This review contains spoilers
Sonic Heroes, or “Sonic Zeroes”, is yet another 3D Sonic game often maligned by Sonic Fans. Actually, no one has officially dubbed this game as “Sonic Zeroes,” but I’d be willing to bet that I’m not the first one. In the timeline of Sonic games, Sonic Heroes was still a relatively early example of a 3D Sonic game. For the first time, a Sonic game did not debut on a Sega console, instead launching on all three major consoles of the sixth generation. This was the first Sonic game without the backbone of a Sega console to support it. While Sonic Heroes does not usually get the brunt of the dissension towards modern Sonic games like the Adventure titles do, it is in the same camp. Sonic Heroes holds a bit of significance for me, and it’s not exactly positive. The Sonic Adventure games were some of my favorites growing up, and I greatly anticipated the third entry. What I received instead was this game, and while I did not enjoy it nearly as much as I did the Adventure games, I still played the hell out of it. I thought it was supplementary material to hold us off until the third Adventure game was released. Boy, I wish I still had that kind of optimism as an adult. For several years since initially playing it as a kid, I’ve heard a litany of negative opinions about this game all over the internet. I somewhat agreed with the general consensus, but I forgot exactly why I didn’t like this game. I thought it was due to Sonic Adventure 3 never seeing the light of day and blaming this game for not living up to my expectations as an eight-year-old. After replaying Sonic Heroes, I realize that perhaps the criticism is a bit harsh, but there is still plenty to find fault with.
It’s a bit silly that I thought of this game as a botched Sonic Adventure 3 because Sonic Heroes was obviously never intended to be a successor to them. It bears little to no resemblance to either of them. For one, the Adventure games had ambitious, grandiose interwoven stories between six characters and an epic space adventure with incredibly high stakes. Sonic Heroes takes a backseat and offers a Sonic story so simple that I’m hesitant to even call it a story. Eggman proclaims that he will take over the world in three days. How exactly does Eggman plan to accomplish this? We don’t know, but he sends Sonic and his friends a letter telling them he’s up to something grand. The stories for the other three teams are catalyzed a little differently, but all essentially result in stopping Eggman in his vaguest diabolical scheme thus far.
A grand story like the ones presented in the Adventure games probably would’ve been too distracting. The ambition of Sonic Heroes lies in its new gameplay dynamic which is the core of the entire game. Each of the four teams comes with three different types of characters: speed characters, strength characters, and flight characters. These three types are based on the dynamic of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, but their attributes are translated appropriately for other characters from the franchise. The speed characters will blast through a level, defeat chains of airborne enemies, and use a tornado move to swing upwards on a pole. They are essentially the base character the player will be used to traverse through the level. The strength characters are the best in combat, easily taking down hordes of enemies and the occasional guardian with a substantial health bar. They can also break certain barriers and use a gliding move for traversal, usually when there is a giant fan present to glide upward. Lastly, the flight characters are pretty self-explanatory. This formation will always form a totem pole with the flight character on top. They’ll fly upward or across gaps and use the other team members as projectiles. When crossing a checkpoint or popping an item balloon/case, one of the characters can “level up” three times. Each time grants the character a more effective attack. After a certain point, the team can perform a “team blast,” which clears the screen of enemies and takes a chunk out of any bosses' health. One would think that constantly having to switch between three characters at all times would be an incredibly tedious, game-breaking mechanic, but it’s executed smoothly. Changing between the three characters on a team takes only a millisecond and the game gives the player enough time to determine which character needs to be used for a specific section. There are even color-coordinated suggestions placed all over each level for which team members to use. Thankfully, the foundation for this new gameplay gimmick Sonic Heroes introduces is competent.
The gameplay dynamics between the three characters aren’t the only type of chemistry presented here. There are four teams made up of recognizable characters from the Sonic franchise (although one team is debatable). Similarly to the way Sonic Adventure 2 was divided, the teams are built up of factions that revolve around a theme of the individual characters' place in the franchise. Firstly, Team Sonic comprises the three most recognizable protagonists in the Sonic universe: Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. I think anyone familiar with the Sonic franchise would guess the relationship between these three: friendly, positive, and confident. Team Sonic is probably my favorite game because there are no complications. It’s the base for the rest of the game to work off of and the prime directive in the game’s narrative. It’s tried and true 3D Sonic, and I can’t think of anything objectionable (except for the blubbering six-year-old they got to voice Tails in this game. What was wrong with his Sonic Adventure voice actor?)
