Sonic X Shadow Generations Review
A Breakneck Return to Form
Chances are good I don’t need to tell you that the Sonic franchise has had its ups and downs. For every Sonic game that hits the sweet spot with well-crafted levels and a great sense of speed, there’s one that inundates itself with uninspired side content and another that just plain doesn’t function. Even back in the Blue Blur’s 1991 debut, we saw what would become one of the hedgehog’s most common stumbling blocks. Everyone remembers Green Hill pretty fondly, but it’s easy to forget that your brisk roll through the hills comes to an abrupt stop with Marble Zone’s tedious box pushing and slow-moving platform rides. The game just fails to consistently lean into what makes it fun, a problem which would crop up all throughout the series’ history with games like Sonic Adventure and Sonic Unleashed. That, plus the straightforward duds like Sonic Forces and the infamous Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), means that I’m always going to approach new Sonic releases with at least a little skepticism. All of this is really just to say that there’s a special sense of relief that comes with any good Sonic experience, and I’m happy to report that this little combo definitely gave me that feeling.
I’ll begin where it all began with the update of the 2011 classic, Sonic Generations. This has been my favorite Sonic game since I first played it years ago, and this remaster was the perfect excuse to return to it after a years-long hiatus. As soon as I stepped into Green Hill Zone’s Act 2 with Modern Sonic, the familiar thrill of a top-speed boost through the stage came back to me like an old friend. Building on the parts of Sonic Unleashed which were actually fun, Modern Sonic’s gameplay in Generations remains the absolute best the hedgehog has ever felt in 3D. It blows my mind that Sega has bothered with new 3D control schemes in games like Sonic Lost World after already hitting the jackpot here, but I guess it wouldn’t be Sega if they weren’t getting in their own way. Anyways, the reason it’s so fun comes down to the simple feeling of speed the genius Boost mechanic gives. Boosting lets you plow through enemies and some obstacles at a blinding speed; it’s a mechanic that could easily boil a lesser game down to thoughtlessly holding a button, but a lot of smart decisions keep it interesting. The Boost meter will run dry if you don’t top it off by collecting rings and defeating enemies, encouraging attentive gameplay even while blowing past everything. What’s more, Boosting speeds Sonic up to such an extent that it’s hard to react to the constant hazards and shortcuts the stage throws at you. Taking shortcuts this way not only lets you improve your time without just boosting ahead, but incentivizes learning the stage at a slower speed first. Practicing a level enough to slide under gaps, dodge around traps, and short-hop over stumbling blocks while holding that Boost button down as much as possible is an extremely satisfying feeling that makes the speed and power of Boosting feel earned. Brief shifts into 2D during the levels also break things up with more precise platforming. Modern Sonic’s controls often feel a little slippery for this sort of thing, but using controlled bursts of speed from moves like the air dash and stomp to get through these sections smoothly is a good feeling too. Modern Sonic’s side of the game hardly misses a step; the best levels like Speed Highway and Rooftop Run are relentlessly fun, and even the clunkier levels like Crisis City and Planet Wisp have great moments and play with a few interesting ideas.
Classic Sonic is along for the ride too in this celebration of the series’ first 20 years. While the fully-2D level design does capture the classic feel with good flow and a bigger focus on platforming, it’s not as much of a hit as Modern Sonic. Being a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the small, but crucial flaw with Classic Sonic’s gameplay is immediately apparent to me; rolling down hills doesn’t build any momentum. While the Spin Dash, jumps, and general sense of momentum throughout Classic Sonic’s other moves work pretty well, this confusing oversight undercuts the fundamental feel of Sonic’s classic Genesis outings. Hills which would look like a great chance to build up speed become nothing more than a downwards slope, with rolling left as a pointless gesture in the face of an extremely quick and powerful Spin Dash. The Spin Dash was introduced in Sonic 2 as a way to smooth out situations where players would come against ramps and the like without the speed to pass them, but without rolling momentum, it just becomes the right choice for any situation where you’ve got a lot of ground to clear. It doesn’t prevent these stages from being fun, but an entire half of the game which could have represented everything that was fun about the Genesis era of the series instead slips under the shadow of Modern Sonic’s excellent showing. These sections are much improved by one of Sonic X Shadow Generations’ few additions to the original game, however: the Drop Dash technique introduced in 2017’s standout Sonic Mania. Just as it did in that game, the Drop Dash lets Sonic transition into a Spin Dash right after hitting the ground from a jump. It’s a wonderfully smooth technique that makes the switch from platforming to running all the more seamless, and it’s easily the most impactful part of this modern rerelease. Modern Sonic gets this move too, surprisingly, but the presence of Boosting and the awkward need to complete an airdash to use it (both moves rely on pressing the jump button again in midair) make it almost entirely superfluous.
