Sonic Adventure 2 - HERO SIDE PART B
Nov. 17th, 2013 01:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xyzzysqrlSo after taking a day off to do nothing but lounge around like a useless lump and/or play Marvel Heroes (wow I love leveling Storm, you just turn on your Whirlwind of Doom and float lazily around and all the furniture and containers in the area EXPLODE VIOLENTLY) I am back for more Sonic Adventure 2!
Last time, I questioned Tails a LOT, enthused about grinding, ran off many cliffs, and Eggman blew up half the moon. Apparently at some big Sonic convention, a member of Sonic Team confirmed that yes, in all games after this there is only half a moon. The side that was destroyed was rotated AWAY FROM THE EARTH as to not bother people.
My theory is that this explains all the goddamn water levels and water-running and such in later games, because the tides are enormously boned now. Thanks, Eggman! Anyway while Eggman was busy DESTROYING THE MOON, the police were busy chasing Tails. Let's pop in and see how that's going, shall we?
Stage 7: Mission Street
In which Tails decides the best way to "hide" from the police is to stomp down the middle of a major street in the middle of the night, crashing cars out of the way and shooting police robots, all while yelling "OKAY!" to himself repeatedly.
Also there's this:
If you can't read that, it's Tails' profile. He has no date of birth, occupation, or nationality. His hair, complexion, and race are all "Fox". He IS male, contrary to what his voice actor leads us to believe. And he is worth $1,000,000.
I like to imagine the police writing this out.
Officer Frank: "Where is he from?"
Officer Kensington: "I don't know, the woods or something. He's a fox."
Frank: "I'll put down 'none' for nationality. Does he have a job?"
Kensington: "He is a fox."
Frank: "Okay. What color is he?"
Kensington: "FOX-COLORED."
Frank: "Listen here, officer, is this a racial thing for you? All you've done is harp on about foxes."
Kensington: "A FOX ATE MY LAST PARTNER!"
Frank: "YOU'RE OFF THIS CASE!"
...Well, that got dark. Let's just keep going.
Pressing on a little further, I get the "Booster" powerup for Tails' mechawalker that lets him hover and float and fly around, so he can cross all the gaps he could just FLY ACROSS BECAUSE HE CAN FLY THAT IS HIS GIMMICK WHY IS HE LOCKED IN A MECHA?
Sigh. Anyway yeah now he can hover. Meanwhile, Omochao dispenses more useful advice. "To defeat the bomb robots, try shooting the bombs and the robots!" Oh my god Omochao why can't I shoot you.
Eventually in spite of Omochao's advice I reach the end of the stage (yay) and the game instantly leaps to Knuckles, who is in...
Stage 8: Aquatic Mine
Let's just Dive into the Mellow for a moment or two. That is laid back right there. It's a shame you can't hear any of it in-game because the mines are constantly making "bloop bloop" noises because there's water everywhere. Also the Emerald radar is pinging wildly. But, y'know. If not for that, it would be very relaxed.
It stays relaxed for about fifteen minutes as I splash around in the water trying to figure out how to access the first gem piece. Augh, digging doesn't work underwater whyyyy. Oh good they brought back the drowning theme. That's something they needed. Eventually I determine you just have to RUB AGAINST THE WALL and it will pop out. ... Yeah, that... was intuitive. Grumble.
Well. Twenty minutes of running around a SPOOKY MINE filled with SPOOKY GHOSTS later (why is everything Knuckles touches haunted now?) I've found all three gem fragments. Woo! Man that was a pain in the ass.
The next cutscene isn't as jaw-droppingly WTF as the "blow up the moon" scene, but it has moments. Tails grouses about not being able to get a signal on the other emeralds, then concludes this is obviously because they were taken to OUTER SPACE. Which makes... sense, yes, but another conclusion would be that using one emerald to track the others doesn't actually -work-.
Suddenly Knuckles bursts out of the sewer system and smoothly declares it's because he got lost in the mines. (Srsly his VA is smooth as HELL on this one line.) Tails suddenly announces that he's hacked a government computer (?!) and has found transcripts of calls between Eggman and the President (?!?!?) and he is now in pursuit of the President's limo. (Tails, no you are not. You're stationary on a street corner.)
