Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut
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Sonic Adventure is a 1998 Dreamcast launch title and is the first Sonic game to make the jump to 3D in the main series. While the original game was well received, the DX version was met with mixed reception by critics and fans alike.
"OH NO!" Qualities
Overall
- Due to being rushed, Sonic Adventure DX is a lot glitchier than the original Dreamcast version it came from. Most infamously, the walkway to the loop in Emerald Coast has broken collision detection.
- Despite the gtaphics being great, they are a downgrade from the Dreamcast version.
- One of the most note worthy changes is the lighting, which looks duller than the original and loses some effects such as Sky Base getting darker when beneath the clouds.
- Transparency is also a major issue, with the workarounds making textures look blocky and low resolution.
- Several textures now have compression artefacts that ruin the details (this was also the case in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, but to a lesser extent).
- All the environments in the game (except for Emerald Coast, Lost World and Mystic Ruins to some extent) are overall more bland and uninteresting to look at.
- Inconsistent framerate; the game will constantly dip below 60 FPS and even 30 FPS at times (this isn't the case on the Wii or emulators, though); in addition, several objects didn't have their logic adjusted for the higher frame rate, and have incorrect behaviour.
- The newer character models, although are higher polly than the originals and have actual hands, look like plastic due to the bad lighting and clash with the other characters (most visibly, the echidnas in the past).
- Also these newer character models do not fully fit in the game, as there are too many times when a graphic glitches (like Sonic's shoes when he runs showing incorrect textures or his eyes disappearing) and the characters lose a lot of expressiveness, so in several scenes the intention is lost. For example, when Sonic rescues Tails in the latter's story, his cheerful smile looks like a "meh" expression.
- In one scene, Amy's model from the original Dreamcast game is reused, so she looks inconsistent and excels from the other models.
- Also these newer character models do not fully fit in the game, as there are too many times when a graphic glitches (like Sonic's shoes when he runs showing incorrect textures or his eyes disappearing) and the characters lose a lot of expressiveness, so in several scenes the intention is lost. For example, when Sonic rescues Tails in the latter's story, his cheerful smile looks like a "meh" expression.
- Somehow, some of Knuckles version from the 1999 E3 demo version made it into this version.
- The concept of skipping the scenes of the game is interesting but it does not run very well, there are times when you have to press the Start button a lot or at a specific moment, sometimes if you skip a scene at the time wrong it sometimes crashes or freezes the game.
- While the mission mode is an interesting implementation in the game, several missions are boring and repetitive, an example is where you have to move a statue to its objective or excavate a specific part.
- The wrong sound effects play often, and some don't play at all.
- Metal Sonic is the only thing you get for collecting all 130 emblems in DX, and he doesn't even have his own unique animations or gameplay. He's just a Sonic re-skin only available in his levels, and "Metal Sonic" isn't even available in the Adventure mode.
- To unlock Metal Sonic, you need to collect all emblems. In the original game the emblems didn’t serve much purpose (other than buying rare Chao via the Black Market website in Japan), so you didn’t have to beat all Chao races or clear all Trial missions as Big, which are commonly known as frustrating. In SADX, however, you have to beat all Big missions and Chao Races to unlock Metal Sonic and get the achievements.This can become frustrating.
- False advertising: Screenshots of the game in development use the Dreamcast images.
PC and HD versions
- The graphics have somehow gotten even worse. Textures have more compression artefacts and are sometimes even lower resolution than the GameCube textures, plus the lighting is even worse.
- The HD versions removed the unlockable Game Gear games.
- Menus in the HD versions are harder to navigate.
- The HD version decided to go back to the GameCube FMVs, despite the 2004 PC version having higher-quality versions; in addition, all PC/HD versions have a horribly compressed intro.
- Butchered audio quality; the PC version uses WMA (Windows Media Audio) format which results in worse audio quality despite being in 44.1 KHz; the HD versions, despite going back to the ADX, sound even worse thanks to poorly coded ADX playback.
- The 2004 PC version doesn't scale the HUD, meaning at higher resolutions the HUD will appear tiny.
Good Qualities
- The GameCube version of DX is the most decent version, the lighting looks decent (although it is still inferior),there is not much compression or it is not very noticeable several times (maybe the compression was due to the capacity of a MiniDVD, although in the HD versions it is not excusable), has better sound quality, the levels look better than in the other versions where it looks flat and more compressed (although the drop in quality is still noticeable in levels such as the first act of Ice Cap) and it has the Game Gear games.
- Great graphics, although they are a downgrade from the Dreamcast version.
- Chaos system improved including more Chaos species, gardens look decent, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle Black Market added, Egg Carrier garden fixed, you can see Chaos stats and Tiny Chao Garden compatibility (obviously exclusive to Gamecube).
- Some levels like Lost World, Red Mountain and Casinopolis don't lose so many details and still look decent.
- The 2004 PC version has mod support, meaning that people have managed to bring back the Dreamcast visuals and audio; notably, Lantern Engine (brings back the Dreamcast lighting) and Dreamcast Conversion (brings back levels and effects).
- Mission Mode, despite its missed potential, was a nice idea.
- The Game Gear games are a nice inclusion, though they only appear in the GameCube and the original 2004 PC ports.
- Due to being on better hardware, the game now runs on 60 FPS, where the original version runs only on 30 FPS.
- The Steam version uses shaders to make the character lighting more closely resemble the GameCube version.
- The GameCube version's music is based on the Japanese release, which is actually higher quality than the international releases (since space had to be made for the English dub).
- Despite the poor execution, having a playable Metal Sonic in a mainline 3D Sonic game is still a good concept.
- It's currently one of the easiest ways to obtain, and play this game legally.
- There's a fan patch called BetterSADX that improves the game in many ways that will let you enjoy the game.
Trivia
- The graphical downgrades got so bad that there's an entire site devoted to showing how many downgrades there are.
- Strangely, DX's intro seems to have been based on the AutoDemo prototype since several shots match up (though fortunately, the GameCube version uses a higher-quality source).
Videos
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