Summer of Sonic (5.5): Sonic Heroes

Super Bunnyhop also did a video on "the first levels" of Sonic games, and one of the ones he said he quite liked was the opening to Sonic Heroes. After a bit of digging, I realized this game had a PC port, but for whatever odd reason was never ported to Steam. I assumed that it wouldn't work out of the box, wouldn't install, and if nothing else wouldn't work with Windows 10. That would explain why it wasn't on Steam.

I was wrong.

Well, I was sort of wrong.

Out of the box it did in fact install and does in fact work with Windows 10. It starts up, the game loads - albeit sluggishly initially - and then I began the tutorial. At first I thought "this looks at a little better than SA2, but the camera is bad" and then I thought "uh the camera is really bad, what is going on" and then I realized: the camera spins incessantly and builds speed until it begins shearing through the earth.

I want to point out that the SA2 camera is so bad it took me a while playing the next game to realize the camera was bugging out. That's not to say that Sonic Heroes camera is a dramatic improvement, just that SA2 soured me so much I was surprised at something working improperly.

Luckily, the apparent fix is to plug in an Xbox 360 controller - which took me a day to dig out, but whatever - and replace the Xbox One controller with it. I've got to admit I'm not exactly pleased to be using the 360 controller, given it just feels worse, but it's a great deal more functional than the camera spinning incessantly. I assumed if the game was a complete dumpster fire I'd just put it right down.

I mean I also assumed it was going to be a complete dumpster fire. Middle era Sonic! Dumpster fire! Right into the trash with you, hedgehog!

This is review five and a half out of nine (But how many halves!?) of the Summer of Sonic review set. Review five is here while review six, which will be up sooner than later, is here.


 I really don't get why this game isn't on Steam. Once I got the game working and the 360 controller out, it wasn't even all that difficult to find a widescreen hacked exe and get that running as well. The resulting game is ... Well it isn't gorgeous like Sonic Generations, but it is completely suitable for its age. I'm not super certain all the attempts at getting FXAA or AA or whatever else actually works, but the screenshots eventually start to look sort of alright once everything was rolling along.

Visually Sonic Heroes has more of the pleasant colorful elements that I feel relate to the roots of the series. It wasn't made that much later than SA2 - and this is a little unfair, because I'm pretty sure some graphically improvements are software forcing themselves in - but the appearance is much more pleasing. It still feels a little like trying to jam Sonic into a "realism" but less "the real world" and more some other concept of realism, if that makes sense, which it probably doesn't. Anyway the levels are colorful and bright in the way Sonic 3 is.

The music, as well, has less derpy lyrics and less "I wish I was in a real band" moments, less Knuckles rapping, more feeling like the old school Sonic music. It's not as good, no, but it's at least catchy and pleasing in reasonable amounts. When coupled with the better grasp of speed and momentum this game has, it tends to give you that feeling of delight you expect from Sonic games. I mean I personally really enjoyed some of the tracks, chipper and upbeat as they are, but I would understand if you didn't.

Basically, it feels closer to playing Sonic 2 or Sonic 3, than SA2, which felt like playing Goldeneye or some other N64 ugh. I understand, yes, that's partially a limitation of the technology and the engine, but the visual choices just resonant within those limitations and the end result didn't work for me. This works for me. I like the visuals of this game.

The basic system of this game rotates around three person teams which you control one at a time. You do not, generally, need to concern yourself too much with the others on your team while you're not controlling. They will pick up rings and power ups and sometimes hit enemies, but they're essentially not really there. You switch between them to accomplish various tasks, which doesn't divide as cleaning as the game likes to pretend. It titles them Speed Strength and Flight, but it's more like... Agility, Punchy, Hovering or something. Some enemies need the hovering character to bring down, and some need the agility character to pummel effectively. Outside of combat, you switch pretty often and it doesn't quite feel forced.

I mean, yeah, putting a big wall up in front of you forces you to hover over it... But like, that's how walls work? And yeah putting a glass floor down that you need to smash forces you to use the strength character, but both these examples feel relatively natural. It does feel like they stretched to fit more mechanics, some of which aren't really necessary, into the game... But on the most part once you get the switching down it's sort of a neat way to break up the game.

And don't get me wrong here, you do not "go slow" if you're not playing your speed character. The speed character goes fast, but the other characters still blast around the screen. As opposed to SA2, where the other character sections go so far as to be the antithesis of Sonic gaming. As opposed to SA2, where you engage in being tortured, in a video game.

The game also has teams and you're supposed to beat the game with all four teams because reasons and who cares. Anyway, each of the teams has the same set of character types, but they're all individually voice acted and I guess sort of talk to each other. I only did the game with two of the teams; for one I violently hate the chaotix on principle and Cream the Rabbit creeps me out.

Of the levels I played - spoilers, the game is kinda broken and I used a trainer to try some of the later levels after it bugged out six times in a row in the fourth zone - the game has lots of variety but a very confusing grasp of the concept of fun. The levels on Team Sonic and Team Dark are very, very long averaging about eight or nine minutes on first pass. I replayed some of them, and even with a reasonable grasp of the levels and mechanics, still found they take about five or six minutes.

Levels are different for each team, but not massively so. It can feel a little jarring, and mess with your memorization of levels, but it's not like you "do the same levels four times", not exactly anyway. I really enjoyed sections of some of the levels, and the way the game breaks up speed, fighting and hovering trickiness is quite refreshing. Oh, and zones (or whatever they're calling them) divide into two acts, but much like Sonic 3 & Knuckles the act are very different from each other. Same general palette and location, but it changes them up a lot. For example, the Casino Zone - because of course there's a casino zone - has a more pinball/slot machine first act, and then crazy bingo tubes dotting the second act. It's pretty cool, actually.