Oh, also his jet which was a robot is now a car. For reasons.
That reason is Stage 9: Route 101 where Tails gets the lead out, puts the lead on the gas pedal, and does a racing sequence! I am delighted to find that this thing has drift physics. I am less delighted to find that I cannot shoot traffic. Damn.
It eventually becomes really obvious (as I start a second one) that Tails is just doing laps on a closed course. "Did you find the President yet?" Sonic radios, and Tails cheerfully shouts that it'll be a "few more minutes". Tails, dear... that's a closed loop track. If you didn't pass him, and he's not behind you, the president ISN'T HERE. Proving yet again that logic has no place in the Sonic universe, Tails pulls up behind the limo seconds later.
Inside, the President (who is made entirely of wood) is negotiating with Eggman. Sonic suddenly leaps in through the open sunroof, along with Tails. They do some technobabble, determine that Eggman IS in space and leave. The President is extremely nonplussed. We instantly cut to Egypt (or a likeness thereof), where Knuckles is claiming he saw Eggman and "that bat lady" enter a pyramid. Obviously that pyramid is connected to space somehow. OFF WE GO.
Stage 10: Hidden Base consists of Tails trying to find the front door to a pyramid. He does this by blowing up random pillars, leaping over quicksand, shooting robots and blowing up walls. A lot of walls. Each one takes a Vooken Cannon shot, or whatever it's called. Each shot is a single tap of the button.
EEE EEE EEE EEE EEE
EE EEE EEEEEEEE EE EEEEEEEEEE
OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY
EEEEEEEE EE EEEEEEE
OKAY
my poor brain
Anyway that was enough to get us in, so now Sonic does Stage 11: Pyramid Cave (HOW LONG IS THIS GAME) (aaugh) (this is just ONE HALF OF IT) which involves lots of running and jumping through literal hoops. That said, there's a lot of rails and you get the "bounce up and down" ability, and the stage flow is REALLY good... and y'know, for the first time this is starting to feel like the kind of Sonic game I really ENJOY.
Just moments, here and there, that tell me "Hey, this could be REALLY FUN."
Anyway, pushing through that, there's a scene where the gang finds a DOOR but it is LOCKED. So Sonic is all "WE CAN FIND THE KEY! RIGHT, KNUCKLES?" and Knuckles is like "what why me" and Sonic is like "WE'RE COUNTING ON YOU, THE WORLD'S GREATEST TREASURE HUNTER!" and gives him a big cheeseball thumbs-up, and then I see the title of the next level:
Stage 12: DEATH CHAMBER
Wow. THANKS, Sonic. Also fuck you.
Customary Music Link is "Deeper", which is a very chill smooth-jazz track about having REACHED THE DEATH CHAMBER and how it really SUCKS to be in the Death Chamber. Smooth jazz is a huge threat to all mankind. Also, I find some sledgehammer gloves, so I can punch metal boxes. METAL BOXES! Okay enough of that.
It takes me no-joke 18 minutes to find one part of the key. Deep breath. This is a LONG HAUL here.
Actually, you know the worst part of the SA2 Knuckles experience? You have to find the items IN ORDER. This is stupid. It means I walk past various perfectly good hiding spots over and over, and then AFTER I've been to the last one, I have to check them all -- AGAIN. Which as it turns out is exactly the case: The next two keys are in places I've already been past many times. 15 minutes later the level is done. Whew.
At this point the game suddenly remembers that boss fights exist! Or should I say... BOO-SS FIGHTS?!?! no I shouldn't anyway this is KING BOOM BOO who is a giant ghost which goes 'blaarrr blaaaugh" at you. You have to run away from him limpwristing fireballs at you until you catch up with a tiny ghost holding an hourglass. Hitting the hourglass opens panels in the roof, which makes him shrink into a shadow. Then you dig his shadow out of the ground, which returns him to normal size, so you can punch him in the ass. Repeat this until he is dead.
This game is really killing my sense of how... anything.. anywhere is supposed to logically exist. I'm not entirely convinced -I- exist anymore.
