Sonic Heroes! SONIC HEEEEE~RRROOO~ES

[Reading]

I don't like Sonic Heroes at all. Besides the aforementioned cheesiness, which majorly detracted from my experience, there's nothing in the game that captured my attention. I see some good and bad points that people are pointing out, but for me, there's none of them - it's just one giant lump of mediocre. I think the stages are unexciting, the music is sub-par, the graphics are mediocre, and everything else is just lackluster. Well, there is one thing I decidedly hated - the story. In my opinion, it's the worst plot of any of the main 3D Sonic games (and indeed, is even worse than some of the handheld games; the Sonic Rush series has a better plot than Heroes). The twist at the end is nice, but I shouldn't have to sit through an entire plotless game to reach it.

Heroes is my least favorite of all the major 3D Sonic games, and one of my least favorite Sonic games of all time. I haven't played Shadow (well, only 1.5 stages), but it was already looking better than Heroes to me.

No offense to anyone who likes the game, of course. XP

[Tombi]

I got this game quite a bit later than a lot of other people, in that I got the PC version in late 2004 and up until that point I had very little exposure to the game apart from a small PS2 demo. So even though my only frame of reference was the Adventure series; I still thought it was pretty good - in the same sense a third sequel to a somewhat "been there, done that" movie trilogy might be.

It didn't quite have the same impact that the Adventure series had, but it was still fun. Plus I wasn't suprised at all by the amount of cheesiness in the game, you could tell what was coming as soon as you looked at the boxart or seen the title screen - and I quite enjoyed the silly new take on the series. (I was shocked when I found it was being taken so seriously by some people, it's just a kids game after all.)

Anyway, I believe there's been better games before Heroes and there's been better games since Heroes, but it was just a pretty good game that probably could have benefited from some more development time and fine-tuning to really put it on the same level as past games. (And, like Shadow, it's a game you have to "pick the right system" to have any hope for a glitch-free experience.)

Edited May 9, 2009 by Tombi

[Semi-colon e]

I'm one of the few who enjoyed the 'countless enemy' boss matches. There's something compelling with letting loose with attacks and destroying wave after wave.

It gives a sense of invulnerability, at least it does me.

Same, Robot Storm was just genius and it's my favourite boss in the game. Better than the damn Egg Albatross and shit anyway. None of the other bosses were fun to play except Metal Overlord who was way too easy but at least had What I'm made of, and also an epic looking team blast.

[123654]

Tails: I'm FALLING!!@#$#@. Yep doesn't affect the gameplay

No, it really doesn't. I don't see how you'd possibly think it does. It can make the overall experience cheesy and annoying, but the gameplay itself isn't affected at all.

[Erazor]

Heroes is easily my favorite 3D Sonic game yet. I have a buttload of reasons but I'm just far too lazy to list them.

[lounge]

Man, when I first got this, after absorbing SA2Battle, it was like a slap to the face. The thing that immediately pissed me off was how inferior the gameplay mechanics were. I didn't like how the characters moved around, they were like all...... Twitchy. It just didn't look smooth or fluid.

I really couldn't believe how lazy they were with designing the enemies. And the AI is.... holy shit. They didn't even try .

The music and sound design weren't very good at all. Especially the sound effects. There were barely any. Bar the sound of dashing off a speed pad or hitting a spring. When you attacked an enemy in SA2, you'd hear a loud, satisfying sound effect. When you attack an enemy in sonic heroes, you don't hear anything. The music I found to be extremely generic. They didn't use real instruments. It all sounded like generic, cartoonish music. There were some good tracks like Ocean Palace and Lost Jungle (very atmospheric). The other tracks were loopy and annoying, especially Mystic Mansion, ugh!

I didn't like how they had to change Rouge's outfit for the babies.

The level progression was terrible. The sad thing is that scenario writer for SA2 also wrote the scenario's for this game.

On the positive note, the level designs were large and full of imagination. And they were gorgeous. Lots of crisp, High-Res textures. I'm still amazed at how much detail there is in the scenery in Grand Metropolis.

