Sonic Heroes

The glorious 3D speed rush is still broken by moments where you will csream with rage inspired by whatever sadism or idiocy has kept Sonic Team from fixing its camera and control schemes after five years of 3D Sonic games.

The two things that platform games rely on the most - the level design and your degree of interaction with them are both massively flawed, and to add insult to injury the usual Sonic technical misgivings are all correct and present: good looking graphics, but prone to tearing and glitching.

The game's graphics aren't on par with today's console offerings -- sure the worlds are colorful and large, but perhaps the developers at Japan's Sonic Team studios had to sacrifice visuals for speed.

Old-school Sonic speed plus a few new twists makes for a decent if not earth-shattering return to the realm of the blue hedgehog.

Less is more in the case of Sonic Heroes, as convoluted exploration concepts are abandoned in favor of pure speed and exhilaration.

Gamers who haven't exactly stuck by Sonic's blurry blue side over the years will have to work a little harder to get to the fun, spastic heart of Sonic Heroes, but those who know what to expect in terms of mechanics and sheer kinetic insanity will feel right at home.

As with the previous two 3D Sonic outings, Sonic Heroes is a solid platformer that could've been a lot better if the developers had spent more time balancing the levels and tweaking the unbelievably frustrating camera.

Awesome audio-visuals and spot-on gameplay (most of the time) make Sonic Heroes the best next-gen Sonic game available. Get rid of the camera problem, put in some truly innovative puzzles and the next Sonic game will really shine.

The techincal aspects of Sonic Heroes are handled well, with the exception of the camera and voice work. In fact, the camera is worse than "Mario 64's" (and that's saying a lot) and the voice acting is downright repulsive. [Apr 2004, p.9]

The concept is well and good, and works well – except for the fact that you still must slow down to use Knuckles and Tails (or the equivalent member in one of the three other teams in the game). These are the moments that the game truly lags, and once again the shoddy camera has come back to once again make the game a pain.

Sonic Heroes’ biggest weaknesses are its combat system and related controls. While the three-formation system provides a refreshing choice in combat styles when facing a handful of opponents, the system quickly becomes disorienting in larger battles.

The camera is crap, the scale is awkward, the story and characters are basic and cringe-worthy, the combat is tedious, the platforming and puzzling is too basic, and I was well bored of it by the time I conquered the final level with the first of the four Teams, which wasn't even that long after I first grabbed it out of the shrink-wrap.

But with this much constant repetition, sloppy enemy and level designs, artificially-prescribed deaths, lack of bonus GBA-connectivity and even some glitchy overlapping voice samples, it's really a matter of how much the player is prepared to tolerate.

Control issues, far too many pointless fall-to-your-death moments and a general lack of purpose or incentive to explore make the fun fleeting and the frustration lasting.

I think Sonic Team needs to focus on its core values and technical competencies, to deliver the sublime experience I believe it is capable of, especially when working with the prestigious Sonic IP.

The lack of guardrails leaves little room for error, and the camera often fails to let you know what's coming until you're already diving head first into a bottomless pit. That's the most common way to go.

It can be fun, quick, breathtaking, and all sorts of great things. However, the bad control problems pop up too often, and just ruin the entire experience. It comes down to five or ten minutes of great gameplay ruined by the game not working where and when it should.

Long stretches of each stage can be severely frustrating and annoying, but when they're not, it's still pretty fun -- and getting "in the zone" to complete an especially hard part in one try is always satisfying.

Rarely does dying feel like the player's fault and, in typical "Sonic Adventure" fashion, the best bits are when you find that the majority of control has been taken away from you, and you're flung around the world at escape velocity. [Mar 2004, p.105]

The 3D world has too many technical flaws, most notably with the camera angles.

The stop and stutter gameplay makes completing Sonic Heroes and exercise in frustration, and when you couple that with some ridiculous boss battles, horrible voice acting and a nasty camera, it wouldn't surprise me if gamers snub Sega's effort and reject Sonic for the industry's better crafted platformers.