So what's next? A SECOND BOSS FIGHT IN A ROW. You know, the pacing of this game is kind of WEIRD sometimes. This one's the "Egg Golem", a giant stone statue. But you know what? While I'm doing the boss fight here, why don't you guys listen to the music from the cutscene right before it? In the background of Eggman's big reveal of the Egg Golem it started playing his ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE THEME MUSIC, E.G.G.M.A.N. ... Is that an abbreviation? Nope! Is it AWESOME? Yep! HE'S GOT THE MASTER PLAN.
Which is more than the Egg Golem has. The Egg Golem has an irritatingly slow attack pattern that ends with it exposing platforms on its butt. You climb them, hit the dingle at the top a few times and win.
For the next scene we head to SPACE!
(Note: This cutscene is a perfect example of the "overlapping voices" problem that keeps happening.)
Unfortunately, the Emerald shards all fall out of the spaceship and Knuckles panics, crashing the ship into the giant replica of Eggman's face that turns out to be his secret hidden base. Tails has created a fake Chaos emerald that does nothing but reverse the polarity and explode, and Amy points out helpfully that she has had absolutely no reason whatsoever to be included in this plotline or in any cutscene past the point where she broke Sonic out of jail.
Amy really -cares- about making my job easier.
Also I don't think "Bernoulli Sphere" is a thing that really exists, Tails. Did you mean Bernal sphere?
Anyway, on to Stage 13: Eternal Engine. That's probably the coolest stage name so far. The gimmick here is that Tails keeps accidentally locking on to stuff that blows open holes in the hull, which gets you sucked into space and killed to death by vacuum. Foxes cannot breathe in space. Good to know. This is also the first level where the camera controls get me killed, as it violently swings -away- from a critical jump, taking Tails with it in a curving arc that leads out to space. Foxes, I remind you, cannot breathe in space.
I have survived worse than the cameraman and the stage design actively trying to get me killed. I finished Sonic 2006, after all. So I beat on, mechwalker against the suction, ceaselessly towards the goal ring. Along the way I find a bazooka, which is kind of awesome I guess? And then shoot my way to the core, SHOOT THE CORE!!, and win. Hooray!
Cut to Sonic, who is being yelled at over the radio to put the fake Emerald in the thing... except, oh no, Eggman captures Tails and Amy apparently without any effort on his part! So now obviously it's time to find those emerald fragments as Knuckles.
Stage 14: Meteor Herd, and here's that music link. Not ... one of the stronger tracks. I think by this point EVERYONE is running out of steam. Oh well. Since I'm in space, meteors rain from above and I can jump super-high and throw things really far. "It feels good floating!" Omochao explains, and is promptly struck from above by a flaming hunk of space death. I didn't even have to lift a finger. Bwahaha.
I also manage to locate a pair of Sunglasses. These "let you see things you couldn't see before" so I put them on and Knuckles gets hit in the head with a meteor. Apparently what I couldn't see before is STARS. Ready when you are, Raoul!
In the end though, this level leaves me INTENSELY frustrated. There's a hint that one of the crystals is below the force field at the bottom of the level, close to the lava. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to to access that area, and as far as I can tell from a couple hours on GameFAQs and Youtube, nobody actually does. They just restart over and over until the shards are all accessable, because they're speedrunning. There is no GUIDE to tell you how to get that one particular shard. There's just infinite sadness as you run around and over and get pelted by space rocks.
This drives me up and down the walls for quite a while. Eventually, I too just restart over and over until I can get them all. Sigh.
Next up is a boss fight with Rouge... and her jiggle physics are hilarious. No, not her breasts. Her EARS. They go "FLOPFLOPFLOP" every time she moves her head. It's incredibly distracting. What follows is a painfully long cutscene where they argue and bicker and Rouge falls off a beam towards some lava and oh no but Knuckles saves her and she gives him the shards but it doesn't mean she LIKES him or anything and AUGH THANK GOD that's the last Knuckles level. On to Sonic!
Stage 15: Crazy Gadget.
