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S1 Ep34: Sonic Adventure 2 Battle
75 Plays7 years ago
Join Dave and Jake for a GameCube throw back with Sonic and crew in Sonic Adventure 2 Battle!
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction & Audio Concerns
00:00:27
Speaker
How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I am joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going today, Dave? It's good. We're finally recording in my apartment again. Yeah. Man, check out this great audio. People who pay attention to the details. Yeah, so send in your feedback on the audio. Let us know if it's worth it or if I can keep recording at my apartment so I don't have to move hardware.
00:00:51
Speaker
Or if we should just get new apartments, you let us know. Yeah, you are the ones that make this decision. Our lives are in your hands. I live for your feedback. But that aside, all of our personal matters, which we will get into later, obviously.
Exploring Sonic Adventure 2 Battle
00:01:09
Speaker
Today, we have come to speak to you about a Sonic game.
00:01:15
Speaker
Based on, you know, since there's a movie apparently fucking coming out, we thought it'd be good to revisit one of, I don't want to say an old classic, but it's a source of pure meme content. And I have a lot of nostalgia for it because I've played through.
00:01:32
Speaker
many many many times with uh my cousin growing up sonic adventure to battle yeah to battle there's sonic adventure battle to yeah to battle it's sonic adventure colon to battle is like a charge in italics or not to battle the answer is actually to battle um this is just off of a continuation from sonic adventure which was completely fucking different but didn't have as much of an emphasis on the multiplayer mode right
00:02:00
Speaker
where Sonic Adventure 2 Battle took a lot of the mechanics of what you would do in a given stage throughout the campaign and allowed you to do that in a multiplayer context because that makes sense. There was definitely like an era of games need a multiplayer aspect to them, right? Like crystal shards, everything like that. They're like, you need to have multiplayer in your game now. It's like we've done everything we have for,
00:02:28
Speaker
for a single player. And now we're going to just push some of those features into multiplayer. Which I guess was fine for the time, but it's not so much. It doesn't exist as much today. It's not like, hey, come over and we'll play, you know, four player split screen perfect dark or something like that. Yeah, typically things were. I should say nowadays are kind of split between, hey, this is a single player game like Last of Us. Yeah.
00:03:01
Speaker
Which is like really I played more recently than you but it's like really good at like story driven Content and single player experience. Mm-hmm. You can have somebody playing watch with you, but it's not quite the same, right? but it doesn't lend itself to multiplayer whereas other games like perfect dark which was like I
00:03:18
Speaker
It had a campaign. It was a first person shooter. You can be like, oh, well, let's put those guns in and put four people in like a box and they'll kill each other. So it's pretty simple to translate over.
00:03:31
Speaker
I guess the other part is probably the aging video game demographic because a lot of these games we played when we were younger and probably lived with our siblings and friends came over frequently,
Comparing Sonic Games - 3D Transition
00:03:41
Speaker
things like that. It's harder on like a week, weeknight. You're just like, it's Wednesday night. I'm going to invite Dave over and we'll play, you know, whatever multiplayer game.
00:03:51
Speaker
I think it's happened like once. Yeah. Over the four years that we've lived next to each other. Literally bought all the couch co-op peripherals and four controllers and all this stuff and have never used them. It's a tremendous waste of money.
00:04:07
Speaker
So that's the preface for us talking about Sonic. But yeah, this one, so I hadn't played this game prior to playing it a bit, watching you play the harder parts. But it seems like a departure from what Sonic was in the past. Ooh, look at you. For the 2D platformer, very traditional.
00:04:32
Speaker
It's wildly different because it seemed like back in the days of 2D Sonic, whether it's Sonic CD or Sonic 3 and Knuckles, everything was kind of...
00:04:46
Speaker
planned out, here's the level, here's the speed you'll be going different parts, here's the interactions, here's the music design, here's like the boss battles of mechanics at the end.
Voice Acting & Localization Issues
00:04:56
Speaker
And Sonic Adventure 2 battles like, hey, I'm reaching for the fucking stars, but we're not gonna play it at all. Because it obviously is 3D, it does have platforming, it does have other things, and it has mechanics and voice acting and music.
00:05:13
Speaker
It does none of it well. Yeah, that's probably all of the new things. It doesn't seem to do that well. It seemed to nail a couple. I guess we'll get to that with the levels, but some of the levels have that sonic pacing that they've kind of improved upon in like later releases. Other games I haven't played, but I've heard for like generation sonic colors. Yeah, things like that.
00:05:38
Speaker
but it also has the courteous cutscenes like you said and the worst voice acting they're just like we have kids we don't need to pay voice actors not to defend the game but originally it was a japanese title and then they're like hey let's
00:05:56
Speaker
port this over, do it in English, but not redo any of the video, which is why the classic scene of Sonic interacting with Shadow in the jungle, whether it's Green Forest or White Jungle, depending on your playthrough.
00:06:10
Speaker
they have that kind of like overlapping dialogue, where it's kind of awkward, kind of like- They talk over each other. The room, where it's like, oh hey doggy, oh hey Johnny, how's it going? Okay, I didn't realize that. One dozen roses please. Lead some greens. Okay thanks, bye. I'm specifically talking over you to emphasize the whole point of the thing.
00:06:30
Speaker
It is definitely awkward going through that though. That doesn't justify their choice of voice actors.
Shared Nostalgia & Gameplay Memories
00:06:35
Speaker
Not that I would pick out an individual to criticize. No. But it's bad across the board. What do you say their selection was? No good! That is what I would say. Alright, so obviously I'm coming into this whole thing with a nostalgic lens because I grew up playing it.
00:06:55
Speaker
I feel like we'd play through it like once every one to two years. My cousin and I.
00:07:01
Speaker
So I was very familiar with the game going in and I wanted to replay it with Jake to get him on board because I could describe certain things and he'd be like, oh, okay. Like, no, you need to live what I'm living. You need to be there for it. I needed the raw experience. Yeah. So I only made Jake play a couple of levels, but immediately I could tell this was not a game that he was enjoying.
00:07:25
Speaker
it was I mean there was parts of it that are legitimately entertaining it just has a lot of holdovers from games of that time like this is before we expected uh the triple-a treatment from mainstream games it's like uh there's a lot of times in the game where it's like
00:07:44
Speaker
cutscene immediately ends or, you know, there's like really weird animation going on, like walk sequences, there run sequences. So I think for the walk sequence, at least they had like, Oh, this is the run sequence. What is their walking? Like, Oh, we'll slow it down. Because like people aren't just like moving their feet, lightly picking it up. Like there's full kickback on the legs. You're like going like heel to ass. Wait a second.
