Like many, I haven’t been the biggest fan of Sonic games of the last decade. This was largely due to the steady stream of mediocrity produced by Sonic Team within those years. But then, Sonic Generations was released and what a pleasant surprise it was. I was even hesitant to purchase it at first given Sonic’s recent history but I played the demo and I was convinced. Sonic is back! In terms of story, there really isn’t one…which is great. Why? Well, like in the Mario games there doesn’t have to be a story in order to produce an engaging game. Something is amiss and you need to resolve it; that’s all that is needed in terms of story. The last 10 years of Sonic games have tried to make games with an interesting story and they’ve failed essentially every time. Sonic Generations even knows this and pokes fun at Sonic’s past adventures, “It’s no stranger than rescuing genies and magic books or saving aliens in an interstellar amusement park”. In this case, a massive time warping monster has distorted Sonic’s world, sucking the life and color out of everything. In addition, Sonic realizes that he’s travelling through time and teams up with Classic Sonic to change things back to the way they were. It’s basically a clever excuse to revisit and pay tribute to Sonic’s gaming history. The music in Sonic Generations is fantastic. Each zone has a classic and modern rendition of new and old Sonic tracks. If there’s anything that remains consistent in Sonic games it’s the catchy music. And if you don’t like the music that plays in each zone (how could you not?) you can replace it with 1 of 50 unlockable tracks encompassing even more of Sonic’s history. It’s similar to the MyMusic option in Super Smash Bros. Brawl: adjust what songs you want to hear in which stage. A great addition but I rarely used it. The graphics are also incredible, especially when Sonic is blazing past everything. The cutscenes oddly, are rather blurry and the audio seems quieter during cutscenes as well. There are also some framerate issues that occur sometimes. All the characters though, old and new, look great and it’s neat to see Classic Sonic, Tails, and Eggman in a 3D environment. Finally, the gameplay. The hub world is very neat; posing as a timeline where you select which zone you want to play. Each zone is divided into two acts, with the first being Classic Sonic’s style of gameplay. This includes 2D, sometimes 2.5D, environments where you zoom from left to right avoiding spikes, jumping on springs, and collecting rings. Classic Sonic even has the classic controls; all you can do is run, jump, and spin dash. There are skills that you can unlock and add on but they provide minor enhancements to gameplay (move more smoothly underwater, mid-air spin attack, energy shields, etc.). The second act is Modern Sonic’s style of gameplay, which is much more versatile: 2D, 2.5D, and 3D environments, grinding on rails, homing attacks, skateboarding, freefalling, ground-pounding. There are a lot of actions Modern Sonic can perform and the unlockable skills add even more. The camera can be a bit wonky in certain areas when playing as Modern Sonic but that’s a minor nuisance. As always, in both acts there are many paths you can take that lead to various shortcuts and routes that may contain Red Rings, collectable rings that unlock concept art and music. There are also challenges that you can play where you have to perform various tasks that reward you with even more unlockables. You can also play online and see how fast you can beat an act and compare your time with others worldwide. The boss battles however, are underwhelming. There are three main bosses, three rivals, and the final boss, all of which are over relatively quickly and are not that difficult. Ultimately, this is a great way to celebrate Sonic’s 20th anniversary. While the main game is relatively short, the levels are so expertly designed that you will want to replay them and unlock everything this game offers. Overall, this is a fun and addictive Sonic game; and when’s the last time you heard that? Graphics: 8.5 Audio: 10 Gameplay: 9.5 Overall: 9 /10
Nice review! I've heard a lot about how there's kind of a disconnect between classic Sonic and modern Sonic in the game, and how the modern stages are kind of inferior to the classic ones. Did you find that to be the case, or were they just about equal?
Obviously the two Sonic's have very different styles of gameplay and which one you prefer really depends on which Sonic games you grew up on. I played the Genesis games at a very young age so I don't remember them all that well but I played Sonic Adventure 2 Battle for the GameCube a lot. So I preferred Modern Sonic's levels a bit more but the classic levels were enjoyable in their own right. It ultimately comes down to whether you prefer 2D platformers or 3D platformers.
Modern Sonic stages are bit like the Advance games, if you've ever played those. There is a lot more emphasis on creating a chain of actions to generate speed (homing on enemies, running over zippers, dashing through a row of rings), while the older games are more about... jumping. There are straightaway areas of speed but it plays more like a platformer. The newer games play off of what people think they remember about the old games ("Sonic is cooler than Mario because he runs fast"), even though that's not actually what the games were.
