Retro Reviews: Sonic Adventure 2

IIWYM presents...
A retro review of...
Sonic Adventure 2: Battle

Ahh, Nostaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalgia. It buoys up many a man's past childhood memories. And it is often deeeead wrong. People tend to look at their pasts, especially their childhoods, with a degree of what the germans like to call "Sunday eyes" or rose-colored glasses. Everything's romanticized to a large degree, especially with the amount of time. This game came out ten years ago, I was a small child who was just breaking in a shiny new gamecube. I logged many an hour into this game, and it shows. I still remembered the placement of most of the collectables and knew exactly what to do to grind out money. Ahh.

             Regardless, onto the game itself. Sonic Adventure 2 was released on the dreamcast originally, actually, but got a rerelease onto the Gamecube a few years later with a few more features. And most recently, it was ported onto Steam, where gamers curious to see what the fuss is about can get it. The premise is simple as many things were in games at the time: Doctor Eggman has released a doppelganger of Sonic (Who else) and sonic is put in prison for the actions of this doppelganger, and sets out to get to the bottom of things.Things escalate from there, and end up with
*Spoiler: To see the spoiler, highlight it with your cursor*
A giant floating space colony shaped like the face, and a plot to use it to blow up the United States, presumably, and cuts the moon in half!
*End spoiler*

The game plays out like a classic platformer style, much like the marios of the era, but with much more of a focus on speed. When it gets it right, the game feels great, and the sense of speed is better than you can get in some modern games even. But problems are starting to arise here that continued into the later games of the series, like the disasterous Sonic '06. But there were a number of reasons that game was bad. This one is good.

In fact, its very good. It ate up an entire weekend of my time, and I loved it. However, the graphics are really showing their age, being well over a decade old now. The game still has a high degree of replayability even to this day. So I say, give the game another shot if you've got some spare change laying around. The core game is STILL about seeing how fast you can run though an impressively designed level, and the soundtrack. That glorious soundtrack is still intact. As soon as I heard City Escape playing again, I was right there, ten years old, sitting in front of that TV with my shiny gamecube. For the nostalgia alone, I'd say pick this up on steam. You'll need to fiddle with the keyboard controls if you lack a gamepad, and in my version there was some occasional significant game lag, but nothing that really detracted from the overall experience.

Sonic Adventure 2 recieves a...
BUY IT CHEAP

It's still good, and I definitely recommend a buy if you've got a weekend free and feel like some nostalgia.

This has been Nev with IIWYM reviews, signing off. Look forward to the Mass Effect Retrospective, featuring a guest contributor!