Sonic Heroes
Sonics Heroes is (as far as I know) Sega’s first original game as a third part developer. Its predecessors Sonics Adventure 1 and 2 both came out for the Dreamcast and were later ported to the Nintendo Gamecube, but Sonic Heroes was the first 3d Sonic game release for PS2 and Xbox.
Sonic Adventure was a worthy attempt to bring the character to a full 3d environment, but by Sonic Adventure 2 the appeal was already wearing off and the games flaws were becoming obvious. For most gamers, Sonics Heroes is the beginning of the trend of really terrible Sonic games. Now I’m sure some of you out there are already prepping your hate mail to me, and that’s fine. The later 3d Sonic games do have their fans, and despite being a technical mess, there is a charm to them. They can be quite enjoyable if you put in the effort, and can see past the major issues which are sloppy controls and horrible camera angles which makes for very frustrating gameplay.
Control and camera aside, let’s get into this. Sonic Heroes is an interesting attempt to make Sonic more of a puzzler platformer. Instead of playing as a single character, you now play as a team of 3.
There are 4 teams to choose, they all have their own storyline, and play through the same levels. The main difference between 3 of the teams (Team Sonic, Team Rose, and Team Dark) is the difficulty of playing through the levels. Within each team is a speed member, like Sonic, Shadow, or Amy who moves quickly, a flying member like Tails who can fly short distances and up over ledges, and a power member like Knuckles who can punch enemies and destroy objects. They each have several special abilities to help you get through the levels. You can switch members at any time during a level to suit your needs. This is starting to sound like a Lost Vikings kind of game, but it’s really not that involved. Though it’s slower paced than previous Sonic games and there’s different ways to get through the level, the levels aren’t brain-busters.
There are some minor gripes here: The team concept is a little lame since all teams have the same 3 abilities, even though those abilities don’t fit what some characters could do in previous games. Also I’m sure Sonic players don’t care too much about the storylines, but Sonic Team usually puts some effort into keeping the story interesting for some games. This is the real exception. The stories are pretty lame, and is just “Eggman is up to no good, stop him”.
Also there’s a bit of a power up system. There are power cores for each character type throughout the level and collecting them can raise each character from level 0 to level 3. With each level increase your abilities improve.
Team Chaotix is a whole different story. Staring members from lesser known Sonic titles, team Chatoix plays the same as the other teams, but there goals a very different. Instead of simply getting to the end of a stage, this team has certain objectives to complete. Objectives include defeating a certain number or type of enemy, collecting items, etc. This is a really neat concept for the game, but fails simply because the levels are still so linear. If the levels were more open this would work much better (for the other teams as well I think).
If you you’ve never played a 3d Sonic game before and are curious, Adventure and Adventure 2 are much better, or the newer Sonic Unleashed. If you love those games, or any other 3d sonic game, then you’ll probably like this one as well. If you aren’t too curious then I really wouldn’t bother looking this one up.
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