Would you look at that, a Sonic “friend” has finally gotten a game—and one starring Shadow the Hedgehog no less. Our always grumpy, witty, and (former) ‘edgelord’ combats some demons of his in developer Sonic Team and publisher SEGA’s latest action high-speed platformer ‘SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS’. This two-pack collection features the original ‘Sonic Generations’ release and ‘Shadow Generations’ as its own standalone title, allowing players to revisit and old classic (albeit with some added issues) and the other to check out a modern rendition of Shadow and his main antagonist: the Black Doom.
Let’s get you up to speed, shall we?
Rolling Around at the Speed of Sound
This being a two-pack collection, I was inclined to give Sonic Generations a whirl first. This frenetic 2D and 3D platformer first came out about 12 years or so, give or take. This entry not only featured our wisecracking Sonic the Hedgehog but introduced “Classic Sonic” into the mix of friends he has. This chance meeting comes to be when a time-eating, giant monster pops out of thin air during Sonic’s birthday party. The uninvited guest proceeds to swallow up everything: colour, props, Sonic’s friends, and the many stages he’s run over the last several decades. The thing didn’t bother taking in Sonic though, likely because the chilli dog addict lacks proper hygiene.
What follows is an adventure across nine stages, complete with two variations of each along with many, many Challenge Stages. See, when you play Classic Sonic, in all his rounded-belly goodness, you’ll be playing the “first Act” of a stage where 2D Sonic runs through and does his very best to get to the end of the level. Act Two is our 2D and 3D runner Sonic the Hedgehog’s forte, and he’ll be blasting through Green Hills, swathes of water, cities, and so much more. All these stages are based on levels from older Sonic games such as Unleashed, Sonic Heroes, Adventure, and the like and for fans of these older titles it’s a nice treat to be running through HD renditions of these cool (and sometimes frustrating) levels.
Sonic Generations is a good game. Both Sonics are fun to play as along with the many stages you can run about in. I especially prefer Classic Sonic as he’s not confined to the rather limited Boost mechanic that Sonic Team has used for 3D Sonic since Unleashed. As some of these stages have only ever built for 3D, such as the Sonic Heroes stage, I’m mixed on how they’ve turned out. Some stages like City Escape are very fun! Sonic 06’s Burning City and the aforementioned Heroes stage are a pain to traverse as 2D Sonic however (and the latter outright killed my urge to replay Sonic Heroes). Boss fights are generally unremarkable but fit the bill. 2D Sonic’s levels have an issue where the camera likes to backseat instead of keeping up and makes some 3D turned 2D levels a pain in the rear. But otherwise, there are some seriously fun, replayable stages here.
Speaking of City Escape, even today seeing it in high definition is a treat—likely the best of San Fransisco you’ll ever see (yes, that means real life all though the waters there are quite beautiful!). Jun Senoue, Ohtani Tomoya, and really just about every SEGA composer continue to shine here years later with their arrangement of classic Sonic songs. I’m not entirely fond of some rearrangements, but that ultimately boils down to personal preference.
Now I’m not a fan of the padding in-between, where you need to complete Challenge Stages to collect “boss keys” to progress but thankfully they’re not too long. Unfortunately, when we get to Shadow’s game, you’ll see this padding rear its ugly head. Oh, right, Sonic Team also added in Chao to the game as collectibles if that’s your thing. They’re not hard to find, just make sure to break slash hit everything and take hidden paths.
Now I like Sonic Generations, but this port is inferior to the original game. It seems to have been a quick port to current generation consoles and PC, with no notable touch ups or bug fixes. Which, you know what, I’m fine with so long as the game stays as is. But a remaster that doesn’t add bugs or worsen existing mechanics is rare and unfortunately, Sonic Generations snagged some extra issues on its way to the Series X. The very first thing I noticed was that the sound mix was botched—the music and sound effects were constantly at each other’s throats, and everything sounds like it’s been normalised. In some stages like City Escape, the GUN Truck is loud enough to crowd out the entire mix and sounds awful in the process.
