Even people that aren't die-hard Sonic Freaks seem to always insist that "the first Sonic Adventure is good though". I feel like that's a stance I run into pretty frequently. However, I've played the first hour or two of this thing several times over the years, trying to understand what they're talking about, and I can't help but feel like this is essentially a SIMPLE2000 game with a much larger budget that was shipped in a beta state.
I love Sega with all my heart, I really do. But why is it that Sonic '06 gets the memetic status as "the funny buggy game" that was rushed for a console launch, but Adventure isn't? It can't just be nostalgia, right? I wouldn't be revisiting it so often if the people gushing about it weren't people I trust enough to have thought past that, ya know?
I've played several different ports of this game. Currently I'm sitting in a chair in front of a Japanese launch copy of the game, drowning the little blue rat boy in the swimming pool over and over. There's a certain appeal to running around a little town square hub that's unmistakeably a video game town square from 1998. The environmental art is delightful. But I'm clipping through the world all over the place, the camera is getting stuck on random things (or inside walls), the movement feels completely broken once you get going, boss fights feel underbaked and clumsy. Everything about the tone is just so, so embarrassing. The fusion jams on the soundtrack still slap though.
I play a lot of SIMPLE2000 games and the like, and they don't usually feel this busted. Though their scope is obviously a tiny fraction of Sonic Adventure's. Well, usually. Dude this game is held together with chewing gum and a wish, and you can see it everywhere.
I dunno man.
I'm gonna get yelled at for this but I had to get it out.
Sonic Adventure is not materially better, more polished, or less broken and misguided than Sonic '06, a game I've also recently revisited because I hate myself. ^_^
Sonic Adventure is kusoge.
He's right and it's true.
I think people give it some leeway for being "the first 3D Sonic" (Sonic Jam's hub doesn't count), but it doesn't even have the excuses of early 3D games where people didn't know what the were doing or what would work.
Hell, Sonic HEROES gets a harder time than SA1 and it's better in basically every way.
i also find myself surprised with the number of people willing to forgive SA and SA2's bugginess while not extending the courtesy to heroes
