Visually, Generations has held up remarkably well for a decade-old game. When you can use a d-pad, however, it’s always a better experience in side-scrolling areas as it allows for faster movement and more speed when it comes to inputs as well. It allows for more accurate side-scrolling movement and if one prefers, the left stick can be used for both side-scrolling and 2.5D/3D stages. It played fine on the 360 pad on the PC and Xbox 360, but being able to play it on the Xbox One enables it to avoid screen tearing and the Xbox One pad’s vastly-improved d-pad makes for a better user experience. Playable on PC, the PS3, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles, Sonic Generations is available on more modern-day devices than a lot of 3D-era Sonic games. It’s especially apparently on Sonic Adventure-era stages as the original ones are full of slower moments for tutorials, while the recreations keep any of that stuff limited to on-screen button prompts and prevent the flow from being interrupted. The 3D games’ recreated stages are largely fantastic as they cut out a lot of excess content and keep the game moving at a much faster clip. The remade levels of classic Sonic are hit and miss when directly compared to the original 2D games’ versions, but the 2.5D/3D second act areas of those make them feel new again. The wide variety of gameplay options helps keep Sonic Generations fun even a decade after its release and offers up more kinds of fast-paced action than other side-scrolling Sonic games. That slow speed leads to it having more challenge, however, since platforming is more complex here with timing in regards to sliding and avoiding enemies before or after. It changes the flow as well since it’s a stage known for boosting areas and while those are present, the stage feels almost more like a 16-bit Sonic 1 stage with a slightly slower pace overall. Having the beachfront stage with only side-scrolling elements completely changes how the user plays the stage. Playing through areas like Sonic Adventure’s beachfront area or Sonic Adventure’s 2’s iconic highway stage from a side-on perspective is interesting from the get-go since even the original versions had full 3D movement. The inverse holds true when playing through a modern Sonic stage with a side-scrolling format. This holds true for Green Hill and other classic Sonic stages and makes what’s old feel far fresher. They look more intimidating and yet retain everything that made the original Sonic 2 version so memorable, and stay within what the side-scrolling classic Sonic version looks like. We’re used to seeing the iconic blue and yellow rail-looking areas, but here, we see just how they would look if we were Sonic running through them. These allow themes like the Chemical Plant of Sonic 2 to be explored in new ways. Modern Sonic is a whole different beast and where the game shines when it comes to classic stages. Thankfully, his jumping feels largely the same and it’s nowhere near as floaty as it was in Sonic 4, where it felt like you were jumping with helium boots on. The physics aren’t the same as they were in the Genesis games and it takes Sonic longer to pick up speed. Seeing classic Sonic stages with polygons and retaining much of the original gameplay style is itself cool – albeit with some caveats. Act 1 featured classic Sonic-style gameplay with a side-scrolling perspective and lacked things like Sonic 4’s implementation of things like boosting or auto-aiming and dashing at enemies in mid-air. It also used a time travel motif to feature stages from most major Sonic games up to that point, enabling it to be a “best of” game that tried something new with various level themes.īringing back classic levels has become a common trend for Sonic, but no game quite did it like Generations. One of the few games to blend 2D and 3D gameplay well was Sonic Generations, which came out after Unleashed and had the benefit of seeing what worked there and what didn’t. The post-2D era of Sonic has been a weird one, with many games coming out in 3D that didn’t fire on all cylinders while games like Sonic 4 dropped the ball when it should have been impossible to do so. We’ve covered Sonic the Hedgehog quite a bit in the Graveyard and it’s been fascinating to track the franchise’s highest points in 2D with things like the third entry alongside games that felt like they were greater in real-time than time showed them to be like the Sonic Adventure series. You’ll see both good and bad souls unearthed every month as we search through the more… forgotten…parts of history. Inside, we’ll be digging up games that have long been without a pulse. Watch your step, for you’ve just entered the Graveyard.
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