[HEADING=2]"Sonic Generations"
[sub][3DS, PC (reviewed), PS3 (reviewed), Xbox 360][/sub]
[sub][sub]Personal PC Specs: Intel i7 740 @ 1.73 GHz, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850, 6 GB RAM[/sub][/sub][/HEADING]
[sub]A dynamic duo of breakneck proportions![/sub]
[sub][3DS, PC (reviewed), PS3 (reviewed), Xbox 360][/sub]
[sub][sub]Personal PC Specs: Intel i7 740 @ 1.73 GHz, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850, 6 GB RAM[/sub][/sub][/HEADING]
[sub]A dynamic duo of breakneck proportions![/sub]
To say that this blue blur has had a turbulent past would be putting it mildly. Depending on who you ask, the last decade ranges in quality from "Well, it was okay . . ." to "Downright terrible, and the gaming world would be better off without him." Sonic Team have made a fair few blunders and mishandled their own IP in a way that even satirical funny-man Seth MacFarlane can't fathom.
[img_inline width=225 height=155 Caption="How many of us would like to forget this ever existed?" align=left]http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/4500000/Sonic-and-the-Black-Knight-wallpaper-sonic-the-hedgehog-4565170-800-600.jpg[/img_inline]
However, Sonic Team would not let the IP disappear into the abyss of time and continued to constantly raise his corpse from the dead again and again, much to the dismay of critics and fans alike. As with any franchise there were people ready to defend the hedgehog, but many more went on the offensive route, finding anything and everything they could to complain about in each new title. Inexplicably, even games that were widely lauded on release became somehow tainted by the turn Sonic took during the jump onto the current-gen consoles.
Not a studio to back down, Sonic Team responded first with Sonic Colors, garnering a fairly positive response even with the limited exposure of being Wii-exclusive. Still not quite enough to sate the rabid fans, SEGA and Sonic Team have relied on Sonic Generations, promising a return to form of the "good old days". But how well does it live up to this seemingly impossible task?
It seems that the words "good", "Sonic", and "game" are commonly thought unable to be placed together in the same sentence, at least not without qualifiers. That's why it makes it all the more shocking that Sonic Generations is genuinely a good game. It may not be the game that purists were hoping for and it probably won't draw in gamers who aren't already interested in the franchise for some morbid reason at this point, but what it does, it does well. It seems that Sonic Team took some time to listen to a few of the common complaints that people have made regarding the franchise over the years and actually tailored the game to match.
[img_inline width=225 height=155 Caption=But you can't fault him, he was in the series while even the most rabid of fans considered it good. align=right]http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Games/S/Sonic%20Generations/Everything%20Else/sonic-generations-mutli-tails--article_image.jpg[/img_inline]
Sonic's silly little friends have had ever-growing bits in his games since Adventure back in 1999; while games like Unleashed and Colors have either omitted them completely or reduced them to side-bar characters, most people still have them burned fresh into their minds. Sonic Generations takes the side-bar route, but between short cut-scenes, minimal voice-acting and dialogue you could be forgiven for forgetting that any of them except Miles "Tails" Prower were even included in the game. There is one exception to the dialogue, but for the sake of spoilers it is being left out.
The topic of cut-scenes and dialogue tangentially leads us into the story. As far as the story is concerned, it's a short game. Depending on the player's skill with platforming and controlling characters moving at high speed, the main story could likely be finished in one day. As such, if you're a person who's looking for an in-depth Sonic story, this isn't going to be your cup of tea. As mentioned before, the cut-scenes are short and dialogue is mostly confined to Modern Sonic, Tails, and Robotnik. Of course, story has never been the strong point of a Sonic game so perhaps it's for the better that Sonic Team didn't make a huge deal out of the story this time.
The difficulty of Sonic Generations is hard to accurately gauge. Being a long-time follower of the franchise, it didn't take long for me to slip back behind the controller and start zooming through the re-imagined levels of Sonic's past. However, one of my peers who has not been interested in the series since it left the Dreamcast has been having considerably more difficulty with the platforming segments and controls than I had. Fresh faces might find that some of the precision platforming bits can be touchy and difficult to master and there are a fair few sections where Sonic will be moving too fast for you to reach a certain path you may have been trying to hit. There are also collectables in each of the normal stages and a massive number of challenge stages (all of which unlock extra music from the older Sonic games that can be played during any level) for each Sonic which increase the difficulty of the game by a fair amount even for veteran platformers.
