Played via GOG

Over the last holiday period I played Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag for the first time - despite me being a fan of the early titles near day one I've only recently decided to carry on beyond the Ezio games and my takeaways have been less than stellar. AC3 was a big, bold and dramatic ending to the original narrative and while it swung for the fences there were still plenty of minor issues dragging it back. Black Flag meanwhile sought to build off the worst parts of that game, giving us a ship mechanic that shoved the even further broken assassin gameplay to the side and a bloated slew of missions and story beats that barely coalesced at the end.

And so I came back to where my love for the franchise started and where I compare every successive game's quality. I won't pretend this game is perfect, but looking at this both as a point of comparison and in a vacuum it remains oh so easy to see why Assassin's Creed as a multimedia IP took off the way it did. You can claim this game is boring or bland or just too weird but take a moment to ignore the expectations, step back into 2007 where the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles promised so much to the gaming landscape and you might see something mysterious and magical.

I encourage you to go even further - turn off the HUD elements, the mini-map, everything cluttering your screen and just soak in the atmosphere. Each time you enter a new city or seek to explore new districts look out for the eagles, both visually and audibly. You'll find your viewpoints, you'll get to know the locations better and you'll find your missions without needing to open the map every 30 seconds. The gameplay loop feels so much less repetitive when you're not knowing what to expect to find or where to find it, even more so in the PC release with extra missions to pick from that aren't related to the eavesdrop/pickpocket/interrogate cycle you're sick of.

The atmosphere alone is so wholly unique too - a video-game based in the Crusades-era Holy Lands? What a brilliant idea, and yet one that remains so firmly unrealised in the medium. I can't imagine it's entirely an accurate depiction of the settings, but being surrounded by the languages, the accents and architectural styles you're certainly transported to a place resembling it all - if you can ignore Altair's North American accent that is.

Like I said, this game isn't perfect - combat can feel stiff and perhaps slow, despite the easy cheat method of equipping your hidden blade in fights and being able to counter at the last second for an instant kill on every enemy. Parkour can feel even more finicky despite the fact that apart from ACII this is the best the franchise ever feels in terms of control and player freedom for what to do and how to do it.

But the narrative - despite you being able to see certain beats coming a mile away - feels fully realised. I'm biased in that I love historical fiction with a conspiracy theory twist and the ideas this game raises is the perfect basis for worldbuilding a franchise, as we've seen.

Next I'll be playing Rogue, hopefully followed by Unity and Syndicate, alongside all the spin-off titles before properly jumping into the soft reboot with Origins. I love this franchise, despite spending dozens of hours in games I don't even really enjoy, but this game, the original, the first, is why I truly love it all in a weird twisted way.

Played via the Phantasy Reverie Series release on an Xbox Series X.

This was fun - I had no real idea what I was in for when starting this game but I had a great time with it. The art direction was stupendously adorable and the music was genuinely great. Sometimes later platforming challenges were mildly infuriating (especially the Extra stage at the end) but this was a solid little game with a very surprising narrative. Whilst the Phantasy Reverie Series release is a remaster of the Wii remake, it does feature the original PS1 audio replacing the Wii's dubs and to be honest I'm glad I experienced it this way since I can only imagine an actual language attached to this game would have ruined at least 50% of my immersion and emotional investment, especially during those last cutscenes.

I've never played a Klonoa game before but from what everyone's saying I made the worst possible choice in the history of mankind by playing this version first. The very simple reason I picked this up was because it was available - unfortunately publishers don't deem older releases viable to keep selling and since there's no way I'm paying $300+ for the original PS1 release this was the next best option. Do I agree with this method? Absolutely not, and it's debateable whether rereleasing older games with an artificial new coat of paint is really the best but I certainly don't regret my time with this release.

Played on an original Xbox 360.

If I could score Alan Wake based purely on its setting, narrative, amd over all vibes this would get 10s across the board from me - it's a wonder that outside of Remedy's experiments and Deadly Premonition the market of making a game influenced so heavily by Twin Peaks remains firmly untouched yet this game managed to ride those coattails whilst throwing in its own clever twists on those old ideas.

