Sonic Adventure DX (Director's Cut)

The Good
There is a lot to do as there is lots of characters... a few gamegear games extras are nice n retro - not good but nice and it's sonic and who doesn’t like sonic? WHO?!

The Bad
It may be sonic but that doesn’t mean its any good, the graphics are very bad, low standard dreamcast rubbish that sonic team hasn’t updated or taken any advantage of the gamecube's power in any way, shape or form. The story is horrendous and complicated and just doesn’t make any sense at all. This factor isn’t helped by the horrible HORRIBLE voice acting and music, in fact it’s so bad it’s funny, the way it all just makes no sense! The gameplay is evil, the action stages play like 3D bits of the original Sonics abet not very good 3D bits, as there too buggy and glitchy, also the thing that really annoys me is that the core sonic gameplay hasn’t changed; it’s still just a case of holding forward all the way through the levels. Some variety is attempted in the different characters but, its just rubbish!

The Bottom Line
DON’T buy it! You might as well as go out with £50 taped to your head with mug me written on it.

The Good
Sonic is known for fast-paced stages, great music, cheesy acting, and furries. Well, this game has pretty much all of that.

The story is just like every other Sonic game: Oh noes! Someone is causing havoc! Who will save us? (enter Sonic)

And you get where this is going. However, I do like how the story is told from six different perspectives. But all in all, the story is pretty generic.

The gameplay is fun and fast paced... sort of. You see, there are six characters you can play as, and, like-wise,six different game types:

Sonic: Fast-paced Platformer Tails: Racer-platformer Hybrid Knuckles: Treasure Hunt Amy: Escape your stalk- I mean enemy. Gamma: Platformer-shooter Hybrid Big: ...fishing... yeeah.

Now, I shall go over each mode and say my opinions of them.

Sonic: Best stages of the game. What you do is simple: just finish the level! Like all Sonic games! These parts do have some cheap deaths and frustrations awaiting, but are good fun over all.

Tails: Same as Sonic's, only you can fly and you have to beat Sonic to the end. These can also be pretty fun, especially since you can fly.

Knuckles: You must look for the missing pieces of the Master Emerald. These stages are complete bull crap. They are slow, boring, and very, VERY confusing. It's useless. Forget about it! (hint hint)

Amy: These aren't too bad, really. In fact... they're kind of fun? Basically, you have to outrun this robot pedophile. Or as I'll call him here, Pedo-Bot. Now, Pedo-Bot works for Eggman, and Amy finds this bird that has... let's just say it has jewelry ;) Anyway, Pedo-Bot must get this "jewelry" and give it to Eggman. You must prevent this. In the stages, you can stun him by whacking him with your hammer. Okay, this is too long.

Gamma: In a sudden twist of story, you play as one of Eggman's new robots, E-102(I think) Gamma. It is basically a platform shooter. Kind of like Contra. Except it's not. I think this mode is good, but not great.

Big: I. HATE. THESE. STAGES. Yeah, caps lock. I'm a man now. Well anyway, you play as the slow-ass, fat-ass, gay, purple cat named Big whose only friend is a frog named... Froggy. And all you do is fish for your lost friend. FISH! Why, Sega? Why? Why? Whyyyyy?

So, overall, the gameplay is good.

The opening cutscene, as well as the few other CGI cutscenes, are very good. They are well detailed. The other graphics...well...see the bad section.

The voice acting, like I said, is cheesy. It's not too bad, but not great, either.

The music is wonderful.

"Open Your Heart" , the main theme, is a great song.

Sonic's theme is also great. Some say it has a GnR feel, and I think I agree.

Tail's theme really doesn't do him justice. He should have a better theme!

Knuckle Head's theme is garbage. I already hate rap, but his theme makes How I Could Just Kill a Man seem like Ride the Lighting!

Amy's theme is catchy but makes NO sense at all. I mean one of the lyrics are something like,"It was so cute, I just had to shave it." ...erm... (disturbing silence)

Gamma's theme(which is instrumental) actually pulls at my heart strings, something few songs accomplish with me.

Big's theme is the best thing about Big, but it still sucks.

The rest of the sound track is amazing as well.

Finally, there is the fact that, when you get 20 emblems, you get an old Sonic game (all on the Game Gear). These are a nice edition, making this game an even better deal. Granted, some of the games suck balls and you could get almost all of them on a copy of Sonic Mega Collection Plus, but it's still a nice addition.

The Bad
Now, as I said, the gameplay is good. But the Big stages are HORRIBLE! Absolute garbage. The character himself is not exactly what I call like-able.

I said that the CGI cutscenes looked good, right? Well, the in game graphics are... terrible. I'm not even a graphics whore, but these graphics SUCK! The mouth movements are terrible, especially with Dr. Eggman. The textures look like they belong on N64! This is unacceptable! The frame rate is a bit better than the graphics, though. But, hey, graphics don't make a game. I'm talking to you, Halo fan-boys.

The Chao Garden is not very good. Now don't get me wrong. The Chao Garden in the sequel is fantastic. But this version seems very watered down. VERY watered down.

The Mission mode can be very confusing and hard. On the other hand, some are just confusing. Finding the cards are a real pain in the ass, too.

There are a few other minor problems, but these are too minor to type about.

The Bottom Line
Overall, this game is a great addition to your GameCube collection. You will have a ball for sure. Just don't go too slow :)

The Good
I must admit that I've never played the Dreamcast version of this game, so I will judge this game's merits on the Gamecube version alone. The game have its strong points, I know people have criticized the graphics on this game, but I find them quite good. Also a strong point for Gamecube users is that the library of Game Gear Sonic games are unlockable in this game, when they are not present in the Sonic Mega Collection. This game is a good first attempt at putting Sonic into the 3D platforming world.

The Bad
However, there exists many flaws in this game, with many elements seemingly lifted from Mario 64, I would have thought Sega would tried tried to innovate within the 3D platforming field, much like the original Sonic innovated the 2D platforming field. They even lifted the poor camera system of Mario 64 and made it worse...The fact that you had to switch to free camera every new stage made it really annoying...Also certain characters seemed to be added for no reason...after the first 3 characters of the game, the game loses some luster...

The Bottom Line
This game isn't a necessity for gamers, not to sound like a Nintendo fanboy or anything, but I feel the Mario platformers are much better than this game to experience 3-D platforming.