The basic concept of a Sonic game is pretty simple. Sonic is a blue
hedgehog who runs really, REALLY fast. While they've kept the speed
aspect since the series went 3D, they've always also had various other
types of gameplay included, such as treasure hunting and even fishing.
Sonic Heroes does away with all these and, for better or worse,
focuses purely on the speed. The story is always exactly the same as
well. Dr. Robotnik makes a bunch of robots and tries to take over
Mobius. While he's always the villain, Robotnik hasn't been the 'final'
bad guy in awhile. There's usually a least one little extra villain with
a twist at the end. It was Chaos in
Sonic Adventure and Shadow in
Sonic Adventure 2. There's a
similar little twist in
Sonic Heroes. It's not hard to figure out
just from the opening FMV, but I won't spoil it here.
The big gameplay twist for Sonic Heroes is that you now play in
teams of three. Each member of the team is color coded, with the colors
based off Team Sonic. The blue character's focus is speed with some
moderate attack power, the red character's focus is attack power, and
the yellow character has low speed but has the ability to fly around
with the others. There are four teams to choose from and each plays
through the same stage though with some differences, mainly in terms of
difficulty. You can also build up a power meter to perform a team up
attack, which pretty much annihilates everything on the screen.
Team Sonic has Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, and is the normal difficulty.
Team Dark consists of Shadow, Rouge, and E-123 (the robot from Sonic
Adventure 2), and is the hard difficulty. Team Rose has Rose, Big
the Cat, and Cream the Rabbit, and is the easy difficulty. There is also
team Chaotix, from a lesser known 32X 'Sonic' title called Knuckles
Chaotix, which has Epsio the Chameleon, Vector the Crocodile, and
Charmy Bee. Team Chaotix is a little different from the others. Rather
than just getting through the level, you have to achieve some sort of
goal. Some of the levels are easier than they were with Team Rose, and
some are harder than they were with Team Dark. As usual you'll have to
play through with all of the teams in order to get to the true end of
the game.
Despite it's solid foundation, the game has some issues. For starters
the levels just feel too long. I don't mean any one team specifically
either (the levels tend to be a bit shorter with team Rose). I just
frequently felt very tired of a level by the time I got to the end.
Also, while the Robotnik boss fights are pretty fun, the fights against
the other teams usually end up just being a button mash fest. Too much
is going on to try to use any 'intelligent' battle plan.
One thing that really aggravated me was the end of some of the 'auto'
sequences. You see, frequently you'll go through a series of loops or
turns or jumps that the game pretty much controls on it's own. The
problem arises at the end of these sequences. Sometimes they will end
with you landing safely, and other times you'll have to manually control
the group to avoid falling to your death. The problem is you never know
which is which. I would frequently die from moving my group when I
should have just let them go automatically, and sometimes I would die
from not moving them to safety. How am I supposed to know when to do
what?
Another small issue is that your partners can get hurt and temporarily
incapacitated. Well, much of the time, your moves and attacks require
the presence of at least one of your partners. Basically, the stupid AI
can get you killed. It's not a huge issue, but it's there and mildly
annoying. I'm going to end by saying that the casino levels are very
cool.
