Review: Sonic Generations

Sonic Generations is a platformer for the Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3. It was developed by Sonic Team.

Old memories with a brand new look.

Sonic the Hedgehog is celebrating his birthday with his friends when a monster appears and sucks them all into a dimension filled with colorless versions of old levels from Sonic the Hedgehog games. Teaming up with a much younger version of himself who has also been sucked into the dimension, the Sonics decide to locate their friends and restore color to the old…areas. I am not sure what you would call them ingame. Zones, I think.

In Sonic Generations you play as classic Sonic the Hedgehog from the old Sega Genesis games and modern Sonic the Hedgehog from more recent games. The game is nine levels long, each broken up into two acts, one for classic Sonic and one for modern Sonic. In both acts you have to run the goal at the end as fast as you can, dodging traps and smashing enemy robots along the way. You collect rings along the way that disperse every time you are hit. As long as you are holding at least one ring you cannot die, unless Sonic drowns or falls into a pit.

Classic Sonic’s level are entirely 2D. Sonic can run, jump, and perform a spindash, which is him building up a lot of speed them shooting himself forward.

Modern Sonic’s levels are a combination of 2D and 3D. His acts switch between side-scrolling and moving on a 3D plain several times per act. The 3D parts are still linear though; Sonic can only go so far left and right and mostly just goes forward. Modern Sonic does not have a spindash, instead he has a homing attack, which you use to hit enemies and cross over pits, and a sonic dash attack, where you just plow through everything until you hit a wall or the dash meter runs out.

I enjoyed playing as classic Sonic the Hedgehog, because it felt like playing his old games. But I think that anyone who has not played those games is going to dislike playing as classic Sonic, since his spindash is really weak compared to modern Sonic’s dash attack.

The level design is done very well. It normally takes three to seven minutes to get through a level, so they do not drag. They are not that difficult to complete, but the fun is more in burning through the levels at top speed without having to stop to get around obstacles. Not that they are no obstacles, but they do not slow Sonic down that often. The levels are exciting too; Sonic bounces all over the place with springs, flies over buildings, runs through caves, runs into the foreground and background, plenty of stuff that is fun to watch.

There is one problem with the level design: it is hard to explore. The levels are linear, but have multiple paths to the end. However, the divergent paths are hard to see coming up when you are running really fast through a level and the camera gives you little warning. You will often miss them unless you have memorized the level beforehand, and they will often be in a place that is impossible to reach once you pass it. Also, the Sonics cannot jump that high, making it difficult to reach other platforms.

Once you get through the two acts of a level, ten challenges acts open for that level, five for classic Sonic and five for modern Sonic. In these challenges you go through part of the level again, but have to deal with an additional challenge, like extra enemies, or collecting a number of rings before you reach the goal, or racing a doppelganger of Sonic. You get a grade based on how fast you complete the challenge.

The challenges are all easy to complete, but reasonably difficult if you are trying for an “S” grade. Except for the doppelganger races, those things are unfair.

I played through the challenges, but I did not enjoy them. Even though most of them were fair  and had some variety to them, I was still playing through parts of the same level ten times in a row, when I would rather have been going through new levels. But I had to play them, even though they were optional, because if I just played the normal acts the game would have been over in a few hours.

Sonic Generations is supposed to be a retrospective on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and in that regard is fails pretty badly. Of the thirty nine games Sonic has starred in over the past twenty years, only nine are featured as levels. Other games do not get as much as a mention.

The first three levels are based on three levels from the first three Sonic the Hedgehog games for the Sega Genesis. Thos are fun because it is cool to play through 3D versions of those levels, with updated designs that surpass how they look on the Genesis.

Chemical Plant Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in glorious 3D

The next three levels are based on the two levels form the two Sonic Adventure games for the Sega Dreamcast and one level from Sonic Heroes for the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox. These are much less exciting, since they are just 2D versions of old 3D levels, or redone version of those the original levels, though they do look much better than they did on their original systems.

Speed Highway, brought back from Sonic Adventure with improved graphics.

The level three levels are awful. One is based on the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog game, one is based on the 2008 Sonic Unleashed game, and the last one is based on Sonic Colors, which came out last year. Who wants to play a shortened, rehashed level of a year old game with the exact same 2D to 3D gameplay? It is not like they were no other Sonic the Hedgehog games they could have used that were actually good, 2D games even, but they were all made by Dimps and BioWare.

Not that they aren't fun on their own, but they are a wasted opportunity.

The story is minimal, the time monster is a plot device instead of a character, and no good reason is given for restoring the levels to their original color. No obscure characters are brought out for the anniversary, and no old plotlines are revisited.

Sonic Generations has the basic idea for a good game, but without the boring challenges it is too short. As a retrospective it fails too, and might actually be more fun for people who do not know Sonic’s history, so they will not be disappointed.