The print ad campaign for Sonic Heroes states, “It’s time for some new heroes.” I couldn’t agree more. If Sonic and crew are the heroes in question, we certainly need some new ones.
The transition of Sega’s speedy blue mascot’s from two dimensions to three has been far from easy. Sonic’s outings on the Sega Genesis are the stuff that fond memories are made of for most gamers of the Genesis era; there was just something about running around at top speed, jumping on and spinning through enemies, and whirling through loop-de-loops and corkscrews. With the introduction of Sega’s Dreamcast, however, things took a downward turn; breaking up the balls-out speed were inane “adventure” sequences, which generally amounted to Sonic scouring an open area for an item of some sort so he could progress to the next action (read: fun) stage. Sonic Adventure 2 did away with the adventure sequences, but instead interspersed Sonic’s speedy levels with sequences involving Tails cavorting around in a giant mech and Knuckles searching for Chaos Emeralds that were hidden about large levels like Easter eggs. Needless to say, the thrill of Sonic the Hedgehog was gone, replaced with everything that was bad about 3D gaming and none of the good.
Sega’s newest game starring the blue hedgehog promised to be different, however. All the fluff would supposedly be gone, and Sonic would return to his classic speed uber alles motif. The player would control all three characters (Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, for example) at once, and switch between them at the press of a button, so there would never be a break in the action. Instead of filler levels and collect-a-thons, Sonic would finally return to the gameplay element that made him famous.
As the saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and Sonic Heroes is no exception.
Simply put, Sonic Heroes talks the talk, but can’t walk the walk. While Sonic Team has indeed made good on their promise to remove the filler, what is left is an awkward, insanely frustrating game that seems to utilize the same engine that drove the original Sonic Adventure five years ago. After playing Sonic Heroes, I’ve become convinced that the problem with the earlier Sonic games was not that there was not enough Sonic, as I had become convinced after Sonic Adventure 2, but that Sonic belongs in the world of 2D, and any attempt to bring him into the third dimension is doomed to failure.
Sonic Heroes indeed seems, on the surface, to attempt to return to the series’ roots. The player chooses between four sets of characters: Team Sonic, Team Dark, Team Rose, and Team Chaotix, each of which consists of a speed character, a flying character, and a power character. The first three teams essentially play the same levels with minor differences and are more or less the same, which is to say that most players will choose Sonic and never look at the other two standard teams.. (Note to Sonic Team: The game is called “Sonic Heroes”, not “Sonic and a bunch of strange looking characters who no one recognizes Heroes”.)Team Chaotix, an assembly of characters from an obscure 32X Sonic game, behaves differently from the other teams in that they play through similar levels, but are charged with collecting a number of items scattered around said levels in addition to simply reaching the end. Given how frustrating Sonic Heroes can be without having to search for things along the way, Team Chaotix is the team of choice for the masochistic Sonic fan.
In any event, the teams of three travel along the levels, each with their own specialties which are fairly obvious given their classifications: The speed character runs very fast and can use that speed to traverse obstacles, the power character is mainly for fighting enemies and breaking obstacles, and the flying character is for attacking airborne enemies and, well, flying. The characters can pick up power-ups to increase the effectiveness of their abilities, and there are branching points throughout the levels where using a different ability can take the player along a different route. This is all well and good until you realize that you use Sonic less and less as the game goes on. He’s generally too fast to retain control of when jumping from platform to platform, he’s ineffective in combat, and he can’t fly, so most of the game is spent with the other two characters and not with Sonic.
When one does switch, however, it is easy enough to do; pressing X or Y will rotate the formation clockwise or counter-clockwise instantly. That is, of course, if the character you’re trying to switch to is not stunned, or the game decides for some other reason that you shouldn’t be allowed to switch when you want to. Thus, there are a number of moments of frantic button mashing until the game allows you to switch to your desired character. To make things even more interesting, the two characters that the player isn’t controlling are invincible (and a good thing, as they tend to attack on their own, and are often used as projectiles for the controlled character’s attacks). This is all well and good until the player tries to switch to an invincible character who is in contact with an enemy; all of a sudden, poof! There go all the rings.
