Sonic Generations

[Scourge]

Alright so this is for any of you that are my fellow sonic fans.

Sonic generations came out a couple days ago. Basically its just a new sonic game where you can play as more than one character blah blah bla-- wait.... this isnt right, WANNA KNOW WHY?! THE ANSWER MAY SURPRISE YOU!!!

ITS ACTUALLY GOOD!

You heard it here folks, the drought of good sonic games is officially over! Not only does it feature gameplay anybody that's played Sonic Colours would be familiar with (3d sound barrier breaking, as well as the occasional sidescroller action... while breaking the sound barrier), but you can also play as the classic sonic and do all 2d platforming with some pretty stunning 3d backgrounds. Now, im going to go through and express the things I liked and disliked about this game. TAKE EVERYTHING SAID AFTER HERE WITH A GRAIN OF SALT, OPINIONS ARE SOON TO FOLLOW! ANY GOOD POINTS ABOUT IT WILL BE IN GOLD, ANY NOT-SO-GOOD POINTS WILL BE IN PURPLE! KTHXBYE

NUMBER 1: BOOST

When playing modern sonic you start out with a boost meter that you can use to break the damn sound barrier... at the push of a button... never seen another game do that first of all. Next thing about it is the fact that you can plow through enemies like theirs no tomorrow, which refills your boost meter. So theoretically you could keep boosting forever if there was a level with nothing but enemies or rings.

NUMBER 2: THE STORY/ CHARACTERS/VOICES

If there's one thing Mario and Sonic games have in common, its that their stories are incredibly cheesy. SG is yet another case of it just making you want to hang your head in shame every damn time a character opens their mouth. (Whoever they got to do Shadow's voice in the 2nd to final cutscene needs to keep a minimum distance of 10 GODDAMN LIGHT-YEARS from sega from now on) The writing was just... BLUUURGH Everything Tails (either one) says is basically something the audience knew 50 years ago.

REDEMPTION

On the few occasions a character appears that isnt Sonic or Tails, they're normally there as a joke on themselves. It seems SEGA has finally realized these characters have issues, so they're milking said issues for comedic relief, and as mentioned above character interactions are few and far between.

NUMBER 3: RIVAL BATTLES

So its a sonic game, there are these mystical things called chaos emeralds. In order to get them, you either complete a stage with both sonics, or compete in Rival battles with the 3 main rivals of our azure attention hungry woodland mammal, Shadow, Silver, Or Metal Sonic. The first two you fight with Modern sonic, and the former rival you fight with classic Sonic. Each of these fights incorporate the different characters skills, and pit that against you. Metal Sonic uses energy bursts of some kind, and Silver uses Psychokinesis to throw random shit at you constantly. Shadow on the other hand seems to have a moveset almost identical to Sonic's, However his boost is his hand-forward-flying-thingy we saw at the end of the Shadow The Hedgehog opening cinematic, his running is... well him just skating because what else do you do when your Shadow that dosent involve murdering people, and every now and again if you get too far behind him in the race-ish thing he'll throw Chaos Spear at you.

NIT PICK

Despite the fact that all of the rival battles have a normal mode and a hard mode, there's little to no difference besides them taking more hits and throwing more attacks at you. Aside from this, the difficulty curve with the 3 of them would resemble a freaking canyon, Shadow being at the bottom. Personally, i had a hard time with metal sonic's fight, and silver's fight had be constantly running out of boost, meaning i had to manage what boost i had alot better and focus more on that.. and get cars thrown at my face. Shadow's fight however is just a race to see who can obtain more magical floaty energy cores or whatever. The only difference between the normal and hard modes are the number of cores you need to obtain before you get a power up (Shadow uses Chaos Spear a whole lot, and you throw rocks at him). ...seriously? Shadow loses to some blue thing throwing rocks at him? isnt he the ULTIMATE LIFE FO--

NUMBER 4: THE LEVELS

Each of the stages in SG have copy-pasted pallets from previous sonic levels. Yes, I said pallets, while there are some similarities with stages like City Escape from SA2 and City Escape in SG, the similarities are nothing more than references than the level it was refering to. Using City Escape as an example again, remember how you started out on a board of metal from that hellicopter in SA2? Thats how you start in SG, only the downhill part is much different and frankly more fun. Oh yeah, and the Demon Truck from hell is back.

So your thinkin "Huh, its just City Escape for modern Sonic, and Green Hill Zone for classic Sonic then?" Well no. Think about this for a moment. Classic Sonic, in City Escape. Yes, each stage has both a classic and modern Sonic level, as well as challenge levels but ill come back to those. Also: they incorporated the Demon Truck in Classic Sonic's level... im not kidding

NUMBER 5: CHALLENGES

WHUUUUA!? TWO COLOURS?!

Yup, this can be percieved as a good or bad thing, depending on who you are. Aside from the story stages, there are also several challenge stages which are re-edited versions of the story levels and each of them bring in different objectives you need to complete. Some have you summoning Knuckles to dig up coins for you, some have you racing against a ghost-clone of yourself to the finish (think the ghost data from Mario Kart), and theres even one where you have to summon in Amy to hit her hammer into the ground to give you a jump-boost... seriously.

While the challenges are fun and do extend the gameplay a fair bit, they arent requiredto complete the game. Personally I would've prefered to see the challenges made into part of the game's storyline some how, but this game was more directed at classic sonic fans, not the 16-year old hate filled windbag sitting behind the keyboard typing out this post, i suppose this was the kind of thing SEGA percieved classic Sonic fans wanted, and more power to them for that.

