Technically, it's a classic: clipping through platform edges, arbitrarily failing to stick on certain surfaces, lock-on attacks that randomly miss and fling you to your doom, and a Sonic that still (STILL) handles like an oversensitive go-kart on ice. Apparently, Sonic Team's pretty staunch about historical authenticity, because Crisis City is probably the most wretched, buggiest level in the game.
Then you get to Act 2, which is the modern Sonic interpretation of the same environment. And it's not good because it's old Sonic - it's a well-paced dash across a crumbling cityscape, demanding sure-footed, honest-to-goodness platforming and rewarding concentration, confidence and agility within a variety of layered paths that take you through a tunnel, or across a sequence of cars thrown into the air by a fiery tornado. 2D Sonic's spin on Crisis City, the level chosen from Sonic the Hedgehog, stands out as one of the best reboots in the game. Let's give it the benefit of the doubt, though, in showing more wisdom than Hollywood and remaking stuff that perhaps wasn't well made to begin with. This is like a three-disc Michael Jackson Greatest Hits album, featuring two discs of post-mortem silence. We even go back to a level from Sonic Colors, which came out way back in LAST YEAR. Only a third of the main levels are spent on material from the cherished Genesis games, with the last two thirds going into Sonic's Dreamcast games (fine), Sonic Heroes (alright then), that one with the werehog (.), and the disastrous 2006 game (what?). And we just keep walking over them, back and forth.Įven as a compilation of sorts, Sonic Generations is weirdly, equally reverent of Sonic's entire career. (It's okay, Sonic's friends are also too stupid to tell them apart.) It's really not worth going on about a plot in a Sonic game (and this one, at least, attempts self-deprecation), but it's one of the loudest groans emanating from the creators, spanned like a bridge between nostalgia and an annualized grind. The first clue is that someone at Sega believes a return visit to Green Hill Zone must be hermetically sealed within canon by an inane time-travel plot, complete with the obligatory scene where classic and modern Sonics think they're looking into a mirror. It's about exploration, not speed! Guys, the physics of my anthropomorphic blue hedgehog is inaccurate within this segmented fantasy landscape! Even when they make a game - well, let's say half a game - dedicated to capturing Sonic as he was, before vocal chords and a third dimension, they still can't win. They can't seem to please anybody, can they? Oh, Sonic's jumping feels wrong. That feeling you get from playing every Sonic game after Genesis brews as disappointment and eventually becomes sympathy, mostly for the branded custodians at Sonic Team. Revisiting two decades of games, Sonic Generations is pitched as a celebration of Sega's previously pudgy mascot and the timeless appeal of blue skies, checkerboard loops, and things that go "boing." But much like the one Sonic receives in the opening, Generations is closer to a lame birthday party that you attend out of courtesy.