...really, that's what you went with? "Crazy Gadget"? ...sure okay whatever. As it happens this stage IS pretty crazy, as the gimmick here is GRAVITY-FLIPPING in the most disorienting, control-reversing way possible. I genuinely have no idea what's going on most of the time through this level. I do know there are rail-grinds and those tube-things from Chemical Plant Zone in Sonic 2... I'm just glad to see the back of this entire thing.
Next cutscene! Sonic arrives to save the day, but he looks a little TOO smug about trading that fake emerald to Eggman, so Eggman capsulizes him and asks him if he REALLY thought he could trade a fake for his friends. What follows is my favorite moment in the whole game so far, and I actually LIKE Tails...
Tails: "How did you know it was fake?!"
Eggman: "Because YOU just told me, fox boy!"
Tails: *brain visibly goes supernova*
Anyway Sonic is shot into space, but not before telling Tails to be awesome and telling Amy to look after her own damn self. Yeah it's not like her one and only role was to get screwed by the plot or anything. Anyway boss fight, mecha to mecha. Shoot him four times and he's down. Yay.
Elsewhere on the ARK, Knuckles is exploring and Sonic just... teleports in with Chaos Control. Later games will completely forget that Sonic is capable of this. He asks Knuckles to go help out Amy and Tails, and off Sonic goes to SLAM DUNK THE CHAOS EMERALD.
STAGE 16: FINAL RUSH
Okay. If you're acrophobic I think this stage is actually Hell. Long grind-rails suspended in outer space as Sonic races towards the cannon so he can SLAM, AND WELCOME TO THE sorry. That said, I -am- acrophobic and OH MY GOD this is the first stage that feels like a MODERN Sonic stage. It's delightful. I love it. My favorite level WOULD be at the very end, wouldn't it?
Then there's a fight with Shadow! You both run down an infinite pathway. Occasionally Shadow teleports, or attempts to shine light out of his special move hole, or whatever. Does something that isn't running. So you hit him in the head until he dies for it. Bwahaha. And then Sonic Chaos Dunks the emerald into the boomtube while doing a sweet 360, and Tails and Amy watch out the window, and the HERO SIDE OF SONIC ADVENTURE 2 IS OVER YESSSSS.
And so, with It Doesn't Matter (Not a BAD version of the song, not as good as SA1's though IMO) playing, we put this thing to rest.
TOMORROW: The Villain Side Story begins.
Last time, I questioned Tails a LOT, enthused about grinding, ran off many cliffs, and Eggman blew up half the moon. Apparently at some big Sonic convention, a member of Sonic Team confirmed that yes, in all games after this there is only half a moon. The side that was destroyed was rotated AWAY FROM THE EARTH as to not bother people.
My theory is that this explains all the goddamn water levels and water-running and such in later games, because the tides are enormously boned now. Thanks, Eggman! Anyway while Eggman was busy DESTROYING THE MOON, the police were busy chasing Tails. Let's pop in and see how that's going, shall we?
Stage 7: Mission Street
In which Tails decides the best way to "hide" from the police is to stomp down the middle of a major street in the middle of the night, crashing cars out of the way and shooting police robots, all while yelling "OKAY!" to himself repeatedly.
Also there's this:
If you can't read that, it's Tails' profile. He has no date of birth, occupation, or nationality. His hair, complexion, and race are all "Fox". He IS male, contrary to what his voice actor leads us to believe. And he is worth $1,000,000.
I like to imagine the police writing this out.
Officer Frank: "Where is he from?"
Officer Kensington: "I don't know, the woods or something. He's a fox."
Frank: "I'll put down 'none' for nationality. Does he have a job?"
Kensington: "He is a fox."
Frank: "Okay. What color is he?"
Kensington: "FOX-COLORED."
Frank: "Listen here, officer, is this a racial thing for you? All you've done is harp on about foxes."
Kensington: "A FOX ATE MY LAST PARTNER!"
Frank: "YOU'RE OFF THIS CASE!"
...Well, that got dark. Let's just keep going.
Pressing on a little further, I get the "Booster" powerup for Tails' mechawalker that lets him hover and float and fly around, so he can cross all the gaps he could just FLY ACROSS BECAUSE HE CAN FLY THAT IS HIS GIMMICK WHY IS HE LOCKED IN A MECHA?
