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Sonic Adventure confirmed for the Xbox Live Arcade

Baron said:
I can't believe the negative attitude people are having towards this game now. Clearly most of you weren't old enough back in 1999 to play this game when it came out. It was and still is a great game. This revisionist "the game is unplayable" BS is just appalling.

Gotta quote this. I've still got no problem with this game and it controls just fine for me. Only problem I have are the glitchy levels. Fell through the floor twice in the second playthrough of the demo.
 

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Roto13 said:
I disagree. : P I think SA 2 got a lot more polish than SA 1 (Though it's still kind of rough) and there was nothing in SA 2 that was nearly as bad as the Amy and Big stages in SA 1. There are a few new stupid characters, but at least Shadow and Rouge play almost exactly like Sonic and Knuckles. The friends in SA 1 were so much worse.
This was actually one of the reasons why I skipped out on SA when I first got my DC and picked up SA2 instead. :lol
 

DeVeAn

Member
Okay, its not as bad as IGN and 1up say. I played through it and there are a bunch of little tech problems. Stuff like camera with no right stick, and collision detection. If anything it played better than the cube version which I remember was worse than the Dreamcast one.

Problem is it was built with such limitations that its "bad design" today. A lot of older 3D games are very poor now. There are exceptions of course.

I really wished they polished it up and gave it a full HD treatment. Ah well, now I can just click an icon and play it without busting the DC out.
 

Roto13

Member
DeVeAn said:
Okay, its not as bad as IGN and 1up say. I played through it and there are a bunch of little tech problems. Stuff like camera with no right stick, and collision detection. If anything it played better than the cube version which I remember was worse than the Dreamcast one.

Problem is it was built with such limitations that its "bad design" today. A lot of older 3D games are very poor now. There are exceptions of course.

I really wished they polished it up and gave it a full HD treatment. Ah well, now I can just click an icon and play it without busting the DC out.
Dreamcast tech can't be blamed for shitty controls and horrible cutscenes and tons of bugs and evil camera angles (damn you, Sonic's ruins stage).
 

skyfinch

Member
They bumped the frame rate up. Cutscenes are normal, but the game play is 60fps. It was 30 on the DC (SA2 was 60fps on the DC).
 

Jex

Member
Unfortunately this game still sucks. Ah well, I didn't think it was any good when I tried out on GameCube. That's what I get for investigating a Sonic title.
 

Roto13

Member
skyfinch said:
They bumped the frame rate up. Cutscenes are normal, but the game play is 60fps. It was 30 on the DC (SA2 was 60fps on the DC).
The DX version was 60 fps, but it still dropped to like 20 at certain points and it seemed a lot worse than going from 30 to 20.
 
I was enjoying this, a blast from the past. Then I fell through the floor. Then I glitched through the pier as I ran from the whale. I cried, and vowed to never sully my memory of this game again.
 

skyfinch

Member
Jexhius said:
Unfortunately this game still sucks. Ah well, I didn't think it was any good when I tried out on GameCube. That's what I get for investigating a Sonic title.

I bought it for nostalgia reasons only. Personally preferred SA2 over this one.

It's a bitch trying to get used to this game again. Completely forgot that the DC only had on analog stick so there's no way of controlling the camera. :lol
 

JaxJag

Banned
Seems like a good port, controls how I remember it did on the Dreamcast.

The visuals seem to be holding up well, on par with most Wii games.
 

Roto13

Member
skyfinch said:
I bought it for nostalgia reasons only. Personally preferred SA2 over this one.

It's a bitch trying to get used to this game again. Completely forgot that the DC only had on analog stick so there's no way of controlling the camera. :lol
L and R control it a little, I think.
 
Well, that's confirmed: they removed the unlockable Game Gear games, likely because this is supposed to be just "Sonic Adventure" and not "Sonic Adventure DX".

Anyway, I wrote up my own review for the game here, if you want to read it. For those of you who don't want to read it and just want a summary, well:

sonicdunno.gif
 

dimb

Bjergsen is the greatest midlane in the world
skyfinch said:
I bought it for nostalgia reasons only. Personally preferred SA2 over this one.

It's a bitch trying to get used to this game again. Completely forgot that the DC only had on analog stick so there's no way of controlling the camera. :lol
Pretty sure L and R do some remedial camera work.
 
