I've just received my copy of Sonic Adventure and I wanted to share my first feelings. First, there are no way to describe the beauty of the game. Graphics are really stunning and the animation is awesome. You ve never seen so detailed textures. Neither you ever seen a game of that speed. Sonic and his friends always keep moving and the camera is so dynamic you want throw away.
I played the game for only two hours. For the very first game, I feel myself lost and didn t know what to do because it has the Mario 64 system. Meaning you begin in the town (actually you first meet Chaos) which is the crossroad for the other levels. You ll have then to find way looking for doors and possible access. I was a little bit worried at this point because the first level, Emerald Beach, was really basic. Moreover, sometimes when you are in a high speed area, Sonic keep following the good path almost by itself. You only have to keep the right direction pushed. Then I played this level two other times (once you ve created a file on your VMS, you can acces to a Time Battle Mode) and I realized that this game is Sonic and that this is the way how it must be played. You just have to go forwrd as fast as possible and, believe me, when you keep this in mind, you really have big fun. And the fact is when going so fast, if the game was fully in 3D at any time, you couldn't manage to keep yourself on the track. I ll remenber from this level that the moment when Sonic is running on a moving bridge and been pursued by an orca is a leap for the history of video games.
Then, I met Dr. Eggman and one of his hi-tech ship. He fight was easy but it was also a great moment. The second level is even more intresting.
The name, Wind something (i can t remenber the name) will give you a hint on what it is about. My poor vocabulary (i m french) don t enable me to describe it like I would. But this one is really fast and big.
It contains lots of loops and jumps. It is definetly my favorite one… for the moment. The third take place in a casino. In order to gain access to an emerald on the top of a room, Sonic has to fill it with coins. For this, he has to play games and earn them. Then he changes himself into a pinball ball and you use him in two pinball with different theme. One is Sonic and the seconde one is Nights.
I did not go further but for what I ve seen, Sonic Adventure won't deceive any Dreamcast owners. The game seems pretty long because after completed the third level, the game shows a 25% of completion. This mean it have at least 12 levels which have to be completed with the other char : Tails, Knuckles, Amy, E-102, and Big the cat. Each one being different, this means that thoses 12 levels will be played differently with the other chars. I also tried a bonus mode (Chaos race or something) where some creatures race again each other on some different tracks. Thoses creatures have to be put into the VMS (they are eggs everywhere just like in Nights) so you can breed them and everything. The race issue depends then on how far the evolution of the creature get. What i can say is that i couldn t stop laughing looking at my baby still moving with his hands.
For now, this is all I saw and all I can tell about.