Recent reviews by muteKi

SO. It's unfortunate that Sega was rather dishonest about the reason for the PC delay -- specifically to add a rather questionable form of DRM that they didn't even get the implementation right on. They used Denuvo, which is a rather overkill DRM program that sometimes gets flagged as a false positive by your antivirus (because the multiple re-encryption the program uses is something that malware developers like to use to avoid detection). While they were committed to fixing the most egregious issue with the DRM -- that it required a continuous internet connection to play the game on launch -- within a day or so, it's still frustrating that the game's launch was tainted by rank dishonesty and questionable administrative decisions like this. Note that Denuvo requires the publisher to send the game executable to them to build the DRM-encrypted version; the Steam version was likely done at the same time as the other versions, with the additional lead-time likely used primarily to have the Denuvo version coded up. I haven't had any issues with offline play since the patch was put up, but between the bad communication and such a strict form of DRM, I couldn't let the issue go, even if my review is positive overall.

Game itself is good, though. Levels have familiar designs but are greatly expanded to the point where most of them are 3-4 times (or more!) larger than their original sources, built with mechanics found from throughout the stage. Production values on sprite art, animation, and music are all, frankly, impeccable (the synth horns in the music would normally feel cheap, but here they work especially well in the context of mid/late-90s CD game audio). The bosses are somewhat unpleasant though, several of which are overcomplicated affairs, some of which have next to no connection to the stages that they're part of (the Metal Sonic boss is the most egregious). Even so, the joys deeply outweigh the frustrations. Worth a look.

Requires fairly beefy specs to run well, mainly because the simulation is just that detailed. That's cool. What's even cooler is the beautiful way the side of a car deforms when you shoot a cannonball at it. You can also re-create the old Spielberg TV movie, Duel.

I think as far as Sonic in 3D goes, the first Sonic Adventure got a lot of things right that games after it failed to grasp -- yes, even in the presence of 4 fishing stages. If you've come to think of Sonic in 3D as running quikcly across narrow paths crossing the abyss, you should at least go back over this game. Levels in this game have more variety in their structure, such as Ice Cap's death-pit-free climb through a circular cave, or the almost Mario 64-like ascent up the Pleasure Castle of Twinkle Park. Part of the reason the levels work as well as they do is that every character has a slightly different way to play. For example: Knuckles' stages are all more open-ended and tend toward larger open spaces, while Tails' stages tend to be more straightforward runs of the faster segments' in Sonic's game. While people who are fans of Sonic mainly from Sonic 3 [& Knuckles] might find these changes in gameplay disappointing, I think they help keep the levels fresh. Since Sonic himself goes through nearly every stage and area on his own (including most of the open areas of Knuckles' game!), it makes completionism a bit less of a grind (although the less said about Big's missions, the better).

That all said, the camera is pretty bad, even now -- and it's probably the reason that the 3D Sonic games after this one tended toward less ambitious level design. This last playthrough I noticed an astounding amount of clipping; I assume this is an issue with the updated version, since while previous versions of the game (i.e., the Dreamcast or 2004 PC versions) didn't have this issue. This is still probably the definitive version of the game. Most of the important graphical effects are here, it runs at a stable 60 FPS on a modern gaming laptop, switching focus doesn't kill the game, and it can run at high-definition resolutions (in a forced 4:3 ratio, admittedly -- but the previous PC release only supported widescreen by cutting off the top and bottom of the screen). The game was rushed a bit to get it out in 1998 before Christmas so the Dreamcast had a killer app, and all versions of the game since (including the bugfixed Dreamcast releases put out for other regions, called the "International Edition" in Japan) have struggled to get a stable game out of it, and even in this recently-patched version many well-documented bugs are still hanging around. On the other hand, it's still probably a more stable game than Donkey Kong 64 -- and supports a wider variety of play interests than "wander around a big map collecting stuff".

Another minor frustration is the lack of cutscenes. While for Sonic's story that doesn't matter much (Sonic's story is defined mostly by the characters around him and he doesn't really develop as a character during it), the other characters all get to be a bit more complex and actually develop as indivduals over the course of the game. Gamma's quest of self-awareness, for example, has a surprisingly tragic end to it for a game about a fast talking blue hedgehog; it's not on the level of a game like Super Mario Galaxy, but it definitely had a lot of thought and heart put into it.

That's basically my summary of the game -- an ambitious but flawed game that definitely had heart in it, before sequel fatigue and shrinking budgets caused the level design to be formulaic and a bit on the bland side. If I were to recommend a 3D Sonic game other than Generations, this would be it.

You'd still do well to check out the Dreamcast release, however, as a few flashy graphical effects courtesy of the console's hardware shading never made it into any of the ports -- Sky Deck in particular has far more dramatic and foreboding lighting and shadows, looking a bit dead in comparison in the DX version. A shame, but these effects are rarely enough to spoil the game; the stable framerate and generally much nicer-looking textures more than make up for it most of the time. (And I suppose a patch to get the proper graphical effect in Sky Deck is not out of the question.)