I saw there was a "free camera" option in the options. what does that do? (didn't test it)

edit: just tested it. lets you move the camera around with the right stick. it's only available from the pause menu, not the main menu.
 

skyfinch

Member
JodyAnthony said:
I saw there was a "free camera" option in the options. what does that do? (didn't test it)

edit: just tested it. lets you move the camera around with the right stick. it's only available from the pause menu, not the main menu.

That's a bit of a plus.


btw, I turned the game off after the first level because I fell through the floor. :lol
Love you, Sonic!
 
Compelling_Gameplay said:
Ray pointed out to me that there's a sexy shower area in this game.

This is why I don't play Sonic games...but probably why he does.

You don't play Sonic games because you consort with perverts?
 
Tomasooie said:
Nice review, but the game isn't being rendered at 480p. It's clearly way sharper than that: probably 720p, but not all of the pixels are devoted to the actual game screen.

I use a VGA cable for my Xbox 360 and it certainly looks jaggy enough to be 640x480 upscaled. There's no way this is 720p.
 

DeVeAn

Member
Started raising Chao. I never knew the redid the garden to be more like SA2! Sweet, now you can see their stats and such.

BTW I think the graphics look damn clean. It runs at a better frame rate than the cube for sure.
 

Tomasooie

Member
Sega1991 said:
I use a VGA cable for my Xbox 360 and it certainly looks jaggy enough to be 640x480 upscaled. There's no way this is 720p.
Well there's absolutely no way it's upscaled standard definition. Play it on an actual widescreen HDTV -- as I said before, it's clearly sharper than that.

On your photo from the last page, you're playing it on an old 4:3 CRT monitor -- is it even possible for the Xbox to output at a higher resolution than standard at 4:3?
 
I just played Adventure on my Dreamcast through a VGA cable a few weeks ago and tried the XBLA demo today. I must say the XBLA version isn't all that bad but it's just the same game I played back in 1999. Nothing else, no frills but it does load somewhat fast and the graphics are clean. I wish there were a widescreen or stretch mode, the blue borders are kind of distracting to me.

I may buy it for nostalgia's sake but 800 points is a tad much. I wonder if it will ever hit 600 or the 400 mark like some other games do on occasion...
 
Tomasooie said:
Well there's absolutely no way it's upscaled standard definition. Play it on an actual widescreen HDTV -- as I said before, it's clearly sharper than that.

On your photo from the last page, you're playing it on an old 4:3 CRT monitor -- is it even possible for the Xbox to output at a higher resolution than standard at 4:3?

I'm not quite sure I follow - the Xbox detects the VGA cable and gives you output resolution options like a PC, all the way from 800x600 up to 1920x1080. If the resolution is higher or lower than what the game is currently outputting at, it scales it.

I have it set for 1280x1024, and there's no way that's what this game is running at.
 

DeVeAn

Member
Wow, so you can make this the "DX" version for $5 DLC. I am sorry but that damn mission mode is not worth $5. Thats half the price of the entire game. Whack. SEGA what is this sleezy shit?
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
XiaNaphryz said:
This was actually one of the reasons why I skipped out on SA when I first got my DC and picked up SA2 instead. :lol
Amy's stages weren't that bad though, it was Big's that sucked!
 

Sydle

Member
Even after everyone said not to do it, I played the trial. Was this game really that ugly back then? I remember being dazzled by Emerald Cost...

The game play has not held up at all. I wish I would have left well enough alone with my memories of it back in 2000.
 
I decided to download the trial yesterday just to see if the port was as bad as people were making out in the run up to it's release. Apart from the borders down the sides of the screen, it's perfect. The game runs at 60fps at all times, and the characters have their DX models, but they're nowhere near as shiny as they were before (on the Gamecube, they all looked like they had been wrapped in saran wrap/cling film). It would have been nice if they had fixed a few of the bugs (in particular the spots where it's possible to fall through the floor), but I'm not too bothered, as I don't think the game would have been 800 points if they had fiddled with it, and Sonic's first level is the only level where I found it happened all that often.