00:08:13
Speaker
It is pretty funny seeing them kick up their feet when they're just going from place to place. We were talking a little bit about how previous games have addressed this by only having a couple sprite animations where it's walking slowly, starting to pick up speed a little bit, and then foot blur. And those are your three speeds. And the foot blur is iconic, Sonic, but they didn't really want to go that way here.
00:08:42
Speaker
Um, but I think later games did pick up on that eventually. Yeah. The traditional, his like, I don't even know how he does it. Oh, the infinity, the infinity. Yeah. I'm doing, I was making infinity sign with my finger. Um, but, uh, yeah, that's his, uh, not the spin dash, but the other one, the peel out thing. Yeah. Uh, less of that.
Gameplay Mechanics Discussion
00:09:05
Speaker
There were some cool things in this though, like the, um,
00:09:08
Speaker
the ability to like instantly dash through rings and collect them all. I don't know if one had that because I've never played one, obviously, but no. Yeah.
00:09:19
Speaker
It was a feature I consistently neglected here. Yeah, it did add some cool things. Real quick, let's go back and break up the level types. Sure. So there's different campaigns. There's hero. And then after you do hero, there's dark. Yeah. Because that's a good balance there. And then there's a combined thing. But throughout each of the campaigns, you have these three different level types where you play as a hedgehog.
00:09:49
Speaker
And you're kind of like running through the level, doing fast things and platforming. Right. The good levels. Yes. The sonic levels. And then there is, you're in a mech. Yeah. And you go around murdering things. Yes. Seemingly to like. Police and civilians. I mean, you destroy a fuck ton of cars too, but it's.
Campaigns & Multiplayer Mechanics
00:10:11
Speaker
The game opens with that. Yeah.
00:10:13
Speaker
And then there's the famed Emerald Shard hunting levels. This is the adventure part of Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, right? I'm gonna get clues from a computer and explore the level. Yeah, this is kind of like... This is the thing that's probably, I imagine, going back in time would be the hardest section to justify.
00:10:36
Speaker
Because there was already good adventure games in 2002. You're fighting against things like Banjo-Kazooie. See, I don't know when that came out, but I know the original was before 2002. Yeah, because it's a 64 game. Yeah. And even Donkey Kong 64 came out end of life cycle for N64.
00:11:00
Speaker
This is not that good. I admittedly, I'd never played these. I let Dave do all of the adventure exploration levels because I wanted someone else to be inflicted. We had to beat the game within a week. And it's just, it's as I was reminded again, fucking brutal and really unforgiving. Just for like the minor interactions of platforming. Yeah. Or if you're Sonic and you're doing like a homing attack.
00:11:30
Speaker
Is it going to go to the thing in front of me? Maybe. Yeah. It, it really fucking makes up its own mind. It's very RNG's in that respect. So it's weird when you're trying to balance out like the, I'm running through green jungle and going out and it's like really pipe really fast. Yeah. But how do I stay in the curve of the pipe to keep momentum versus I've now just run off the side. Exactly. Which Jake has seen me do more than once. Yeah. It's, um.
00:11:56
Speaker
kind of talking about the Sonic levels. That's always a trick for these kind of... So I put this game in the middle of the Sonic, like, franchise lifespan. And this is coming off of the early games, which had really fast straightaways where it was clear you're supposed to just blaze through them, cut up by, like, some platforming. But it was very consistent in that. And people have, you know, they have levels they love from the early Sonic games. Usually the first level in a Sonic game. You just go super fast.
00:12:27
Speaker
And they kind of did the same thing here, but this is before they really caught the balance for how to deal with the slower sections with the platforming, the camera, like, oh, God forsake the camera. And it really shows. It really shows that they had not perfected that yet. That's that's a tough.
00:12:49
Speaker
It's a tough thing to get. There's a balance between going fast and not just watching Sonic go through loop after loop after loop, right? Because, theoretically, that would grow tiring. I haven't reached that point yet. That's all I want to see. I'm going to send you a gift of just going in the same loop over and over again. But how you're talking about the
00:13:09
Speaker
Dashing along the rings. There's an upgrade you can get. Mm-hmm called like It's like something light shoes something dumb. Yeah, but it allows you to when you press B near a series of rings. Yeah, yeah
Character Dynamics & Plot Analysis
00:13:24
Speaker
It allows you to dash through a series of like Rings are close enough together. Yeah near light speed, which is really fun. I
00:13:35
Speaker
So if you can kind of intersperse those through different sections where you're doing homing attacks or going off ramps or just sprinting down a fairly straight way, it helps break up the gameplay but it keeps that I'm Sonic, I gotta go fast mechanic. That whole theming of just going and it keeps the gameplay active versus
00:13:56
Speaker
you get hit by something from off screen. And you're like, oh, I've lost all my rings. And I just, I got knocked back possibly off an edge. Possibly it just kills you. That's really, that's probably the smartest attempt I think I've seen so far for maintaining the sonic tempo while still having an interactive section in the game is the homing dash attack. Well, it's nice for things like, oh, I'm chained between enemies. Or I'm just trying to,
00:14:24
Speaker
kind of get like a start to momentum if I'm starting from no momentum at all. I'm just kind of standing. And also if you're going to the springs. You can target into them. Yeah. Yeah. Launch. Usually like when the game threw in a section where it's like, here's three or four enemies flying above the, like just in the air. And it's clear you need to like coming dash through them. Like that usually worked fine. It was whenever you're trying to like coming dash in a smaller room or the camera's constrained.
00:14:54
Speaker
The fact that, yeah, it was your best option to attack in situations where the game can punish you with, like you said, projectiles from anywhere. Just cosmically spawned projectiles from behind the camera, wipe you out or something. That's all hardships they had to kind of hammer out in future games. Hopefully, I haven't played them.
00:15:19
Speaker
I mean, historically for Sonic games, probably not. Probably not. I feel like they still have a lot of mechanics issues when they really shouldn't. So this is the Sonic section. You did just hand me the controller to start off the game. Yes. So that first level is probably, I haven't seen the entirety of it, but that's the level I had seen the most of previous to this from this game.