The gameplay is where Alan Wake falters however - it's not really bad persay but it's very basic and repetitive with not much in the way of keeping you engaged. I actually found it kind of comfy at first, the first few chapters go by on a Normal difficulty setting without much issue, leaving you in a chill state of wondering around, get enemies pointed out to you, react with flashlight and kill, rinse and repeat. The later chapters really only serve to point out how shallow that gameplay loop is though. You see a lot of cool environments with fun setpieces and cool story beats, but the combat gets a little tedious after a while and never truly feels "fun". The idea of staggering enemies with light a is a neat one but I'd hate to play on the higher difficulties with stronger enemies and less access to items as Normal felt more than balanced to me.

Overall I would recommend playing Alan Wake if for nothing else than to set yourself up for its terrific-looking sequel. It can be beat in just over 10 hours and while the gameplay can be a bit tedious later on, the tone and story Remedy set out to craft here is wonderfully unique and intriguing.

Played on an original Xbox 360 model.

It took me way too long into my playthrough of this game to appreciate anyhing it was trying to do - Edward as a protagonist is aimless until the last act of the story, the gameplay acts as an inverse of AC3's with more focus on ship sailing than actual on-the-ground assassin-ing, and the modern day plot is embroiled in a weird meta commentary about Ubisoft's own development of the franchise through the lens of being a front for Abstergo. Whenever I hear people talking about this game it's always heralded as the "best" entry in the series with much bemoaning of how the franchise has since fallen in quality and all I can really respond with is "really?" Black Flag, with it's parkour and general movement hat's further simplified from AC3's dumbed-down mechanics and yet still remains as dodgy and imprecise as the original game's? Black Flag with gameplay and mission markers and side activities and hidden trinkets bloated to being over a 40 hour game with the narrative of a 10 hour experience? Black Flag with its cosmetics and upgrades locked behind mandatory online and multiplayer content? That Black Flag? Because if this really is the peak of the AC franchise then jesus wept I'm not even sure if I want to bother continuing with it.

Ok, positives - the art direction is really fucking good. I've enjoyed the art style of all the previous mainline entries but Black Flag really does manage to capture the clear blue oceans, golden beaches and scummy shanty towns of a romanticised carribean amidst the golden age of piracy. Characters all look pretty good too and I had a much better time being able to identify individuals here than I did in AC3's ocean of bland-looking, wrinkled white men in their 40s. The music too is more defined than the last entry, with many tunes becoming recogniseable over the course of the game, and while I never truly enjoyed sailing the high seas (7/10, too much water, etc) I can certainly recognise how all of these points coming together could provide a really great vibe for people to relax into.

Unfortunately I didn't fall into that camp - I grew to appreciate the ship segments in AC3 well enough towards the end but having that be the main focus here never grew on me. It's not what I enjoy these games for and combined with the other multitude of problems I listed prior resulted in a frustrating and boring experience for the majority of my time here.

I could forgive some of this if the focus was upon the assassin/templar conflict but it took a large back seat to Edward's journey, and that felt like a slog at the best of times to get to the (admittedly satisfying) inevitable conclusion to his arc. Too much of the story just has him bugger about, dead set on chasing a vague goal of riches despite him offering really insightful monologues about how it's all kinda worthless and recognising his friends are slowly dying. This could have worked as a fine story but it's so bloated in the middle and the ending remains vague as to if Edward even joins the brotherhood or not. Genuinely the best part was the drunken sequence of everyone shouting at him but this came so late in my playthrough that I was actively just trying to finish the damn game and it was a bit soured by that point.

