It’s another year and another Sonic game to talk about, but this time he’s sharing the spotlight with an old favorite. 2024 is Sega’s “Fearless – Year of Shadow” campaign, a year dedicated to celebrating everyone’s favorite black-and-red edge meister, Shadow the Hedgehog. Before the next feature film starring him releases, he’s got a new solo game packed in with a remaster of an old favorite. Sonic X Shadow Generations is here, promising a glimpse into the series’ future and a refresh of its past.
To Be This Good Takes Generations
Sonic Generations is now older than Sonic Adventure 2 was back in 2011, when Generations first launched. Feeling old yet? There’s some good news: Generations holds up marvelously and is still perhaps the best 3D Sonic title out there. From back then to now, it’s a game bursting at the seams with polish, attention to detail, and charm. This was also the title to help found several characteristics of the series, most notably creating a hard distinction between the early ‘90s “Classic” era Sonic and his “Modern” counterpart first seen in Sonic Adventure. While they were treated as one and the same for a while, nowadays they’re presented in distinct flavors, and that all started here.
With Modern Sonic’s gameplay, you’ll fly through levels using the now familiar “Boost” gameplay, first introduced in 3D through Sonic Unleashed and refined further in Colors. At the press of a button, you’ll be running (but not rollin’) around at the speed of sound and Boosting through whatever obstacles and enemies are in your way. This speed can be tough to get a handle of, however, as misuse of it will have you crashing into walls, bottomless pits, spikes, and so on. To get the most out of the Boost and to score good times, it’s important to memorize every level and find the fastest routes throughout.
What’s particularly remarkable about this gameplay in Generations is how well the level design accommodates this. While the overall control scheme and gamefeel are very similar to Unleashed (the title that first introduced Boost to the series), what makes the difference is the density in decisions to make and paths to take. There are a ton of shortcuts in every level put in devious spots that require the player to be daring and have split-second reaction times to hit a Dash Ring or to use the Light Speed Dash on a trail of rings. Getting good times and seamlessly traversing through complex level layouts feels like threading a needle or drumming to the beat of a good song. It makes time attack addictive as I slowly shave off precious seconds from my previous record.
Classic Sonic is a revised spin on how he played in the Genesis/Mega Drive titles. Rather than boosting, stomping, or sliding, he’s instead defined by rolling and accruing momentum by running downhill or using Sonic’s Spin Dash ability. It’s not quite like the older games, since his levels too are defined by speedrunning rather than exploration, complimented further by having an impossibly strong Spindash that sends him flying when used properly. He’s also somewhat heavier than in his earlier 2D installments, so jumping to reach shortcuts will require some more precision. I don’t like Classic Sonic’s gameplay quite as much as Modern’s, but it is elevated by particularly strong level design and good gimmicks.
A Mega Collection of Old Stuff
Besides the main stages, there are also missions and boss fights to engage in. Missions are remixed versions of levels with new objectives that will occasionally feature a character other than Sonic helping out. These can range from racing a Doppelganger, to destroying a number of Badniks, to using a character’s abilities to help clear out obstacles. Due to the high number of them, it’s perhaps inevitable that they vary a lot in how fun they are. Despite that, I felt compelled to do them all because being a completionist feels very rewarding if you’re already a fan of Sonic. While you don’t unlock new levels like in Sonic Colors, you do unlock things like new Skills for both versions of Sonic.
Skills can be purchased from the Skill Shop, which can then be used to customize various attributes of how you play. Modern Sonic can get Skills like Speed Up, increasing your overall speed but making platforming a bit riskier, or he can use Blast Off which heavily strengthens your Boost at the start of a level. Classic Sonic can get Skills like the Long Spin Dash to strengthen his already ridiculously strong Spin Dash, or you can give him the very same Homing Attack that Modern has by default. Both can also transform into Super Sonic after you complete the game. Each Skill has an associated point cost out of 100, so you can’t equip anything you want and have to think ahead about which Skills are best for which levels. It’s a nice splash of customization to an already highly replayable game.
