Sonic Generations

As a fan of the series for 19 years, Sonic Generations is a great way to celebrate the 20th anniversary! Playing through 9 levels cherry picked from the series history as old-school 2D sonic and the newer 3D style creates lots of nostalgia, particularly when you spot a piece of level design from another level that didn't make the cut. (The final level from Sonic Colours feels a lot like the classic 'Scrap Brain Zone', for example.

The game is fairly short, but each level has so many secrets and alternate routes as well as online leaderboards it becomes hard to put down! The difficulty curves nicely for younger children (and those of us with no hand-eye coordination), and the music remixes for each Sonic play style are absolutely fantastic!

Cannot recommend it enough!

A... good Sonic game? A GOOD Sonic game?! What crazed Bizarro world parody of Earth is this upon which I find myself? After so many years of the has-been hedgehog turning out terrible game after terrible game (Last year's surprisingly good 'All Star Racing' excepted I guess, but it wasn't strictly a Sonic game) it seemed not unreasonable by this point to just roll your eyes at the very idea of a new Sonic game (Although some of us still kept coming back for more every time. Not my proudest moments.)... but believe me when I say that Sonic Generations is easily the best Sonic game since the series moved to 3D. I'm sure the irony of the majority of the game being based firmly in 2D play mechanics is lost on no one.

Foregoing the pointlessly long winded narrative structure of the majority of the 3D Sonic games, Generations' story is kept as minimal as possible, using only the bare minimum of cutscenes to establish the story that sees some sort of time travelling monster causing havoc for both 'classic' Sonic (As he appeared in the Mega Drive Sonic games) in the 'past' and 'modern' Sonic (The Poochie D-esque annoyance he's become today) in the present. With the two stranded in a white 'limbo' outside of time and unaware of each other's presence there, they both must travel through levels revamped from every Sonic game from the very first title right up to last year's Sonic Colours, each played in 2D for classic Sonic and in a hybrid 3D/2D mixture for modern Sonic that has the appearance of the 'daytime' levels of Sonic Unleashed in execution, but are significantly better put together here. This essentially gives you every level presented in a Mega Drive era fashion (Gameplay wise at least) and also in a full 3D fashion, and it works fantastically.

The 2D stages adhere surprisingly closely to the play mechanics of the original Mega Drive titles, correcting the missteps that made the recent downloadable disappointment Sonic 4 such a bad idea by actually making it play just like the older games, with none of the new nonsense tossed in (Goodbye homing attack) for these levels aside from the visuals of course. It actually FEELS like Sonic 3 to play, which is just how you'd want it when the game is aiming for what this one is. The 2D levels are fun, well put together and do real justice to their originating sources. The 2D altered versions of levels from 3D Sonic games have some really cute touches to them as well, with Sonic Adventure 2's 'City Escape' being a real highlight in my eyes. The 3D hybrid levels with modern Sonic take a fairly different approach, but not so much as you might expect. There are a lot of 3D sequences, yes, but at least half your play time in these levels will also be spent in 2D... except that these modern levels DO feel a lot more like Sonic 4 in execution but with several tweaks that make it a lot more fun to play such as the 'speed boost' ability that sends you flying forward at ludicrous speeds, with you having to collect rings to keep the boost gauge full. It cannot be overstated how great the sense of speed during these moments are, most especially when controlling Sonic in the full 3D segments. There are some of the usual niggles in here like suddenly appearing obstacles, traps or enemies that you will usually be going too fast to possibly react to in time and some control annoyances with the 3D bits, but beyond that, I was amazed by how intuitive and easy to handle the controls were in the game. I think what highlights best just how much better this game is than what came before it is the level 'Crisis City'... a post apocalyptic, lava filled city level which is lifted from the 2006 3D Sonic the Hedgehog game. In THAT game, Crisis City was a deeply frustrating level where you were constantly being bombarded with sudden pitfalls, tons of enemies and a level which seemed to go on forever in addition to the poor controls the game itself had... and in Sonic Generations, this level is recreated for modern Sonic in such a way that it LOOKS identical to see in motion, but the tighter controls, more focused, reasonable length level design and challenges that don't feel cheap make it a completely different experience to play. I died something like 7 times before finishing this level in the older Sonic game... in Generations I did it in one shot with minimal hassle... which in a way brings us to one of the main problems with this game: difficulty.