And I’m not basing this off memory as I was flipping between Sonic Generations on the 360 and this iteration during my comparisons. During these swaps, I also noticed that the game no longer has a life system. Not that it mattered much, all it ever did was force a stage reset (which you should be doing anyway on death!) but there are leftover skills that are meant to assist with said system that are now useless. Heck, you can still buy lives, but they don’t seem to do anything when you do so. Couldn’t have even renamed the string, Sonic Team?
Between the remaining bugs from the original game and the lack of polish with regards to this port of Sonic Generations, it’s not the worst way to play the game. But considering that this replaced the original version across platforms that had it still, it’s mildly frustrating to see a late 7th generation classic somehow get worse.
A Shadow of a Doubt
Once you’re done burning through Sonic Generations, now comes the other half of the collection: SHADOW GENERATIONS. This game takes on a similar structure to that of the first game, except the level selection screen has now become a full 3D hub where players take on the role of Shadow the Hedgehog as he navigates through his own tribulations briefly during the events of Sonic Generations. And Shadow’s portion of the game takes no time to throw us into an explosive prologue stage aboard The Ark—where Shadow came to be.
Right off the bat, Shadow plays much differently than Sonic does, thanks to a barrage of mechanics that slowly but surely make their way into the player’s hands as they progress through the main story. Shadow is fast and controls very well, but only so fast thanks to the game’s Boost mechanic, but our Ultimate Lifeform™️ can blast foes with bolts of energy, use Chaos Control to pause time (including the stage timer!), float, grapple, and even glide when the time comes. A lot of his stages make good use of these abilities, many don’t. And some of the later mechanics that unlock feel very clumsy to use—partially due to the fact that they are introduced so late into the game and are used by three stages at most. But I’ll delve into that in a minute.
Let’s talk about our new hub world. This is a stage that is very clearly based on Sonic Team’s work on ‘Sonic Frontiers‘. And like Sonic Frontiers’ open world stages, I don’t like Shadow’s either. See, technically this White Space hub is an improvement because it is vastly smaller than Frontiers’ stages. But that’s about it—it has the same issue where rails, bounce pads, targets, and other various mechanics are just scattered about with no rhyme or reason. I swear, if someone at Sonic Team could just play ‘Mirror’s Edge Catalyst’ for a few hours, we’d have vastly improved hub worlds by now.
And just like Sonic Generations, players will need to complete Challenge Stages to unlock boss fights and continue the main story. Except now you need to complete every single one of ’em to unlock the Boss Keys that lay just outside of Shadow’s reach. These stages range from “Okay” to “waste of my time” and I’d much rather replay the game’s main stages to collect objectives rather than play these little time wasters. To add salt to the wound, Shadow has limited Boost in the hub world for some reason, so when you do finish a Challenge Stage and proceed to ring the associated bells to chase down a collectible, there’s a good chance you’ll run out of fast juice, forcing you to hunt for rings to continue chasing these darn things.
Like the other half of this pack, Shadow’s levels consist of two Acts: Act 1 being a full 3D level while Act 2 has Shadow take on the 2D perspective. Shadow’s 3D stages are a lot of fun to play, barring the abilities that get piled on top of the player down the line. They have many alternate routes, some out in the open and some that require a knowledge of Boost mechanics and Shadow’s physics to reach. Knowing the layout of the stage is your bread and butter, allowing you to shave off precious seconds off your high score while keeping away from hazards that will take away your precious rings. When you get to boss fights, they’re far more engaging as you actually take on the baddie as opposed to simply walking up to it. Oh and, for the most part, the music remains as sublime as ever for nearly every level.
I don’t have many nice things to say about the 2D stages, however. This worked for Sonic Generations because the player played as Classic Sonic. Shadow isn’t a classic character (depends on your definition of classic at this point), he’s a character that was designed for Sonic’s 3D games and I found most of these stages to be rather dull. For what it’s worth, Act 2 stages will take advantage of Shadow’s added mechanics more frequently and sometimes this does work out well, such as Kingdom Valley’s level that has the player bouncing about, launching blasts and enemies into stage triggers and the like. And hey, these stages don’t have Classic Sonic’s issues where the camera decides you want to stare at the stage more than
Actually, I think this is as good as a time as any to talk about Shadow’s mechanics. I mentioned he has a lot of things going for him, perhaps a bit too much. See, compounded with these newfound abilities you get and stage hazards that require specific abilities to get past, sometimes I’d end up confused on what abilities I should be using to get past a specific obstacle. Sometimes enemies are routed by firing blasts of energy at ’em, other times it might be floating on water where the player loses their Boost ability, or even using Chaos Control at the right times.
