Sonic Generations

During the Console Wars of the 90's Sonic was SEGA's answer to NINTEDO's Mario: it was the blue hedgehog that sped through its acrobatic levels to showcase Sega Mega Drive's processing speed. Judging by the fact that there are no more SEGA consoles, the outcome of that war is pretty obvious. However, just like the losers of WWII, one should never turn its back to Sonic.
It is fast. And it has spines.

HAS IT REALLY BEEN 20 YEARS!
This game borrows heavily from most Sonic games of the past. You will be reminded of favorite levels of old Sonic games, meet old friends again, relive old adventures and fight old bosses. And all this with just the right measure of nostalgia, a game redesigned to keep fresh and interesting without falling into the trap of simply recreating the old levels.
This Sonic game will appeal to old and young players alike.

CHOOSE YOUR DIMENSIONS
The game is a platformer, with an equal mix of rings to collect, enemies to survive and puzzles to solve in a flash. This is where it gets interesting: you can choose to play each level as either a classic 2D side-scroller or a modern pseudo-3D Third-person action racer. Both are fun so this will bring you back to replay the game again and again. But you better come equipped.

SONIC IS TOO FAST FOR A KEYBOARD
I tried playing the game using the keyboard and although it can be done it is not how one enjoys the game. I am a purist PC gamer so I refuse to use a controller to play a PC game. Whenever a publisher releases a game for the PC, it better be PC-optimized. This is where SONIC GENERATIONS looses its 5th star: it really needs a controller such as the MS 360 Controller for Windows. Otherwise, instead of controlling Sonic, you simply try to follow him around the screen.

A nostalgia trip that goes by in a blur.

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 almost bought this at launch but decided to wait until it was affordable.. I'm a huge sonic fan but didn't know how well it'd translate into 3D.

Firstly, let's get the gripes out of the way - no way will it run on anything like the minimum requirements - on my laptop - which happily runs SWTOR at full resolution (which is fairly demanding) - I had to drop it to 800x600 to get an acceptable framerate. It's not even that detailed 3D, so no idea what Sega have done there. If you don't have a recent gaming laptop look elsewhere for your sonic fun.

Also, it's a straight xbox port - and it shows.. the key mapping is the whackiest I have ever seen. On screen it says press 'B', and you have to press 'S' for example. It's fairly frustrating stabbing keys until you bend your mind around it - fortunately, being Sonic, it aint a complex game, and as long as you have left/right/fire/spin you're pretty much sorted.

On to the review. The game proceeds much as you'd expect, with sonic being his usual bouncy self (no Tails in his version, as far as I can tell). Contrary to my expectations the 3D is actually quite well done.. It's a mixture of movie-style sections where there's no real interaction (eg. jumping through a waterfall), and complete changes of perspective.. going forward instead of left/right for example. The 3D doesn't really change the gameplay just changes your view of it.. when you first see it you do go 'wow'. OTOH as an Sonic purist I still prefer 2D.. the novelty wears off fairly quickly.

Also hovering around at times is a helper blob/alien who pops up and offers 'hints', like 'if you lose all your rings you can get them back' etc. I found him pretty annoying, to be honest, like Jar Jar Binks.. however he's probably useful for new players.

At some points in the game I found myself stabbing keys trying to work out what to do next.. eg. you're dumped in a white world at the end of the first level with no hints what to do next. It's not particularly hard, but I found myself wishing they'd spent a bit of time polishing it - I thought it had crashed again when it first happened.

I also noticed a number of bugs (other than the whacky keys) that hopefully are fixed, so won't mention them here - apparently a patch is available from Steam that fixes lots of things.. I've not had the time to find & apply it yet.

I find myself conflicted.. It took 3 hours of fighting with upgrades and drivers to get this installed, and the whole thing feels like Sega rushed it out to a deadline. OTOH it's Sonic, and it's fun. For 10 quid it's worth a few hours.. personally I wouldn't pay more... not really enough there. So, worth a punt, but don't expect miracles for the money.