NUMBER 6: CAN I DO SOMETHING ELSE??!

As mentioned above, the game was geared towards classic sonic fans, so the game pretty much steered away from anything that wasn't running or platforming, the only exception being on Seaside hill where you take control of a go-cart for a few seconds... which still feels like your controlling sonic somehow. Seriously, you can boost while in this thing, its kinda strange. So why am I bringing this up? Well... why cant I play as Shadow?

NUMBER 7: THE LEVEL CHOICES

The choices of levels brought into the game, for the most part were a good selection. Green Hill Zone and Chemical plant are there (which by the way are AMAZING as modern Sonic) are there, and City Escape and Speed Highway from SA's 2 and 1 show up, but.. i couldnt help but feel like Final Rush (SA2) would also make a good choice. They already had the objects and pallets from the Shadow battle, why not that D:

(short) NUMBER 8: GAME LENGTH

Aside from everything ive said above, the length is probably the only major complaint i have with the game. The story mode took me about 6 hours to do, and that was with the fact that I left for a little bit to go play tf2 for a while for game night.

NUMBER 9: THE DAMN BOSSES

Just... ARGH

Okay so the first boss is a massive nostalgia trip for classic sonic fans. And i believe its the only boss you fight exclusively as classic sonic, and is kinda a pain in the ass.

2nd boss is Modern Sonic again, kinda easy but if i say any more ill spoil it so i dont think ill go into that

3rd boss, again Modern Sonic.. Im not even sure what game this dude is from but the fight can get annoying if your stuck doing it for a while

Final boss:

nuhhh... Fine, ill do it *inhales*

THE FINAL BOSS SUCKS

A: its confusing as fuck as to what your supposed to be aiming for

B: you've got 2 super sonics to figure out what to do with

C: once you figure out what your supposed to be firing at, hit-detection is absolute SHIT

D: the cutscene beforehand features Shadow comming in offerng encouragement... Why didnt he just finish off the bastard himself.. he's more than capible

E: Its about as clear as fucking mud which Sonic your controlling at any given time, took me about 7 mins to do so

F: RIIIINGS

Its near impossible to see where rings are comming from, and whe you do, aiming is a right ass

G:and after you get through all that... THE BOSS IS PISS EAS-

RECOMMENDATION

Despite my above complaints about the game, its still an amazing game. If your tangentally interested in getting it, I say go for it. Seriously, its 30 bucks on steam, im not sure about PS2 and Xbox, but 30 FREAKING DOLLARS for a new AAA release on Steam is actually an amazng deal.

Also: once you beat the final boss, you can unlock Super Sonic on any stage!

So yeah, thats about it... now go buy it.

WARNINGS

- The game has some framerate issues when it comes to Chemical Plant

-Every now and again I would get these random lag lock-ups. They were short and went away quickly but still annoying

-Make sure your system can handle the game

-USE A FREAKING GAME PAD, IF YOU DONT, I FEAR FOR YOUR SOUL WITH KEYBOARD

-If you get dizzy easy, consider having a buddy play the modern Sonic levels for you, they can actually make your brain hurt

-This happened twice to me the entire time, but I was running along a railing and I just randomly phased through the rail and into the abyss/lava below... Why?

-This is rare but be careful about approching a spring when in boost/spin dash mode, you might just clip through it into the pit behind it (common culprit of this being Speed Highway)

-The online mode crashes the game for me every time i try to load it... So much for that.

-All configurations for the game are in an out-of-game configuration menu

[Milkyway64]

Huh. I've never cared for Sonic. From the beginning I felt it was a tryhard attempt flawed from the get-go, and so a 2.5D Sonic game did little to excite me.

I shall elaborate. What's Sonic's deal? Speed. What do sidescrollers notoriously have? Limited vision in front of you. Combine these? You just crash into walls, and enemies, and obstacles, and really, why bother? Anytime I played Sonic 2 I took my time because trying to do what the game prides itself on just got me hit over and over, so I would have rather just taken it slow to get extra lives from holding onto my rings.

Sonic is only fun if you've completely memorized the game. Otherwise it's a slippery platformer with some frankly awkward physics and some decent, if extremely easy (in most cases) boss encounters.

New Sonic turned me away with it's annoying... art direction? I don't know. But listening to generic sounding boy bands while listening to a freaking Betty Spaghetti anatomied hedgehog take himself seriously just makes me feel insulted. Sonic was fine at least when it was about a derpy mad scientist making robots out of animals and Sonic had to save them, but now it actually tries to have plot, and introduces another funny looking creature with a grimdark attitude with a frickin gun and I'm told he's the ultimate life form? Are we serious?

[Drasiana]

azure attention defecate

I...don't think you have the right word there buddy

Anyway, nice that Sega seems to be at least trying again but I've been turned off of the series since Sonic Adventure 2...in part because of the wretched games and in part because of the even more dubious fandom.

[Scourge]

I...don't think you have the right word there buddy

Anyway, nice that Sega seems to be at least trying again but I've been turned off of the series since Sonic Adventure 2...in part because of the wretched games and in part because of the even more dubious fandom.

Fixed for your amusement.

[TheRedFox8]

I will get it when my deployment is over, just because of the Demon Truck from Hell. :D

[Fire Yoshi]

No Knuckles, no alternative characters, no purchase. =P

[TheRedFox8]

D: