Sonic Generations: Sega, please stop torturing my mascot. He's been dead for years.
Oh Sega, it's adorable how you keep wanting to change something I've been happy with for more than 10 years now. Sonic 3 along with Sonic and Knuckles was really the height of perfection in your series. It gave exactly what the fans wanted, a more than solid side scrolling platformer, tight controls, an incredible sense of speed. Hell, you even added multi-player when it wasn't at all necessary to the enjoyment of the game. Then...Then you decided to take a shaky step into the world of 3D, and like the house from The Amityville Horror we just want you to get the fuck out.
First thing off the mark, this game is not designed for pc. Nor should it have been on pc. This is easily one of the sloppiest ports I've witnessed. For fuck sakes, the button prompts when using a keyboard are still Xbox 360 controller prompts, leaving you to guess at what the game really wanted you to hit. If you didn't go bind all your keys at the start of the game or do some serious experimenting, this will leave you ham fisting your way into some insta-death holes.
Oh sweet jesus. Where is the left trigger on my keyboard? How do I? What is this?!
There are absolutely no graphics options beside from the very basic screen resolution and how cranked you want your Anti Aliasing. This leaves the game to be pretty badly optimized. Here, I'll show you a picture of what you can change, I'm not joking.
Bearing this in mind, there won't be a video at the end of this post like there will be in most games because running this game alone makes my computer hiss. Running it with fraps is likely tantamount to some sort of domestic abuse.
Now you're probably thinking "Why would anyone buy this? It looks like it was a pretty lazy, poor excuse for an attempt at a money grab". You'd be mostly right, but as long as you have some sort of 1x4x9 monolith to run your games on, and the happen stance to have an Xbox 360 controller you can high jack for your PC it actually turns out to be a pretty fun game. Despite all these crippling flaws the game is fairly enjoyable. You're not going to run into any Oscar winning writing or voice acting, and it's not going to befuddle your mind with the depth of plot of say....Inception. It does deliver a pretty fun platforming experience, I'll break it down for you.
The game is split up into two halves, one of which you control the new fangled Sonic who lost a few pounds and can therefore no longer curl up into a ball (and plays like Sonic Adventures), and the old Sonic who is the side scrolling goodness we are all accustomed to. They are both fun in their own respect but with the addition of some floaty controls the side scrolling sonic gained a serious dose of frustration.
You little blue bastard. Stop when I tell you to stop!
It's because of this that the strangest thing happens. The awkwardly controlling 3D running away from the screen new Sonic is actually more fun to play. He lends more towards the awful port and lack of tight controls. You even get some really cool huge jump sequences that show off a big portion of the levels. Sort of like this one in Chemical Plant.
Please land this jump.
All in all it's a decently fun fan title. I say that because no one in their right mind looking for a decent platformer should even come close to buying this. It's certainly one of the best sonic games that has come out in the past few years but...god....that's not saying much is it.
Signing off
~Weevils
