Games to play before you die: 1)

Sonic adventures 2: battle

Format: Gamecube



It hasn't really been a great roll for sonic recently, his neglectful creators have been throwing him out with gimic after gimic. Fair enough sonic colours and sonic 4 look quite nice,but there arent any games in between that are worth playing. Only 25% of sonic unleashed is actually playable and the storybook franchise is just plain rubbish. But anyway as part of my new features i will tell you about games that are old and deserve you recognition.

Anyway if you can't wait for the new, decent looking, sonic games, I highly recommend you go out and get a game called sonic adventures 2 battle. Originally the game was called sonic adventures 2 and was only available for the dreamcast but it is better on the gamecube.
I have had my copy since release, but if you look on ebay or in your local gameshop you should be able to pick this up for easilly less than a fiver.

Firstly the game centers around robotnik's (not eggman, its robotnik sega don't change his name). Anyway again he is trying to steal the chaos emeralds using the help of his new hedgehog sidekick shadow the hedgehog. That's about it really, i don't want to give any spoilers, but it does get really compelling.

The gameplay is great and does have a really good 3D, fast feel that is what sonic games should be like. Sonic speeds quite respectively fast through his few missions and you really get a great sense of satisfaction speeding through a whole level and homing attacking some evil robots in the process. However in this game, similar to the first sonic adventure, you control multiple characters in different missions. These are sonic, tails and knuckles. However the 'Dark Side' of the story sees you playing as shadow, robotnik and rouge the bat.
Through these three different characters come 3 different play styles. Sonic and shadow are just get to the end of the level fast, tails and robotnik have a shooting style mission, rouge and knuckles have a scavenger hunt mission.

The sonic and shadow levels are probably the best as it is the most fun and you don't get bored on the missions as your always running to the end. Unfortunately there was a major problem with the jump mechanic as sometimes sonic's jumps would go crazy and perform his two-jump sequence at once. This was very annoying during one of the bosses as you will see if you play it.

The shooting missions weren't that bad but sometimes they could be frustrating and a bit boring, Also the scavenger missions were ok but when you get stuck on a mission it can be hell.

Another little flaw i had with this game was some of the bosses, as a lot of them were just prison robots and although simple to kill they were really boring. One of the bosses is against a ghost, and unfortunately, this battle drags on and becomes a chore. Despite this though the character vs character boss battles were awesome and great to fight out.

The graphics are pretty good for a gamecube game and improve vastly on its prequel. Textures are good and the lighting is rather good.
Some people say the camera is a bit rubbish but i think its pretty good and doesn't really interfere with gameplay.


This game has a very good musical score in my oppinion, some people don't like it's mix of hip hop, j-pop and rock. Personally i dig it. Most of the games songs are by a band called crush-40 who are to most a mystery. They ae actually a pretty decent band and i must admit if it werent for their music being incorporated into some of the levels then they wouldn't be as memorable. If you can play through this game and not get at least one song stuck in your head, then my god you deserve a medal.

People give this stupidly low scores due to the technical flaws and not on it's fun factor. I reccomend this game, despite it's few flaws there is a lot of fun and replayability in this game and definitely deserves your attention.