Current Events > So I'm playing through Sonic Adventure 2 for the first time...*spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

I have a soft spot for the original Adventure but this game just seems pretty bad. There are annoying insta-dead pits in both the Sonic/Shadow and Tails/Eggman stages and the game is way too wonky to account for them. The camera control is awful.

How did they make the Knuckles stages even worse? The sensor only picks up one emerald at a time? What a freaking waste. That Knuckles level where you're in the Egyption tomb looking for keys was awful.

The story is hilariously bad. I can't believe the President is a character in a Sonic game and I watched a cutscene where Eggman phoned him up to make demands. I've finished the Hero route and around halfway through the Dark route. Shadow is pretty hilarious so far with his edge.

It does have a weird charm to it. The songs with vocals are charming and funny. But I feel like too many stage levels just have generic guitar music. Pretty disappointing considering the variety in SA1.
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You're the fake hedgehog around here!
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-Gavirulax- posted...

What platform are you playing it on?

I've never played the story mode, only did the multiplayer with a few mates in high school (which I sucked at, heavily).

PC. Seems like a good port. Only annoyance is you need a mouse to launch the game.
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The chao garden is the best part.
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I love it, but just for the Sonic and Shadow levels
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unbelievable you guys dissing SA2
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I like the Sonic/Shadow levels when they're a bit more open. The early ones are pretty good. But for Sonic specifically his last two levels weren't good. The ARK level with the gravity switches was incredibly awkward. Sometimes you fell into pits before you could even see them. There is a section where you jump on a spring and it looks like the camera is pointing you to a platform forward but you actually need to jump backwards. It feels so wonky.

Then you had that level with the grinding rails. When it worked it was fun. When it didn't you would get flung to your death before you could even do anything. You could lose your momentum easily and get stuck behind a loop. And the level goes on and on for ages.
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Yeah the second to last one isnt the greatest but the final one is my favorite
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Damn I wanna play in the chao garden now
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MarqueeSeries posted...

Damn I wanna play in the chao garden now

Me too. I never did get that ultimate shadow chao
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The introduction of Shadow marked the slow death of the franchise.
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Darmik posted...

I like the Sonic/Shadow levels when they're a bit more open. The early ones are pretty good. But for Sonic specifically his last two levels weren't good. The ARK level with the gravity switches was incredibly awkward. Sometimes you fell into pits before you could even see them. There is a section where you jump on a spring and it looks like the camera is pointing you to a platform forward but you actually need to jump backwards. It feels so wonky.

Then you had that level with the grinding rails. When it worked it was fun. When it didn't you would get flung to your death before you could even do anything. You could lose your momentum easily and get stuck behind a loop. And the level goes on and on for ages.

Wait until you get a load of the last Shadow level's gimmick.
Mostly, it seems like the underlying physics engine is shaky as hell and it has a tendency to do weird things all too often(that are often fatal). Then there's the camera: most 3D platformers of that era struggled with the camera, but it's especially egregious in SA2. It's a bad combination. And it's made worse, oddly, by ambitious design: it doesn't feel like the team that actually designed the levels was aware of the short-comings of the engine and the camera.
Even so, most of the Sonic/Shadow stages are pretty good and fun to play.

There's no need to discuss the other parts, as they're bad in ways that are both obvious and boring.

Krystalcyanide posted...

unbelievable you guys dissing SA2

Outside of Chao Garden, it's a pretty bad game.

Dubbing and audio is god awful as well. Shadow and Sonic constantly interrupt each other and the background music is louder than the voice acting.
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<_<
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The camera is awful during those Knuckles/Rouge segments too. There was this one emerald hovering in the middle on one of those tomb rooms and it was a nightmare to jump to because of the camera. It would readjust itself while gliding which would completely change my direction.

Ugh that tomb level was awful as Knuckles. Wasn't as bad with Rouge at least.
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