Red Rings also unlock lots of bonus contents. One of the best parts about Generations is that it’s a celebration that spanned the entire series at the time of its release. Even despite the series’s occasionally shaky (if not outright negative) history at time, it fully and lovingly embraces everything that it was and is now. Even the infamous Sonic ‘06 gets plenty of love, with a fantastic recreation of Crisis City as one of the main levels, as well as a boss fight. The the more obscure stuff gets some attention too, like the Extras Menu theme from Sonic Jam getting an incredible violin cover, or the main theme of the Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast getting a remix by its original composer. There are a lot more things besides, but we’d be here all day if I tried to list all of it. Since this is a title that’s almost solely focused on compiling and celebrating the series’ history, your mileage may vary on how much its going to appeal to you. In terms of resonating with its target audience, however, it hits a bullseye.
There’s New Stuff, Too
This remaster of Sonic Generations brings about a number of changes and additions with it. As is the case with every Sonic game from the past few years, both Classic and Modern Sonic have access to the Drop Dash from Mania. By holding the jump button, Sonic will rev up a spin in midair and go zooming along when he hits the ground. It’s nice that it’s here, but if I’m being frank I never bothered to use it much since Generations clearly wasn’t made with it in mind. Classic’s Spin Dash is far more effective at covering ground, and in Modern’s case, a simple stomp and Boost will get you moving far faster than the Drop Dash possibly could. I suppose it could be fun to use for self-imposed challenges, though.
While it’s no Chao Garden, there are also Chao hidden throughout each of the main levels for you to find. These are hidden in fixed locations and your only hints on where to find them are through text alluding to specific spots. It seems tough, but if you know the levels well enough then they can actually be pretty fun to find. On a few occasions, I wound up exploring parts of levels that I didn’t even know existed before I came to track them down. That speaks to the strength of the overall level design, but it also highlights how clever their hiding spots typically were. It’s also a nice bit of fanservice, as each Chao you find has a unique design based on their various mutations from the Chao Gardens of old.
There are also some quality-of-life and performance updates to be found here. Lives are gone, so you can now speedrun levels without the stress of a life penalty upon restarting. If you want to play with them on, however, they can be re-enabled in the options menu. Red Star Rings also have a dedicated UI that shows up whenever you collect one, informing you of how many you’ve gathered and which ones you missed. Overall playability has been smoothed out as well, with frustrations such as performance hitches and unregistered inputs being a thing of the past with this version. It also features far faster load times, with even the Switch version having loading speed comparable to playing the 2011 PC version off of an SSD.
Finally, the English script of Generations has been completely overhauled, with dialogue provided by Ian Flynn and some of the cutscenes edited to match the changes. The original game had a nothingburger of a story and the dialogue was broadly quite forgettable, and here it’s only somewhat better. While I appreciate Flynn’s attempts to inject some continuity into the game and fix glaring mistakes (such as Tails originally not recognizing Green Hill or Chemical Plant), the broad strokes of Generations’ story still isn’t particularly interesting. Still, even despite that, this is easily the definitive version of the game. Sonic has had a less than stellar history when it comes to ports of his 3D games always being worse off, and this one finally breaks that curse.
The Misadventures of Mr. Unsmiley
Starring in his own game for the first time since 2005, Shadow the Hedgehog takes the stage in Shadow Generations. As the name implies, Shadow Generations is a series that delves into his own history, and it takes place at the same time as Sonic’s own story. After feeling a familiar yet dreadful presence while staring at Space Colony ARK, he heads there to see if something is amiss. It’s not long before he discovers a mysteriously revived Black Doom (the main villain of Shadow 2005) and gives chase. It’s not long into the chase where he is swallowed up by a time-warping entity and dumped into White Space, where characters and locations from past and present collide. This includes Maria and Gerald Robotnik, two characters who were at the center of Shadow’s tragic past.
I love Shadow the Hedgehog as a character, but I don’t love his game and especially not its story. I thought Black Doom and the Black Arms were an unnecessary wrinkle to a character with a backstory that was already relatively complex, which is why I was apprehensive of the idea of them coming back for this game. In the end, however, I guess they don’t do any damage, but they also don’t make the story any more interesting. Sure, Black Doom no longer has Shadow being a total edgelord and cursing up a storm, but that doesn’t change the fact that Black Doom just isn’t an interesting villain at all. He spouts evil nonsense to Shadow about how he’s always one step ahead of him and will take over his body for the entire runtime, and Shadow tells him off every single time without fail. Compared to Sonic Frontiers, where Sage was offered a lot of emotional reflection thanks to her interactions with Sonic, I’m left with the sense that it was quite lacking here.
