Games, PS3, Reviews, Xbox360 

Sonic Generations

November 13, 2011

It’s offi­cial. After years of fum­bling around with strange top­ics and awk­ward, seem­ingly untested game­play, Sega has pulled out a truly excel­lent Sonic the Hedge­hog game. Although short, it’s a sweet ride that hope­fully will get the Spin-Dash ball rolling again.

The game fol­lows an incred­i­bly sim­ple sto­ry­line. Sonic’s friends are in the process of throw­ing him a birth­day party when a giant mon­stros­ity (which I shall hence­forth refer to as the Fly­ing Pur­ple Peo­ple Eater) appears out of nowhere and cre­ates a vor­tex which sucks in all of Sonic’s friends. Sonic chases them into what appears to be a giant white limbo. Even­tu­ally, he and the res­cued Tails note that the areas and ene­mies are sus­pi­ciously famil­iar. Upon stum­bling on ver­sions of them­selves from the past, they dis­cover that they’re trav­el­ing through time. It sounds kind of silly, but the sto­ry­line of this game isn’t the point.

The per­son really trav­el­ling through time is the player. Every level in the game comes from some Sonic game in the past, span­ning the whole his­tory of the series from the very first Sonic the Hedge­hog to the recent Sonic Col­ors. You play through each level as both Mod­ern Sonic, who han­dles like you’ve come to expect from Col­ors or Unleashed (or, if you’re unfa­mil­iar with those, Sonic Adven­tures, only with a few new pow­ers and occa­sion­ally sidescrolling) and Clas­sic Sonic, who han­dles the same way he did in the Gen­e­sis days. Each level is bril­liantly reimag­ined, rang­ing from incred­i­bly famil­iar feels with the “cor­rect” Sonic for the level to fit­ting and inter­est­ing spins with the other Sonic.

Every­thing about this game is designed to tug at the nos­tal­gia strings. The lev­els both look and feel famil­iar, with the same ene­mies and many of the same rec­og­niz­able areas as in their orig­i­nal titles. What evoked the most nos­tal­gia from me, how­ever, was the music. Each level fea­tures two takes on the orig­i­nal music for that level, rang­ing from almost-cover reper­for­mances to new and inter­est­ing remixes. I took far longer than I should have to beat the game because I prob­a­bly played my most mem­o­rable level, City Escape from Sonic Adven­ture 2, ten to twelve times before mov­ing on.

Apart from the main story arc and stages (which is, sadly, an incred­i­bly short ride that lasts under 5 hours), the game is full of chal­lenges of all sorts using por­tions of each stage. Some revolve around other char­ac­ters, such as hav­ing to use a search­light to find a cam­ou­flaged Espio, or run­ning through a level with no rings save for the ones that Cream the Rab­bit drops for you. Oth­ers involve using spe­cific items from past games to clear stages within a lim­ited time, or rac­ing a dop­pel­ganger Sonic. If you really feel like hav­ing a nos­tal­gia jour­ney (or you’re too young to have expe­ri­enced it and want to see what it was like), you’re able to play the orig­i­nal Gen­e­sis ver­sion of Sonic the Hedge­hog after buy­ing a con­troller in the item shop with points you earn by play­ing levels.

I loved this game, and with­out tak­ing any­one else into con­sid­er­a­tion, I would have given it a 10. How­ever, there are a few draw­backs to Sonic: Gen­er­a­tions. As I’ve already said, the game is rather short, but bears the weight of a $50 price tag. That’s $10 less than the usual game price, but still a rather hefty cost for the amount of time you’ll spend with it. Also, some of the dia­logue is incred­i­bly child­ish. I under­stand the need to be able to mar­ket a Rated-E game to chil­dren whether it’s nos­tal­gic or not, but a few select lines made me feel like I was watch­ing Nick Jr. or PBS Kids. Lastly, some of  the bosses took a while to beat, not due to dif­fi­culty, but due to sheer con­fu­sion. The final boss, namely, was so con­fus­ingly “sim­ple” that I had to double-check my meth­ods by look­ing on the inter­net. Yes, for a Sonic game.

Com­plaints aside, Sonic Gen­er­a­tions is an excel­lent game for all ages, but most of its effect comes from nos­tal­gic value. If you were ever a Sonic fan, you’ll def­i­nitely enjoy this game. It is a mas­sive step in the right direc­tion after Sonic Unleashed (seri­ously… a were­wolf?) and Sonic the Hedge­hog 2006 (a game so bro­ken I’ve dubbed it my biggest per­sonal gam­ing dis­ap­point­ment of all time and con­sid­ered giv­ing it an AVGN/Spoony-style Let’s Play beat­down.), and proof that Sonic is NOT dead. With Sonic cer­ti­fied “alive”, per­haps all hope is not lost for what could be the great­est Sonic game of a gen­er­a­tion, should it come to be: Sonic Adven­ture 3. Hear me, Sega? Sonic Adven­ture 3. We want it, prefer­ably with Crush 40 cre­at­ing the title theme.

Pros:

• Nos­tal­gia
• Excel­lent, solid gameplay
• Nos­tal­gia
• Qual­ity sound­track, cre­ative remixes
• Nos­tal­gia