Thanks Sonic Team

As most of you know, I'm an advent Sonic fan. I had all the Genesis games, I still play my Sonic Adventures on Dreamcast, Game Gear, I even had shoes with Sonic's face on them when I was 6 and my Soap's at age 13. The recent years of Sonic games have always gotten a lot of gruff from players, despite most of them not actually playing the games. Sonic Team actually had quite a bit of success with the last Sonic game on the Wii, Sonic Colors. We have talked more than enough about the older games in these good game posts.

But this is a good week for games and my wallet is completely overworked. Thanks to some good deals on games(never ever buy a game without a deal. Exclusive costumes are meaningless when you can buy them later for less than the cost of your presell) I was able to pick up a couple of GotYs. Of course, the only one I actually opened was Sonic Generations, and boy am I satisfied.

Contrary to popular belief, Sonic Generations is not a simple collection of remastered levels. Though it does have a simple world hub for Stage Selection, there are storied cutscenes between each stage just like any other Sonic game. Akin to Sonic Adventure 2, you clear a level once and proceed through the story. After completing the level, you can redo them for better ranks and collectible music and art. You will also unlock Bonus missions with varying difficulty. There is everything from racing Sonic's friends, to wacky level layouts and special moves. Perhaps the second best part about the game is going through the challenges and seeing the new layouts. You can change the music in ANY level to any of the 50 additional tracks you can unlock. Some of my all time favorites I have unlocked are Mushroom Hill and Sonic Boom(with the voice over)!


Nostalgia runs rampant in Generations and is hard to escape from. Lucky enough, the level design has a very nice learning curve as you progress through the game, making S ranks more and more difficult to obtain. As I mentioned, there are 5 collectibles(art and music) hidden in each Act, and finding most of them involves traveling through the "pro paths" of the levels. Just getting to the pro paths is tough on its own. Memorization, twitchy muscles, flawless inputs; call it what you want but getting to the best paths isn't as easy as you may think. I like to believe that this is what separates people who love the game from people who played through it and only liked the game. It should go without saying that Generations isn't for everyone, as 80% of all Sonic games is repetition.


Leaderboards are a very important part of Sonic Generations for players like myself. I am by no means the best Sonic player in the West, but I am trying my hardest to get top numbers. Even the most average playthroughs can get you in the top 500 in the world. Once you get to the top 300(for now, soon we will have more people with better grades), the difference in speed becomes more and more exaggerated. The top player may have a level completed in 45 seconds, while you barely get 1 minute and 30 seconds upon completion. If you like being the king of Leaderboards in a game, good luck trying it in this one.

As a Sonic speed junkie, Sonic Team would have to ship me a broken disc to make a game that I wouldn't like. The game does have a buggy moment or two(such as the camera going into "3d mode" while playing Classic Sonic). The Leaderboards appear to have a few issues too. Besides that, I will be playing Sonic Generations a LOT. Alongside Resistance, Dark Souls, Disgaea 4, Dead Island and Resident Evils; Sonic Generations has made my library quite fat. The only way to play through these by Xmas time is to eat, breathe, and sleep games.