The quality of Sonic games has varied wildly since the 2D glory days, ranging from the depths of Sonic ’06 all the way up to the delights of Sonic Generations – a game which came out thirteen years ago now. Updating and reimagining classic Sonic levels in both 2D side-scrolling style and 3D, Generations was a bit of a surprise after Unleashed, which featured a werewolf for some reason. Sonic X Shadow Generations is both a remaster of Sonic Generations and a whole new game alongside with Shadow Generations. This does the same thing, but for Shadow the Hedgehog and his whole broody oeuvre.
Sonic Generations has Sonic characters from different times teaming up together. Specifically, you play as the old school, voiceless Sonic in the 2D side-scrolling levels and switch to the newer, unfortunately less silent surfer dude-voiced Sonic for the 3D levels. The remaster here is good, I haven’t seen any frame rate drops – not even on Chemical Plant – and it looks about as good as you’d expect from a remastered Sonic game from the PS3 and Xbox 360 era. It’s much better than previously, but not as good as you’d expect a new game to look. Standard. Outside of that, the game is just Sonic Generations – it’s great, and worth it even if it’s just to play Spinball again, which is just great.
With the remaster out of the way, we can move onto the whole new game that comes with it: Shadow Generations, which is actually better that Sonic Generations in my opinion. It looks better because it’s a new creation, of course, but most importantly there is an extra layer of polish here that helps iron out a few minor wrinkles in Sonic’s gameplay.
Specifically the level design is improved and has a better flow through each stage. They each have multiple paths for you to discover for yourself – usually by falling out of the one that you’re on – and that fluid design goes hand-in-hand with the ridiculous high speeds.
This is all helped by Shadow’s unique abilities, such as a ranged attack called the Doom Spear and the Chaos Control ability to slow down time, giving you more possibilities so it isn’t all just dashing into things and running. This includes jumping off moving objects that are in slo-mo, which is always outrageously cool even when you’re an overly broody hedgehog.
On top of that there’s also Shadow’s chaos abilities, which allow him to change his body and style of movement by, for example, creating a manta ray to surf across water.
You might expect Shadow to stick with 3D gameplay – he’s a child of Sonic Adventure 2, after all – but he really isn’t picky and is able to dip into 2D as well. He handles both the classic and modern gameplay styles in this game, and I honestly am having a hard time picking a favourite.
Traditionally, 2D was always the best because Sonic in 3D is exceptionally hard to get right and, when it isn’t right, it’s particularly frustrating. Even in the remaster, I prefer the 2D levels to the 3D ones, but in Shadow I think the 3D ones are my favourite. They’re just a delight from beginning to end, with a surprising amount of missable areas for a game about going fast.
And then there’s the bosses, which are absurd and over the top in all the right ways. The first one is The Biolizard, which is obviously a gigantic lizard that has some kind of bubble-based armour to protect its arms that you keep hitting – it’s mental and a lot of fun.
Perhaps the only problem is that the game is still quite short, even with a second game built into it. They also rely on having you unlock keys to fight bosses by completing challenge levels on levels you’ve already done. Some of these are fun but I can also see them being frustrating, especially if the main reason you like Sonic is going fast.