In this world, where there is Sonic, there is also Shadow. As one could probably imagine, Team Dark has an incredibly different dynamic than the one of Team Sonic. Every member is seen as inherently villainous because of their antagonistic roles in previous titles. Shadow and Omega have to learn to cooperate, as they fight each other in the beginning cutscene. Shadow, Omega, and Rogue search for Eggman, but for completely different reasons than Team Sonic. Shadow has just woken up from what looked like a cryogenic chamber and has no memory of Maria or any of the events from Sonic Adventure 2. The player should also be confused, considering Shadow plummeted to the earth in SA2 and assumedly died, so that’s certainly a point of interest for their story. Omega is hellbound on destroying Eggman and every one of his robotic creations, including himself. I didn’t like Omega as a kid because I thought this was a return of Gamma from Sonic Adventure 1 and was disappointed that he no longer had that warm charm he once had. I now realize that Omega is not Gamma, only from the same series of robots. I like Omega now because he seems to be the strongest of the strength-class characters, and sometimes his hostile dialogue makes me chuckle. Rogue is here just by circumstance; she was trying to steal from Eggman again and found Shadow and Omega. One could assume that I’d hate Team Dark just from the characters alone, but their unsavory qualities are toned down significantly here from Sonic Adventure 2. Their campaign is a slightly harder version of Team Sonic’s, with some additional bottomless pits, ring dashes, and harder enemy placements thrown in for a challenge. Because I played Team Sonic first, I found Team Dark’s story easier. I had gotten a sense of flow from the game by then and already knew what to expect. I’m not stating that Team Dark is insignificant. This is just the natural flow of progression.
If the player is playing the stories in order like I did, the game takes a huge decline after Team Dark as the player starts Team Rose. It’s Sonic Heroes for your little sister, and I’m not saying that to disparage any young female gamers. I simply can’t imagine why anyone would pick Team Rose first over any other team in the game. A team consisting of Amy, Cream, and Big the Cat? What other demographic besides little girls did the developers have in mind here? Team Rose acts as an easy mode, a regression from Team Sonic and the polar opposite of Team Dark. Of course, the game becomes much easier after the player has beaten it twice already with two different teams, but Team Rose would be a facile affair regardless. There is a patronizing tutorial mode at the beginning, each team blast grants temporary invincibility, and the length of each level is cut in half. There practically isn’t a reason for Team Rose to exist. Their lackluster story of finding Froggy and Cream’s chao’s sibling doesn’t make a point for their significance either. The only use I got out of them was that getting to the special stages was much easier, and Big the Cat is still fucking hysterical, but for all the wrong reasons. Whenever he utters a line of dialogue, I don’t know whether to burst out laughing or coil back as a reaction to retching.
The last team is Team Chaotix, the one team composed of three characters that I’m sure will make most people go “who?” For those who don’t know, they have shelved characters from a failed Sega 32X game from 1995 called Knuckles Chaotix. The game sort of had a team dynamic like Sonic Heroes but executed in the worst way possible. The developers thought it would be appropriate to give them another chance in a similar game. Espio, Vector, and Charmy are resurrected as freelance workers who work as a team to do odd jobs. They are low on cash and desperate for work, which is why they don’t question a mysterious package with a one-lined walkie-talkie commanding them orders. Team Chaotix acts as a mission mode in which the team goes throughout the levels with some added objectives. These range from collecting snails, defeating enemies, blowing out torches, etc. At this point, playing the game again as Team Chaotix is tiresome, but at least the three characters have a nice sense of chemistry together. It’s refreshing to get some characters in a Sonic game that are INTENTIONALLY goofy for once. I also think it’s funny that Eggman gets so desperate in his situation that he has to hire what is essentially the Saul Goodman of odd-job workers to come and save him.
