Sonic Heroes

The Good
Some of the Team Rose levels are quite fun, as are early levels some of the other teams have to make their way through. The graphics look nice and characters like Big are finally doing something useful.

The Bad
The characters are often completely out of control. You're trying to make your way across narrow bridges, platforms, grind-rails three pixels wide and the like and your character is darting about all over the place. The ability to switch characters could have made for an interesting game, but instead you spend half your time fiddling about with controls trying to select the correct character (the character-selection control often selects the wrong one). The camera angles are dodgy, all too often you can't see what's right in front of you until it's too late, and sections like the 'rising lava' are rendered impossibly hard. Some of the bosses are just tedious - Robotnik's big ships need about 300 hits or something like that. And why did they have to include those grind-rails? They were a stupid gimmick in Sonic Adventure 2 used to promote some hideous brand of trainers or other. These games need good ideas, not pointless marketing ploys. The storyline and the 'humour' are just terrible, especially compared to games like Twinsanity. 'Humour' in Sonic Heroes seems to mainly revolve around spaceships with 'egg' in their name. In Sonic the Hedgehog 2, released in 1992, the Death Egg was a humorous send-up of the Death Star. Now, thirteen years and many Sonic games later, the 'egg' jokes are wearing very thin. So Dr Robotnik is fat and bald! We get it!

The Bottom Line
You must choose one of four teams in order to make your way through varied 3-D levels. Each team contains a fast member, a tough-nut and a character able to fly. You can switch between characters in order to cross the levels filled with platforms, dangerous robots, collapsing scenery and the like.

The Good
It's Sonic...that's about it. That is literally the ONLY reason I bought it (and subsequently will also be the only reason I will buy the PS2 and X-Box versions later this month). I need to keep my collection up to date.

The Bad
Practically EVERYTHING. The control is disgustingly inaccurate, the GameCube's 8-notched control-stick well didn't help much when you needed to make finite direction changes at full speed. The music is boring..plain and simple. I would love to hear some sort of throwback to the Genesis era, instead of this new techno-ish + rock + j-pop GARBAGE from Jun Senoue (spelling?). Sonic Team's effort to revive the older type of run and jump Sonic completely does NOT fit the atmosphere the music creates. On top of that, the game itself is lame...I could sit for hours with Sonic 3 & Knuckles (and when I first got them, I did just that) and explore levels, find different paths, etc etc... With Sonic Heroes, the time it takes me to go through a level ONCE is already longer than I want to spend on it, not to mention the fact that once AGAIN we have the whole stupid "Emblem" crap. These are levels that are boring, monotonous and repetitive, TEDIOUS, and just outright lame. No real complexity at all. The graphics are all spiffy shiney (Must be whatever that "RenderWare" logo is on the back of the box), but that's about it...Sonic Team again wanted eye candy rather than a full bodied game. Despite the graphics being crisp and smooth, the camera still sucks... Like, we all know how bad the camera was in the Adventure series...well take that camera, make it boring and stationary, and you've got Heroes' camera. The game is akin to the early Crash Bandicoot games on PS1, only you have more mobility, and you CAN rotate the camera around you to see other things. There's just something about this game I cannot stand......on top of everything else, Sonic Team didn't even get some of their OWN CHARACTERS traits correct... when Sonic runs at full speed...uhm...he either holds his arms at his sides, or stretches them out behind him...he does NOT move his arms when he runs! His spindash is nearly non-existent now as well, reduced to nothing more than a swift kick from a fellow teammate. And Knuckles' biggest claim to fame, his ability to climb walls... is gone. Uhm... What the hell?

The Bottom Line
This game is CRAP. I'm saying this, with Sonic gaming experience from the day Sonic 1 was released... I'm probably one of THE biggest Sonic fans in New England, I have just about every Sonic game that has been made (along with its European and Japanese version counterparts as well). I know the older games inside and out, but I still enjoy playing them... in contrast, any Sonic game that was made from 1999 and after, has been the complete opposite- I barely know the levels at all but I dislike it so much I can't even force myself to play it.

TOTALLY rent it first... don't waste 50 bucks on something you'll wind up shelving in a day and a half. If you want a GOOD 3D Sonic game, push for Mike Wallace to find the working Saturn demo of Sonic X-Treme, or just pop 3D Blast into your Genesis/Saturn.

The Good
This game is a great game but the Adventure ones for Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo Gamecube had more different game play. The graphics are good, the gameplay is great, Team Chaotix is the best. The sound is great, Crush 40 music is in this game. This has speed, fly and power.

The Bad
The bad thing is that when you finish a team, in the cinema, you can't view the credits, you need to play through Egg Fleet on story mode. Also we need treasure hunting again. Team Chaotix may be similar but it isn't the same.

The Bottom Line
Good graphics, good gameplay, good music. So go and buy it or at least rent it.