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ProJared reviews Sonic Adventure 2


Rad Dudesman

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Without watching this I already have a feeling of overwhelming negative thoughts towards the game and saying that the Treasure Hunting and Mech Stages are terribly designed. I can tell by his smug face in the thumbnail. I liked his Xenoverse review a bit but I don't know if I even wanna watch this. Guess I might as well though since I'm posting in here.

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Without watching this I already have a feeling of overwhelming negative thoughts towards the game and saying that the Treasure Hunting and Mech Stages are terribly designed. I can tell by his smug face in the thumbnail. I liked his Xenoverse review a bit but I don't know if I even wanna watch this. Guess I might as well though since I'm posting in here.

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There's this overbearingness of calling the Sonic Adventure games terrible now, when they were once "great". I mean really, no game can be just OK now.

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I pretty much agree with Jared, except for that part about the lucky charms with the marshmallows and the oats. If I was the one making that metaphor, I'd say to turn the oats into marshmallows as in, take the other characters and make them play more symmetrically to Sonic and Shadow.

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Wow. I really disagree with Jared. Does Sonic Adventure 2 have it's flaws? Yes of course it does, no game is perfect, but sucks? Really? Are we gonna go that far? 

 

This is one thing that has really annoyed me about game reviewers and it's the fact that they always go to one extreme or the other. It can never be decent, It always has to be the best game ever made or the most shittiest game ever made with these developers. Jared makes it perfectly clear that he enjoys the Sonic and Shadow stages, along with the Chao Garden. I'm sorry but that's at least 1/3 of the game that's perfectly good, on top of the fact he likes the bosses plus he liked Pumpkin Hill. I think that at least justifies it as average but terrible? Really? That's an overreaction.

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 that's at least 1/3 of the game that's perfectly good

 

That's his point. Only 1/3rd of the game is good. The other 2/3rds are awful.

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I've never even understood the negativity towards the Treasure Hunting levels, lol. Even replaying the Steam version - which, playing this game on a keyboard can be a bit of a nuisance, in my opinion - the flaws people point out just aren't there from my experience, other than the BS one where it makes you find the items in order even if you find a different one first. No issues with control, no glitches, no frustration with the hints or anything. I mean, hell, I even have a grand 'ol time doing it. (I still need to go back and completely A-Rank the rest of her levels, though. All I managed to do was Dry Lagoon and Route 280 before getting sidetracked by other games.)

 

Maybe they fixed some of it in the Steam version and I just don't remember it from my childhood, buuuuuuut...I dunno, man. I just can't figure out the real major malfunction with the Treasure Hunting levels when I play them.

 

I'm just focusing too much on one aspect right now, though - I do admit to my judgement being pretty shrouded when it comes to this game, but I acknowledge the flaws that I feel it has nonetheless. I do agree with him on the Mech levels and whatnot, yeahh, but I still can't help but feel he's taking it to an extreme. If I were to try to call it down the middle, I'd just say that it was a good enough at best and frustrating at worst, and a decent experience overall, but to say it just sucks is a bit baffling to me. I can't really wrap my head around the concept of it being a blemish to the series and whatnot.

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Don't agree with him called the entire game "awful" but I think the lucky charm part is the best description to Sonic Adventure 2.  The game has alot of annoying, stupid parts to it but who cares? The fun bits is so much worth playing through. 

 

Now that I think about it, without those fun bits, the game would just end up being forgettable to me. 

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That would be a point if they were actually bad.

 

Yeah, treasure hunting is boring as hell and the shooting had no reason to be there. But with the exception of a few Knuckles and Rouge levels none of them are outright bad.

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On their own, no.

 

The problem is being forced to play them to get through the story.

 

In order to go to the next Sonic level, you've gotta beat this crappy Tails/Knuckles level first.

 

In SA1, you had a choice.

 

In SA2, you play genre roullete.

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On their own, no.

 

The problem is being forced to play them to get through the story.

 

In order to go to the next Sonic level, you've gotta beat this crappy Tails/Knuckles level first.

 

In SA1, you had a choice.

 

In SA2, you play genre roullete.

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I haven't watched the review yet, but personally I feel the Treasure Hunting levels weren't inherently bad, just massively MASSIVELY unintuitive.  They actually only become fun once you're very familiar with the stage design and have many past playthroughs of experience to draw from - mainly because the clues are so fundamental to finding the treasure, and half of them don't even make sense until you're familiar enough with the level to know what they're referring to.  I mean what the hell kind of vague clue is "Narrow Path" in Aquatic Mine?  I'm sure veterans who have replayed the story tens of times and/or gotten all A ranks know exactly what area that clue refers to now, but it took multiple shard placements in that area before you figured out they had that clue in common, etc.