My only real problem with this rerelease of Sonic Generations is that it hardly does anything to refresh this thirteen-year-old title. It’s true that the fundamental gameplay didn’t need much improvement, but there were a lot of seemingly obvious refinements to the visuals and performance which somehow went unaddressed. Although you no longer need to open a separate config window to adjust controls and graphics settings on PC, the lack of options in this department remains dated. The fact that this game is still natively locked to 60fps on PC in 2024 astounds me, especially with how fast-paced it is; every frame counts! What’s more, certain voice lines and animations in the cutscenes were pointlessly redone, but the overall visual quality of the game remains staunchly rooted in 2011. The lack of improvements to models and textures in this rerelease not only makes it look unnecessarily dated in comparison to Shadow Generations, but just implies a lack of effort towards what was frankly my most anticipated part of the package. Beyond the addition of the Drop Dash and a few new collectable Chaos tossed into the existing stage layouts, not much care was given towards making this rerelease feel fresh in any way. Of course, the great gameplay and soundtrack are as good as they ever were, but some modernizations would have definitely been appreciated. Luckily, we live in the age of patches; modernizations like an improved framerate cap and quicker loading when restarting a stage (something you’ll be doing a lot if you like improving your times) which are present in Shadow Generations can hopefully still be made.
I guess it’s about time I touched on the brand-new part of this package. Shadow Generations is actually much more than the Shadow-themed level pack for Sonic Generations that I expected it to be when it was announced. While it’s designed in the style of Modern Sonic’s gameplay in Sonic Generations, Shadow’s control scheme and new abilities give the game its own feel. The Sonic series has a bad habit of making Sonic seem like the least special of its characters; all the way back in the Genesis days, Tails and Knuckles could do everything Sonic could on top of their unique abilities. Shadow does similarly have a lot of extra powers; Chaos Spear projectiles can stun otherwise-dangerous enemies, and defeating enough enemies lets Shadow stop time with Chaos Control to access new shortcuts and even stop the in-game stage timer. He also unlocks extra Doom Powers over the course of his twelve stages, but most of these are functionally more like stage features than new powers. Doom Surf just changes Shadow’s controls to cross water, Doom Morph can only be used with purple goo orbs nearby, et cetera. These new powers give Shadow a lot of fun new ways to speed through the stages, and his tighter turning controls at both low and high speeds allow for more varied level designs that still feel good. He also has a double jump instead of an airdash, and his Air Boost pops him up a bit for more hang time. All this means that Shadow feels a bit tighter and more well-rounded than Modern Sonic in Generations does, but Sonic actually feels noticeably faster. Shadow doesn’t have Sonic’s short hop that lets him jump over gaps without losing speed while Boosting, and Sonic’s Air Boost provides no height but is much faster. Shadow’s gameplay has more variety and consistency, but Sonic’s creates an adrenaline rush Shadow just can’t match. It’s nice to see that they didn’t opt to have Shadow make Sonic feel completely obsolete; it makes their rivalry feel more balanced in practice. Their differences made me curious as to how it would feel for Sonic and Shadow to tackle each other’s levels, but Sonic Generations is unfortunately a completely different piece of software in the collection; significant work would be required to put either character into the other game. All the more reason I think Sega should have done more to update Sonic Generations.
I should touch more upon the structure of Shadow Generations. There’s more focus on 3D gameplay this time around, fitting for a character that wasn’t around before Sonic’s jump to 3D. Rather than switching between 2D and 3D in the middle of a stage, every stage for Shadow has one level in 3D and another in 2D. This is a less jarring approach that helps both gameplay styles’ strengths stand out instead of competing with one another, although the shift wasn’t a big problem in Sonic Generations. Shadow’s hub world is also in full 3D, and progress to new stages now depends on the acquisition of his Doom powers. Generally, Shadow Generations compliments Shadow’s movement abilities with stages that have plenty of alternate routes and a hub world with a greater emphasis on exploration and movement. Challenges, shorter stages with gimmicks that remix existing levels, also return in a limited capacity from Sonic Generations. Sonic Generations had a lot of challenges, but a lot of them had frustrating or boring gimmicks. Shadow Generations has much fewer challenges, but the challenges are a lot more fun. Sonic Generations luckily only demands that you do a few challenges to access boss fights and progress, so you can stick to the fun ones. Shadow Generations requires every challenge to be completed to beat the game, which makes it all the better that its fewer total challenges are actually fun.
All told, Shadow Generations feels like a shorter, but more well-rounded and polished experience than Sonic Generations. It makes a lot of really nice small improvements to the system Sonic Generations introduced which I think a more involved rerelease could have easily implemented, but Sonic Generations is still well worth playing even without those refinements. Both games have stages which are a ton of fun to run over and over for better times, great movement mechanics for that sense of speed, and excellent music for every vast and impressive level. Where Shadow has more ways to navigate his levels and fight enemies, Sonic comes out ahead in terms of pure speed. For the price, any fan of fast-paced platforming is getting a lot to appreciate in this package. It’s a collection of some of the very best the Sonic series has to offer, making for an excellent starting point for beginners and a real treat for longtime fans. Let’s hope Sega can ride the momentum from this game into the Blue Blur’s next adventure instead of tripping up along the way again.