User:TheJoebro64/drafts/Hero
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sonic Heroes is a 2003 3D platform game in Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog series. Set six months after the events of Sonic Adventure 2, the story follows four individual groups of characters in their quests to find Doctor Eggman; meanwhile, Metal Sonic secretly manipulates these events. Sonic Heroes features twelve playable characters divided into pre-determined teams of three. Gameplay requires players to switch between team members and take advantage of each's unique abilities to complete levels, and collect the seven Chaos Emeralds in special stages.
The game was produced in commemoration of the series' twelfth anniversary. Sonic Team USA handled development, led by Yuji Naka and Takashi Iizuka. The team aimed to make Sonic Heroes feel like a standalone game rather than a continuation of the Sonic Adventure games, and built the game using the RenderWare game engine. Sonic Heroes was the first multi-platform Sonic game—produced for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Microsoft Windows—and was released in Japan in December 2003, with a worldwide release following in 2004.
Reviewers were polarized by Sonic Heroes, although most agreed it was an improvement from the Sonic Adventure games. Some critics wrote the game was much closer to the series' original 2D entries, and singled out its graphic design and detailed environments and textures as highlights. Others derided it for not addressing the problems of past Sonic games, such as poor camera controls and incoherent voice acting. Despite the mixed reception, the game was a major commercial success and was branded under the Player's Choice, Platinum Hits, and Greatest Hits lines for the GameCube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2, respectively.