00:15:46
Speaker
basically starts you on a large hill and you're just running down the hill being chased by a giant truck with a gun on it. What? Just a plaque that says gun. Is this not the first level of the game? Yeah, just to clarify a little bit, you first start out, you jump out of a helicopter and then you kind of have like this snowboard and you're going down hills in a San Francisco-like setting. Okay, that's right, there was a snowboard.
00:16:15
Speaker
later on in the level you are just running downhill from the gun truck though yeah yeah that's what stuck out in my mind uh so i only played this back like monday so it's been a while and i forgot in sections but i love that section though like if i'm ever going downhill and a few other trucks behind me immediately think of that yeah
00:16:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's uh, it's completely ridiculous and the game doesn't make more sense after that. No, it gets progressively worse. Yeah, it's not that the truck has a gun, it just has a plaque that says gun. Yeah, guns like the military organization that has robots and trucks and pilots for mechs that do things, I guess.
00:16:58
Speaker
It's interesting.
Mech Levels & Control Challenges
00:17:01
Speaker
But it opens with the iconic go fast Sonic level, which is pretty core to these games. There are intermediate areas on that level where you have to switch to platforming mode, homing dash, some enemies, cross some ledges, things like that. And then you'll go back into the downhill sequence.
00:17:27
Speaker
Going fast is Sonic is probably still the most fun in those games. It's like I just I quite enjoy it and I realize why they made it an attempt at like Sonic R for instance, right? Like I understand why they did. I'm not saying it was an attempt and the attempt was made.
00:17:46
Speaker
But this isn't the Sonic R episode. That's April 1st next year. But overall, I think the Sonic levels are definitely the most fun because they had that sense of momentum, which the other ones completely lacked. What? No.
00:18:07
Speaker
Which ones do you want to complain about next? Yeah, so we talked about the adventure ones, which were Knuckles. There wasn't an evil echidna that couldn't just have one for the dark campaign, but they put Rouge in that. Rouge the bat. She's sexy as hell. Probably the most attractive bat, I think, that's been portrayed so far. I haven't played a lot of Castlevania, so maybe they have another bat that could be a contender, but I'm not aware of it.
00:18:37
Speaker
Um, but yeah, they, they kind of just, so the characters have the same move sets. Um, in both cases, it's like.
00:18:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's a mirror match between campaigns, pretty much. Yeah. Um, you're just either, and Rouge isn't a good guy, but she's, she's, she's literally, um, a jewel thief. Yes. She's, uh, who am I thinking of? Catwoman. Literally Catwoman is, is Rouge. Um, but they're like, uh, cats been taken. Uh, that next character in the alphabet. All right. It's a legitimate English word. There we go.
00:19:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's I feel it's the most frustrating as you saw on What's that last Rouge level in space?
Musical Elements & Cultural References
00:19:25
Speaker
It's like crazy space or something mad space. Yeah. Yeah But the level designs start out fairly simplistic you're going around looking for clues and you have like a little Radar thing that will beep more frequently and change colors depending on how close you get to the shard Yeah, you got to collect three at a level
00:19:45
Speaker
But until you get to know the levels and like the presets of, here's this clue, you know where the thing is, it just... It's a treasure hunt. Yeah. It's all it is. But it's like a really shitty one and I don't think anybody enjoys them outside of the music for them. Yeah. Cause like Knuckles has like this weird R&B soft rap thing. Yeah. But all of the lyrics are about the level and the people involved in the plot at this time.
00:20:14
Speaker
It is a lot of effort into the soundtrack, like targeted effort. It's not like we need a good R&B track, we'll just use this as backing for some level. They clearly planned it all out.
00:20:26
Speaker
I ain't gonna let it get to me, I'm just gonna freak. Down a pumpkin hill, I can feel it in my feet. I'll be honest, I've actually forgotten some of the lyrics. The great emerald's power allows me to feel. I can't see a thing, but it's around somewhere. I see what you forgot, Dave, is you actually jump from a helicopter first, and you snowboard down into the wrap. No, it's...
00:20:57
Speaker
You know, like in the same way you have, you might contract somebody to like, hey, we're doing a Pokemon movie. Could you do the soundtrack? They're like, okay, what do you want? They're like, oh, just talk about Pikachu and friendship and stuff. They're like, yeah, yeah, we'll get you some nineties rock shit. And that's what they go with. But it's, it's so fucking memorable. Like even like the whole Arby's campaign where they had like the pumpkin hill reference. I'm like a nostalgic me remembers that.
00:21:26
Speaker
See, I don't even know that reference for Arby's. I have no association there. It was like a pumpkin cheesecake milkshake. They're like, oh, something, something. And they have a cardboard thing
Plot Coherence & Character Motivation
00:21:37
Speaker
of pumpkin hill. And you're like, oh, yeah. Interesting.
00:21:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think they're opening for determining who would actually sing these, but like, do you guys have any aspirations of making it big? Because if so... Oh yeah, come on, come on. But yeah, they are... There's a lot of games that have very interesting soundtracks where they just go all in.
00:22:01
Speaker
Basically, as I was playing this game, I was thinking about Revengeance. I was like, oh, yeah. They just went for it. They just went for it. And I'd rather you go for it, because even if it turns out bad or just too cheesy or something like that, it's way better than the voice actors did on the rest of these games. Yeah. It's all comically bad. Yeah. I think if you just watch 10 minutes of a playthrough at any point,
00:22:32
Speaker
you see like how awkward some of the level design is and then like the cutscenes you're just like wait what getting the full context of the entire game does not help no it really doesn't it's just it's so maria maria yeah it is it is great um even like we just did
00:22:56
Speaker
the final section today where it's kind of like the goo guys working together with the bad guys. Now they're just the guys. Yeah. Yeah. I kept looking over at Jake and Jake looks over me. I'm like, yeah, I got nothing for you. I can't justify like, Oh, well here's why it's XYZ. It's just what they fucking went with.
Boss Battles & Character Humor
00:23:13
Speaker
Yeah. It is.
00:23:15
Speaker
It is an interesting experience start to finish for sure. The one type of level you haven't really talked yet about is the mech though, which has like the least speed.
00:23:28
Speaker
Because even on the adventure maps with Rouge and Knuckles, you can traverse those maps pretty quickly. In fact, you were traversing those maps so quickly, I had no idea what was going on for a good part of it. Yeah, those characters can still speedrun and then jump and glide, which helps.
00:23:45
Speaker
But when you're in the mech, if you turn at all, you lose any momentum. Like, I don't know how speedrunners actually go through this game. I'm gonna guess glitches. They cheat. They cheat.