The modern portion is similarly mixed for me - it takes far too long to realise just what exactly Ubisoft were trying to do here and really the entire scope of it all only becomes clear at the very end when you're finally able to access all the computer files previously locked off to you. The narrative of the Sage and Juno weaving into it felt kinda cool but I was surprised they wrapped all those ideas up here instead of allowing them to be left open for the next installment. Sean and Rebecca's return was fun and satisfying and the audio logs from Desmond and the original Subjects from the 80s were really cool to this guy who's always genuinely enjoyed the modern portions, but like I said, it just takes too long to actually see it all.

Ultimately, Black Flag is a step back for me. I can recognise why a lot of people really enjoyed this game with the AAA gaming scene really lacking in strong pirate games but those are half the reasons I just couldn't gel with this one. The other half is purely down to the game feeling really buggy to play dispite this being the 6th entry of the series and the bloated nature of it's narrative and activities dragging the pacing down.

For the length and narrative of this VN, it's hard to come away feeling you didn't get an experience worth the price of admission. It's obviously about a subject that not everyone's going to connect with or even necessarily find comfortable exploring, but it's evidently a labour close to ctc's own experiences and in that I felt it was told in a raw but compelling way. Characters can feel two-dimensional at first, but giving the game a chance of multiple playthroughs can really flesh them further and the writing that either progressively spirals or gets more emotionally charged, path depending, is all spurred along by a wonderfully oppressive soundscape.

Looking forward to any and all future work from ctc, the endings were worth finding

Played v2.0.0 via Steam on Windows 11 (Gigabyte B560 HD3, i7-11700 @ 2.5GHz, 64GB DDR4 RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070) with Flare's GUI Assets v1.3 mod.

Sonic Lost World is such a weird game - the awkward middle child between the highs of Generations and lows of Forces, Lost World appropriately straddles between the two in a potentially brilliant package but teaming with hints of mediocrity.

First up the gameplay. I enjoyed how this game handles and feels whilst playing - for the majority of the time. The "sprint" button seems like it should be a strange inclusion for a mascot with a crippling "go fast" medical condition but it compliments the level design well, allowing you to control fairly well where and how Sonic will get from point A to B. The advancement of the homing attack to allow chains the longer you wait near enemies felt like it could have a satisfying risk/reward system depending on how long you wait for your opening but often times chains don't appear when you want and waiting around stronger enemies for the chain to build can result more often in wasted time. The parkour is the big new gameplay gimmick this time around and I wish I could give it high praise but it falls just shy of being very finnicky and unreliable. Running up and along walls can be fun but jumping between them to cross a long gap or even getting started on your run can be frustrating and result in multiple deaths. The Wisps from Colors make a return but they're relegated to one-off gimmicks in rare scenarios and feel forced in given their lack of narrative inclusion and sparsity.

The level design is fairly varied with a decent mix of 3D and 2D segments. Lost World also takes a step back from the level stylings of Generations and Colors with their one or two big levels per area and a handful of smaller challenges and instead sticks to 4 decently-paced levels per zone, each offering a decent amount of exploration of different paths and methods of traversal. These can vary from 1 minute to 4 and beyond depending on skill level and how far you are in the game but I had fun exploring and progressing through the majority of these - for the majority of the time. The only ones I grew to hate were the 2D-gliding-through-the-air levels, which had a steep learning curve and never felt natural to control with the caveat of dying if you strayed too far up or down the screen. There are a fair number of levels where you can farm lives however so you shouldn't really be reaching a true "game over" screen, but sometimes you will hit snags where you're repeatedly dying to what feels like stupid decisions, often involving the red rings. Bosses vary from stupidly short and easy to obvious but dysfunctional. Zavok's second encounter took a frustratingly-long time to figure out and when I finally did the homing attack chain would cut off in the middle 3 out of 4 attempts, resulting in me falling off and having to wait for the next opportunity to stun him.

The art direction is fairly solid - for the majority of the time. The CG cutscenes have weird foliage/artifacting that looks straight out of Colors while the design of "Sonic's World" feels strange and unlike anything we've seen before. Designs for the Lost Hex and the Deadly Six felt strong to me however and I really enjoyed their stupid interactions, even if a lot of it was incredibly surface-level.

