem lies however. It lies in the voicing of the characters. It’s terrible. Cream the rabbit sounds absolutely stupid and Tails now sounds like a constipated kindergartener. That stupid party bee mobile phone add has nothing on Charmy the bee either. Some are all right though, such as Sonic Knuckles and Eggman, but the rest leave much to be desired. Keeping the voices from some of the older games would have been a much better move than the new rubbish Sega has come up with, and it’s mostly the voice actors they kept that are good. The characters are also constantly yelling phrases as you play the game and by the end of the first level you’re already sick of Tail’s “Whoa I’m flying” and “I’m getting dizzy.” As a whole the sound is average bordering on below.
Replayability/Lastability This game won’t last you long at all. Sure there’s like more than 150 emblems to collect, but you’ll never have the patience to play the game through. Plus the multiplayer mode straight out sucks with about 5 times less raceable courses than Sonic Adventure 2. Once you put this game away you will never ever in a million years want to play it again. Which is a shame because behind the madness there is actually quite a lot of content available to unlock and play.