00:24:00
Speaker
But it's very awkward as far as movement, and then you kind of just are mashing the B button to, if you hold B and go over a target, it'll have like a little reticle, and if you let go, it'll send these like homing projectiles and like one hit kill them. And the laser as you're holding B emits a constant loud beep, which is great. Yeah, it's like a beep screech. And Jake's like, is that the game? I'm like, yup.
00:24:28
Speaker
But you're just going through, you're just blasting through boxes. Police robots. Yeah. Vehicles are in your way. Yeah. You're basically against the world, whether you're playing as the heroes or dark. The police are the ultimate enemy. Yeah. Fucking police, basically. Oh, man. Again, I don't know what ties in, but I feel like those are the least... I don't want to say the least interesting.
00:24:56
Speaker
Some of them can be fun, they do have fun sections, but it typically feels like it's either a rail shooter, or you're awkwardly going and jumping and mashing B. It doesn't feel as fluid as some of the Sonic or Shadow levels, or as comically awkward as the Knuckles and Rouge levels.
00:25:16
Speaker
and you have like multiple hits. You have like a health bar that's not tied to rings. They kind of just, my power is failing. Like I gotta give them like some credit for trying something different, but I mean, just giving you a ton of firepower and taking away all your speed is not a Sonic game to me. So. No.
00:25:42
Speaker
But some of the levels are interesting. They're just not as interesting.
00:25:48
Speaker
So make an eye contact with you. Do you remember the car levels? There's one for each campaign. Get the president. Or just get the president. So you actually, I knew I was in for a special treat when you were excitedly handed me the controller to start watching my facial expressions. But for one of them, you're playing as Tails, right? Try to get the president.
00:26:17
Speaker
You were just on this road that could just be like an f-zero track with less Like verticality. It's not particularly interesting. There's just some turns and holes in it In fact, actually the holes were those introduced for rouges or rouges levels had like Some like oh if they just remove like the edge Yeah, like we'd have holes in the middle of the fucking road you had to avoid. Yeah tells us it wasn't even that interesting tells us just
00:26:45
Speaker
like go forward through this map and there's technically a time trial thing like you have limited time but in order to fail that you would have to literally stop and it's not like you're racing against other people you're just moving through but they do have like NPC cars that you can hit yes just soccer moms basically
00:27:08
Speaker
Gotta get that early warning commute gone. And they just like get launched when you hit them. They fly off of the track and yeah, their commute just cut tragically short. One of my favorites though is when, cause a lot of my joy from playing this again was not the game itself, but just like seeing Jake's reaction, like the awkward things and him breaking into laughter cause of how awkward or corny or poorly designed things were.
00:27:35
Speaker
But in one of the race car sections around the road, the NBC cars will still follow the normal track. And it's not a typical road. Sometimes you have like these
00:27:45
Speaker
It covered areas for no fucking reason, sometimes it gets narrower. Sometimes it just, the ramp goes up like 45 degrees for no fucking reason, and other shit. But like we watch one of the NPC cars just kind of like go up the 45 degree thing. But it gets like five seconds of airtime and you're like, what the fuck? This is just the normal drive. Like the in universe justification, we couldn't think of one, it was just always something silly and dumb.
00:28:13
Speaker
like radical highway there's like police constantly trying to kill you there's holes in the fucking road how is an actual thing there's also that left turn like 90 degree left turn with the road out ahead of you yep it's just like going full speed on a highway and there's no road there's just no road
00:28:33
Speaker
It's an experience, really. Yeah. This is going back to what I said earlier, why they're trying to kind of just reach for the stars and you're trying to put so much different content to kind of like broaden demographic to say like, oh, we have all these things.
00:28:52
Speaker
But it's just like each one is done fairly shittily outside of the how you're playing Sonic going through a Sonic level. That's a formula they're more familiar with because they had Sonic Adventure where you still had different characters who had different play styles. I was told by one of our listeners to argue that Sonic Adventure was better than Sonic Adventure 2. Which listener is this? I will not reveal his identity. Interesting.
00:29:22
Speaker
I think they're both shitty. Yeah. I wouldn't say one is necessarily better than the other. Because they're both so bad. Yeah. It is, for all of its faults, it is an entertaining game. That is true. Which is, I think that was the thing that mattered more back in the early 2000s. There was a lot of bad games, and there was a lot of games that weren't even entertaining.
00:29:50
Speaker
Not comically bad, just bad, right? This one's at least comically bad for a while. There's a couple times where it gets into like actual bad territory. Getting shot from an enemy you didn't see, having enemies descend or a pop in right in front of you. That's never gonna be fun. But for the most part, the hilarity comes from how disconnected from both reality
00:30:18
Speaker
and the sonic universe as I understand it which is a hecka nerdy thing to say how that disconnect is just all over the place but I mean I guess it's sonic tape so this is canon now yeah and it blew up half the moon
00:30:38
Speaker
yeah the plot goes all over the fucking place too because like you said before like the president's involved yeah for half half a minute yeah most and then is it gone yeah they kind of um it's almost like a ad libs for plot like they took they're like all right this mission is going to have this plot as the setup and then this plot is the end
00:31:02
Speaker
And then the next person came up and was like, all right, without any context to what the previous person said, what should the plot for this level be? That's how the game goes. That's not entirely wrong. Verb. Spin dash. Need a noun. Amy Rose. OK. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll put that in. Yeah, so you spin dash. Sonic spin dash is Amy Rose. Is that a euphemism?
00:31:27
Speaker
Oh, man. It's like the Bible in some sorts where it's just a bunch of random bullshit pieced together and they're like, no, this is all one thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this makes sense. Let's make a religion out of this. Let's not make a religion out of Sonic. Some people already have, unfortunately. Leave Sonic alone. Yeah, it's an interesting experience. The characters are also...
00:31:54
Speaker
Interesting is also my word. I get that that's my thing. Whether a game is good or bad, it's interesting. Oh, it's interesting. Interesting. Interesting, right. Jake, how did you like the meal I cooked for you? It was an interesting day. Oh, OK. But that could mean it's good or it's bad, because I use that to describe the best of games. It's unique. And the worst of games. My mom said this about me before. And she actually used the word, it's, also. So I don't know where that was. But yeah, the characters.
