Why Sonic Adventure’s Big the Cat Levels are Fundamentally Flawed
Over the last few years the Sonic Adventure series of games have come under a greater amount of scrutiny than their initial critical reception when they were first released in 1999 and 2001 respectively. What were, at one point, seemingly unanimously praised for being among the greatest games in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise have now, long since, had that title revoked as more people find and some debate how much the games have aged in their near-two decades since release.
Sonic Adventure was among the surprisingly large launch lineup for the Sega Dreamcast back in 1999, but was by far the most hyped game of the series. This was mainly due to the fact that a Sonic game for the Sega Saturn proved a difficult task and, thus, aside from a few spin off games, a compilation, and a graphically enhanced version of Sonic 3D Blast, there was no main series game released for the Saturn.
Sonic Adventure, as a release title for the Dreamcast- which was the most powerful console available on the market at the time of its release- was designed to be a grand epic, showing the hardware capabilities of Sega’s most advanced console yet. The game was meant to showcase all the different styles of games possible on the new hardware while pulling off graphical tricks none of the other consoles were physically capable of replicating and telling the most ambitious story in a Sonic the Hedgehog game up to that point. Of course, these days, everyone has since, so thoroughly, deconstructed the game that, looking at it now, its ambition is seen as more of a misfire than something that landed, but back in 1999, there were very few games which could capture the scope of the game, and even if they did, nothing looked quite as impressive in comparison.
One of the biggest points of criticism for the Sonic games of this era is the use of different gameplay styles between several different character. And no play style on the game makes more people let out an exasperated sigh more so than Big the Cat’s levels. I remember as a kid, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to beat the game because of the Big the Cat stages and as it turned out, my brother ended up being pretty good at them. As it turns out, very few, if anyone, really enjoys the Big the Cat levels. It wasn’t until I was in my final year in college playing through the game again when I finally was able to complete Big the Cat’s story at all. After doing a summer break emblem hunting and the frustrations my brother and I both felt when trying to get all the action stage emblems for Big the Cat I started to question what made that particular play style so frustrating.
I always approach strong criticisms with a little bit of skepticism especially when it comes to criticisms of Sonic Adventure as there are experiences other people have had with the game that they say makes it bad that I’ve never experienced with the game in my 17 years of owning it and playing through it countless times. That said, I don’t necessarily disagree with all criticisms or ignore all of them, after all, being objective in any critical analysis means that there has to be some kind of disadvantage or downside to whatever you’re looking at, and there are many fair criticisms of the game, bot major and minor. I am here to agree with the affirmation that the Big the Cat levels are not well designed and fundamentally flawed.
Back when I got an Xbox 360 for super cheap in early 2016, one of the games I immediately picked up for it was a Sega compilation disk consisting of Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 9, Sonic Adventure, and a Bass Fishing game. The reason i bring that up is because I was curious that, of all the Dreamcast games they would choose to put on a compilation disk, it would be a Bass fishing game. I’ll admit, I haven’t touched that game at all and it’s mostly because of my experience with Big the Cat’s levels in Sonic Adventure, but I found it interesting that there would be a whole game dedicated to fishing rather than a segment of a larger game like it is in Sonic Adventure. How could a fishing gameplay style be so bad if there are entire games dedicated to just that gameplay style?
For the uninitiated, Big the Cat’s levels are all fishing levels. There are elements of platforming in, maybe, 1 or 2 of the stages, but it’s very light and unchallenging. The challenge of Big’s levels is in the fishing segment where the goal is to catch Big’s friend, Froggy… every level has you catching Froggy and Big always loses Froggy afterward in, what can only be described as, a series of contrivances so the plot can go where it’s supposed to.