I enjoyed the CG. At the time, I've never seen CG so expressive and entertaining to watch in a game. And I liked how the character interactions went.

I didn't mind the team concept at all, they just got lazy with programming it.

Overall it's still a good game. 7/10. Not great by any means. I found Shadow the Hedgehog to be five times better than this though.

[Phos]

I rented it once.

Several reactions I had to it:

"Sonic, huh? it could be fun."

"So it's just Eggman, up to no good? Sounds like they finally got the story right."

-Level or so in-

"This isn't fun at all."

[EXshad]

I think Sonic Heroes is a good game. Probably one of the best, next to the 2 Adventures and Sonic Unleashed. Sure, the control is a bit twitchy, but for the MOST part, the level design supports the controls well. On the Gamecube version, the graphics are also very nice to look at, and there are hardly any frame-rate hiccups. There are a couple glitches though, and while the game is packed with replay value, it can get incredibly repetitive. The Chaotix missions are also bullshit.

And the only other problem that I have with it is the story-line. It's so light-weight and childish. Granted, I didn't expect something as angsty and brooding as Sonic Adventure 2 with a game entitled Sonic Hereos (...then again, I didn't expect a game with the title Sonic Adventure 2 to be so angsty and brooding...though the plot WAS good ), but Sonic Adventure had a pretty compelling plot and it wasn't overdone. I mean, it's like a step backwards from the Adventures: here are 2 games that took the Sonic series from 2D to 3D, not just in gameplay, but in character development, and in both areas, it succeeded, for the most part. Why then did they digress back to nothing again?

I was also split on the whole "character-switching" thing. On one hand, it was seemless, and kinda cool to take advantage of all the different abilities, but on the other hand, I hated running really fast, then slowing down to kill some enemies with Knuckles, then using Tails to do some half-assed flying platforming, then running again. It's jarring, to say the least.

What else? Hmm...collecting the emblems have actual meaning, and the multiplayer mode is a total blast. The music was also very good and brought back memories of the good ol' days...again. lol,I think that does it

Edited May 9, 2009 by EXshad

[Surge]

Everyone is so shiny in that game!!!

[Eternal EX]

I rented it once.

Several reactions I had to it:

"Sonic, huh? it could be fun."

"So it's just Eggman, up to no good? Sounds like they finally got the story right."

-Level or so in-

"This isn't fun at all."

Haha I can only imagine your reaction to Shadow TH. Anyways SH was a decent game and team dark was my favorite part. But like someone said, how they brought shadow back was really dumb. My reaction when I saw team dark's opening

"shadow?....

how did he survive?..

AWESOME a new robot!..

rouge has a new outfit?..

I like the music"

Rubber sonic and CO. was lame and team Rose was a waste of time. ASS grinding... really?

7/10

[Silencer226]

For me this is probably the last 3D Sonic game I actually enjoyed for more than a few days. It may be childish but it was an enjoyable game for the time. It's not perfect but it's decent, not to mention the vibrant color scheme was a nice touch. So what if they were shiny, it was playable.

[JezMM]

Well, I guess Heroes at least deserves a list from me of what it did right:

- An overwhelmingly nice summery feel overall. I think it's this more than anything that brings me back to it, with the unfortunate reminder of how lame it is upon playing to follow.

- Despite advances in technology, no city level has been as detailed and active looking as Grand Metropolis in a Sonic game since. The smog of Skyscraper Scamper on Unleashed was so dissapointing when we had this on a last-gen console to compare to...

- Soundtrack is pretty good, but at the same time, nothing really amazing in there.

- Team Rose's story provides a pretty nice hour of reasonably paced gameplay for a bored afternoon.

- For some reason, I did really dig the way the end credits music started at the end of the final cut-scene rather than being treated as a seperate entity detached from the ending like in most Sonic games. Did start the trope personal to the Sonic series of just playing muted FMV cut-scenes in the background of the credits though, which is always really boring.

