Sonic Generations

Let's get this out of the way first. Sonic has been somewhat on the decline as of late, the last possible good Sonic game was Sonic Heros in 2004. In 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog was released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and it was a car crash, no it was an oil refinery spill of a game. Subsequently the games that followed were to a degree very poor and not memorable at all With Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Black Knight out i really felt the series was dieing and aged just like my childhood was playing the classic sonic games. Finally Sonic Colours was released in 2010 and the system seemed to be still a bit edgy but was in long last a sonic game i enjoyed.

Now they released Sonic Generations, a forced marriage of classic sonic and the new-age sonic to celebrate 20 years of Sonic goodness. At first my mind though how, and will it work?. In short, yes it worked, it's one of the best sonic games since Sonic CD and the classics. It spans over a large library of his past games picking some of the best levels in his history and the most popular. 9 zones in total with all 2 acts, so that's 18 levels all together + 7 boss fights that's 25 levels in total. This is not taking into consideration all the replay value the side-missions give you, if you want to do them of course.

Gameplay:
Okay, so the player takes control of two sonic's per act of each level. The first act is always taken by Classic sonic and the second act is always taken by new-age sonic. You basically do classic sonic stuff such as collect rings, defeat enemies and battle bosses (albeit sadly not at the end of every level) but you do face of again a number of great bosses in the form of gate that require you to collect all the keys. To get these keys you must do side-missions. Some are really and honestly boring as hell but others such as racing your doppelgänger are amazingly fun but sometimes i wished they would be more of a challenge. You face of against bosses in there familiar places such as Metal Sonic from Sonic CD in the Stardust Speedway (Bad Future) level and the amazingly bad-ass as well as pretty tough Egg Dragoon from Sonic Unleashed. You can also purchase upgrades for sonic to use but they are not needed at all as i've completed the game with almost a clean sheet of S ranks without using one of them. That brings me onto the rating system, you get rated on speed and rings collected at the end of the run that is totalled into a ranking at the end.

Story: -Minor Spoilers-
A time eater intrudes on sonic's birthday part (his 20th im assuming) breaks up the parts and create worm holes taking them all away and leaving sonic in a form of limbo. Sonic meets up with classic sonic and together they must restore time and colour to his memories and returns his friends and fixes space and time. To save spoilers this is as far as i will go. A cheesy yet satisfying story.

Graphics:
Well this is going to be unexpected. Sonic generations has some amazingly eye pleasing graphics, this is coming from a bonafide admitted graphics whore as well. Each level has pain painstakingly been recreated to look just like the classic level with just the right amount of artistic flare and change to make it new and original as well as fresh. The levels are amazingly well detailed as you look in the background you see land and mountains, realistic waterfalls and by far the best look level was Sky sanctuary. If you have the computer to put the game on maximum settings and run smoothly whist travelling at the sound of blue you will appreciate the graphics. Don't expect Battlefield 3 but for a Sonic game, i was blown away.

Please watch this video i created my self suing my computer and FRAPS, watch in 1080P of course as this will show the game games graphics in great detail: (In the comment section)

Overall:
The game is pleasing and a nostalgia overload of epicness. Hard to fault classic levels and even the remake of levels from some of my not so liked sonic games were amazing to play. Of course for me the 2D sonic levels were the best of course though but im grew up with that sonic so it is natural.

Negative aspects and/or nitpicking?
- Side-missions are 50% of the time boring and unwanted.
The only side missions i really liked were the time-trail missions and the Doppelgänger missions.

- I believe they could have done more levels in truths honesty (!Nitpicking alert!)
Yes yes, it's nitpicking but there are 9 epic zones overall and i enjoyed them all a lot but i was left wanting more. More remade levels in the new graphics engine epicness. I'd have them remake the first two sonic games, Sonic CD and Sonic Adventures all.

Closing comments:
Wow this got a bit long, if you are here thanks for sticking with me on this one haha. Anyway for £20 (Now £13 on PC o.O) this game is bargain if i even saw one. Id happily pay the price that Modern warfare 3 is going for and still be happy. But why 5 stars? It came out for PC, and for that Team Sonic (The devs of the game) i thank you so much. By the way, use a controller. Don't be a douch and down-rate a game (like another guy who reviewed the game) because you are too much stuck up and pompous PC gamer to use a controller :/ im as hardcore as PC gamers get and i don't mind using one for games like this.

For your Referance my computer specs: - The game as said was full maxed, it ran as smooth as a baby:

Screen: Panasonic 42" 1080p Plasma + Sony 32" 1080i LCD - Note: I only used the Plasma whilst in this game
GPU: XFX HD6970
CPU: AMD Phenom II 965 Black Edition 3.4Ghz QuadCore
RAM: 4Gb of DDR3 RAM
OS: Windows 7
Mobo: ASUS ML4 LE
PSU: XFX 850w Black Edition

I purchased this game for my son who absolutely adores Sonic. The game graphics really shows up the quality of my Panasonic plasma screen. You can never get bored of it. Although not 3D, it certainly feels like it is the way it takes you around the circuit. There are quite a few challenges and levels to complete. I would certainly recommend you buy this!

If you are running this game on a laptop with an NVidia graphics card, the NVidia cards aren't detected, and the configuration utility defaults to integrated Intel graphics which runs extremely slowly. To get game to work, see the Steam support forums on how to manually edit the config file so graphics card is detected and game then runs OK.

I dont think Amazon allows URL's so I'll copy what worked for me:

"...---- -OR USE THIS METHOD:- ----

TESTED WITH A GeForce GT 555M chip.

1) Open the NVIDIA Control Panel, go to "Manage 3D Settings" then "Program Settings". Add the sonicgenerations.exe executable and set the preferred graphics processor to be the NVIDIA one.

2) Open "Control Panel" and look for the "Device Manager". Open it and expand the "Display Adapters" item. Make a note of the exact name given to your NVIDIA adapter (including the use of capitalisation.

3) Use the Sonic Generations configuration tool to configure the game to your liking and save.

4) Go to the Sonic Generations directory (in most cases "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sonic generations") and open GraphicsConfig.cfg in notepad or your preferred text editing software.

5) You should notice that the second line will be the name of your Intel adapter. Replace this with the name of your NVIDIA adapter exactly as it appeared in Device Manager.

6) You should see a line that says something like "MONITOR\LGD0292\{4d36e96e-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\ 0000" (this will vary depending on your exact setup, just look for line of this format), it should be the second to last line. Delete the contents of this line completely so you are left with a blank line. Here is my configuration file as an example:

Quote:
Do not manually edit this file, use the configuration tool.
NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M
\\.\DISPLAY1
1600.900.60
1
1
1
1
0
d7b78e66-4256-11cf-fd56-b424b7c2c535

1515474505

7) You should now be able to play the game

One thing that should be noted is that the line "\\.\DISPLAY1" may need changing as well. In my case, DISPLAY1 is fine when only my laptop display is enabled. However when the display was extended onto the "fake" Intel VGA display, I needed to change it to DISPLAY2. Therefore if DISPLAY1 does not work, I recommend trying DISPLAYi where i is the number of displays you currently have enabled.

NOTES: make sure you go to device manager and copy it exactly as it says(i had 5 spaces after GTX 580M for my card)

This second method was suggested by: ezodagrom. Thank you!"