00:32:23
Speaker
Characters are just great So starting off with Sonic's he's probably the most normal Character I think other than maybe maybe Eggman Yeah, Sonic's a very go get him character. He's always about positivity and not paying attention to anybody else's shit for the most part Yeah, remember the one part where I'm
00:32:47
Speaker
the heroes are together, and he kind of says like, hey Knuckles, you gotta go find those keys. Knuckles is like, wait, you want me to do what? And he's like, we'll be waiting for you, buddy. And then Jake's like, wait a second. Knuckles never accepts the task. Sonic just entirely on you. And then it loads into Knuckles level. He's conceited. It's pretty great. Knuckles is...
00:33:14
Speaker
He's more the receiver of tasks for sure in this game. I can't think of many things he just takes the initiative and does, but there was the interactions with him in Rouge.
00:33:25
Speaker
yeah like his character which are great in and of itself is supposed to be like the the cool guy like he's the edgier right he gets the rv yeah exactly yeah he must be cool but then he has like these awkward interactions with rouge which i don't know if you want to depict from your own viewpoint as this was a fresh experience for you
00:33:47
Speaker
It was an interesting experience. Oh, it was interesting. That's good. Yeah. So in particular, it's the fight between the two of them and the cutscene immediately after, which thankfully we got to see twice.
00:34:04
Speaker
Um, but basically they're, uh, Knuckles, the only thing he cares about is the master emerald. This is the one piece of lore. I think they've got accurate, consistent. Yeah. Across everything. And so he's like working about assembling it and Rouge, the, the gym thief, uh, obviously wants to just accumulate the parts on her own and they have been right in the game. Um, but, uh, there there's this boss fight between them and you play as Knuckles. Uh,
00:34:33
Speaker
the first time here through the hero campaign. Thankfully, Dave was doing this fight because it looked absolutely obnoxious. It's trash. But it's like this kind of a square based area or circle with platforms between them. I can't remember exactly, but there's like a turbine in the center. Nobody's going to look it up, Jake. That's true. I don't know why I'm describing it.
00:34:58
Speaker
But she does these anime interrupts which recur throughout the game where it's like they're using their super move where
The Charm of Awkward Cutscenes
00:35:07
Speaker
whatever was happening on the screen, the screen switches to just their animation of doing their special ability. It lasts like a second and then the attack like homes it on you or whatever.
00:35:21
Speaker
It's super disconcerting and disorienting is what I'm looking for. And I'm literally just watching Dave play this. I'm not even the one having to respond to these inputs and it's happening.
00:35:37
Speaker
But yeah, he eventually won the fight. Dave won the fight, not in Knuckles. And thank God. No, don't fall. Thank God. Thank you. And so Rouge is like, all right, here's, you know, I'll hand over the the pieces of the emerald after Knuckles saves her from like falling off or something. Yeah, she can fly. But she literally has fucking wings and she's like this top secret agent slash jewel thief. Yeah.
00:36:04
Speaker
But after like losing her match or debut fucking thing. It was a date. It was a date idea. It was just a date idea. Do you want to collect pieces of the Master Emerald together and then fight to the death? She just kind of like hands them over to him. Yes. And he's like, why didn't you fucking do this earlier? As simple as it meet immediately to. He has all these charges and he's just like, boom, full Emerald. Well, when you know the Master Emerald that well, it's not hard for you. Right.
00:36:34
Speaker
He speedrun this before tearing it apart and putting it back together. It's like a fine powder. He just kind of like jizzes superglue on to it. He's like, yeah, there you go. Emeritus. My emeritus. But he reluctantly thanks her and apologizes for, he's like, sorry if I hurt you.
00:36:55
Speaker
And then just runs away. Like the cutscene changes. Immediately. He just, you see like him like quick run off the screen and you're like, what? There's not context for any of it. I'm not wildly gesturing with my hands for what space I have around the mic. Yeah. He's like all of this space. There's no context in this space. It's true. And just it's things like that chained together throughout the game. And that's like a great example of those interactions. You're like,
00:37:22
Speaker
I don't know what was the precursor for this, or how this relates, or what the character motivations are, but when I was that age, at like 13, 14, this game is so fun, and that's all I cared about. But now I'm going back and I have a podcast, smokes pipe.
00:37:42
Speaker
I'm really looking at it with a critical eye, and you're like, this game is garbage. Here's the thing, though, and this is the takeaway, is if they didn't have those awkward social situations or knuckles, being like, sorry if I hurt you, and then just dashing away on a pipe for an instant cut, the game would be worse. So much worse, because as we've determined, the game isn't really good,
00:38:09
Speaker
No, like the mechanics and the controls and the way they interact is not fluid enough to be like enjoyable gameplay. So the awkwardness of like those cutscenes adds a personality to it. We're like, oh, it's a B movie. I got you. It makes it entertaining without making it good.
Gameplay Variety & Missed Opportunities
00:38:27
Speaker
And yeah, those were the highlights for me because like especially so we We played this game over three sessions heroes dark and then finished out most of the like finale fuck by a lizard But that first one with the heroes scene because the the they reuse a lot of assets in dark Oh my god, yeah, but seeing the cutscenes the first time in heroes like I thought was hilarious
00:38:56
Speaker
uh because they just they almost had i don't even know they either got incredibly lucky with making some of those interactions as awkward as possible or they they planned it they're just like we're gonna make this abysmally uncomfortable for the english viewer i mean certain things you definitely had to sign off on other things i think we're just uh
00:39:22
Speaker
A happy coincidence. Yeah. Like the interaction between Sonic and Shadow in the jungle. Blue hedgehog, black hedgehog. Yeah. As they are canonically known. Yes. But it's a lot of times like after a battle, you just have like two characters kind of like heavy breathing. Usually like in DBZ context for Japan, for people who don't know. It's like, oh, it's signifying they're tired from their battle. That stands for database zero for listening. Yeah.
00:39:52
Speaker
Do not drop tables. You killed my train of thought. Yeah, you were talking about the exhaustion after a DBZ battle. Yeah. Yeah. And usually, you have some cuts and scrapes on the person. They're breathing heavily. Oh, they must be really tired from their sustained fight. Right. But in the context of this game, everything is awkward and remotely sexual. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. A lot of these voice lines
00:40:22
Speaker
could just be taken completely out of context. As we've established, there doesn't seem to be a proper context, so I don't know if it's even incorrect to assume that these are sexual in nature.
00:40:40
Speaker
You're no ordinary thief. It's a lot smaller than I expected. To reactivate it, large amounts of energy are necessary. Move aside, Knuckles! I hate you! You guys always leave me behind and have all the fun!