- Seaside/Palace, Power/Metropolis, Frog/Jungle, and Hang/Mansion are actually pretty well designed levels.

And the list of things that could have been awesome but had stupidly clunky execution:

- A classic formula of two acts and a boss to each "zone" even if they were treated as seperate levels.

- The chase-style boss sequences of Advance 2 being fleshed out into 3D (thankfully remedied in Sonic Unleashed).

- Special Stages making a return

- The concept of multiple difficulties (even if, to get the true ending, they are all mandatory)

- The teamwork thing wasn't a BAD idea really.

- The return of Team Chaotix and Shadow were handled kinda lamely. Well, more Shadow than Team Chaotix.

Edited May 10, 2009 by JezMM

[canderson]

I'm one of the few who enjoyed the 'countless enemy' boss matches. There's something compelling with letting loose with attacks and destroying wave after wave.

It gives a sense of invulnerability, at least it does me.

Yeah, these enemy boss fights were fun. If they were to bring them back, I would prefer for these battles to be optional.

Maybe put them in an Extra's section.

I really enjoy using Team Chaotix for these boss fights. You can eaily earn 10 lives(getting 999 rings), by repeatedly using Team Blast. Of course, everyone knows that.

[Thirsty Pocket]

Yeah... there's too many problems I have with the game to praise it very highly.

Probably the biggest problem is the constant talking within the level... This was the first game to do this. In Sonic Adventure and Sonic adventure 2, you had to look out for, and touch, Tikal's spirit or Omochao for hints... now they MAKE you listen to instructions... and other things you don't need to hear.

The script is pretty bad, and bad voice acting makes it worse.

I do like the graphics though. I was thinking this is how Sonic's world should look, not like how it looks in recent games.

This game is also one step ahead of Sonic Adventure 2 in the "LOL it's always been about speed" kick that Sega suddenly got on, taking the emphasis off Platforming.

[canderson]

I'm one of the few who enjoyed the 'countless enemy' boss matches. There's something compelling with letting loose with attacks and destroying wave after wave.

It gives a sense of invulnerability, at least it does me.

Yeah, these enemy boss fights were fun. If they were to bring them back, I would prefer for these battles to be optional.

Maybe put them in an Extra's section.

I really enjoy using Team Chaotix for these boss fights. You can eaily earn 10 lives(getting 999 rings), by repeatedly using Team Blast. Of course, everyone knows that.

Edit: Dobule posted by accident. Is there a delete button? It's embarassing to ask a question like this.

Edited May 10, 2009 by canderson

[SuperStingray]

Heroes was a bit of a mixed bag to me. It was a disappointment after playing SA2, but it had its moments. The story was virtually nonexistent and poorly written, but considering it's an excuse plot, I can overlook it. But Metal Sonic's character was nicely handled. It has a nice and diversified soundtrack as well.

As for the gameplay, it's hardly flawless; the physics were often pretty bad, but the levels are cheery, imaginative and enjoyable and most elements such as the team gameplay are well handled. It also involves some gameplay elements that were in the classic titles that you don't see much of anymore such as level exclusive entities and some exploration. My biggest problem of all though, is that it's essentially forcing you to play the game on easy, medium and hard (and a mission mode) to get to the end. There's really no point to that considering its more of a game than a story so it's not like we need every perspective before we get to the last part.

In retrospect, it's a better game than I remember, but I still feel it marks where Sonic's decline began.

Edited May 10, 2009 by A Ham Sandwich

[StrudelB]

Sad to say, but this was the first Sonic game I bought. I got it with my Gamecube. And I LOVED it.

LET'S BLAST THROUGH WITH SONIC SPEED!

And I still do. Heroes is my second favorite 3D game, behind Adventure. I just love what they did with it. They removed ALL humans except Eggman, making it fit more with the earlier games rather than the Adventure games. The colors were... colorful. It brought back the Chaotix, Metal Sonic, and Big. The music was great, especially What I'm Made Of. Some of Crush 40's best work right there. I was also fond of the voicework as well. Drummond did a great job in my opinion. William Corkery was brought in for Tails, and I feel that his voice fitted him.

