Sonic Heroes was, however, better than Sonic Adventure 2. Possibly 1. The challenges presented by needing this character to do that was interresting and, dare I say it? Clever. Had it not been promised to be better than the SA's, it would not be the most disapointing new game. But, Naka screwed up, and Heroes pays the price. As good (I wish I could think of a better word right there) it was, it was not classic Sonic good (and again). Not only did they once again waste five minutes of each level with Sonic rolling around a loop or funky road, but Robotnik was still Eggman, and Tails' voice was still fucked. To any classic Tails fan, it was hard enough to see the designers alter his design more than with Sonic or Knuckes. But then they most likely hired a girl to do the voice, and listed her with a guy name in the credits so they could still say Tails was male. And then, Sonic could no longer roll. One of the few things SA2 kept of from the original games was his ability to roll around. But in Heroes, sonic grabs Tails and Knuckles in a triangle-like formation, and speeds forwards what would be about 15 feet. Plus, 80% of the time you don't even realize you pressed the buttons to do that or did it in the wrong direction and plunged off the level's edge.
Again, a new paragraph is needed to list the butcherings of a game. And then, once you've gotten past all of these, you're stuck with absolutely no originality. Yes, the original Sonic games deserved the classic level pattern of a green level, then later a casino level, and more level plans were never altered that I can't think of in my rage. But a 3D game deserves change! Isn't that why it's 3D!? In SA1, you kept the level layouts, and I suppose this is excusable as it was a pioneer in terms of game style. But then, they left out the casino level in SA2, yet kept the green first level. And then came Heroes. Not only did they lack the creativity to come up with ANY new level concepts not used in a previous game, but they couldn't even copy enough to fill their "standards!" There were two green levels in the beginning, two casino levels later on, and two rail levels (from SA2), etc. Every concept came in twos!
I have one final, and great, uncontrollable hatred at a part of Heroes. Team Chaotix. First, for those who don't know, I should explain that each playable team contained one speed character (like Sonic), one power character (like Knuckles), and one flying character (like Tails). Now, back to the insufferable monstrosity that occured with Team Chaotix. For any classic Sonic fan who is old enough or knowledgable enough to know what the Chaotix are, you would easily think of Charmy the Bee as the flying character, Mighty the armadillo as the power, and either Vector the crocodile or Espio the Chameleon as the speed. While neither of these candidates had exceptional speed, one could easily come to the conclusion that Espio would be picked, as Sega could use his invisibility as something to tell people you can use, in a vain attempt that the common person would be suckered into buying it for one bit of gameplay. And of course, that's what happened. Espio as speed, Charmy as fly. But then apparently Vector was too "cool" and "hip" a character with his walkman on his belt and headphones on his ears to leave out. Yet this doesn't even begin to form an excuse to exclude MIGHTY the armadillo as a power character. HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU SAY VECTOR IS STRONGER THAN AN ARMADILLO NAMED MIGHTY!?!? For the sake of not feeling guilty about overly inapropriate material on my website, I will not continue with this bastardization (I realize two uses of that is perhaps much, but it descibes perfectly what happened to Sonic).
A conclusion now works its way into this piece of over 4 years of pent up anger...and getting that out is attributed to the Cynical Pie, over in the links section. More specifically, to the rant entitled "Ranters who won't rant" which rants about how some people refuse to acknowledge things that piss them off. I was playing Heroes today, and began cursing in my head at the multiple loops (don't let me start again...), and thought about that rant. So then I decided to write it, and here we are. I'm going to end this now, as the departing of my rage seems to have left my writing a level down from where-ever it was at the beginning of this rant. But I guess (as my final statement) that this was not actually a conclusion, but more of a tip-of-the-hat/advertisement. Yes folks, you too can have lots of money if you rant like CP tells you to do!