00:40:58
Speaker
Ah! Amy, your timing is impeccable! Leave it to me! I'll take care of her! You two, go! Now it's time to get serious. This annoying echidna has been following me. He's so persistent. What's that- that vibration? What's that- that vibration? What's that- that vibration?
00:41:17
Speaker
That was pretty rough. I'm sorry... if I hurt you. There's no time for jokes! Eggman's ready to fire that weapon again! I might as well get some use out of it! Nothing like some pommel, am I right, Jake? Yeah. Alright, that was enough of a transition. So, some of the boss battles in this game feel kind of...
00:41:43
Speaker
Awkward yeah, that's fair. They look awkward. Yeah Cuz like they go through a very Repetitive cycle and you hit them. There's some iframes you wish them to do it again and you rinse and repeat right? It's kind of like this awkward break in between levels. Mm-hmm
00:42:04
Speaker
where they'll like, they'll slowly type out the name. Bigfoot. Like you hear, for so many like parts of the game where it's like, hey, here's the setting and the time. They'll have somebody aggressively on like a fucking typewriter. And you hear like these clickety clacks and you're like, why? Why? It's like an old military movie or like detective story where it's like South Boston, 1847. And you're like, man.
00:42:31
Speaker
It makes no sense in this game. It could be thematic and add some feel to a movie or something, but in this game, no context for it. Which, at this point, is actually starting to fit the context of the game because the rest has no context. Yeah.
00:42:51
Speaker
But yeah, those boss fights. So kind of, I guess you could split them out into the boss fights versus like actual original big bosses. And then the boss fights where it's like characters in the game versus other characters in the game and their normal forms for the most part. Yeah, because there's like gun bosses. Yeah. Where it's like, oh, it's a mech.
00:43:14
Speaker
This hedgehog will never beat, oh, the hedgehog beat me. They just hit you in the cockpit, I guess. The hedgehog is tearing me out of the cockpit. Yeah, it's pretty funny, because you were talking about how the police were, they had like unarmed drones, or unmanned drones, things like that in the past. It's a manned, I mean, these are like manned things. Yeah, these ones are. Because we had somebody like on like the comm who's like,
00:43:40
Speaker
Talking about the hedgehog attacking it exactly. It's like sending reinforcements. Uh-huh. The reinforcements never come by the way you murder the guy It's the one thing the good guys and the bad guys can agree But they have those and I mean that was the first boss fight that I got to play around with a bit and You have to hit the cockpit like we were saying but the hitbox on that is like wonky AF
00:44:12
Speaker
Because I just got destroyed it comes down to like verticality I think a lot of times you have to hit it from above and down or equal and down and not blow it up That's part of the controls of like the homing dash like where's it gonna go?
Multiplayer Mode & Chao Gardens
00:44:25
Speaker
If it's not arranged just kind of go straight and if you bump the enemy Yeah, it's not in an attack mode or whatever the fuck you just take damage Yeah, and if you had any rings you lose the rings if you didn't have rings you're fucking dead and you have to restart the section and it's
00:44:40
Speaker
I don't want to say little things like that. It's major things like that. So you're like, why is this here? How does this actually benefit the game at all? It's just like, hey, games and boss fights, let's put in some boss fights. Yeah. And it's a tough opener too. It's like, I would want the first boss fight, the first actual boss fight to be more polished.
00:45:04
Speaker
so that people get more invested in the game, I guess. Yeah. It's like you'd want the one with decent hitboxes, too.
00:45:12
Speaker
I feel like that particular fight, they repeat it, what, twice? Three times? A lot of people fight that mech. It's twice, and then Rouge technically fights a variation of that. That's flying. Yes. But since you can also fly, you just spin-dash the ever-living fuck out of it. You destroyed it immediately. It was pretty fast on the Rouge fight. It bodes well for me. That's being impressive. But yeah, that's one type of fight.
00:45:39
Speaker
The other type would be... Like the Sonic Bros. Shadow shit, which is awkward as hell. Cause it's... I don't know, I guess for like most boss fights, I typically expect... Fury or No More Heroes level of thing, where it's like, there's mechanics, there's something going on. And these are kind of just like awkward brief interactions that it can be...
00:46:05
Speaker
as short as like 20 seconds, and you're like, okay, I guess the boss fight's done. And you don't really need to know mechanics, you just kind of wait until they take damage. I don't know, that's weird. And some of them are cheesy. You cheese out some of the fights. There's supposed to be this race between Sonic and Shadow, but I saw that your method for actually beating the boss was not to race, but rather to stop.
00:46:29
Speaker
which would have the other person do their special move, which leaves them open afterwards. Hear me out. That's the only way I've ever seen to beat the boss. Because if you just, if you're racing, you will always get ahead of the person or ahead of the AI. They will then use chaos control to teleport in front of you. And that kind of continues. But if you lag behind, they'll be like, Oh, let me do that app animation you were talking about before. It was like a homing attack on where you last were.
00:46:57
Speaker
So during that time, you can kind of get closer to them and hit them while their guard is down. Yeah. It's the whole thing is bad. The game is bad. Yeah. The one thing I liked in some of those fights though was, uh, and this is actually a pro and a con, but when it was like Sonic versus shadow, if you hit them, they drop rings.
00:47:20
Speaker
And you hear the sound, the iconic ring drop sound and the clatter that is prevalent, so prevalent in the series. Now, I was super confused whenever that happened until I looked at your ring total as to whether you took damage or they took damage, which is the con. On the pro side, I like that you're fighting other people and their health is still rings, right? That's some internal universe consistency.
00:47:44
Speaker
But yeah, you know, it's it's even far between but there are other Things like I know you're talking about egg golem.
Conclusion & Nostalgia Reflection
00:47:53
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, which I think is one of the more interesting fights Because it's not
00:48:00
Speaker
1v1 dumb bullshit. Yeah, there's actually mechanics to it and it's like a more traditional Sonic versus one of dr. Eggman's robotics. Yeah, like machines Like which was all of the boss fights I experienced in the series, you know And it's cool. I like the the scope if Sonic was God of War Again another episode for the future maybe hog of war
00:48:36
Speaker
But essentially for the Golem fight, he does some things, then he gets like tired and will kind of pause. You can then kind of run around to his back and he has like these platforms. You'll jump on them and you get to do a series of homing attacks to go up really quickly. And going back in that Sonic is fast. Shadow of the Hedgehog. Ooh. Yeah.