The only problems I had with this game were some control issues (not much, though), Amy, Shadow, and some of the dialogue.

LOOK AT ALL THOSE EGGMAN'S ROBOTS!

[Diogenes]

They removed ALL humans except Eggman, making it fit more with the earlier games rather than the Adventure games.

This is still stupid. Were I in charge, people would be flayed for this sentiment.

[Badnik Zero]

I'm very harsh on this game, because I think it's the first real disappointment from the series. The latter half of the DC-GC generation, Heroes and SHtH, fell off any successes they were riding from the Adventure series in a major way. This whole game seems full of good concepts, and it manages to bore me to death.

Some examples. Tag team platforming, each character has abilities that make them a necessary part of your team. How it failed? The three characters seem more like one super-character, because many of their individual abilities are nerfed in order for them to fit into the three categories. Instead of giving the player options with what to do, the game lays out very clearly what character you need to use for a section. The levels are full of artificial roadblocks that require character switching, like a giant stone to smash with Knuckles, or a tall section with flight boosters obviously designed for Tails. What you end up playing is a sort of rock-paper-scissors with the very level design, and it's cheaply done. And you sit and brawl with larger robots for up to 30 seconds. Each character has their own pace of play, and the constant switching really chops up the game experience.

Mechanics that worked well in other games are borrowed and "improved upon" with new innovations. Did you like speeding through a level with three acts? Cool. Speed through this ten minute long act, filled with grind rails and instant deaths. When on rails for most of the game, you really just need to be pressing one button, and the speed and response dynamic that made the gimmick fun has totally disappeared. Instead of a handful of ridiculously long levels, they could've designed a game with more environments, and shorten these beasts by a few minutes. The game also forced these other teams in the game, which is just more artificial inflation of replay. Open environment in this game is synonymous with wide platforms and areas, but the levels are terribly linear. More space should mean more than one way forward, but again the player is given little in the way of options. Parts of this game, more than any other before it felt strictly autopilot, with most actions requiring spamming of a single button.

On top of this, the graphics choices make the characters look rubbery, and the script is the only Sonic game that makes me wince. I have a high tolerance for the cheesier side of Sonic, but this was awful. The only characters I enjoyed to a slight degree were the Chaotix, and only because they were fresh entries to the 3D games. The rest of them seem soulless, as if they were caricatures of themselves.

But there are a few things this game got right, IMO. The music was pretty good, and very Sonic flavored. Speed sections in some areas of the game feel really nice, although most of them are automated. Level themes and gimmicks weren't awful ideas, and I give them credit for things like the very well done casino theme in Bingo Highway, the alternating rail switches in Rail Canyon, and gravity reversal stuff in Hang Castle. Lots of good ideas. It just seems like a very shallow game after the first few levels. For a letter score I give it a straight C. It was very mediocre.

Edited May 16, 2009 by Badnikz

[CtW]

I'm somewhat disappointed with Heroes because it is where the series seems to have started drifting from the style of the Adventure series and it does have some glitches and control issues with bad collision and very airy controls (though not nearly as bad as Sonic 06...).

However on the other hand, it had a lot of good to it. The fact they made secondary characters less useless and gave them a purpose plus made characters like Amy, Big, and Cream more important to the series was great and bringing back the Chaotix was just plain cool. The graphics, while being a departure from the Adventure games, were actually a big plus in my book since they felt like a 3D version of the colorful old levels of the Genesis games. The music was also up to the usual high standards of the series, I loved the theme songs of Team Dark and Team Chaotix.

My only big issue with the game is the robots. I greatly preferred the design of Robotnik's SA2 robots. I wish they had just gave them a redesign to fit in with the graphics while retaining their appearance since the new robots just don't look like they're even enough of a threat for Sonic and the rest of the group to bother with. Smaller stuff would be that a lot of the character switching felt pointless and forced, the levels tended to be far too long, and in some portions you could basically zone out because the game seemed to pretty much play itself or only require holding forward. And after a while the incessant talking from the characters on your team along with the whole "power of teamwork" junk began to grate on the nerves and make me feel like I was watching a bad Saturday morning cartoon.