It’s part of a wider problem with the narrative of Shadow Generations, in that a grand emotional idea is stifled by its short runtime. Shadow having every major aspect of his backstory come back in one reunion deserves a lot of emotional gravitas, but it feels like it doesn’t do enough before the credits show up. It’s a shame because, aside from the aforementioned issues with Black Doom, what little is here is stellar stuff. Shadow himself has the best characterization he’s seen since Sonic Adventure and Heroes, and what little glimpses we get to see of his dynamic with Gerald and Maria tug at the heartstrings. Sonic also makes just one appearance within Shadow Generations, but it wound up being one of the most fun cutscenes in the game thanks to their lively rapport.
Overall, I’m left with the sense that Shadow Generations’ story has many good intentions and even solidly executes upon some of its ideas. It’s just too short to feel substantive relative to how big of a deal the premise itself is. Maria and Gerald don’t even get to interact with any other characters besides Black Doom and Shadow, so it feels like something is missing. If the story were two or so hours instead of roughly fourty minutes, it could have really been something special. As it is now, it’s okay, but surely not as good as it should have been.
Black Doom Gives You Wings
Shadow Generations could be taken as a sort of quasi-sequel to both Generations and Frontiers. Engine-wise, it runs on Hedgehog Engine 2 just as the latter did, but structurally and in its core design, it more closely resembles the former. The primary difference here is that there is no Classic Shadow to speak of (a Pandora’s Box that Sega will probably never open), so you’re using the Boost format of gameplay for the game’s entire duration. Its overall gamefeel is like a somewhat more polished version of Frontiers with the level design mentality of Generations. It’s somewhat slower than before, but there are several aspects of play that more than make up for that. Shadow’s own levels are additionally taken from games from Adventure 2 and beyond, so there are no Classic stages, and a few games post-Generations see their comebacks here.
Cards on the table: these are some of the best 3D levels to ever grace the franchise. Not only are they fun to run through for the sake of it, but they’re also enormous and impossibly layered. Each level can take three minutes minimum even when you’re taking all the best possible shortcuts, and under normal circumstances you can expect to spend five or more minutes there. It feels like every frame of gameplay is presenting some kind of alternate route or shortcut to take, even being well-hidden and organically integrated into the environments. The 2D stages aren’t too shabby either, resembling the high speed antics of 2D Boost titles like Sonic Rush.
Shadow’s own powers make a difference in facilitating this, too. At the start, Shadow has his iconic Chaos Control ability, allowing him to stop time and find new routes to progress. This starts off simple enough as you freeze rockets to walk across them and reach higher routes. But later levels may have it so you have to freeze boulders being pelted at you to make a homing attack chain out of them and reach a higher pathway, introducing an element of timing and danger. This also gives you some incentive to fight enemies, as defeating them is what recharges Chaos Control.
Aside from Chaos Control, Shadow will gain access to various Doom Powers over the course of the game, allowing him to conquer new obstacles and find new pathways. Doom Spear allows him to throw Chaos Spear, a projectile attack that stuns enemies and hits switches, at multiple objects at once. Doom Surf allows him to surf over water and perform tricks across ramps while also knocking away flotsam to attack enemies. Doom Wing allows you to glide through the air after gaining 50 rings, and is effectively Shadow’s super form this game. There’s also Doom Blast, allowing you to launch an enemy high in the air before kicking them afar to reach new shortcuts or hit objects. Meanwhile Doom Morph allows him to swim through purple goop and sling himself across distant objects. It’s a nice way to spice up an old formula, but it’s not without its problems.
Frontiersn’t
Doom Powers are your primary means of traversing through the White Space, which is essentially a miniaturized Open Zone level like the ones seen in Frontiers. Waters that leave some sections inaccessible can be conquered with Doom Surf, and purple goop that is otherwise untraversable can be swam through with Morph. Blast can also be used to reach high up places, but for the most part its reserved for the main stages and boss fights. The issue with Doom Powers is that, compounded with the lowered game speed, they feel so easy to use that they take some of the thrill out of Boost gameplay.
Doom Surf is perhaps the biggest culprit of this, since it takes water and effectively turns it into a non-obstacle. Boosting over water in Generations was thrilling because there were a lot of ways your run could immediately end in disaster if you messed up or aren’t paying attention. Since Doom Surf activates automatically and has several safety nets, I didn’t really get the same vibe from it. Doom Blast is similar, since the game will oftentimes automatically point you to where it should be used, though lining up enemies for a perfect shot does still feel gratifying.