00:48:58
Speaker
I like it. I like it. It's good. I'm going to think about puns as you explain all the mechanics of these fights. Just constantly interrupt me whenever you feel fit. It's great. But it is a cool looking fight, and it's actually got some scope to it. I like the small character fighting against giants, which a lot of games use, but I appreciate it. And it's very different for this game. There's only a few fights where you actually fight against really large bosses.
00:49:26
Speaker
And then you get to redo the fight as Eggman, where Sonic has disabled the control unit on top of, and the Egg Golem's gone rogue, so you have to do the exact same fight as Eggman, but you're in a mech, and you just shoot the living shit out of it, which goes to show guns get things done. That's true. As the rhyme goes. That's what I heard as a kid. I'm not super pro guns, but the rhyme was there. That was my bedtime story.
00:49:56
Speaker
One of the major fights that stands out for me, which I want to say it's bullshit, but it's just iconic for me, is when you're playing as Knuckles, and you've gone through, I think it's Death Chamber, where you're getting the keys, and then you fight King Boomboo, who is like a rainbow-tongued giant ghost who still haunts me to this day, literally, as he is a ghost. But it's just very creepy and awkward.
00:50:25
Speaker
but you have to dodge the attacks, wait for him to do some channeling ability, then run around behind, punch a ghost who's holding up a Sand Timer, which is one of the mechanics in the game, it will open up the lights in the room, King Boom Boom will kind of shrink down and dig underground, and then you have to go find him, dig him out, and then go punch him, and then you repeat that cycle like five times. Right, and he gets faster on subsequent stages, things like that.
00:50:55
Speaker
But that was a more interesting fight to me that had mechanics as opposed to, I'm going to keep doing a homing attack until they pause and wait awkwardly and then I'll hit them in the back. Yeah. The character versus character fights were probably the weaker ones. Another thing I just noticed was all of these large boss fights they're having in these circular arenas where you can run around the outside. Around the outside? Yeah. Around the outside.
00:51:24
Speaker
That one's like more scope to the fight and the option for more mechanics like that This is probably mechanically and the most interesting fight for me by the way The big King ghost boo boom boo. Yeah, boom boo boo boo This one actually it looked the most like it could have been taken from a Mario game Actually, not just because it's a big ghost that's almost named boo boo, but you know I
00:51:54
Speaker
But it still has those external mechanics, things like that. Like, oh, we're going to shed light on the situation. That's the boss's weak point. You know, all of this. I thought it was cool. I thought this was the one that was engineered and set up.
00:52:09
Speaker
to be the best boss fight. Although the last one also was pretty cool. Not playing it, just watching it. Well, the last one you saw me do was the BioLizard, right? Yeah. How many times did I try that before turning out the GameCube, do you remember? I mean, do lives count or really in full tries? I think across lives, it probably was almost 10, because you were down to like only a few that first attempt, then you came back with seven, I believe. Six or seven.
00:52:37
Speaker
yeah it was it was a bit so it was it was probably around 10 um there's times that were like they'll strip you of so many things clothes and then to be fair if you're a hedgehog and wearing clothes you already have your own issues yeah clothes at least just gloves and shoes it's all you need he's not naked he's wearing socks yeah you've seen the uh i'm sorry this is a side thing but the the glasses for sonic were just
00:53:07
Speaker
No, no, okay. There's a there's an image online where yeah, I know we gotta be careful here where It's like sonic without his glasses. Oh Yeah, it's just the whites of his eyes are his glasses Yeah, I fucking love Ellen, but yeah, that's his third piece of clothing I digress
00:53:31
Speaker
But yeah, a lot of times the game will put you like these, hey, attacks you're homing in at you. You can't really control anything else beyond that. And it just kind of like kneecaps you and it's like, don't die. And you're like, well, this is kind of hard. Because like at that point in the game too, it's not an introduced mechanic.
00:53:50
Speaker
So citing another, maybe possible future episode one day, something like Psychonauts, everything is explained as you go. We'll cover that when Tea comes out. Yeah. Like you have a chance to go over certain things. You're like, okay, I've at least experienced this before. So then down the line where you're doing like, Hey, all of the mechanics, you're like, all of the mechanics, all of the mechanics, you at least have that baseline of, Hey, I understand what's going on because I've been shown this before. You have this organic learning process.
00:54:20
Speaker
Yeah, and earlier Mega Man games have done that too. I'm not going to steal everything from Egoraptor. But there's a lot of ways for games to convey, hey, here's a mechanic. You're like, OK, cool. I'm familiar with that. I've proved that I understand it. And then I can leverage it later. And you're like, OK, let me apply these skills I've learned. And if you'll accomplish for beating a boss, versus in kneecapping and saying, bitch. And then it kills you. And you're like, well, cool.
00:54:50
Speaker
Yeah, there's not like, most of these fights don't really use powers and mechanics that you've gotten. They do follow the traditional, the traditional adventure game trope of like impassable obstacle. You could basically break it out to keys and doors, right? Here's a door, can't pass through it. Here's the key. Maybe the key is like God's strength or some other, you know, MacGuffin item, or in this case, boots, gloves, and bracelets.
00:55:20
Speaker
And that allows you to break that block, jump through that puzzle, do whatever, right? None of the boss fights actually use those for the most part. They don't. No, it's weird. Yeah.
00:55:32
Speaker
Which is kind of probably one of the shortcomings for the boss fights here. One. Yes. Because it doesn't really build off of that collection mechanic. And also, we already mentioned this, but the heroes and the villains are copy-pastes of each other. And their abilities and also their upgrades.
00:55:55
Speaker
Tails and, or I should say Sonic and Shadow. I get it. They're both hedgehogs. They're basically the same. Shadow does not have the bounce bracelet though. Okay, okay. I actually miss that. So none of his levels will actually incorporate the unique to bounce. That's good because I kept forgetting I could bounce. But like outside of that, fucking verbatim. Yeah. Like there's not a need.
00:56:16
Speaker
because they're just, oh, I'm in a mech, I go around and shoot, call them a hedgehog, I jump around and grind on rails. It's all the same shit. And the upgrades are the same. If they wanted to differentiate these characters a little bit, start them out with the base, so you're like, hey, I've already played Tales in a Mech, so I know what Dr. Eggman in a Mech is like.