As for the game itself, apart from the bugs mentioned above, I still think it plays great. It's nowhere near as good as any of the 3D Mario platformers, but it's my favourite 3D Sonic platformer by far.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Better port than expected, but still not great. Should have been higher resolution and in 16:9 at minimum. Would have been nice to see improved effects as well (they didn't even implement the TEV water that was used in the Gamecube version as a shader). At least it looks MUCH better than the broken ass PC version.

Ben2749 said:
I decided to download the trial yesterday just to see if the port was as bad as people were making out in the run up to it's release. Apart from the borders down the sides of the screen, it's perfect. The game runs at 60fps at all times, and the characters have their DX models, but they're nowhere near as shiny as they were before (on the Gamecube, they all looked like they had been wrapped in saran wrap/cling film). It would have been nice if they had fixed a few of the bugs (in particular the spots where it's possible to fall through the floor), but I'm not too bothered, as I don't think the game would have been 800 points if they had fiddled with it, and Sonic's first level is the only level where I found it happened all that often.

As for the game itself, apart from the bugs mentioned above, I still think it plays great. It's nowhere near as good as any of the 3D Mario platformers, but it's my favourite 3D Sonic platformer by far.
Did you ever try Sonic Unleashed on 360? Definitely my favorite 3D Sonic.
 

Rlan

Member
The "Sonic Adventure DX" expansion is up there as well, with the 60 missions and the Metal Sonic playable bit. Did anyone download it? I was wondering if it had separate MS Leaderboards or any of that stuff.
 
Damn it! I'm trying hard to hold off on getting this game but hearing it has the SA2 style Chao Garden and runs at a steady 60 throughout makes it very hard to not control my urges. ;_;
 
Ok so I've played two levels (Emerald Coast, Windy Valley), and I really don't understand the hate for this game. It plays just fine, the only problem about it is the camera- and even that isn't downright horrible.

Oh well.. The only thing I'm dreading is Bigs fishing stage. :(
 

Roto13

Member
Regarding the DX expansion, do you still have to unlock Metal Sonic by getting all of the emblems? (Because that's toooootally not worth it.)

And I gather the Game Gear games, which would make the DLC worth buying, aren't there?
 
I just don't understand people who are getting their memories "totally destroyed!!" by playing this again. Do you not play your old games? I go back to play my PS1 games all the time, and of course they're not gonna age well. It's been 10 or 15 years! Unless it was a 2d game, I find it really rare 3D games as old as this one to hold up perfectly today. I'm really not sure what people expect to happen when they go to play a straight port from over a decade ago.
 

clav

Member
SwiftSketcher said:
I just don't understand people who are getting their memories "totally destroyed!!" by playing this again. Do you not play your old games? I go back to play my PS1 games all the time, and of course they're not gonna age well. It's been 10 or 15 years! Unless it was a 2d game, I find it really rare 3D games as old as this one to hold up perfectly today. I'm really not sure what people expect to happen when they go to play a straight port from over a decade ago.
Castlevania Symphony of the Night still stands to the test of time.

This game has not aged well at all. Worse than a half-ass port. They didn't bother upscaling anything. Not even the resolution.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
SwiftSketcher said:
I just don't understand people who are getting their memories "totally destroyed!!" by playing this again. Do you not play your old games? I go back to play my PS1 games all the time, and of course they're not gonna age well. It's been 10 or 15 years! Unless it was a 2d game, I find it really rare 3D games as old as this one to hold up perfectly today. I'm really not sure what people expect to happen when they go to play a straight port from over a decade ago.
Sonic Adventure is a bit of a special case in that it was already broken and unpolished when it was released. As a launch title for a new generation of console it was easier to ignore, but the cracks were showing just a year after release. At this point, it's just a mess. There are plenty of Dreamcast games from that era that still hold up very well.

Other launch DC titles like Powerstone and Soul Calibur still hold up beautifully to this day.

Castlevania Symphony of the Night still stands to the test of time.
2D games tend to hold up much better than early 3D games.
 

Suairyu

Banned
Sega1991 said:
Anyway, I wrote up my own review for the game here, if you want to read it.]
Spot on. I played the Dreamcast game again somewhat recently and I was amazed I could ever stomach it as a kid. It's not that it's a terrible game per se, but it certainly is below average and not really worth anyone's time. I think the fact it was Sonic made me think it was good.
 
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