Sigh. Anyway yeah now he can hover. Meanwhile, Omochao dispenses more useful advice. "To defeat the bomb robots, try shooting the bombs and the robots!" Oh my god Omochao why can't I shoot you.
Eventually in spite of Omochao's advice I reach the end of the stage (yay) and the game instantly leaps to Knuckles, who is in...
Stage 8: Aquatic Mine
Let's just Dive into the Mellow for a moment or two. That is laid back right there. It's a shame you can't hear any of it in-game because the mines are constantly making "bloop bloop" noises because there's water everywhere. Also the Emerald radar is pinging wildly. But, y'know. If not for that, it would be very relaxed.
It stays relaxed for about fifteen minutes as I splash around in the water trying to figure out how to access the first gem piece. Augh, digging doesn't work underwater whyyyy. Oh good they brought back the drowning theme. That's something they needed. Eventually I determine you just have to RUB AGAINST THE WALL and it will pop out. ... Yeah, that... was intuitive. Grumble.
Well. Twenty minutes of running around a SPOOKY MINE filled with SPOOKY GHOSTS later (why is everything Knuckles touches haunted now?) I've found all three gem fragments. Woo! Man that was a pain in the ass.
The next cutscene isn't as jaw-droppingly WTF as the "blow up the moon" scene, but it has moments. Tails grouses about not being able to get a signal on the other emeralds, then concludes this is obviously because they were taken to OUTER SPACE. Which makes... sense, yes, but another conclusion would be that using one emerald to track the others doesn't actually -work-.
Suddenly Knuckles bursts out of the sewer system and smoothly declares it's because he got lost in the mines. (Srsly his VA is smooth as HELL on this one line.) Tails suddenly announces that he's hacked a government computer (?!) and has found transcripts of calls between Eggman and the President (?!?!?) and he is now in pursuit of the President's limo. (Tails, no you are not. You're stationary on a street corner.)
Oh, also his jet which was a robot is now a car. For reasons.
That reason is Stage 9: Route 101 where Tails gets the lead out, puts the lead on the gas pedal, and does a racing sequence! I am delighted to find that this thing has drift physics. I am less delighted to find that I cannot shoot traffic. Damn.
It eventually becomes really obvious (as I start a second one) that Tails is just doing laps on a closed course. "Did you find the President yet?" Sonic radios, and Tails cheerfully shouts that it'll be a "few more minutes". Tails, dear... that's a closed loop track. If you didn't pass him, and he's not behind you, the president ISN'T HERE. Proving yet again that logic has no place in the Sonic universe, Tails pulls up behind the limo seconds later.
Inside, the President (who is made entirely of wood) is negotiating with Eggman. Sonic suddenly leaps in through the open sunroof, along with Tails. They do some technobabble, determine that Eggman IS in space and leave. The President is extremely nonplussed. We instantly cut to Egypt (or a likeness thereof), where Knuckles is claiming he saw Eggman and "that bat lady" enter a pyramid. Obviously that pyramid is connected to space somehow. OFF WE GO.
Stage 10: Hidden Base consists of Tails trying to find the front door to a pyramid. He does this by blowing up random pillars, leaping over quicksand, shooting robots and blowing up walls. A lot of walls. Each one takes a Vooken Cannon shot, or whatever it's called. Each shot is a single tap of the button.
EEE EEE EEE EEE EEE
EE EEE EEEEEEEE EE EEEEEEEEEE
OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY
EEEEEEEE EE EEEEEEE
OKAY
my poor brain
Anyway that was enough to get us in, so now Sonic does Stage 11: Pyramid Cave (HOW LONG IS THIS GAME) (aaugh) (this is just ONE HALF OF IT) which involves lots of running and jumping through literal hoops. That said, there's a lot of rails and you get the "bounce up and down" ability, and the stage flow is REALLY good... and y'know, for the first time this is starting to feel like the kind of Sonic game I really ENJOY.
Just moments, here and there, that tell me "Hey, this could be REALLY FUN."