 

 

But on that first all-important story playthrough, the treasure hunting levels easily take the majority of the playtime.  Most people found this inexcusable with the Werehog and it's inexcusable in SA2 as well.

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I think it was a pretty good review.  He may not of liked it but he gave valid criticisms as to why he didn't.  And it wasn't even a full on attack on the game.  He also gave examples of plenty of things he liked.

 

I kind of agree with him on genre roulette and making every character play drastically different.  When you do that, you divide the potential enjoyment the fans can get out of the game rather than a unifying playstyle that most people can enjoy.  At least that's how I've seen it.  Though I won't agree about ditching the other playable characters.

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I think the most interesting bits he brought up was complimenting the Pumpkin Hill level for more catering its design to Knuckles' actual abilities and strengths that were predetermined, as well as his and Rouge's use in the Last Story. And in general, he didn't seem to really have a problem with the idea of treasure hunting so much as the specifics of its implementation, which makes me think he would be willing to have a more nuanced dialogue about different types of goals and gameplay stints that could be added to Sonic without actually superseding the original appeal of them (even though he broad-strokes about the friends at the end there, but whatever; conclusions and all of that.)

 

I'm also not sure I'm on board with him entirely complaining about Sonic's pyramid level and its unlock door scheme, at least on the point that the mechanic being something that's not really seen again is an automatic detriment. I feel the introduction of one-time level gimmicks is fair game for design, particularly if you're attempting to define a location's qualities as much through gameplay as its aesthetics. The classic Sonic games did this fairly often anyway, so I'm not sure if this is necessarily a point I'd bring up as a universal negative.

 

Also, I hate the Lucky Charm metaphor in general. The marshmallows on their own are overbearingly sweet. And I genuinely like frosted grain cereals anyway. Seriously, how the fuck do people just slam down nothing but Lucky Charm marshmallows without gagging???

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I don't really know why I don't like Projared. I liked his Dragon Ball Z game retrospective, but I think that's probably because 80% of it was just talking about the games and not adding his opinion to the mix. And when he did, I felt, even for games I hadn't played, that there was just some jumping to conclusions going on. I started to get this very malicious sounding undertone in his voice, like he was some serial murderer that ran away from the police, got plastic surgery, changed his name, and started an inconspicuous persona as a video game reviewer. It didn't really help when I was blown away at the apparent anger he had at e3 with Rise of Lyric yes I will continue defending that game relative to where it's placed among other Sonic games while still recognizing that the overall quality is okay at best why do you ask even if the game didn't change much when it was released, I didn't really feel like he was explaining much about why so and so sucked, and I'm noticing the same here. And hey-- Sonic Adventure games? Not perfect. Not by a long shot. They can only barely be considered good you know like RoL, but terrible? No. Terrible to me says that there is something fundamentally completely fucked up about a game. Terrible is not whether I see something in a game that I think "fits" probably because I grew up in an era where Sonic turned into a fucking werewolf and even RoL is less stupid than that, but whether anything, normal or not, was executed in a way that I can have fun with it. Sonic and Shadow's levels? Fun. Well-executed. Tails' levels? Not fun. Bad level design. Not made for walker controls. Eternal engine. Eggman's levels? More fitting ironically, but also better designed, holds more plot significance, and I GET TO PLAY AS OUR LORD AND SAVIOR. Knuckles and Rouge levels were always a bit of an odd spot for me. I always liked them better than Eggman and Tails levels, but I couldn't decide if I was having fun and I still can't really. So for sake of doing a list:

Sonic-good

Shadow-good

Eggman-good

Tails-Bad

Knuckles-okay-ish

Rouge-Slightly less okay-ish but okay-ish nontheless

So that only effectively leaves one part of the game that I absolutely can't stand, and it's not fucked from a fundamental level like Shadow the Hedgehog's awful controls and camera along with horrid tone or Sonic 06's dogshit everything, and I don't see that as "terrible".

 

Probably kind of a primitive mindset, but sue me, that's just how I think.

 

Moreover, it feels like at this point people only make videos about Sonic games to call them terrible (it's no coincidence that game grumps are only playing the Sonic games people hate, they're doing it on purpose to be fucking dongwipes). They always seem to either choose the ones people are most divided over, or choose Sonic 06. And I think that's bullshit because a nearly ten year old game is being used to represent the quality of an entire franchise, even the classic games are getting shit for it now! 

 

 

I don't know what else I should be saying, I've had a lot of fun with strikethrough text here, I'm really hungry and I can't get these goddamn Club nintendo points to work

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SA1 didn't give you a choice story-wise, it just forced you to do them in a different way.

 

I don't know why people keep making this argument. No one played just Sonic's story and said fuck it, they sat through the bullshit so they could get the last story.

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