Also being surface-level was the narrative - a very strange episode in this series that tries to take a minor step back from Colors and Generations' more light-hearted and overly-comedic banter and attempts to take itself a little seriously. However the lack of any drama or tension in cutscenes or pathos in the characters' relationships and the voice actors' direction results in it all falling just flat and it was a tradition carried on through Forces until Frontiers managed to break that cycle. If nothing else then you can argue Lost World sows the seeds of Eggman's recent grey morality and as always Mike Pollock's comedic timing helps sell a lot of the cutscenes.

Even the music can feel a little off at times. It's all still good, but Ohtani was very clearly either given the direction to emulate some symphonic Mario or he really wanted to go in that direction from the start because ooh boy if you thought this looked like Mario Galaxy, wait til you hear it. There's a lot to love about this OST though - Careening Cavern is a super chill beat with an underlying menace that bursts out on occasion, Midnight Owl is a fun musette-styled caper, and Desert Ruins is classic percussion-filled Ohtani with a variety of lazy middle-eastern inspired catchy melodies. Cutscene music however is forgettable and boring, nothing at all sticking out or complimenting much of what's happening on screen.

Lost World's greatest sin however is it's complete and total lack of tutorialisation. It doesn't tell you how to do anything, whether it's basic movement, the new parkour move set or how the Wisps properly function. The new homing attack takes way too long to figure out, I thought it was determined by how long you held the jump button on the second press but it instead requires you to wait for the chain to appear. It never felt really intuitive and it ended up causing me to take damage more often than not due to course layouts or boss attack patterns. Learning the parkour requires a metaphorical trial of fire by going after the red rings. They won't start as very challenging in the first few zones, but only by the time you reach the fourth will you begin to get a better understanding of how the parkour actually functions. Activating the Wisps will present a pop up box (every time) on how to move with the wisp, but it doesn't explain any basic functionalities. I still don't know what the deal with the Rhythm Wisp is or how you're expected to know that the Hover Wisp offers a light-speed dash ability since there's no explanation in the game anywhere for them. They all end with another pop up saying the Wisp has been depleted too which...yeah, I know.

I want to give Sonic Lost World more than 3/5 but it truly doesn't deserve it. For every cool level design, ability or bopping track, there's at least one other thing detracting from it and holding the experience back. It's not a complete waste of your time, there is fun to be had here despite it not adhering to the boost formula of prior successful games and shamelessly aiming for a "Mario but with a Sonic approach" design philosophy, but it doesn't take long to find minor grievances that sour the regular gameplay experience all too often.

Digital EU version played on an Xbox One X.

For a 10 hour experience you can certainly do a lot worse than this game. Sound and visuals are consistently top notch and whilst the narrative can feel almost clinical in its attempt to pull on your heartstrings, the gameplay is consistently fun and engaging, always encouraging you to explore and experiment with your abilities.

Except the flooding tree sequence. Fuck that.

Physical EU version played on a PlayStation 3 Super Slim.

I think there are a lot of decent choices made in this game - the narrative change to focus on Ratchet's (& Clank's?) origins feel wonky and sometimes more than a little forced but it adds some decent drama and seriousness that the prior 2 games sorely lacked. While new characters of Talwyn and her robot companions feels redundant due to prior games having these exact same archetypal characters with different designs and names, Qwark at least shows signs of gaining a little pathos whilst the inclusion of the pirate robots made this game far more enjoyable during moments of dryness. The gameplay is a vast improvement over Up Your Arsenal's however, featuring a strong focus on actual platforming again and maintaining that balance that the first two games had, albeit building on the strength of the weapon levelling that was such a core focus of Arsenal and Deadlocked.

