As good as the Dreamcast version (Sonic Adventure 2 - Battle (GC))

Member Name: latino reheat

Product:	Sonic Adventure 2 - Battle (GC)
Date:	04/08/02 (853 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's Sonic The Hedgehog !, Great gameplay, Nice levels

Disadvantages: Bad graphics let the Cube down, Shoddy camera

Infact, it's almost identical to the Dreamcast version.

I hope to god Sega's shoddy conversion to the Gamecube format is limited to this game only, otherwise it'd be a crying shame !

I own Sonic Adventure 2 on my Dreamcast. I thought it was amazing, some great graphics, cool 'choons, awesome levels and landscapes. I played it so much that I completed it within 2 weeks (well i'm not that good really).

Then when I heard a Sonic game was coming to the Cube, I said to myself "Thats the game i'm getting on launch!!" To be honest I really shouldn't of.

Not that the cube version is worse then the Dreamcast game, but it's no better.
The graphics are the same as the DC's, which really got my goat, if they put some effort into the remake, they could of taken advantage of GC's amazing power.

But no, like I said earlier, they just got lazy.

Enough quibbles (is that even a word??) and back to Sonic.
From humble, yet superb, side-scrolling beginnings on the Mega Drive (Genesis for you Americans) to the now 3D expanses of this new game.
Oh how I loved the old games, simple, yet original and slightly challenging. When the first Sonic Adventure came out, I was sceptical "Will the first fully 3D Sonic game really be any good". I wasn't disappointed. After completing it, I couldn't wait for the second game.
Even though I had it for the Dreamcast, I still felt it necessary to purchase this new

The game sort of follows on from the first SA game. Sonic and chums are on Earth (we're still not sure how he got there from Planet Mobius but anyhoo) and is causing a bit of a stir.
The army are after him, believing him to be behind some criminal activity. Of course Sonic is innocent and has been framed like the proverbial rabbit.
He is swiftly captured and taken away by helicopter. Sonic then decides to make a daring escape by using par
t of the helicopter as a snowboard and plummets down to Earth.

This brings us to our first level and one of the best.
City escape, fast and full of baddies. The level starts off with a cool snowboarding bit completely downhill. We're also introduced to a bit irony as SEGA have included traffic on the roads. You can bash right into them and send the cars flying. AHAHAHAHA ! A hedgehog destroying a car !

There are some truly awe-inspiring moments, from the 16-wheeler chase to running down the side of a 100 foot building. The musics not bad either ;)
After escaping from the army pursuit, Sonic witness'es something that disturbs him, a black hedgehog carrying a chaos emerald, moving faster then Sonic ever could.

What is going on? Well without giving much away, good old Robotnik ("Eggman", his nickname is used in this game) has a doomsday device orbiting Earth which could wipe the surface clean of anything. This would allow Robotnik to construct a new Robotnik Land.
All he needs is the Chaos Emeralds and the Master Emeralds....

Unlike the first installment, you are limited in choosing who you play as. In the first one, you could choose a different character and play "their game".
SA 2 will only let you play as the Hero's or the Dark side.
The Hero's consist of Sonic the Hedgehog, Tails and Knuckles, on the Dark side, you have Robotnik, Shadow the Hedgehog (darn I really didn't want to give much away!) and new comer Rouge the Bat (a jewel theif, pratically a female Knuckles).
Within this, there are more limitations, Sonic plays the standard levels, Knuckles has a sort of hunting game (looking for the pieces of the Master Emerald) and Tails rides about in his mech suit shooting targets. Exact same goes for the Dark side, with just Shadow instead of Sonic, Rouge instead of Knuckles and Robotnik instead of Tails.

Another annoying thing about this is the game is played
sequentially, the first level is Sonic, then the second is Knuckles and so on.
I got real bored of the Tails levels and the Knuckles levels can be too long (on one level I took 18 minutes to finish it!).
Thank god for the level select mode (which also lets you try out new mission objectives). You can play any level that you have completed in the main game.

I whinged about the graphics earlier, oh sure, they were fine for the Dreamcast, but the possibilities could of been great had they reworked them for the Cubes capabilities.
Apart from being a bit blocky and jagged, the colours are vibrant, the locales are quite nice, all though a bit flat and un-interactive. They range in themes, from forests and large safe-holds, to space stations and deserts. A great range, with some pretty great music to go with them.
Sound effects are resurrected from the "Bling" of collecting a ring to the funny jingle when you pass through a continue post.
The voices are a bit cheesy and the actors probably couldn't find work elsewhere, but somehow, the voices fit the characters well.

The cut-scenes are mostly in real-time, but on occasion and for the end sequence, we get Full Motion Video, which is blinding !
One niggle with the cut scenes is the dubbing. Characters will often speak over each other, and there'll often be prolonged silences which need not be.

The controls are nice and smooth, they are quite sensitive, which has good and bad points :
Good - accurate turning and manoeuverable.
Bad - Too fiddly and good end up ruining your thumbs.
The A button will get ya jumping, while the L/R shoulder buttons change the camera view (which is just as well seeing how the cruddy camera angles haven't been fixed from the original).
The B will perform a certain action.
Now this changes depending on where you are and what power ups you have.
If you have the lightspeed shoes, when standing next to a li
ne of rings, the B button will allow you to perform the "Lightspeed Dash".
The lightspeed boots aren't the only thing that you can pick up, each character has a bunch of power ups that can help during the game (about half are not compulsory).

New moves are in abundance in this game, most notably Sonics "grinding" move. This allows him to grind along rail. This is highly useful on some levels where to get somewhere, grinding is the only way to get there.

As for extras, we have the Chao garden. Chao's are odd little blue creatures that you can raise in the game, like tamagochi's. You can feed them, pet them and send them to school. Theres even a little cute racing game where you can race up to 8 other Chao's.
Whenever you rescue an animal from a robots core in the game, you can use that animal to give your Chao personality traits and special attributes.

Sonic Adventure 2 Battle also utilises the Gameboy Advance link, allowing you to raise your chao's from the cube. It also allows you to transfer Chao's from the cube to the GBA (you'll need Sonic Advance though) and vice versa.

And lastly, the multiplayer. This is perhaps the only enhanced part of the game. In the DC original, only a handful of levels were avaliable to the 6 characters, but now about half of the game levels are avaliable to play on.
New characters are included too, Amy Rose amd Meccha Sonic, The Chao Walker and Dark Chao Walker, Tikal and Chaos Zero (both from the first SA game). This adds a bit of variety to the game, but not much, as the characters take on the Action/Hunting/Shooting styles of the standard 6 characters.
We also have Kart racing, the Chao racing and a couple of side games like snowboarding for instance.

It's a great game for multiplayer, but sadly only a maximum of two players can go head to head. It's fun while it lasts...

Hmmmmm, overal, SA2B is a tough cook
ie to crumble. Some of the later levels can be frustrating to get through, but the ending isn't disappointing and full of action (which is rare in games these days).
It could of been so much more, but cash cows seem to be top priority compared to new, original and exciting.

I shouldn't of bought this game full price. What I should of done is waited until it was at maximum £25.
I hope thats what you'll do, if you can wait that long to own it.

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