Written by: Alex

 

 

 

It’s Sonics twentieth birthday, and to celebrate Sega have created "Sonic Generations". It is a title designed to bring together the Sonic of my youth, with the new attitude filled talking blue hedgehog younger gamers are familiar with. Featuring beautiful renderings of classic zones, and gameplay that is instantly recognizable, Generations is a fitting celebration for Sega's iconic hero. But with twenty years since Sonic's heyday, and the modern Sonic games so varied in quality, I do find myself wondering if maybe my memories of the series are best left in the past.

 

 

Sonic Generation's begins with a wonderful recreation of Green Hill Zone 1. Gamers of my age will probably remember this with crystal clarity; the music, the speed and graphic style, all instantly seared themselves in to young gamers consciousness. Playing it again twenty years later with the beautiful new engine, the game instantly caught my attention.

 

Despite my nostalgia I had to be focused on this new game and not trapped in my rose tinted memories so I put my past aside and watched to first cut scene; Sonic's surprise birthday party. But this was not the Sonic I had just been playing it was the new blue hedgehog, gifted with the power of speech. In the short dialogue he and his friend Tails talk for a time about the birthday plans before a dark presence suddenly appears and drag them both in to the past.

 

So the real game begins as the two hedgehogs meet and move through the game together, each playing in their own style. All of the worlds are brought to life in two ways, one to accommodate the classic 2D Sonic and the other with a more 2.5D approach to play, which I assume is more in keeping with more recent incarnations of the series.

 

This all works well and my only issue with it is drawn from the way new Sonic always seems to be portrayed as better. From commenting on washed out colours (admittedly quite funny) to suggesting that old Sonic needs to borrow new Sonic’s moves. It creates a sense that the developers are looking for acceptance from long time gamers (like me), and trying to make us see how they have improved the blue spiky one over the years. But I still don’t.

 

 

As always Sonic is a game of memorisation and speed. It is at its best when the mix of memory and button presses keeps the action fluid, and at its worst when obstacles slow you for too long. While the core run and jump mechanics are in place for each hedgehog both vary in control and feel unique. Original Sonic relies on his jump and ground spin almost exclusively, while the new Sonic has turbo, lock on attacks and a slide.

 

Older Sonic’s play space is different too working on a 2D plain exclusively, relying purely on vertical levels to create paths, a mechanic I find comforting and familiar. New Sonic is a little different, but does manage to keep a similar feel while evolving to introduce foreground and background depth. The result uses the 3DS 3D effect perfectly, jumping from path to path in and out of the regular play field. No doubt to players familiar with each of the two incarnations of the blue one this will all make sense but initially for me I struggled to switch between skill sets.

 

My issues at adapting to new Sonic were not based only on the environment but also the controls, in particular the lock-on attack. It is a handy move in many ways allowing attacks to home in on a target with out precise aiming. However when not locked on to a target the move has the unfortunate affect of shooting the hedgehog a few centimetres forward stalling vertical momentum in favour of horizontal.