Anyway, pushing through that, there's a scene where the gang finds a DOOR but it is LOCKED. So Sonic is all "WE CAN FIND THE KEY! RIGHT, KNUCKLES?" and Knuckles is like "what why me" and Sonic is like "WE'RE COUNTING ON YOU, THE WORLD'S GREATEST TREASURE HUNTER!" and gives him a big cheeseball thumbs-up, and then I see the title of the next level:
Stage 12: DEATH CHAMBER
Wow. THANKS, Sonic. Also fuck you.
Customary Music Link is "Deeper", which is a very chill smooth-jazz track about having REACHED THE DEATH CHAMBER and how it really SUCKS to be in the Death Chamber. Smooth jazz is a huge threat to all mankind. Also, I find some sledgehammer gloves, so I can punch metal boxes. METAL BOXES! Okay enough of that.
It takes me no-joke 18 minutes to find one part of the key. Deep breath. This is a LONG HAUL here.
Actually, you know the worst part of the SA2 Knuckles experience? You have to find the items IN ORDER. This is stupid. It means I walk past various perfectly good hiding spots over and over, and then AFTER I've been to the last one, I have to check them all -- AGAIN. Which as it turns out is exactly the case: The next two keys are in places I've already been past many times. 15 minutes later the level is done. Whew.
At this point the game suddenly remembers that boss fights exist! Or should I say... BOO-SS FIGHTS?!?! no I shouldn't anyway this is KING BOOM BOO who is a giant ghost which goes 'blaarrr blaaaugh" at you. You have to run away from him limpwristing fireballs at you until you catch up with a tiny ghost holding an hourglass. Hitting the hourglass opens panels in the roof, which makes him shrink into a shadow. Then you dig his shadow out of the ground, which returns him to normal size, so you can punch him in the ass. Repeat this until he is dead.
This game is really killing my sense of how... anything.. anywhere is supposed to logically exist. I'm not entirely convinced -I- exist anymore.
So what's next? A SECOND BOSS FIGHT IN A ROW. You know, the pacing of this game is kind of WEIRD sometimes. This one's the "Egg Golem", a giant stone statue. But you know what? While I'm doing the boss fight here, why don't you guys listen to the music from the cutscene right before it? In the background of Eggman's big reveal of the Egg Golem it started playing his ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE THEME MUSIC, E.G.G.M.A.N. ... Is that an abbreviation? Nope! Is it AWESOME? Yep! HE'S GOT THE MASTER PLAN.
Which is more than the Egg Golem has. The Egg Golem has an irritatingly slow attack pattern that ends with it exposing platforms on its butt. You climb them, hit the dingle at the top a few times and win.
For the next scene we head to SPACE!
(Note: This cutscene is a perfect example of the "overlapping voices" problem that keeps happening.)
Unfortunately, the Emerald shards all fall out of the spaceship and Knuckles panics, crashing the ship into the giant replica of Eggman's face that turns out to be his secret hidden base. Tails has created a fake Chaos emerald that does nothing but reverse the polarity and explode, and Amy points out helpfully that she has had absolutely no reason whatsoever to be included in this plotline or in any cutscene past the point where she broke Sonic out of jail.
Amy really -cares- about making my job easier.
Also I don't think "Bernoulli Sphere" is a thing that really exists, Tails. Did you mean Bernal sphere?
Anyway, on to Stage 13: Eternal Engine. That's probably the coolest stage name so far. The gimmick here is that Tails keeps accidentally locking on to stuff that blows open holes in the hull, which gets you sucked into space and killed to death by vacuum. Foxes cannot breathe in space. Good to know. This is also the first level where the camera controls get me killed, as it violently swings -away- from a critical jump, taking Tails with it in a curving arc that leads out to space. Foxes, I remind you, cannot breathe in space.
I have survived worse than the cameraman and the stage design actively trying to get me killed. I finished Sonic 2006, after all. So I beat on, mechwalker against the suction, ceaselessly towards the goal ring. Along the way I find a bazooka, which is kind of awesome I guess? And then shoot my way to the core, SHOOT THE CORE!!, and win. Hooray!
Cut to Sonic, who is being yelled at over the radio to put the fake Emerald in the thing... except, oh no, Eggman captures Tails and Amy apparently without any effort on his part! So now obviously it's time to find those emerald fragments as Knuckles.