That, unfortunately, is the general theme of Sonic Heroes: Make progress, die for reasons beyond your control, begin again from the last checkpoint. It actually reached the point, about midway through the game, where I was hesitant to attack for fear of the attack’s momentum carrying my character off a ledge. Sonic’s Light Spin, a move that carries him from the beginning of a chain of rings to the end, is the worst offender of this; often, the end of a string of rings is located just before a ledge, and following it sends Sonic falling to his doom. In fact, plummeting to one’s demise is a fairly common occurrence, given the loose control and the difficulty to judge distances. This wouldn’t be all that bad had the game followed the standard of the past several years and provide unlimited lives. That is not the case, however, which takes a lot of the fun and experimentation out of the game and replaces it with an unhealthy fear of the unknown, as one wrong move will waste, at the very least, several minutes’ worth of progress, if not sending the player all the way back to the start of the level. Speed is useless if one is not given the freedom to utilize it with reckless abandon.
The level design adds to this frustration as well. A number of the levels achieve the feeling of speed by essentially removing control from the player, so that the player really doesn’t feel like he is the one making Sonic traverse the loop. What’s worse, there are way too many instances in which the player is required to land on either a small platform or a thin rail, with the consequence of failure being the aforementioned bungee jump minus the bungee cord. Just to add insult to injury, Sonic Heroes resurrects the Casino Night zone from the 2D Sonic games, but presents the pinball tables at a 3/4 angle, so that one cannot see the flippers until one has already sped by them. Boss battles are often no better; in addition to the standard “bounce on Dr. Robotnik” battles, there are shoving matches with other teams which seem incredibly arbitrary, and boss battles that simply consist of wave after wave of standard enemies.
The control doesn’t help matters, either. Sonic Heroes tries to jam too many actions into a small set of buttons, and ends up making the control scheme unnecessarily complicated. Each character’s B button is context-sensitive, which can create sticky situations when you intend to perform a spin attack with Sonic, for example, but you happen to be near a ring, and you end up careening off in a Light Spin instead. Given the number of precarious platform jumps that Sonic Heroes requires, the general looseness of the control should have been corrected; if it were simply a difficult game, then I could live with that, but the fact that the game is overly difficult as a result of its control is unacceptable.
Graphically, the game is fairly pretty to look at. The game rarely experiences slowdown despite the breakneck speed, and that is to its credit. The colorful look of previous Sonic games is carried over to Sonic Heroes, and it is pleasant to look at. While the game is not cel-shaded, it is cartoony enough to almost look as though it could be. While the environments (particularly the water effects) may not be overly detailed, the game moves fast enough that the lack of detail is often not noticeable.
What is noticeable, however, is the terrible camera. Sonic Heroes’ camera has obviously been carried over from the Dreamcast games, since it is nearly impossible to control. The camera can only be rotated side-to-side with the shoulder buttons; the only way to tilt it up and down is to go into a nearly useless first-person mode with the C-stick. As a result, judging jumps vertically is even more difficult than it needs to be. Furthermore, the camera has the irritating tendency to jump around and get stuck behind objects, with headache-inducing results.
One is much more likely to get headaches from Sonic Heroes’ sound, however. First, the good: The sound effects are carried over from the original Sonic games, and the sound of collecting rings and the classic “stage complete” theme are the kinds of things that can warm the cockles of any old-school gamer’s heart. The rest of the music is fairly generic guitar rock; while it does get repetitive, it’s never really offensive.
The voice acting, however, is easily among the worst I’ve ever heard in a modern video game. Not only is the dialogue insipid (for example: “There’s that flower again!” “Do you think we should use it to fly again?”), but it is delivered with all the acting ability of a four-year-old. If the characters only spoke in skippable cutscenes, this might be bearable, but the characters speak at scripted points in the levels, as well as shouting exclamations every time they take any action, much like Mario and friends in the Super Mario Advance games for GBA. These are the same voices that have plagued the Sonic games since Sonic Adventure, and Sega really needs to either hire legitimate voice actors or cut out the voice acting all together.
Overall, while Sonic Heroes certainly isn’t the worst game ever made, it also leaves a great deal to be desired. Not every game series can make the transition from 2D to 3D, and Sonic Heroes is living proof of that fact. As a long-time Sonic fan, I am once again disappointed by a mishandling of the series by designers who seem to have completely lost touch with what made Sonic a great game in the first place, which was its simplicity. Sonic Heroes takes a simple concept and makes it complex seemingly for the sake of complexity, and the result is an overly frustrating game that feels more like work than fun. If you need a Sonic fix for your GameCube, look into Sonic Mega Collection and experience Sonic the way he was meant to be. Otherwise, if you thought Sonic Adventure was a great game, then Sonic Heroes will likely satisfy you, but the rest of us will be left shaking our heads, wondering what happened to our zippy blue friend.
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