This is not a hard game. The challenge is fairly minimal throughout, with enemies proving to be little more inconvenient than jumping over a stone in front of you. The bosses are a little harder, but still aren't up to much, with the best I can say about their difficulty being that some of them are looooooong. One of the later boss fights where you have to battle Dr Robotnik in some sort of big flying dragon type robot went on way too long for my liking, lasting longer than any regular level of the game I had done up until that point. Then on top of this the final boss of the game is absolutely infuriating. Not because it is actually hard or anything, but more because the way it is designed is just horrible, and really ruins everything that the game did so right beforehand at the worst possible moment. There is also a point to be made about how short the game is, as apparently it took me just over 6 hours to complete... and that's with doing a whole bunch of the challenge levels too, rather than just blasting through the story. I'd be very surprised if it took the average player of reasonable skill more than 10 hours at the most to get the Platinum trophy for this one. Which may sound fairly decent for a Sonic game (Especially when you consider that the original Sonic the Hedgehog, included on the Generations disc as a bonus, is barely ONE HOUR long in it's entirety) but still felt very 'slight' to me. There is replay value here though, and at the end of the day it is very enjoyable to play, but worth full retail? Debatable.

Graphically, the game is just marvellous. The characters and levels are brightly coloured and super fast moving with rock solid performance from beginning to end. I did find that the lighting looked a tad 'odd' in places, but beyond that, it's a superb looking game. The soundtrack is pretty great too, made up of numerous remixes of various Sonic soundtracks from throughout the character's history. The... ugh... voice acting is what you've come to expect from a Sonic game at this point, but Sonic Team made the very wise decision to not have 'classic' Sonic talk at all, which works perfectly thankfully and makes for some amusing physical comedy that is streets ahead of the crap you get from modern Sonic's repellant 'supporting cast'.

All in all, this is a really great game. It's fun, it's easy to play and provides a genuinely enjoyable nostalgia trip charting the history of the Sonic series (Both good and bad) in a really well judged manner. It is very light on content though and the difficulty is pitched very low, but these are probably minor gripes (now that the game's price has dropped quite a bit at least) against the fact that this is easily the best Sonic game since his Mega Drive days. It is superb.

Poor Sonic. For ten years of his career, he's become a Pariah of sorts in the video game industry. When entering the new age of 3D platforming, Nintendo's Mario (ironically) outran the Fastest Thing Alive, and Sonic just couldn't catch up. SEGA sadly declined along with it. Ever since then, SEGA and Sonic Team seemed to be playing a never-ending game of catch-up with Nintendo's towering reputation. That is, until recently...

2010 was SEGA's attempt to revitalise the franchise. Whilst the touted "sixteen-year-wait" of Sonic 4 was a mixed succsess in many people's eyes (including my own), Sonic Colours seemed like the fabled return to form for the series; and it was. Despite taking evident cues of Mario's space-soaring games on the Wii, Colours finally got the balance right: of introducing a new mechanic, by maintaining the much-loved Sonic gameplay of sprinting as fast as the eye could see. However, Sonic Generations looks back at the glory days of the past... and some not so good days. Regradless though, Sonic Generations is perhaps the most conceptually ambitous Sonic game in quite some time; as it combines classic 2D Sonic gameplay with modern 3D Sonic gameplay. No Werehogs or princesses to be found here. Just Sonic blazing in levels like a totally re-created 3D version of Green Hill Zone. For now, at least, it seems as though Sonic's days of sword-slashing and hoverboard-racing are firmly behind him.

