Quick! Name a level in Sonic Adventure 2 that isn’t City Escape (the first level)!
You probably couldn’t think of one. Maybe Pumpkin Hill, from remembering its rap-based theme song? But one very distinctive level in that game is the last one on the Hero Side: Final Rush.
Wait, what do I mean by Hero Side? None of this paragraph really matters, but…. There’s two scenarios in it, the Hero story with Sonic, Knuckles and Tails, and the Dark story (the game shies away from the term Evil) with series debut characters Shadow and Rouge, and Dr. Robotnik, a.k.a. Eggman, playable. The story scenes from Sonic Adventure 1 were ditched in favor of a level select map, and the varied gameplay of the first game narrowed down to running stages (Sonic/Shadow), searching stages (Knuckles/Rouge) and shooting stages (Tails/Eggman). Gone were Amy and Big the Cat’s playstyles, and Omega’s were given over to Tails and Eggman.
Of course, everyone most loved the running stages. The game’s named after Sonic, after all, even though they had some issues. The issues, they were what many people who played the game remembered. Although the game is arguably an improvement on SA1, gave us more insight into Eggman’s history and motivations than we’ve ever had before or since, and even its lore plays a big part in the Sonic 3 movie, it’s still a 3D Sonic, and so it’s still seen as inferior to the Genesis originals. The 3D Sonic game released after Sonic Adventure 2 was Sonic Heroes, which was mostly about running; the searching and shooting gameplay seen in SA2 hasn’t to my knowledge returned since.
But as ZoomZike reminds us, there are interesting ideas in Sonic Adventure 2! He examines the last of the running levels (if you don’t count the very hard to unlock Green Hill level), in fact the last Hero Side level in the game.
Final Rush takes place in space (there’s still gravity though), and is themed around Sonic Adventure’s 2 new gimmick, rail grinding. You’ve shredded on rails throughout the game up to this point, but most of Final Rush takes place sliding around on rails improbably placed in Earth orbit. The level is rife with opportunities to send your pitiful blue garden mammal through a fiery reentry. My own memories of the level, like most of the game, involve camera struggles and fighting glitches, but I remember Final Rush being entertaining at least.
ZoomZike thinks the level was well-designed (23 minutes). Maybe you’ll agree.