00:56:35
Speaker
and then make their upgrade paths actually different. Maybe he gets different mechanics after he gets that first upgrade, but I mean, that would have been more effort, I guess. Whoa, hold on there, Jay. But yeah, if you have different upgrade paths, you can then leverage. Keep saying leverage. Yeah, yeah.
00:56:54
Speaker
Like a lever. Different level design. Where it would use the mechanics. Because they'll kind of gate you with certain parts where, oh, you need the hover boots to kind of jump and then go as you slowly descend to cover certain gaps.
00:57:13
Speaker
But like, Tails and Robotnik have that. And they also have the, oh, I can now break metal boxes type of thing. It's the exact same. I would have given Robotnik a hyperboost, like a jump jet that just launches him in the air and then make his levels be more vertical. Or have sections like that. Because that'd be great. You're just like, oh, don't surrounded by enemies? Now I'm 100 feet in the air. Now admittedly, this would also make it so they can't really copy paste the levels, which
00:57:42
Speaker
It's probably a con for development. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I can only criticize games that are over a decade old too much, I suppose. No, I can't. I can criticize them as much as I want. It's bad. One of the redeeming things. So like I said, I used to play this game a fuck ton. Yeah. With the homies. With the... It's literally just one friend and cousin. With the homie. With the homie.
00:58:10
Speaker
The multiplayer wasn't great, but it was entertaining to kind of play those same type of level mechanics in a smaller 1v1 type setting. Also a key part of the game, which I haven't talked about at all, are the chows. So like in between levels, if you get like a break the bout chow box and get the chow key, you can go to the chow world in between campaign stuff. What is a chow? A chow is like a small,
00:58:40
Speaker
pet baby type thing. You can give it annual upgrades and power-ups to make it look different and gain stats over time. They look like smaller Pikmin to me. That's not an incorrect statement.
00:58:56
Speaker
It's something that I had in the first game and maybe even earlier I'm not super up on Sonic lore. Yeah, but you can have them like race and battle right so if you had like two Memory cards you can like verse each other right which my cousin I would do and I
00:59:15
Speaker
I think I was the try-hard on that because I'd just be like pumping staff for this little kid. Why is your memory card attached to a game shark? Don't worry about it. Yeah. Like when Shao was like five times a week like... Just ripped. They had Shao karate and Shao racing and they're both... You can really do... It's kind of automated except for you could kind of yell like, hey, and give like a mustang and a boost or something. Yeah.
00:59:43
Speaker
but it's pretty much just the raw stats and RNG. Yeah. I'm just imagining you're fielding your chow's to fight them and like his loads and it's just a chow off in the corner and yours loads and it's just like shadow or something. Just like wait. Please hold. Yeah. But I didn't get to see this part of the game so I have to rely on your nostalgia and enjoyment.
01:00:09
Speaker
There's only so much time we had and I want to subject you to everything. Right. This game had to have some positive, uh, take Dave's word for it. Uh, nostalgia at the end. I want you to appreciate like the memes and like shit of it, but not have you belabor through every single piece, I guess. You did say that there was a lot of, uh, there's, there's some, a hefty amount of gameplay that was, uh, locked behind.
01:00:34
Speaker
chow abuse and whatever the opposite of abuse is. I don't know what that is. Love, Jake. There's love. Okay. I'll write this down real quick. But what kind of content was locked back there? Basically, there's emblems you get throughout the game where you complete a stage, you get an emblem. But I think each stage throughout the story has like five emblems you can get total. You kind of have to go through and get like an A rating on
01:01:04
Speaker
I think it's initially the level and then like certain challenges within the level, like you get a certain score, there's like a time trial, other things. There's also stuff for chow specifically, where if you beat the AI and like a race for like the light side and dark side, so you'd have to spend time on one chow nurturing it, letting it become like an angel chow, opening up that area.
01:01:29
Speaker
to be qualified for that or abusing the shit out of another one and opening up like the hell area and making it like a dark chow. Right, right. Which usually you could do by like jumping and like landing on it. Like a bouncing gumba stomp it. Yeah. Or just throwing it. Oh man. Which I did a bit. I didn't realize that was a bad action. As soon as I went to the chow world and Dave's
01:01:54
Speaker
They saved game hair, just started picking them up and tossing them. Yeah, these are ones I've had for like 10 years, by the way, asshole. So thanks for that. They haven't seen you in 10 years. And as soon as you return, you start throwing them. Daddy! Oh, man. But yeah, it's got some interesting depth to it in odd places. Like if I were to go game developer mode and armchair developer, not at all qualified to do.
01:02:23
Speaker
I'd be like, all right, let's cut back some of these optional things we got going here. The ratings per level, nobody cares. The chow things, maybe some people care, but still let's drop it and we'll be like, you know, improve the base experience of the game.
01:02:41
Speaker
I don't know if that's how development works, but that's what I would want to do. Yeah, there seems to be a lot of, again, going back to my initial statement of reaching the star's ancillary content. They're trying to be like, hey, this is a thing, right? And just kind of like pipe it in there. And it's not needed, but as a whole, it was an enjoyable experience and I will always love a part of the game for that. But also I do,
01:03:08
Speaker
admit that it is garbage. It is a garbage game. Lovable garbage. Maybe Sonic Adventure 1 is better. But it's meme content for me at this point in time. That was the argument I needed to make. I don't have any actual ammunition for that. It's on Steam though if you don't have a game view.
01:03:29
Speaker
So it's an option for you if you want to hate yourself. This is the first that I've heard that it was on Steam. Dave just really wanted me to come over three times tonight. AJ, what did you want for Christmas? I didn't want to play on GameCube. Not this. But it was fun sitting down, going through this experience, and laughing at how completely ridiculous Sonic Adventure 2 Battle actually is.
01:03:58
Speaker
I would at least observe this. Watch a friend play it. That's the experience I can attest to. You can't do a playthrough on YouTube and you just see the frustration and hatred in their eyes. It takes something out of it if it's not your friend immediately going through the pain.
01:04:20
Speaker
I got nothing. Let's wrap it up. All right, so thank you guys for listening to another episode of Soapstone. As always, you can send your feedback into us directly at soapstonepodcastgmail.com. Or if you would like to send your feedback in a more collaborative fashion or make it appear that people actually listen to us, you can like us on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast.
01:04:45
Speaker
and we are always happy to engage with people there tend to respond to comments when possible or when they come in and yeah it's just a fun place and we will post our episodes there and on spotify when they are available yeah so thanks for listening and we'll see you in the next one
01:05:18
Speaker
Oh