Sonic Heroes Review: Canât Save the Day
Sonic Heroes is a huge turning point for the Sonic franchise. More than just the last game to feature the Sonic Adventure voice cast, it was Sonic's first multiplatform adventure after the demise of the Dreamcast. It landed on every platform available at the time, it set the world on fire, selling incredibly well and netting generally positive reviews.
Sonic Heroes was many peoples' first exposure to Sonic, coming not too long after the ports of his Dreamcast titles to the Gamecube, Sonic Heroes would further the divide created by the GameCube port of Sonic Adventure 2: Between those who grew up with Sonic on Sega consoles, and those who knew him through his forays onto other hardware. This puts me in a sort of unique position with the the series, because I really did a little of both. I remember seeing some of Sonic Adventure's more egregious flaws, in particular.
In a lot of ways, Sonic Heroes both makes those a lot worse and makes some strides to try and mitigate them. Sonic Heroes is divided into four stories, though only one of them really serves any sort of importance. Team Sonic, Team Dark, Team Rose, and Team Chaotix, each consisting of three members each. Team Sonic is the normal mode, Team Dark is hard mode, Team Rose is easy, and Team Chaotix is basically Mission Mode. You'll need to clear all four Stories and get all 7 Chaos Emeralds (put a pin in that, that'll come up again later) to get the hidden Last Story.
The plot, outside of Team Dark, is completely inconsequential, and even then, that feels like a complete afterthought. Team Sonic wants to stop Eggman because that's what they do, Team Rose wants to find Sonic for Cream's Chao's friend and Froggy, Team Chaotix picks up a gig thinking they'll get paid, and Team Dark is after Eggman so newcomer E123 Omega can destroy him and hopefully they'll find something to help Shadow regain his memories. That's about as basic and deep as it ever gets with Sonic Heroes, and that's not necessarily a good thing.
One of the most beloved aspects about the Sonic Adventure games is their stories, the worlds they created, the characters that grew in them, especially Shadow. His mysterious pass, his heroic sacrifice to save the world and fulfil his promise to his friend left a profound impact on everyone who played Sonic Adventure 2. Heroes effectively undoes all of that for what's barely a cliffhanger to set up Shadow's own game. Metal Sonic is here as the main villain, but that's totally inconsequential as everyone else. It never comes up again in any game, nobody grows from the adventure, and there's just so much nothing here that makes me wonder what the point of any of this was. So with the story being a massive letdown, maybe the gameplay will be better?
Unfortunately it is not. The gameplay is a barely functional, slippery mess. It uses the same gameplay engine as the Adventure games, but the topspeed is arbitrarily DOUBLED for no real reason at all, and the levels aren't entirely built to compensate for the speeds you can achieve. Many times I found myself coreening off the side of platforms and cliffs because I couldn't stop myself in time. This issue persists throughout the entire game, and it only becomes worse in later stages that just drag on and on and on with a seemingly unending parade of robots, that you must absolutely destroy if the door that leads to the path forward will open. What makes this even worse is the returning Special Stages, which can only be accessed through a key in certain stages. Picking up the key isn't the issue, it's usually in plain sight and easy to get to. What IS the problem, is that once you pick it up, you cannot get hit ONCE, or else you lose the key and don't even get the chance to pick it up again. What makes this even worse is that the collision detection is so wonky here, things that shouldn't even come close to you end up knocking you five feet back. Even worse, on top of the flying off into bottomless pits issue I mentioned, is that attacking with the Power Formation will send you lunging forward at a borderline unpredictable distance. Sonic Heroes is a game where even the most insignificant mistakes will cost you dearly.
This review seems overly negative, and that's just unfortunately how Sonic Heroes is. It's never boring like a Rise of Lyric, and at it's highpoints, you can really see what could've been a true continuation of the Adventure series. At its low points, it can feel like the worst game in the world. And it's a major bummer that the highs are drastically overshadowed by the lows.

