At its worst, it’s a stage restart for me, especially if I unintentionally took a path by mistake, but I have to wonder if Shadow really needed all these abilities. Even in Sonic’s spinoff games, our blue Hedgehog has never had a toolkit this wide, and I think the added abilities eventually become a hindrance over time. Especially since late-game abilities are only really used in the late-game stages. The grappling and wing abilities in particular are rather annoying to use as the former can quite literally knock you off stage at high speed while the latter lets you zoom past levels with floaty glide mechanics that Sonic Team had actually fixed with Shadow’s normal character controller.
A brief tangent, but I don’t get why Sonic Frontiers got a stage. Shadow isn’t even in that game! And the Chaos Island remix that gets used is rather horrifying, a side effect of the trap genre I suppose. Really, we could’ve gotten a Black Knight stage or something…
Ow, No Edge?
SHADOW GENERATIONS’ story is more of a recap than doing anything to advance, hmm, “Sonic Lore” so to speak. Players who don’t know of the black-and-red Hedgehog will be acquainted with his past as subtly as Sonic Team can reference the 2005 classic ‘Shadow the Hedgehog’ as they possible can. I feel the developer actively tried “smile and nod” that game away here with a bit of “yes that happened” and “we don’t talk about Bruno”. You’ll find plenty of music from his spinoff game being reprised as unlockable BGM for stages—seriously, I never thought I’d hear Julien-K in a Sonic game again but “Waking Up” is here and I love it. You do get to hear a rearranged “All Hail Shadow” towards the end of the game but I think the original has more charm—sorry, Crush 40. “Almost Dead” is missing though and that one is a big shame.
But like all good things, nothing lasts forever. Today’s Shadow the Hedgehog has gained more wit at the expense of his. I still cherish the gun-wielding edgelord’s glory days very dearly and no, Sonic Team, I won’t forget that classic. Heck, I’ve even lined it up for a replay very soon. But hey, in SHADOW GENERATIONS, we get to see a softer side of the faker. As players open up the White Space hub, very soon you’ll run into two people who are very dear to Shadow: Gerald and Maria Robotnik. They still have about as much lines as you can count letters in the English alphabet, but that’s more than they’ve ever had before so I’ll allow it.
Most of the game’s cutscenes are in-engine and they look quite good! Particularly scenes where Shadow interacts with the Robotniks and he displays a range of emotions I’ve not seen from him since ‘Sonic X’. But admittedly, the timeline of events in this game seems to be all over the place. At some point, Shadow’s main antagonist, the Black Doom, claims that they’ve fought Shadow before and have learned from their mistakes. But Shadow claimed to have defeated him before and the last time I think they met was his debut game. I pondered this for quite a while before realising that I shouldn’t put much stalk into a universe where time travel and dimension nonsense come into play.
Anyway, what really mattered were the brief but precious moments Shadow got to spend with Maria and Gerald. The cast did a great job of delivering their lines during these fleeting bits as they slowly become a far-off memory. Because after this game, Shadow will get shoved right back into Sonic’s laundry list of friends with the occasional comic book appearance. Expect a “Year of Big the Cat” sometime in a timeline near you.
SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS is a good collection of two fun games. Sonic Generations is still a solid romp even if this port adds more issues to the game while Shadow’s offering is action-packed and builds on the former’s strengths. This is the most you’ll ever get of Shadow the Hedgehog for quite a while, so dig in while it’s hot. ∎
SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Sonic Generations is pretty fun!
- Shadow's character controller plays great and is very responsive.
- Some great 3D stages with fun boss fights.
- A nice little recap episode for Shadow the Hedgehog.
CONS
- Sonic Generations is a barebones port with added bugs, a lack of polish, and no improvements.
- Shadow's hub world is boring and scatterbrained. Challenge levels are nothing more than padding.
- A fair bit of mechanic bloat on Shadow's part.
- 2D Shadow levels should be outlawed.