Unfortunately, the major grievance that most people have with this game is the lack of variety with each team. All of them have different dynamics in terms of characters, but this is definitely not the case for the levels. Whether the player is breezing through with Team Rose or trying to navigate over a series of bottomless pits with Team Dark, the levels are in the same order with almost exactly the same layout. As one could probably imagine, this gets old after a while. Fortunately, most of these levels are some of the strongest levels I’ve played in a 3D Sonic game. Each level is completely different in theme and design, and there are only two per theme, so they never wear out their welcome for one campaign. Seaside Hill and Ocean Palace are bright, sunny, and breezy, a perfect starting point for the game. Grand Metropolis has some of the most thrilling uses of the roller coaster track design Sonic is known for. Rail Canyon is a hectic loop of rail grinding that will test your reflexes. Frog Forest has always been one of my favorites from this game, probably due to the spectacle of the green jungle. Hang Castle makes fair use of a gravity mechanic, and I’m always drawn toward horror-themed levels. Egg Fleet and Final Fortress take the player right into the heart of Eggman’s shark-themed armada high up in the stratosphere. This level is so epic in scale that I’m almost sad to admit it puts the Egg Carrier from Sonic Adventure 1 to shame. The only level I didn’t care for was the casino levels because the pinball sections were frustrating. While these levels are individually very strong, they do not hold up well with the repetitive nature of the game.
Having to repeat the same levels four different times is most likely because Sonic Heroes was a rushed project. It’s somewhat executable because the levels are fun, but the most egregious aspect of this rushed development is the number of glitches. In many instances, the characters will fall through the ground, some ramps will take the player to oblivion, switching between grind rails will result in falling off of them, and good luck if the player ever accidentally changes characters during a pinball section. These glitches are more common with the Xbox and PS2 versions because the developers “didn’t know how to develop games for those two consoles yet.” I suppose I should count lucky that I have this game on the Gamecube, but I still encountered plenty of these glitches. I don’t think I have to explain why glitches that punish the player are inherently bad as they should be a demerit for any game.
The bosses in Sonic Heroes are a double-whammy of not holding up upon repeat encounters and not being substantial enough to hold their own in quality. There are three types of bosses throughout each campaign: an Eggman vehicle boss, a fight with another team, and an endurance fight with waves of enemies. The Eggman vehicles can be beaten in a matter of seconds, spamming the attacks of the strength characters with Egg Hawk and the homing attacks of the speed character with Egg Albatross. The team fights can also be defeated in seconds by spamming the tornado with the speed characters. The endurance fights inherently feel shoehorned as any endurance fight against waves of enemies tends to feel in any game. Remember how everyone collectively got tired of encountering Chaos 4 in Sonic Adventure? Sonic Heroes will teach the meaning of monotony to those with those gripes. Egg Emperor is the only boss that feels somewhat inspired as it’s the only challenging fight, but this sense of gratification does not hold up upon beating him three more times. The final boss at the end also does not feel like a culmination of each character's story but rather feels like extra content. Not only is this because of the slog of beating the game four times, but because of the esoteric means of unlocking this final section. To access the game’s finale, the player has to complete every special stage with either of the four teams. The player has to get a key and not receive any damage until the end of the level. This is the only aspect that gives Team Rose any credence to being featured because this is easier to accomplish with them (it’s also a funny thought that Team Rose is the most powerful of these teams because they are the only ones with the Chaos emeralds). If Team Chaotix’s story of rescuing Eggman didn’t give anything away, the true villain of this story is Metal Sonic, and the only crime Eggman is guilty of here is being a shyster and not paying Team Chaotix. He’s been disguising himself as Eggman and using his fleet to conquer the world...or something like that. The fight against him features each team taking down his force, with the final Super Sonic section capping it off. For some reason, the portion of this fight with Team Chaotix was the most difficult, while Team Sonic’s section was piss easy. This is anything but a satisfying fight to conclude the game.
