Topic: IMPRESSIONS: Sonic Adventure DX Director's Cut

[TheYoungerPlumber]

Sonic Team plays a trick on Father Time.

One level was playable for each Sonic Adventure DX character at E3 2003.  From what I’ve been told, the game is already done, though it certainly didn’t look it in LA.  The character models taken from Sonic Adventure 2 Battle look decent, but the environments haven’t been touched at all.  Playing as the faster characters reveals an unacceptably horrible framerate.  At times the game ran at 60 frames-per-second, but it often drops below 30 for no apparent reason -- something I found very distracting.  Tails’ snowboarding level has the most trouble: I honestly felt as though I were playing the game on a Nokia N-Gage.      

I am also disappointed with the controls, which are just as bad as in the original.  Although I’m aware of how hard adding to an already-completed game can be, Sonic Team could have at least tightened up the analog controls a bit, even if they couldn’t implement camera control with the C-stick.  When a similar game very early in development (Sonic Heroes) handles better than an update to an already completed game, I can’t help but be frustrated.    

The Sonic Adventure DX E3 demo left me yearning for my 4-year-old Dreamcast original.  I only hope the gameplay bonuses in the final version can make up for its shoddy framerate and unimproved controls, because right now I’m not looking forward to my own review of this game.