It does all start to feel stale in the mid game though; whilst character models and animation quality get a little bump not much is on display to demonstrate the power of a new console generation. Art direction and level design feels like remixes of prior games and the wholly uninspired score has me certain I've heard most of the soundtrack before, either in prior entries or from Pirates of the Carribean. The lack of subtitles during gameplay was frustrating since what I was able to hear seemed to flesh out the narrative and character motivations but I genuinely feel I was only able to make out a quarter of it, whilst nearly every cutscene had audio skips, causing the dialogue to fall behind the animations and run the risk of not even finishing before gameplay came back. The lighting in some levels also made playing a bit of a chore since there were plenty of areas in the late game I just couldn't see properly and the lack of an in-game brightness setting exacerbated my issues.

Tools of Destruction is the fifth game in as many years for the Ratchet & Clank series and you can tell. The game design as a whole feels tired and while Insomniac can still deliver hilsrious jokes and seems to take a fresh new direction with the story it feels like one that could make or break older fans' enjoyment of the series. We've had 4 games now of not knowing Ratchet's origin and the possibility of making him some sort of prophesied son of a god-like species (whilst potentially retconning Clank's origin entirely) has red flags all over it. Still, if you haven't played an action adenture platformer in a while you can do a whole lot worse than this game.

Played via The BIT.TRIP release on a PlayStation Vita OLED model.

This is a review of two halves - one for the game itself which is an addicting reaction-based runner that looks and sounds great but suffers from a little too much reliance on memorisation for bullshit you have no idea is about to happen. With those few exceptions in mind the rest of the game rides the fine line of the player being the fuck up with no fault of the game, which is an impressive feat.

The other half of my review pertains to the version I had the displeasure of playing - the Vita release, as part of The BIT.TRIP package which bundles the first five games of the series together. This version suffers from really bad framerate issues; not entirely noticeable at first, but when there are specific obstacles or background entities on screen such as a long string of the wall worms in the first world or the mining characters in the second, performance just tanks to low 20s at best and it really throws you off both your rhythm and what you can see coming. I managed to push my way through to the third world after 4 hours but all of the issues culminate here where smooth framerates just don't happen any more and I can't keep bashing my head against this brick wall of a shoddy porting job any more.

This is a good game that I might revisit again sometime but for the love of god avoid the Vita version as much as possible.

Played via the UK PSN release on a PlayStation Vita OLED model.

It's fine, it feels like one of those mildly infuriating Flash games from the mid 00s with overly-tight jumps and controls. The crushing blocks have an annoying feature of being insta-death when touched on the side they're crushing into, despite distance from crushing destination and the end boss of the bonus levels was too well-designed compared to everything else despite just needing to wait him out. The worst part was the music - just one walking bass jazz track on repeat for 36 levels that repeated every few measures and wore thin within the first 5 loops.

Overall fine for the price, you'll get an easy platinum if that's your thing but don't come in expecting a hidden gem of an indie game.

2019

Played on a PlayStation Vita OLED model.

Reading other reviews I can see how this is a relaxing game - mastering the platforming within procedurally-generated levels whilst collecting little colorful sprites to chill music resulted in me playing a lot longer than I thought I had and for that I can give it props.

However this was a purchase during a sale, the kind that you add to the cart because it's cheap and an hour of fun is better than nothing, and I had no idea what I was in for when I booted it up. I played this game for a total of 70 minutes and half of that time was figuring out what the hell I was supposed to be doing - there's no indication of a goal or even an aim to the game upon loading and a lot of the gameplay felt like pointless busywork until I realised I was supposed to be interacting with doors and proceeding to further levels.

It didn't help that the performance on the Vita was so piss-poor either with what I can only assume being a memory leak of some kind completely tanking the performance of this very simple (albeit nice) looking game resulting in single digit framerates and unresponsive controls, requiring a complete reboot to function properly again.

I've been avoiding achievement collecting lately when playing games but when I consulted my earned list to try and get a better understanding of what I was supposed to be aiming for and realised I was one trophy away from the platinum it was quite surprising. This isn't a bad game and maybe if I played the PC original I'd even be able to relax and vibe with it but this port should be avoided.

Played via the UK PSN release on an OLED Vita.