The controls have struck me as rather unusual over the time that I've played the game, though not because of the control scheme. The responsiveness of them has had three different variations while I was playing: On the PS3 connected to an HD TV, the jump button lagged behind an entire second after pressing (for the demo, I have no hands-on experience of the full game on an HD TV) leading to some rather nasty deaths after missing a precision jump; On a standard definition TV, the PS3 version of the game still had a slight delay, though hardly noticeable. The PC version, the odd one out in games like this, I can only recommend to play with a game-pad. Keyboard controls don't suit the game at all and certain things like pressure-sensitive jumping seemed to be missing from keyboard controls. It's not impossible to play with the keyboard set-up, but a controller felt more natural and allowed for much smoother play.
[sub]Even while boosting at full speed, something that occasionally strains the PS3's hardware.[/sub]
Modern Sonic plays very similarly to how Unleashed and Colors did, with small tweaks to how fast he runs and turns, his jump height, and his physics underwater. His gameplay has the Homing Attack (Classic doesn't have the Homing Attack) which serves as a great help during his platforming segments. He also has the Boost from Unleashed and Colors, which replaces the Spin Dash, providing a massive speed increase as well as letting you plow through enemies that may be in your way on the track. However, his speed still proves to be the bane of his platforming sections and every now and then he'll shoot over a platform or go running straight into a bottomless pit before you have time to react (thankfully much less often than in, say, Unleashed because of much more forgiving level design).
The level designs of all the standard acts are fairly massive and encourage speed and exploration even more so than the Genesis titles did. The sheer number of branching paths could keep you going back to a level four or five times just to make sure you've found everything. There are tricky jumps, particularly in "Sky Sanctuary", "Crisis City", and "Planet Wisp", which could cause controller-throwing frustration if the controls begin to bug up on you. Modern Sonic's "Crisis City" is still a testament to just how badly Sonic '06 failed, with probably the worst level design in the entire game. Other levels such as "Seaside Hill" and "City Escape" contain parts that certainly make you question the level designer, and any time Classic Sonic was forced to go underwater I was left wondering who thought that would make him jump faster.
[sub][sub]Though this throwback did bring back many a fond memory.[/sub][/sub]
The choice of which levels to re-design does also raise a few questions. While it is certainly a unique set-up, the levels feel disjointed and disconnected from stage to stage, being plucked from completely different games and even console eras. Only the two Dreamcast-based levels ("Speed Highway" and "City Escape") feel natural being placed one after another. However, it's a bright, vivid, cartoony game with stunning detail for the speed at which you pass it by, something very nice to see on a platform aside from the Nintendo Wii these days. And with the graphical overhaul also came soundtrack remixing.
I'll admit it, the soundtrack made me go into foaming fits of nostalgia. Though only the first three stages (based from the Genesis games) have memorable music, the remixed tracks for the rest of the levels are still solid additions (with the exception of "City Escape", despite being a fun level Crush 40's vocal tracks have never felt right for Sonic). Classic Sonic's version of "Crisis City" has a track that I could listen to all day long, in no small part thanks to how much I enjoy the sound of a good electric guitar. And while they may not be the same 16-bit synthesizer tracks the SEGA kids grew up with, they're still very fitting to be in a Sonic game.
The nostalgic value in this game is immense, comparable to the likes of New Super Mario Bros. or Donkey Kong Country Returns. It has tons of throwbacks to the last twenty years of Sonic games (even the bad ones), and whether you started playing Sonic during the Genesis era or later, there will be plenty of things you recognize in this game (such as the three elemental shields from Sonic 3, which can be unlocked for Classic Sonic). It's a solid, fun title that can keep you playing for days even after you've beaten it, in an age where Sonic Team can definitely use solid titles to bolster its name once again. Between Colors and now Generations, it's safe to say that I'll once again be keeping a wary eye on the future of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.
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This is my first-ever review, how nerve-wracking.