The worst culprit of this is Doom Morph, which frankly didn’t need to exist. While its slingshot mechanic is decent fun, its an ability that should have been folded into the Homing Attack. Instead, you have to use an unwieldy, slow, and unfun squid to slowly traverse through purple goop that only ever detracts from the level design, rather than adds to it. All told, while I love Doom Powers in theory, its execution isn’t fully there yet. I hope to see it iterated upon in a game that’s less restrictive about them.
These issues are before getting into my problems with White Space. It doesn’t get in the way but as both a hub and an extension of the Open Zone, I’m surprisingly not much of a fan beyond its general progression system and decent challenges. Compared to Frontiers, it’s very lacking in its sense of speed and control-wise I also find it broadly inferior despite being worlds ahead in terms of polish and overall intentionality. There’s no sense that I’m covering huge ground, and while I get that it’s something reserved for the linear levels in this game, it makes the hub feel lacking. I’m not too compelled to go exploring in it like the adventure areas of Sonic Adventure 1, and it’s not fun to blitz around the place like the islands of Frontiers. It’s an awkward middle ground. Also, the map is not helpful at all in finding out where stuff is, to the point that I’m surprised they even greenlit it.
How’s It Look?
While I’m still having an internal debate on whether I like the more subdued colors of Shadow Generations vs. the more saturated Sonic Generations, I’m happy to crown Shadow with having by far the best animations in the series. While this was an area where Frontiers struggled, Shadow Generations has so many well-done animations and little touches that it’s almost headspinning. Even in the very first level, you’re treated to this incredibly well-done transition where the flooring and walls fall apart as Shadow is sucked into an Inception-like version of Radical Highway with a dreamlike disorientation of gravity and stage imagery. Stuff like this happens a few times over the course of the game, and while it would have been easy to reuse that animation, each transition gets its own special setpiece.
Shadow is constantly reacting in dynamic ways to levels and bosses, and all of the anime-isms of Frontiers’ setpieces are cranked up here. The Death Egg Robots scattered throughout Sunset Heights use their arms and lasers to attack Shadow, and he dramatically darts past all of it in an over-the-top setpiece. Metal Overlord may shoot debris Shadow’s way, but he’ll use Chaos Control to bounce everything back and performing a finishing kick move that pays homage to Kamen Rider (a transforming hero media franchise that’s incredibly popular in Japan). Sonic will forever remain my favorite character in the series, but Shadow’s claim of being the “coolest” isn’t without merit.
Elsewhere, the game is a solid upgrade over Frontiers visually. While I criticized the White Space earlier, I do want to give credit and say that they’ve thankfully sorted the nasty pop-in issue that the Open Zones were plagued by. The main levels are also rich with detail and life, with the ones from older games especially receiving an impressive facelift. Space Colony ARK manages to look more like outer space than before, and Rail Canyon looks appropriately looks quite hot thanks to impressive lighting. As far as porting goes, the Switch version holds up quite admirably. It’s not razor sharp like Sonic Generations is, but it holds a steady 30FPS and looks comparable to the other versions.
Verdict
Sonic X Shadow Generations is the best 3D Sonic package that money can buy. A solid upgrade to Generations’s performance and features makes the best 3D Sonic title even better. Meanwhile Shadow Generations represents a resounding leap in level design and visuals compared to some past games, and is a rock-solid compliment to its predecessor. I have my issues with it, and I don’t think it’s as great as Sonic’s portion of the package, but it’s still good and largely well-rounded. It feels as though the series has finally shed its curse of each game being a “good first step”, and what we have now are simply good, if not great games. The future doesn’t just look bright for the Blue Blur, it may be looking better than it ever has.
SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for more Sonic games, you should check out our review of Sonic Origins Plus. We’ve also covered platformers from a variety of other series, like Astro Bot.
Thanks to Sega for providing a Nintendo Switch review code for Sonic X Shadow Generations.
A hobbyist who took up the pen to write about their favorite pastime: games. While a lover of many genres, Isaiah Parker specializes in Platformers, RPGs, and competitive multiplayer titles. The easiest way into his heart is to have great core gameplay mechanics. Self-proclaimed world’s biggest Sonic fan. Follow him @ZinogreVolt
