Sonic Heroes

Game Title: Sonic Heroes
Console: Gamecube
No. of Players: 2
Memory Blocks Needed: 2
Difficulty: Medium-Easy
Extras: N/A
Genre: Action/Adventure
Developer: Sonic Team
Publisher: Sega
Age: General

Story
85/100
Could Sonic ever have a normal day where he doesn’t have to save the world? Would the blue hedgehog want to live a life of normal stuff!
Well Eggman is up to his old tricks again: world domination. (I’ve always wonder how he pays for all of that.) However this time Sonic is going to have some friends and some friendly competition. It seems everyone–or at least every character in the game–is after Eggman. Our characters form teams and search for the illusive mad scientist; together they’ll face new monsters and save the world from the mysterious villain that seems to know everything about our characters.

Gameplay
85/100
Sonic Heroes present a new form of game play–at least where Sonic games are concerned. Alternating players in one stage, switching to accomplish certain task only that character can. You’ll pick one of four teams: Team Sonic, Team Shadow, Team Rose, Team Chaotic; and complete the mission. An interesting twist is that although you’ll be going into the same stage, the difficulty and complexity to each will be different depending on your team. Team Sonic for the most is pretty average, their stages present some difficulty but after a few tries you’ll pass. Team Shadow is by far the hardest to beat (keeping the black hedgehog down, those racist bastards!), their stages are the longest and most difficult to accomplish–some of those stages seem to go on forever, and face the hardest of all the enemies. Team Rose is the easiest and probably the best for beginners, their stages are short and pretty easy to accomplish. Then you have Team Chaotic, this is the interesting team, the first time we’ve ever seen these characters. Their stages aren’t specifically a race to the finish but instead at the beginning of each stage you’ll your orders on what you have to do, they range from finding the sea shells to going unnoticed by all enemies.
You play as a team of three characters, only one is the active character at a time but you’ll be able to switch via the X and Y button. Each stage is created for you to use each one of your team members’ special abilities. You’re team will have one FLY, SPEED, POWER character and it’s going to be up to you to figure out when it’s best to switch. There isn’t much complication figuring out what their abilities do: FLY can lift your team up to reach higher places and you’ll be able to launch them at enemy targets, SPEED can well really run fast and perform a special move that can lift enemies in the air and temporary stun them, POWER are your muscle power character if you want to smash stuff this is who you’ll want to be.
Like all Sonic games the floating golden rings are always good. In Sonic heroes they perform an extra feature; they allow your team to perform its ultimate special move, which depending on your team will have several different effects.
Overall game play is cool, it offers players a unique experience to test their skills with different characters and in different situations.

Graphics
95/100
Probably the best thing to this game is the graphics, more specifically the cut scenes. Very clean and smooth both the cut scenes and when you actually play the game. Best graphics in a Sonic same by far. Although some (like me) might say that it’s a bit too cute for comfort, but tolerable.

Controls & Camera
80/100
A lot of the game will require you to switch between the characters on your team very quickly so being able to do that is crucial. The buttons are easy to switch (X, Y) it might take you a while to master it though but once you do you’ll be ok. Other than that the actual game play does have its flaws too. Other than the SPEED character on your team the other two seem to be more chaotic and less stable. For example many times your team will have to be in FLY mode to flip a switch to progress however many times it’s you just launching your team members into nothing ness. There is no aim, you’re basically just trying to shoot, and while that separate those with aim and other without it can be very annoying and dangerous. And the same is with your Power character; it’s usually you just blasting away hoping that you hit the enemy. So in that regards other than you SPEED character the controls suck. The camera works ok could have been more focused on your team but alright.

Music & Sounds
85/100
The music was ok, the theme was particularly nice, but it wasn’t anything outstanding. Overall it was good but if your volume button was pushed in and you couldn’t turn up the volume, you wouldn’t have missed much.

Replayability a.k.a What is there to do when finish the game…
80/100
Well first you’ll have to finish finish the game. Let me explain, each team will be able to defeat the final boss (Eggman’s Robot Emperor); however that isn’t the final ending. To reach the final ending it will require you to collect all seven chaos emeralds.
Now there is a multiplayer feature in this game, but that’s only after you complete the requirements to unlock them. Then you’ll be able to choose from the four teams available and enter different forms of play, whether it is a collect the rings mission, reach the finish line; there are about 6 different categories that you will be able to choose form. That’s about it in terms of Multiplaying/Replayability available in this game.

Overall
80/100
I must say I’m kind of disappointed in this game, while I loved the graphics and the new form of game play, I don’t think it surpassed Sonic Adventure 2 Battle in terms of overall coolness. What was cool is that you were able to play with 6 new characters (Team Chaotic {3 new characters}, Team Rose {2 new characters}, and Omega from Team Shadow). That was awesome. Team Chaotic and Team Dark were my favorites, they were just overall kickass. But that’s about as far as I go with giving this game prop. The stages were so predictable, and overall everything looked a bit too cute for me. There wasn’t much to do after you collect the seven emeralds and fight final bad guy. And I didn’t know what to think of the game in terms of story plot line. It’s obvious that they wanted to make a connection to the final scene in Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, with what happened to shadow and all, but the story in this wasn’t very clear and broken up. While it was fun to play, it got pretty boring since I began to fell as if I wasn’t getting anywhere in the story anytime soon. It was a good game but not much content to get mild fans or gamers new to Sonic hooked on it in my opinion. It’s probably a game for Sonic fans looking for their next fix. Very Happy