The story in Sonic Generations starts off with Sonic having a birthday to celebrate his twenty years of enduring popularity with his furry friends. Then, a purple monster sucks up Sonic's pals, and dumps Sonic into a limbo. Then, Sonic meets up with his classic self; fat belly, black eyes n' all, and it's up to him to restore the order of time. It's not that the core plotline of Sonic Generations is particuarly engaging; are Sonic stories meant to be?, it's rather, the newfound sense of humour Sonic Generations has. Most Sonic storylines have become so bad, they're almost funny. Generations gleefully takes pleasure of mocking this trend, slyly spoofing how ridiclous the Sonic series has truly become. Lines like; "no stranger than saving genies, magic books, and saving aliens in an interstellar amusement park", and "Dr Robotnik! Nobody calls me THAT anymore!" only makes the game more appealing. The mute expressions of Classic Sonic are also funny and adorable, and the two Sonics have a great dynamic with each other in each cutscene.

At it's core, Sonic Generations is essentially a 'Greatest Hits' compilation, but that is by no means, a criticism at all. In fact, it's what makes Generations so cool. Each stage has a total of two acts, allowing you to play in a 3D perspective as Modern Sonic, and in a 2D perspective as Classic Sonic. 2D Sonic is exactly as you remember it from the Genesis days; complete with spin dashes, impaitent foot-tapping and all, and Modern Sonic sucsessfully evokes the daytime stages seen in Sonic Unleashed. The Classic Sonic stages truly steal the show; this is exactly what Sonic is all about. The physics are spot-on, with Classic Sonic handling exactly like he did in the Genesis days. The classic stages themselves are pleasently nastolgic; harkening back to the bygone era of when Sonic was all about green hills and wacky chemical plants. For somebody who grew up on the 16-bit hedgehog days, it's enough to shed a tear to your eye.

The Modern Sonic stages are fast, action-packed, and shifts nicely from a 3D to a 2D perspective at certain stages. Modern Sonic still has a homing attack, and can now pull off even more tricks than he could before. The mechanics of more recent Sonic titles are still present, such as the abilty to drift and slide under obstacles. Both Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic offer up an exciting variety of gameplay moments, such as Classic Sonic speeding down a chemical plant runway, and Modern Sonic being chased by the GUN truck again, this time at a much faster speed.

Whilst most of Generations has many moments of blue blur bliss, there are still a few problems which hold Generations back from being the masterpeice it could've been. Stages such as Modern Sonic Crisis City are still badly designed, and are a bit messy. Whilst the Classic version is great, the Modern version still has awkwardly placed platforms, cheap deaths and pitfalls in which you can still easily die. Whilst the addition of Challenges and side missions is a nice touch, some of them still remain trivial. Missions such as collecting a certain number of rings in an enclosed area are still fustrating, but ones such as racing a Doppelganger Sonic are genuinely lots of fun. It's still a shame that levels that Modern Crisis City still suffer from handicapped level design, because in contrast, there are so many great examples of 3D Sonic done right here.

Some Sonic purists might also have a problem with the emphesis of Sonic levels from the early 2000's to the present. And to be honest, I see their point. Why not include a 3D version and 2D version of Ice Cap from Sonic The Hedgehog 3, or even a few stages from Sonic CD? The inclusion of levels from Sonic games that have suffered a lot of fan backlash over the years is still questionable too. However, most of the levels picked here have been thoughtfully re-designed, and, since SEGA have promised DLC to come in the future, there's no reason why your favourite level won't be in them.

However, all of those complaints I have just said, are thankfully outweighed by the many great qualities of Sonic Generations. To say that about a Sonic game for the first time in years is a great thing. The skill system in Sonic Generations is nicely executed, adding an RPG-lite mechanic to the fray. It's fun also equpping Sonic with optional abilties that you can use when your playing a level. The remixes in Sonic Generations are mostly excellent; with only two mildly forgettable ones. The little touches in these remixes such as the frantic, desperate violins playing in Modern Crisis City, or the inclusion of Endless Mine in the City Escape Classic mix are little things that'll make fans smile.

Perhaps, the best thing about Sonic Generations is that it is one of those rare times when Sonic Team have constructed a Sonic game lovingly, with confidence, care and attention to detail. Everything in Generations is done with a level of respect and reverance for Sonic's history in general. Whilst the Genesis era of Sonic will always be remembered as when Sonic prospered the most, Generations still stands tall as one of the most accomplished games in the series' history. It seems fitting then, that Modern Sonic shouts out to Classic Sonic: "enjoy your future! It's gonna be great!" Well, y'know what Sonic, I might just believe that now.