Ultimately, I think if Sonic Heroes had a longer development time (if I can trust my sources on this), the game would’ve proved to be as exceptional as either Sonic Adventure game. It presented a mystifying concept that actually proved to work, it presented a cast of (mostly) recognizable and charismatic characters from the Sonic franchise, and the levels are consistently fun and varied. However, the flaws with this entry are so glaring that it’s difficult to look past them. There should be no excuse for faulty glitches and the amount of repetition. For a long period, I thought I hated this game for deviating from the Sonic Adventure name I had grown to love and starting what I thought was the series' decline. Upon replaying it, I’m happy to declare that it’s still a solid 3D Sonic game, all things considered. However, I am still not uttering Sonic Heroes in the same breath as the two Adventure games, and those games still have plenty of flaws themselves. Since Sonic Heroes came out, there have been MUCH worse outings from the blue blur, so maybe time and retrospection have also aided this game, for better or worse. It’s still in a rocky position for the franchise.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
It’s a bit silly that I thought of this game as a botched Sonic Adventure 3 because Sonic Heroes was obviously never intended to be a successor to them. It bears little to no resemblance to either of them. For one, the Adventure games had ambitious, grandiose interwoven stories between six characters and an epic space adventure with incredibly high stakes. Sonic Heroes takes a backseat and offers a Sonic story so simple that I’m hesitant to even call it a story. Eggman proclaims that he will take over the world in three days. How exactly does Eggman plan to accomplish this? We don’t know, but he sends Sonic and his friends a letter telling them he’s up to something grand. The stories for the other three teams are catalyzed a little differently, but all essentially result in stopping Eggman in his vaguest diabolical scheme thus far.
A grand story like the ones presented in the Adventure games probably would’ve been too distracting. The ambition of Sonic Heroes lies in its new gameplay dynamic which is the core of the entire game. Each of the four teams comes with three different types of characters: speed characters, strength characters, and flight characters. These three types are based on the dynamic of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, but their attributes are translated appropriately for other characters from the franchise. The speed characters will blast through a level, defeat chains of airborne enemies, and use a tornado move to swing upwards on a pole. They are essentially the base character the player will be used to traverse through the level. The strength characters are the best in combat, easily taking down hordes of enemies and the occasional guardian with a substantial health bar. They can also break certain barriers and use a gliding move for traversal, usually when there is a giant fan present to glide upward. Lastly, the flight characters are pretty self-explanatory. This formation will always form a totem pole with the flight character on top. They’ll fly upward or across gaps and use the other team members as projectiles. When crossing a checkpoint or popping an item balloon/case, one of the characters can “level up” three times. Each time grants the character a more effective attack. After a certain point, the team can perform a “team blast,” which clears the screen of enemies and takes a chunk out of any bosses' health. One would think that constantly having to switch between three characters at all times would be an incredibly tedious, game-breaking mechanic, but it’s executed smoothly. Changing between the three characters on a team takes only a millisecond and the game gives the player enough time to determine which character needs to be used for a specific section. There are even color-coordinated suggestions placed all over each level for which team members to use. Thankfully, the foundation for this new gameplay gimmick Sonic Heroes introduces is competent.
The gameplay dynamics between the three characters aren’t the only type of chemistry presented here. There are four teams made up of recognizable characters from the Sonic franchise (although one team is debatable). Similarly to the way Sonic Adventure 2 was divided, the teams are built up of factions that revolve around a theme of the individual characters' place in the franchise. Firstly, Team Sonic comprises the three most recognizable protagonists in the Sonic universe: Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. I think anyone familiar with the Sonic franchise would guess the relationship between these three: friendly, positive, and confident. Team Sonic is probably my favorite game because there are no complications. It’s the base for the rest of the game to work off of and the prime directive in the game’s narrative. It’s tried and true 3D Sonic, and I can’t think of anything objectionable (except for the blubbering six-year-old they got to voice Tails in this game. What was wrong with his Sonic Adventure voice actor?)