This game does Its damndest to disuade you from playing right at the start - with an intense difficulty, linear progression and slow combat scenarios, it just doesn't feel immediately fun to play as a metroidvania. You'll soon unlock traversal upgrades and health/gun modifications but they don't serve to make the game much more interesting than in its base state and even revisiting a level is always slow and tedious due to the lack of any unlockable shortcuts.

The challenge from the game comes from limiting health pickups and checkpoints to right before a level's boss, placing effort on survival of long stretches of platforming sequences and enemies. It's difficult to say if I ever learned to enjoy the challenge myself since your starting health and gun make it feel woefully unfair at the beginning of the game whilst later game sequences can feel boring or frustrating. This is all prelude to a boss that is exactly the same as all the other bosses in the game too, plus or minus a new attack to adapt to.

The art and sound are fine for what they are, certainly nothing bad but not standing out particularly either. The only thing that sticks in my mind is how ridiculously adorable the 7-8 identical bosses were, I kinda felt bad killing them.

Overall Xeodrifter is fine - it has design issues surrounding its level layouts and upgrade progression, and while there is a highly competent game here to control, it just can't save a forgettable experience.

2019

Played via the DRM-free itch.io release on Windows 11 (Gigabyte B560 HD3, i7-11700 @ 2.5GHz, 16GB DDR4 RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070).

I should probably preface this review by stating my experience with metroidvanias is rather minimal - I've put a fair few hours into the original Metroid whilst never being able to finish it (the lengthy rooms and lack of map feels near intentional to waste my time) but haven't touched a Castlevania outside of the franchise's original incarnation as an action platformer (OG, Bloodlines).

So it always seems to be the indie metroidvanias that hold my attention longer, and while Redo! seems to borrow equally from the genre as well as survival horror, it's a solid title, clocking in at just under a 4 hour experience if your goal is the ending.

I found movement to feel limiting at first (the other reviewer isn't entirely wrong about the jump) but finding that the level design is built with it all in mind made me relax into the flow of the game easier. Enemy design and item placement felt satisfying to me, easily encouraging the "come back later if you feel overwhelmed" feeling whilst not being above allowing the player to cheese through some areas if they're smart with rolls, weapon usage and health.

The art style and soundtrack were the personal standouts however - aesthetically it feels similar to 2012 game Lone Survivor at first but where that game planted it's feet firmly in the disturbing, Redo! isn't afraid to go fantastical with enemy and world designs. The soundtrack is more of a soundscape though and whilst there's not many in the way of "bangers" here it very much supports the art's strengths and lends itself to keeping you on edge rather than pumped up.

Overall I enjoyed my time with this game - I don't doubt that it could be better in some aspects and I'm looking forward to the developer's follow-up, Sessions, but for Redo!'s length and cost I was thoroughly pleased with my end experience.

Played via the Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury eShop release on a Nintendo Switch.

3D Land was one of the earliest titles I played on my 3DS back in the day - it was a solid little platformer for the handheld with its bright, simple colour scheme and solid art direction landing it in the top games for the console.

3D World is much more of the same, with some added screen real estate and complexity to the level design but something feels...broken in the transition. Maybe it's nostalgia talking and sitting a few meters away from the TV, but where Land's simplistic lighting made you confident in your platforming, World's more complex system leads to uncertainty and hesitance. I never was absolutely certain where I was going to land when playing this game which resulted in every jump being accompanied by a full rectal clench.

The crux of my issues ultimately fall on the camera though - it's similar to 3D Land's but due to the wider shots movement can be finnicky, and when combined with a lot of late-game chaos on the screen I often had no idea where I was when desperately trying to hit a block or jump on an enemy.

I used to get pretty angry with games, and while I've managed to chill out a lot lately there was just something about this game that would result in occasional primal yells whenever my co-op partner and I would lose a life or hit a game over. It wasn't helped by the sprint button also being the "grab other player" button or simultaneous platforming always risking unwanted boosted jumps from landing on your partner and sending you flying further than intended. Maybe we had a skill issue, maybe I was needlessly losing my shit over a game designed to be played by literal children, but goddamn the rage I had at points in this game due to co-op interactions...

