2024 has been the Year Of Shadow and I’ve loved every second of it. It’s all building to the brooding hedgehog’s cinematic debut this December, but one of the biggest stops along the way was Sonic x Shadow Generations. Shadow having half a game all to himself is the closest we’ve come to the anti-hero getting his own outing for almost 20 years, and it’s everything I could have hoped for. However, pairing it with a lackluster remaster has left a bad taste in my mouth.
I was always going to play the remastered Sonic Generations before moving onto what is effectively Sega’s take on Bowser’s Fury. Not only does Sonic’s name come first, but it’s also the older game of the two. Its reviews further convinced me that was the right decision as there was an almost unanimous agreement that Shadow’s Generations overshadowed Sonic’s, and I’d rather have the bad stuff first. The video game equivalent of eating all your broccoli so you can have dessert.
Shadow Generations Might Be The Best 3D Sonic Game I’ve Ever Played
Despite my love of everything Sonic, very few of the blue blur’s 3D outings have left a lasting impression on me. Certainly not to the extent that the original 2D quadrilogy did, laying a foundation on which pretty much everything I like in gaming has been built. I know going fast is kind of Sonic’s whole deal, but the speed and movement in most of his 3D games has never really clicked with me.
That continued with the Sonic Generations remaster. It’s fine, but it felt almost identical to the original. That had me fearing the worst for when I’d eventually start playing Shadow’s campaign. If it was just an extension of Sonic Generations with Shadow as the lead, that two-decade wait for some significant Shadow content would have ended with a whimper.
Thankfully, Shadow Generations isn’t just an extension of the Sonic remaster. It shares some of its elements – returning life back to various areas, finding keys to unlock boss levels – otherwise calling it Shadow Generations wouldn’t make much sense. However, its gameplay is so much better than Sonic Generations that it ranks among the best-feeling 3D Sonic games I’ve ever played. The movement feels smoother, I’m yet to find myself falling through random, supposedly solid parts of various levels, and the boss design feels a lot more complex and thought out.
All great news, of course, but it only took a few levels of smooth Shadow gameplay until I started overthinking the situation and began to get a little annoyed. If Sega knows how to make a 3D Sonic game feel this good, then why wasn’t the same formula applied to Sonic Generations?
Sonic Generations Should Have, And Clearly Could Have, Been Better
The main reason the Sonic Generations remaster will quickly become a game I rarely ever think about, much like the original, is because it doesn’t feel good to play. If Sega hadn’t improved upon how its Sonic games feel since the original’s release, then a focus solely on enhanced visuals, although even those improvements feel minimal in the remaster, would have been all I expected. Clearly it does have a better handle on the gameplay though, so why wasn’t that changed in the remaster to align with the Shadow campaign’s standards?
The only logical explanation I can come up with is that it would have required too much effort. Shadow Generations is all-new content that needed to be built from scratch. Sonic Generations already exists, so giving it a fresh, albeit very thin, coat of paint was far easier than rebuilding the game so it feels better to play in 2024 than it did in 2011.
It’s also pretty clear that if Sega didn’t need a vehicle through which to include Shadow in a game, the Sonic Generations remaster wouldn’t have happened. With a whole new generation of Sonic fans about to be introduced to Shadow via the big screen, there needed to be a game out there with Shadow as its star. Giving Shadow a game all of his own wouldn’t have made sense, and almost certainly wouldn’t have sold well. Tacking a standalone campaign onto a game that’s just about old enough to get away with being remastered, however, that’s the best option.
It’s a shame that’s the way it needed to be, and it’s likely why Sega didn’t feel the need to invest more effort than it did into the Sonic Generations remaster. It’s also a shame that even after Sonic 3 hits cinemas next month, it’s unlikely Shadow will ever be popular enough to star in a game of his own again like he did in 2005. If the best we can hope for is stuff like Sonic x Shadow Frontiers though, I’ll take it. I’d rather that than wait another 20 years for Shadow to be the focus again.
Sonic X Shadow Generations is a double package of a remastered version of the 2011 title Sonic Generations, alongside an all-new campaign featuring Shadow the Hedgehog and both 2D and 3D levels.
- Released
- October 25, 2024
- OpenCritic Rating
- Strong