Sonic Heroes

Sonic the Hedgehog, Sega’s long-ago answer to Mario, has still managed to live out his days in a three-dimensional world, long after father Sega retired from the console business. However, Sega has not seemed to be able to do Sonic any justice since the good old’ days when games were bounded by the x and y plain. And even though Sonic has gained MANY friends over the past few years, it hasn’t seemed to help so far, until now. For the first time ever, Sonic and his pals (Knuckles, Tails, and Big the Cat, to name a few) are working as a team (or four teams to be exact), which seems to be the well-needed step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the teamwork doesn’t make up for the same key problems Heroes’ predecessors had.

You begin “Story Mode” by choosing one of four teams: Team Sonic (Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles), Team Dark (Shadow, E-123, and Rouge), Team Rose (Amy, Big, and Cream), and Team Chaotix (Espio, Vector, and Charmy). The levels slightly change, depending on which team you chose, but are basically the same. Every team consists of three characters, each with their own special attributes: Speed character, Strength character, and Air character. Each character is represented by a certain colour: blue for fast characters, red for strong characters, and yellow for air characters. Switching between characters on the fly is as easy as pressing either the X or Y button; you can’t switch characters in mid-air, which can cause a few problems.

Controlling each character can be fairly easy most of the time. The control stick obviously moves the character, the A button makes the character jump, and the B button makes the character attack. Since you play as a team, there are also certain team combos that can be used at any time that either do a super attack, which deals a lot more damage than any player’s normal attack, or do a special move, which allows the team to by-pass a certain obstacle. The teamwork aspect works very well and pulling off the limited amount of combos can be a lot of fun. The one annoying flaw in the game’s controls is the camera (controlled by the c-stick); a flaw that plaques most action/adventure games. What makes the camera such a nuisance is the fact that when you try to rotate it to see who the hell is attacking you, it automatically switches into first person view. In fact it is almost impossible to rotate the camera in any situation without having the camera switch into first person.

The levels are designed in typical Sonic fashion with many long tracks, evil robots, bumpers-galore, and alternate routes. The levels are fairly straight forward, and although they don’t seem linear, you always eventually end up at the end. Luckily there are many checkpoints scattered throughout the levels, which don’t make them drag on any more than fifteen to thirty minutes at a time, making for a fairly short game.

Although the Story Mode is short, the multiplayer adds on a lot more replay value, with 7 different modes, all of which have to be unlocked. Sadly, the multiplayer only supports up to 2 players, but is still a lot of fun. All the different modes are played on stages from the Story Mode, which are obviously tailored for each mode depending on the certain style of game play (i.e. Race mode removes a lot of the enemies so you can continue moving throughout the whole level without many interruptions).

For some reason the last few Sonic games have looked exactly the same (graphic-wise), and Heroes is no exception. The graphics feature the same old Sonic appeal, with a bright pallet of colours and a big-headed, small-bodied cast of characters. Not only have the graphics not changed much, but the sound also appears to not have changed much either. It features the standard array of sound effects is and a soundtrack that mostly influenced by techno and pop punk.

Heroes is probably the Sonic Team’s best attempt at a 3-D Sonic game to date, but unfortunately the same annoying flaws have yet to be ironed out. So if you enjoyed the previous 3-D Sonic games, then you will defiantly be pleased with the changes Heroes made to the series, but if you are not a Sonic fan, then you best not bother with Heroes and save your money for the day Sonic Team finally fixes a few of the bugs caused from the 2D – 3D crossover.