
The game assumes you know a good amount of Sonic lore, although you won't miss anything by simply ignoring the references and playing. While you can scream through most of the sections on your first or second chance, it will take you many more times before you see everything there is to see.Įach level is a newly designed take on the areas we're used to, and there are references to games, characters, and even bad guys from past games. Each level is a tunnel that funnels you from point A to point B, but there are different paths to take and different surprises to discover. There will be sections where you're simply holding the forward button while asking your friends if they saw that great thing that just happened. The same tension from past games can be found here in order for Sonic to take part in the cool, scripted moments, the game has to take control from the player. The 2D levels are more fun to play overall, but the 3D sections are more cinematic and feature some very impressive moments.

Then you must repeat the level as a 3D action-fest that's more scripted and features Sonic's homing lock-on attack and other tricks he picked up in later games. Once as a classical 2D level the kind we remember from our days with the Sega Genesis. There is the skeleton of a story that involves a scary, smokey-black monster that brings the old and new Sonic together, and this means that each level must be played twice. I was impressed with Sonic 4: Episode 1, but this is even better. Sonic Generations is out now on the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, and it is not a perfect game-we'll go over some of the areas where things fall apart-but it comes the closest to bringing back everything we loved about Sonic, while getting rid of the things that continued to annoy us. We kept crawling back to the same disappointment, hoping against hope that the latest game would be more like the classic releases and wouldn't feature any goofy sidekicks or weird relationships with human girls. We kept hearing that this next game would be the good one, and that we had nothing to worry about.

There have been hints that Sonic could still work as a character, such as the 2D games that were released on the Nintendo DS system, but everyone's favorite hedgehog has been in trouble for longer than he's been a viable mascot.
