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Sonic Adventure 2: Battle Review - Gamecube

Sonic on Nintendo? That's right. Now that Sega have left the console making business and have changed to being a third party developer, Nintendo fans can now enjoy the games Sega was most famous for. When first announced that a Sonic game would make an appearance on the GameCube everybody wondered about the possibilities. However, GameCube fans were given a tweaked version of the famous Sonic Adventure 2: Battle game. Available since launch in Australia, Sonic Adventure 2: Battle was warmly welcome and has proved to be the third highest selling launch title for the GameCube.

Gameplay

SA2:B's story is a simple one. Dr Eggman, otherwise known as Dr Robotnik in previous instalments, has invaded a secret military base to uncover an experiment that his grandfather had been working on a long time ago before the military shut down the project. After releasing the experiment, Dr Eggman discovers that the experiment is a black hedgehog named Shadow. Soon after Dr Eggman and Shadow plan to take over the world by stealing the Chaos Emeralds so they can power up a big ray gun on a space colony base called Ark. In the process the military thinks Shadow is Sonic and in turn, thinks he's the one stealing the Chaos Emeralds. An excellent thing about the story is that for the first time in a Sonic game, you can play the Dark Story as well as the Hero Story which adds more insight on how the story progressed.

Single-player mode has over thirty levels in it and over 150 missions, and they all have different objectives. While the shooting and running levels have the 'find the goal' objective, the treasure hunter levels have the objective of finding three Chaos Emeralds or finding three keys or finding three pieces of the Master Emerald. While that is the main layout of the story mode missions, after completing these levels you'll have side missions in the level select option of the game. They range from collecting one hundred rings to finding the lost Chao (more about Chao later). After you complete a level in story mode, you will always be introduced to the next level by a cutscene of some sort that will progress the story either a little or a lot.

The levels in SA2:B are well thought out and do suit the style of the level usually but at times can get annoying. An example of this is when playing the treasure hunter levels. You see, because the levels are so big and all you have to do is find a small object, and then only wat to find it is by using a device that beeps when you are near the object and clues that are sometimes useless, you will take a long time to find it. This doesn't suit Sonic games as Sonic should be fast paced, yet the treasure hunter levels are definitely not this, making them boring and feeling like a ... (continued next page)