This is absolutely still a solid game though, and to the standard I'd expect from a first-party Nintendo release. The music is fun and always suitably tuned to the scenario you're playing whilst power ups and level designs are truly fun to traverse and satisfying to get right. The issues I had with the game might be due to my proximity to the TV and could possibly have been entirely eliminated if I were to play in portable mode (or if I were to simply git gud), but I believe the points I've raised here are valid to hold in mind for any visits to this 10 year old game that's still being sold for $60 on modern hardware.

Played via the Steam release with BetterSADX mods installed.

Another year, another replay of Sonic Adventure, this time with Frontiers now having released and seemingly broken the era of the stale Boost formula. It's odd too, because a lot of my criticisms with that game, especially towards the animations and cutscene directions can be also applied here, giving the impression that Sonic Team never really did have a handle on those to begin with. It doesn't help that Sonic Adventure feels older than ever before, with a camera system that's positively decrepit and any port of the game without heavy modding looking and playing like a complete travesty. Still, it remains a charming time with good controls, a decent art direction, and a banging soundtrack.

Regardless, I wanted something a little fresher from my nth playthrough of this game and attempting a chronological route (with the aid of mods allowing the unlocking of all stories straight from the get-go) really helped hold my attention this time around. If, like me, this is a comfort game for you but you want it to feel a little fresher I recommend the route laid out below. Be aware of a game-locking bug (unless you can familiarise yourself with how the SASave tool functions) when playing Tails' story, so always keep the emblem across from his workshop free for collection until a specified point. Also whilst this was a fun exercise, the cutscenes never perfectly line up and you'll have to stretch your imagination a little as to how the chronological events connect in a cohesive manner.

Knuckles - intro
Big - intro
Sonic - intro / Chaos 0
Tails - intro
Sonic - Emerald Coast / Tails - post crash
Sonic / Tails - Egg Hornet
Knuckles - Speed Highway
Sonic / Tails - Windy Valley / Casinopolis
Knuckles - Casinopolis / vision #1 / Chaos 2
Big - Twinkle Park
Sonic / Tails - Ice Cap
Knuckles - Red Mountain
Sonic / Tails / Knuckles - Character bosses / Chaos 4
Sonic / Tails - Sky Chase

Gamma - intro / Final Egg / Beta
Big - Ice Cap
Tails - Sand Hill / vision #2
Tails / Big - character cutscene (collect the emblem across from Tails' workshop immediately after meeting Big - this saves the game and prevents being locked in the vision sequence)
Amy - intro
Sonic / Amy - Casino area / Twinkle Park
Sonic - Speed Highway
Amy /Sonic - abduction
Big - Emerald Coast
Gamma - Emerald Coast
Knuckles - Lost World
Gamma - vision #3
Knuckles - vision #4 / board Egg Carrier
Sonic - Mystic Ruins cutscene
Tails - Tornado 2
Sonic - Red Mountain
Sonic / Tails - Sky Chase 2

Gamma / Amy - character cutscene
Amy - Hot Shelter / vision #5
Big - Hot Shelter
Sonic / Tails / Knuckles - Egg Carrier transform / Sky Deck
Sonic / Tails / Gamma - character bosses
Sonic - change ship shape
Big - vision #6
Knuckles - vision #7
Big - Chaos 6 [story complete]
Sonic - Chaos 6
Knuckles - Chaos 6 [story complete]

Gamma - Windy Valley
Tails - Speed Highway / Egg Walker [story complete]
Gamma - Red Mountain
Sonic - Lost World / vision #8
Gamma - Hot Shelter
Amy - Final Egg
Gamma - Beta [story complete]
Amy - Zero [story complete]
Sonic - Final Egg / Egg Viper [story complete]

Super Sonic - vision #9 / Perfect Chaos [story complete]