In this world, where there is Sonic, there is also Shadow. As one could probably imagine, Team Dark has an incredibly different dynamic than the one of Team Sonic. Every member is seen as inherently villainous because of their antagonistic roles in previous titles. Shadow and Omega have to learn to cooperate, as they fight each other in the beginning cutscene. Shadow, Omega, and Rogue search for Eggman, but for completely different reasons than Team Sonic. Shadow has just woken up from what looked like a cryogenic chamber and has no memory of Maria or any of the events from Sonic Adventure 2. The player should also be confused, considering Shadow plummeted to the earth in SA2 and assumedly died, so that’s certainly a point of interest for their story. Omega is hellbound on destroying Eggman and every one of his robotic creations, including himself. I didn’t like Omega as a kid because I thought this was a return of Gamma from Sonic Adventure 1 and was disappointed that he no longer had that warm charm he once had. I now realize that Omega is not Gamma, only from the same series of robots. I like Omega now because he seems to be the strongest of the strength-class characters, and sometimes his hostile dialogue makes me chuckle. Rogue is here just by circumstance; she was trying to steal from Eggman again and found Shadow and Omega. One could assume that I’d hate Team Dark just from the characters alone, but their unsavory qualities are toned down significantly here from Sonic Adventure 2. Their campaign is a slightly harder version of Team Sonic’s, with some additional bottomless pits, ring dashes, and harder enemy placements thrown in for a challenge. Because I played Team Sonic first, I found Team Dark’s story easier. I had gotten a sense of flow from the game by then and already knew what to expect. I’m not stating that Team Dark is insignificant. This is just the natural flow of progression.
If the player is playing the stories in order like I did, the game takes a huge decline after Team Dark as the player starts Team Rose. It’s Sonic Heroes for your little sister, and I’m not saying that to disparage any young female gamers. I simply can’t imagine why anyone would pick Team Rose first over any other team in the game. A team consisting of Amy, Cream, and Big the Cat? What other demographic besides little girls did the developers have in mind here? Team Rose acts as an easy mode, a regression from Team Sonic and the polar opposite of Team Dark. Of course, the game becomes much easier after the player has beaten it twice already with two different teams, but Team Rose would be a facile affair regardless. There is a patronizing tutorial mode at the beginning, each team blast grants temporary invincibility, and the length of each level is cut in half. There practically isn’t a reason for Team Rose to exist. Their lackluster story of finding Froggy and Cream’s chao’s sibling doesn’t make a point for their significance either. The only use I got out of them was that getting to the special stages was much easier, and Big the Cat is still fucking hysterical, but for all the wrong reasons. Whenever he utters a line of dialogue, I don’t know whether to burst out laughing or coil back as a reaction to retching.
The last team is Team Chaotix, the one team composed of three characters that I’m sure will make most people go “who?” For those who don’t know, they have shelved characters from a failed Sega 32X game from 1995 called Knuckles Chaotix. The game sort of had a team dynamic like Sonic Heroes but executed in the worst way possible. The developers thought it would be appropriate to give them another chance in a similar game. Espio, Vector, and Charmy are resurrected as freelance workers who work as a team to do odd jobs. They are low on cash and desperate for work, which is why they don’t question a mysterious package with a one-lined walkie-talkie commanding them orders. Team Chaotix acts as a mission mode in which the team goes throughout the levels with some added objectives. These range from collecting snails, defeating enemies, blowing out torches, etc. At this point, playing the game again as Team Chaotix is tiresome, but at least the three characters have a nice sense of chemistry together. It’s refreshing to get some characters in a Sonic game that are INTENTIONALLY goofy for once. I also think it’s funny that Eggman gets so desperate in his situation that he has to hire what is essentially the Saul Goodman of odd-job workers to come and save him.
Unfortunately, the major grievance that most people have with this game is the lack of variety with each team. All of them have different dynamics in terms of characters, but this is definitely not the case for the levels. Whether the player is breezing through with Team Rose or trying to navigate over a series of bottomless pits with Team Dark, the levels are in the same order with almost exactly the same layout. As one could probably imagine, this gets old after a while. Fortunately, most of these levels are some of the strongest levels I’ve played in a 3D Sonic game. Each level is completely different in theme and design, and there are only two per theme, so they never wear out their welcome for one campaign. Seaside Hill and Ocean Palace are bright, sunny, and breezy, a perfect starting point for the game. Grand Metropolis has some of the most thrilling uses of the roller coaster track design Sonic is known for. Rail Canyon is a hectic loop of rail grinding that will test your reflexes. Frog Forest has always been one of my favorites from this game, probably due to the spectacle of the green jungle. Hang Castle makes fair use of a gravity mechanic, and I’m always drawn toward horror-themed levels. Egg Fleet and Final Fortress take the player right into the heart of Eggman’s shark-themed armada high up in the stratosphere. This level is so epic in scale that I’m almost sad to admit it puts the Egg Carrier from Sonic Adventure 1 to shame. The only level I didn’t care for was the casino levels because the pinball sections were frustrating. While these levels are individually very strong, they do not hold up well with the repetitive nature of the game.