If the controls for Big’s play style can be summed up with one word, it would be: ambiguous. The game isn’t exactly clear with how you’re supposed to catch Froggy. You cast your lure out and the game fixes the camera to a usually awkward view that, more often than not, has you staring at a wall or the ground. The lure isn’t moved very easily and is only moved in pre-determined increments that also contorts the camera into weird positions that makes your view of what’s happening worse. If you try to move it back ot its original position, there’s only a small chance that it will actually do that. There is a lot of fighting with the camera in Sonic Adventure, but this is when it’s at its worst. How do you get Froggy’s attention? How do you reel him in when he catches the bait, and how do you do that without breaking the fishing line? None of these things are explained to you (well) in the game or in the manual (for the Gamecube version, at least). How are you supposed to have fun when you have no idea how to play the game? It also doesn’t help that Big’s first stage is strangely one of the more difficult levels in his story. It never feels like an accomplishment that you catch Froggy- or anything- in Big’s levels, instead it feels that you somehow got something right by chance. Essentially, rather than how most games gradually introduce gameplay and the rules of the game through keeping things simple like most well-designed games, the developers for Sonic Adventure decided, with Big the Cat’s stage, to throw you in the deep end with no time limit, a semi-cryptic hint ball, and good luck wishes. You don’t really get a remote grasp of how to catch anything successfully until you’ve finished playing through Big’s entire story but even then…
Things get worse when you try getting Big’s B and A emblems. The goal is the catch a fish of a certain weight before finishing the stage by catching Froggy. The problem with this aspect of the game design brings out all the worst things about Big’s Stages. In Sonic Adventure, every character can collect upgrades to help enhance their abilities and perform certain tasks. Most of the time the game will not let you progress through the game until you’ve collected the necessary level up item. This raises its own set of issues, but at least the necessary items are emphasized since those are the ones required to get through the game. While, I guess you could technically argue that Big the Cat’s level up items work the same way, he is in a unique situation where, unlike every other character, you will not be able to complete all the ranked stage tasks without all of them. This is not made evident until you’ve spent a frustrating 35 minutes on Big’s first stage and every fish you catch is under the weight required to complete the task. You look up a walkthrough and on there it says that the fish won’t even spawn in if you don’t have all of the lure upgrades. The game never communicates this to you, and nor does the game really point out that there are lure upgrades you can pick up in the adventure fields. In the meantime, you’re still fighting with the controls and, especially when you have to catch the bigger fish, a lot of the time they can take minutes to reel in since they fight so hard. At the end of it all, none of it was very fun and there’s less a sense of accomplishment but a sense of exhaustion that comes over you as earning the emblems for the B and A ranks for each of the action stages were more of a test of patience than a test of skill.
These are, ultimately, the reasons why Big the Cat’s stages are so disliked by, nearly, everyone. Not only are they not very fun to play or earn the B and A ranks in, but the game requires you to play as him. He is made essential to the story yet his story is so inconsequential and, lacking in significance that forcing the player to play through all of his levels so they can unlock the final story of the game is extremely frustrating. The fact that Big also has more stages than a couple of the others is also baffling. Not all of the play styles are agreed on when it comes to the assessments of their quality, but any of the others present on Sonic Adventure are preferable to Big the Cat’s.
Sonic Adventure is not an unplayable mess or anything extremely bad, nor is it still a masterpiece. As with many games that came out in the late 90s, there are many quirks present which we have all grown accustomed to not being there that, when we go back, our tolerance for those quirks is diminished. But there is a difference between gameplay quirks and poor design, and unfortunately, Big the Cat’s gameplay style falls under the latter category. Something like this being made now, would be completely unacceptable, and back then, I doubt many were heaping praise on Big the Cat’s gameplay style. This isn’t an argument against the idea of a game developer experimenting with new ideas, but when experimenting, one should make sure that the end result- especially for a game- is done well enough to warrant presenting to the player and requiring that it be played. Of course, in true Sega fashion, when an experiment goes awry, they choose never to implement any element of it in future games again, and thus, that’s what happened for Big the Cat’s fishing gameplay- for better or for worse.