Stage 14: Meteor Herd, and here's that music link. Not ... one of the stronger tracks. I think by this point EVERYONE is running out of steam. Oh well. Since I'm in space, meteors rain from above and I can jump super-high and throw things really far. "It feels good floating!" Omochao explains, and is promptly struck from above by a flaming hunk of space death. I didn't even have to lift a finger. Bwahaha.
I also manage to locate a pair of Sunglasses. These "let you see things you couldn't see before" so I put them on and Knuckles gets hit in the head with a meteor. Apparently what I couldn't see before is STARS. Ready when you are, Raoul!
In the end though, this level leaves me INTENSELY frustrated. There's a hint that one of the crystals is below the force field at the bottom of the level, close to the lava. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to to access that area, and as far as I can tell from a couple hours on GameFAQs and Youtube, nobody actually does. They just restart over and over until the shards are all accessable, because they're speedrunning. There is no GUIDE to tell you how to get that one particular shard. There's just infinite sadness as you run around and over and get pelted by space rocks.
This drives me up and down the walls for quite a while. Eventually, I too just restart over and over until I can get them all. Sigh.
Next up is a boss fight with Rouge... and her jiggle physics are hilarious. No, not her breasts. Her EARS. They go "FLOPFLOPFLOP" every time she moves her head. It's incredibly distracting. What follows is a painfully long cutscene where they argue and bicker and Rouge falls off a beam towards some lava and oh no but Knuckles saves her and she gives him the shards but it doesn't mean she LIKES him or anything and AUGH THANK GOD that's the last Knuckles level. On to Sonic!
Stage 15: Crazy Gadget.
...really, that's what you went with? "Crazy Gadget"? ...sure okay whatever. As it happens this stage IS pretty crazy, as the gimmick here is GRAVITY-FLIPPING in the most disorienting, control-reversing way possible. I genuinely have no idea what's going on most of the time through this level. I do know there are rail-grinds and those tube-things from Chemical Plant Zone in Sonic 2... I'm just glad to see the back of this entire thing.
Next cutscene! Sonic arrives to save the day, but he looks a little TOO smug about trading that fake emerald to Eggman, so Eggman capsulizes him and asks him if he REALLY thought he could trade a fake for his friends. What follows is my favorite moment in the whole game so far, and I actually LIKE Tails...
Tails: "How did you know it was fake?!"
Eggman: "Because YOU just told me, fox boy!"
Tails: *brain visibly goes supernova*
Anyway Sonic is shot into space, but not before telling Tails to be awesome and telling Amy to look after her own damn self. Yeah it's not like her one and only role was to get screwed by the plot or anything. Anyway boss fight, mecha to mecha. Shoot him four times and he's down. Yay.
Elsewhere on the ARK, Knuckles is exploring and Sonic just... teleports in with Chaos Control. Later games will completely forget that Sonic is capable of this. He asks Knuckles to go help out Amy and Tails, and off Sonic goes to SLAM DUNK THE CHAOS EMERALD.
STAGE 16: FINAL RUSH
Okay. If you're acrophobic I think this stage is actually Hell. Long grind-rails suspended in outer space as Sonic races towards the cannon so he can SLAM, AND WELCOME TO THE sorry. That said, I -am- acrophobic and OH MY GOD this is the first stage that feels like a MODERN Sonic stage. It's delightful. I love it. My favorite level WOULD be at the very end, wouldn't it?
Then there's a fight with Shadow! You both run down an infinite pathway. Occasionally Shadow teleports, or attempts to shine light out of his special move hole, or whatever. Does something that isn't running. So you hit him in the head until he dies for it. Bwahaha. And then Sonic Chaos Dunks the emerald into the boomtube while doing a sweet 360, and Tails and Amy watch out the window, and the HERO SIDE OF SONIC ADVENTURE 2 IS OVER YESSSSS.
And so, with It Doesn't Matter (Not a BAD version of the song, not as good as SA1's though IMO) playing, we put this thing to rest.
TOMORROW: The Villain Side Story begins.
