Sonic Adventure 2: Great Game, Mediocre Port

Steam has begun putting up a series of games from the Dreamcast, Saturn, and other related systems through the Sega Heritage Collection which is essentially rereleases of some of their most popular games, but remixed into HD. I cannot be happier. The Dreamcast is among my top list of favorite consoles and Sonic Adventure 2 is almost as high up there. Throw in the Battle features from the Gamecube release as DLC and we’ve got ourselves the perfect game. Or so you’d think.

Sonic Adventure 2 is just one of those games from your childhood that does stand the test of time. Its cheesy yet endearing soundtrack, the hilariously awful voice acting, and the GOTTA GO FAST gameplay that the Sonic series is known for makes this game undoubtedly the best of the 3D series of Sonic games, which have been plagued with very few hits and many embarrassing misses. Seriously, Werehog? Just the idea is enough for the author to need to write a note of apology to the world.

Sonic Adventure 2 itself is still dynamite. Very little was changed from what I remember. Sonic and Shadow levels are still filled with fun high speed grinding action, Eggman and Tails levels are still fine, and the Knuckles and Amy levels are still the boring pieces of filler that you rush through to get back to grinding on rails. I don’t even need to mention how addicting raising chaos are. It’s just the same here. What’s different, though, is the port.

These HD rereleases were also done for the Playstation 3 and the XBOX 360. This is great, but what they did for the PC port is not. It is practically a carbon copy of the 360 version of the game. The game is set up assuming you’re playing with a controller. Many of us are, but they made no effort to make Sonic Adventure 2 playable with the keyboard, which is unfortunate for the PC users who do not own any current generation consoles that can be plugged directly in via USB.

While the port itself is faithful to the Dreamcast and Gamecube versions, it also lacks new or special content that they could have added in, such as new multiplayer maps or modes. This combined with the lackluster effort put into the PC release make this amazing game worth buying, but only if you have a controller to play Sonic Adventure 2 with, as you’ll quit out of annoyance on the keyboard.