Oct
22nd
2024
Sonic X Shadow Generations Initial Impressions · 11:49pm October 22nd
Warning: Mild spoilers below the break if you're waiting until launch on Friday.
I'm four hours into Sonic X Shadow Generations. It's essentially two games in one, you select which you want to play before being loaded into that game. Some quick feedback:
- Shadow Generations' White Space is much, much more complex than Sonic Generations' 13 years ago. It's been "Frontiers-ified", being presented in 3D with numerous platforming puzzles.
- The campaign is quick and succinct; I completed it in just about three hours. But what is there presents a very, very solid story. If you're a fan of Sonic games and stories from 2000-2006, you'll likely be very happy here; there are references galore, and this essentially tells you what Shadow was up to for 95% of Sonic Generations.
- Towards the end, I found the stage selection somewhat baffling. The final stage is Chaos Island, from Frontiers, a game Shadow didn't even make an appearance in. I'm assuming they wanted to include a Frontiers stage more than they wanted to give us a second or third stage from a game Shadow was in. Lava Shelter would have been awesome, for instance.
- Since completing Shadow's campaign, I went to go see what improvements are in Sonic Generations. I've barely scratched the surface, but the colors certainly pop more, and I'll probably have to run it more than once, but the camera glitch from Chemical Plant 2 may finally be gone (I held the world record for Chemical Plant 2 for about 12 hours on launch day back in 2011, and the glitch was a run-ender.).
- There have been some dialogue changes which are questionable to say the very least. Did you like the cheesy jokes about Tails being nervous about the water in Chemical Plant, or Knuckles commenting on Classic Sonic's weight? Yeah, those are gone, for some reason.
Of course. Can't have anything resembling fat-shaming anymore because that's fatphobic and being fat is a protected class now.
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I understand (and abhor) the reasoning for the (very tame) fat joke getting axed, but I'm really scratching my head at the Tails chemical water joke being removed.
Do they think the reference is too dated now? Not enough people remember how often Tails drowned in the underwater sections?
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That one, I can't even begin to reason into having an explanation for.
Has Sonic gone woke like some weirdos are saying lmao?
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Well they did cover up Rouge the Bat's back because her bare shoulder blades were considered too spicy for Americans.
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Is that really the game's fault, or the people's fault for thinking their kids will turn into sex-hungry beasts just because they saw GASP shoulder blades!
Finally cleared it myself tonight. Story is good, most of the stages are good, and most of Doom powers are fine. But exploring the overworld can get a bit obtuse, the squid power is crap, and I found Radical Highway's level design unintuitive. It's not perfect, but overall it's a solid game/expansion.