[EVENT] The Sonic Stadium 52 Game Challenge 2024! - New Prizes every week! Current Prize: Sonic and the Secret Rings profile gift AND Sonic's Birthday Bash challenge for additional prizes! (2024)

Weekly Check-In : Sonic Adventure DX (Steam Release)

I've finished Sonic's Adventure, hooray! And it only took me three weeks. Hopefully the rest of the characters won't take me near as long.

I don't have much to say about Speed Highway except that it's a solid go-fast level. It reminded me a lot of Radical Highway in that way, but lacking in alternative pathways. It had the added bonus of that section where you run down a building and dodge obstacles though. It's pretty basic, like a first level that got plopped into the middle of the campaign, but that doesn't make it any less fun.

I'm split on what to say about Red Mountain. On the one hand, the above ground section was kinda eh, but the underground section was a blast. The inside felt suitably treacherous without feeling cramped like the outside, and it had a lot of opportunities to chain homing attacks on enemies; a mechanic that I enjoy using.

Sky Chase Act 2 was still just alright. The controls are slippery and it's difficult to aim with the pinpoint accuracy that the game expects. It's relatively painless just getting through it to continue the story, but I don't look forward to emblem hunting on these stages. But hey, maybe once I git gud I'll come to appreciate it like SA2's kart stages.

Sky Deck...

Those camera angles, oh god! They look cool as still screenshots admittedly, but are vertigo inducing in motion...

...Yeahhh, I didn't enjoy this one so much. It has ambition for sure and was taking advantage of the novelty of SA1 being a fully 3D game, but it's both Way Too Long and dizzying to look at. Oh, and the walls are hungry in this level too.

Does Eggman not feed his battle ships? How irresponsible, tsk tsk.

Two more boss fights came after. Gamma was as tough as Knuckles, which in this game means he had the constitution of a wet napkin (not leather, like he claims... ), but Chaos 6 was a bit more fun since there was more to do in order to defeat him.

Lost World was pretty cool! It's not at all what I expect out of a Sonic game, rather resembling the temples of Ocarina of Time, but it fits the adventure motif and continues the trend of throwing new gimmicks at the player each stage. The snake and water part made me so nervous at first because of how Sonic kinda...shifts around on top of it as it moves, but I didn't have any problem with falling off like I'd feared. The appeal of this level for me is certainly the atmosphere.

With that said, I'm going to talk about the cutscenes surrounding it in the spoiler below because...well, spoilers.

Lastly, Final Egg. Great music, and so much to do in it. It's like if a McDonald's play place was also trying to kill you. I've been making a point to mention one or two fun little gimmicks of each stage, but with this one there are so many interesting things happening all at once. There's conveyor belts with spikes, passageways that resemble washing machines, lasers, swinging hammers, weird spidery elevators, entire rooms full of explosive badniks, fans, and Eggman's most evil weapon...

Mockery. -shakes fist-

I enjoyed this stage! However, what came next was...The Egg Viper.

I went into the fight thinking Eggman would be as much of a pushover as the other bosses, but of course this is Eggman we're talking about. He was the one pushing me over and off the ledge with those dang spiked discs. The fight initially seemed difficult because of those, but it ended up being more tedious than anything. It was a lot of "GET A LOAD OF THIS!" and waiting for the disc phase each attempt to figure out what distance I needed to be to not get punted off the platform. I did it eventually, but Eggman's lines in this fight will forever be burned into my psyche.

And with that, I have seen the ending of Sonic's campaign. There was some jank along the way, but overall I had fun and am invested in the story. My curiosity about this port has been satisfied, so my plan is to slap the the BetterSADX mod onto it for the rest of the way and see how it plays in comparison.

No updates for my SA2 A-Rank grind today; I banned myself from opening it until I made progress in SA1, lest I be hooked on one challenge for multiple days again. Regrettable considering it's this week's profile reward, but oh well. :P