Having to repeat the same levels four different times is most likely because Sonic Heroes was a rushed project. It’s somewhat executable because the levels are fun, but the most egregious aspect of this rushed development is the number of glitches. In many instances, the characters will fall through the ground, some ramps will take the player to oblivion, switching between grind rails will result in falling off of them, and good luck if the player ever accidentally changes characters during a pinball section. These glitches are more common with the Xbox and PS2 versions because the developers “didn’t know how to develop games for those two consoles yet.” I suppose I should count lucky that I have this game on the Gamecube, but I still encountered plenty of these glitches. I don’t think I have to explain why glitches that punish the player are inherently bad as they should be a demerit for any game.
The bosses in Sonic Heroes are a double-whammy of not holding up upon repeat encounters and not being substantial enough to hold their own in quality. There are three types of bosses throughout each campaign: an Eggman vehicle boss, a fight with another team, and an endurance fight with waves of enemies. The Eggman vehicles can be beaten in a matter of seconds, spamming the attacks of the strength characters with Egg Hawk and the homing attacks of the speed character with Egg Albatross. The team fights can also be defeated in seconds by spamming the tornado with the speed characters. The endurance fights inherently feel shoehorned as any endurance fight against waves of enemies tends to feel in any game. Remember how everyone collectively got tired of encountering Chaos 4 in Sonic Adventure? Sonic Heroes will teach the meaning of monotony to those with those gripes. Egg Emperor is the only boss that feels somewhat inspired as it’s the only challenging fight, but this sense of gratification does not hold up upon beating him three more times. The final boss at the end also does not feel like a culmination of each character's story but rather feels like extra content. Not only is this because of the slog of beating the game four times, but because of the esoteric means of unlocking this final section. To access the game’s finale, the player has to complete every special stage with either of the four teams. The player has to get a key and not receive any damage until the end of the level. This is the only aspect that gives Team Rose any credence to being featured because this is easier to accomplish with them (it’s also a funny thought that Team Rose is the most powerful of these teams because they are the only ones with the Chaos emeralds). If Team Chaotix’s story of rescuing Eggman didn’t give anything away, the true villain of this story is Metal Sonic, and the only crime Eggman is guilty of here is being a shyster and not paying Team Chaotix. He’s been disguising himself as Eggman and using his fleet to conquer the world...or something like that. The fight against him features each team taking down his force, with the final Super Sonic section capping it off. For some reason, the portion of this fight with Team Chaotix was the most difficult, while Team Sonic’s section was piss easy. This is anything but a satisfying fight to conclude the game.
Ultimately, I think if Sonic Heroes had a longer development time (if I can trust my sources on this), the game would’ve proved to be as exceptional as either Sonic Adventure game. It presented a mystifying concept that actually proved to work, it presented a cast of (mostly) recognizable and charismatic characters from the Sonic franchise, and the levels are consistently fun and varied. However, the flaws with this entry are so glaring that it’s difficult to look past them. There should be no excuse for faulty glitches and the amount of repetition. For a long period, I thought I hated this game for deviating from the Sonic Adventure name I had grown to love and starting what I thought was the series' decline. Upon replaying it, I’m happy to declare that it’s still a solid 3D Sonic game, all things considered. However, I am still not uttering Sonic Heroes in the same breath as the two Adventure games, and those games still have plenty of flaws themselves. Since Sonic Heroes came out, there have been MUCH worse outings from the blue blur, so maybe time and retrospection have also aided this game, for better or worse. It’s still in a rocky position for the franchise.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com