Oh, and this game has special stages that resemble the Sonic 2 ones. I'd make mention of more of this, but I was giving the game a run to see how annoying Cream/Big/Amy are (VERY annoying) and happened to get one to pop up while playing the first level again. I have no idea what the trigger was, maybe rings? Anyway I have no idea, but it looked ok and didn't make any sense.

So what are the big issues with the game? Well, first and foremost, the whole team angle is a bit goofy and I'm sure it subtracts for some players. I sort of like it, sort of don't, as some of the abilities and juggling what to do can be interesting but often feels too linear. Several of the abilities feel extremely unreliable and when coupled with the next problem can make the game murder fun out of nowhere...

Also, seriously, serrrriousssly, can someone at some point find the memo inside Sonic Team or Sega or I don't know where but it must exist - the one that says Guys, what we need in this section where a misclick hurls you at a 100 miles per hour is a bottomless pit? It's a 12 year old game, sure, but what kind of glaring brain problem do you have to have been born with to think this is good design? It's just unfathomable. You do get better, sure, but the game is estatic to punish the player for the slightest mistake. And there's no reason to do so.

I gave up on the game on the fourth act or zone, which is level eight or so. Why did I give up? I kept dying to bottomless pits. Why was I dying? Because the game would just hurl me off cliffs as part of the "run on rails" sections. I mean... Like, it would just do that, over and over, without a checkpoint in between. I repeated the same four minutes four times in a row and finally got it, though my solution was basically to use the hover character to float til I was aligned. At which point, it bugged out and hurled me off a cliff to my death without a checkpoint. That's it, I'm done!

The camera and control issues wouldn't be 10% as annoying if Sonic or Shadow or whoever else wasn't constantly hurling their carcass off some platform. As you get better at the game this is less and less an issue, but why does it start out as an issue routing from the level design? Just don't hurl people off cliffs or buildings all the time. It's not that hard! There's no reason for paths to be so tiny and frustrating, or for various objects to be so finicky.

Anyway as I was saying the camera and controls simply aren't great, and the game is a fair bit more frustrating than it should be, over a couple issues. Given the speed you move at, and the windows of opportunity, abilities are set with too low a threshold for activation and areas to work in are just too tiny. The camera problems would be mitigated by a larger area to view... Well, and not sucking in general...

Oh and fucking seriously, trying to align to a 2d object without a shadow along a 3/4 from behind perspective is nearly impossible until your sense of direction within a game is very good. I die over and over again on the dumbest stuff and just wonder what the game's playtesters or developers thought. There's a section with a rising lava dumb crap as per usual and you're supposed to use your flying character to grab a hanging rope. The big issue here is the rope has no shadow - because lava - so you're trying to align a weird shaped object with what is essentially a line and a circle floating without any real frame of reference. It's terrible, terrible work.

I realize this is a 15 year old game or whatever, but Sonic games had these problems for a decade and you honestly have to sit and question why they let issues like this slip through in the rush to produce ... What, exactly, were they spending time developing with like SA2 or this game or Sonic 2006? A lot of dumb stuff like cutscenes and voice acting and...

Oh, and yeah, this game has voice acting and it is quite the mixed bag. I guess it's just sort of a thing, but Tails being a pre-schooler sounding boy just irritates me. I mean he sounds excited, which is good, but it's a bit creepy. The characters all basically act like a tutorial when you're not playing them, gently reminding you who is good for what or explaining game mechanics, but since it doesn't force you to respond or pay attention it honestly isn't as annoying. Also, there isn't a set tutorial character - if you're playing as Tails, Knuckles will suggest you switch to Sonic, and when you switch to Sonic Tails will explain the pole mechanic and so forth. So there's dialogue for each team member of each team and it keeps the repetition down. I mean yes, they get a little boring, but there's enough variety I didn't hate it instantly.

One issue that is very uniquely this game's is the leveling system. It's garbage. It's  just janky trash and I have absolutely no idea who thought it was a good idea. Basic run down is your characters level. Fine. It makes some of their attacks and skills work better. Problem is, when you die (ie when you're new to a level, or when you run into something hard) you lose all your levels. End result is the game heaps on punishment, since level 0 characters are weirdly worse in ways hard to articulate.

Does anyone in these Sonic games ever like... Understand fun?

Anyway the basic issues persist as with SA2, albeit in a somewhat less irritating - but still irritating - fashion. The camera and control stemmed difficulty issues plague the game and show a sublime misunderstanding of game design that likely persists for the next decade of Sonic games. I gave the power plant level multiple tries on team dark and died repeatedly on the exact same spot, owing less to reaction time and more to how difficult it is to line of three axis on the viewing angle it was giving me. And you have to pull this trick THREE TIMES. Three times! There's a decent game here, but it is buried behind a fundamental misunderstanding as to the game's limitations.

It's one of those games where you feel like testers got very good at the game's dumb problems and never fixed them. And I'm not budging on this one, the camera is objectively bad in some spots. Bear in mind Sonic Heroes was meant to "introduce new players" to Sonic

So would I recommend digging up a copy of Sonic Heroes and giving it a shot? No, not really. Did I have fun with the game? Yes, absolutely, there's an excellent game here. In fact, seriously, it just makes me really sad. The game has an excellent skill ceiling and feels really good to play well... But it bugs out, it spikes difficulty or the camera breaks.

It's not like the game is innately bad. The core premise is good. The engine handles the speed well, the game has a high skill ceiling and "lane switches" very literally quite often. You could take these same assets and these same levels, and make a very good game!  But being hurled into a bottomless pit because an on rails jump section repeatedly failed to connect?

Yeah I'll pass. Well, I mean, I did play the game a good eight hours or something, so it's not that bad, but it should be so much better than it is.