All in all though as far as the 3D games go it's right below my personal favorites, the Adventure games, in my book.

[The-Master-Board]

Sonic Heroes is by far my favourite Sonic game, bar the classics.

It ticks all the boxes for me - whimsy and colours (making me feel like this truly is another awesome world unto itself, unlike Unleashed, stupid crappy our world remake) The levels were fun and had great music tracks, the music themes for the game were a nice mix and really catchy, the storyline was simple like Sonic games of old, you got to play as so many Sonic characters, THEY BROUGHT BACK THE CHAOTIX!!!! AND METAL SONIC!!!! What more could they have done! I hope they make a Sonic Heroes 2, that way we might get Nack back too.

The bosses were piloted by Eggman....well "eggman"...which is cool because he used to do that at the end of every level. The gameplay was pretty fun, cummon you can't say playing as Knuckles throwing Sonic and Tails at enemies wasn't incredibly awesome! There wasn't a mass amount of humans or uneeded characters, they didn't add new characters just for the game.

Basically I loved the game. It is still a game I continue to get the urge to go back and play just for the fun of it, unlike new Sonic games that feel like a chore to play the first time.

The only minor flaws I found with it were, the character modles were a bit...ugly, the gameplay could've been altered a bit more to make each team a little varied so gameply didn't get stale, I know I hate "Epic monster of the week" plots...but this one was ok because at the time those plots weren't the norm...plus its Metal Sonic, the extras were lacking (finishing the game on the aptly titled "Hard mode" and only getting a thanks for playing message!? Pfff, and the dialogue was a little cheesy....

But the main thing NO SUPER TRANSFORMATIONS FOR TAILS AND KNUCKLES!?!? That was pretty poo.

Other than those slight, minor flaws I choose to neglect because of the awesomeness of the rest of the game, Sonic Heroes is the best 3D Sonic game in my opinion. I think Sonic Team reached its peak with this game and have slumped ever since.

I really hope they do a second Sonic Heroes, I miss the fantasy and whimsy of Sonic games that actually feel like they are from Sonics world, to me Sonic Heroes IS what Sonic was all about...and they captured the classic feel so well in this game.

[Dr. Mechano]

This is still stupid. Were I in charge, people would be flayed for this sentiment.

Agreed. Humans are cool, and unlike animals, are capable of growing badass mustaches. Humans stay.

But as for Heroes, BAH. I hated it.

The gameplay was only so-so, and I could've done without beating the same levels with almost no gameplay changes multiple times.

The story was the real stinker here though. In the Adventure games, even when Eggman lost control of his plans, he was presented as an intelligent, strong character who still had a vital role in the story. In Heroes he's in a prison cell for most of the game, gets beat up and chased away(Even after helping Sonic beat Metal by means of his advice), and generally treated like garbage by everyone. This game paved the way for Shadow, which abused Eggman even more.

Turning Metal Sonic into a traitor was a lame move too. They didn't even bother explaining why he turned on Eggman.

[Semi-colon e]

Also to be fair, Eggman was pretty resourceful when he was trapped, if you think about it deeper as someone else did before (prolly on the old forums), but as it stood, he was a bit of a joke =/

[Dr. Mechano]

Also to be fair, Eggman was pretty resourceful when he was trapped, if you think about it deeper as someone else did before (prolly on the old forums), but as it stood, he was a bit of a joke =/

Circumstances!

Eggman wasn't a joke, or presented as incompetent by his own merits. He was just mistreated by Metal Sonic, and then the Chaotix. Nothing bad that happened in this game was his fault(Aside from, arguably, creating Metal Sonic in the first place).

[Awesomer]

Its pretty meh to me, maybe because im stuck with the crappy ps2 version with bad controls.

Edited May 10, 2009 by Awesomer