2025-01-09

Shadow Generations

Shadow Generations released as part of a combo pack with Sonic Generations. This is the best way to present the game: a mirror counterpart that includes everything the other game doesn’t. And as a mirror, it is a cooler, sexier reflection of the prior game. Taking place at the same time as Sonic Generations, the story sees Shadow confronting his past through remixed versions of other games’ levels.

The setup is familiar: play a 3D level, then play a 2D version of the same level. Except, the 2D gameplay actually works! You have access to all the abilities of the 3D stages, and all the levels feel extremely readable. It’s not just good level design, there is deliberate scripted camera movement in the same way as 3D levels. Since there’s no “classic Shadow”, there’s no lore reason to strip the player of fun abilities for half the game. And it goes both ways, as there are now no 2D segments in any 3D stages.

And the 3D stages are awesome, too. Alternate routes and little challenges have never been more clearly marked, and there are always options to move faster. There are a handful of transformations, abilities that change how you move. These are probably the worst part of the game, forced segments where you have to use the surfboard ability for a part of the level. But it’s not even that bad, it mixes up the gameplay to keep things fresh.

Challenges are also back, and this was another criticism I had towards Sonic Generations. Since it forced you to pick one of many challenges, it just felt artificial. Shadow Generations fixes this by only offering you two challenges per act, and forcing you to play all of them! That sounds worse, but paradoxically it’s a lot more fun. The developers could ensure everything interesting is necessary, distilling what would be 5 different challenges into 2. It also seems more surmountable to get S ranks on each of the challenges, since there’s fewer of them. I think they were a little easier, too, I got a few S ranks without even intending. Thankfully, there are postgame extra challenges that are more difficult, though I haven’t played all of them.

In general, almost everything about Shadow Generations gave me a reason to come back to it. There are hub world collectibles and in-level collectibles that I don’t really care about, but these are also completely optional. All of the right decisions were made here, there is no self-sabotaging tumor that bloats the runtime.

Score: 3/3. If you even slightly like 3D Sonic games you need to play this game, it is fantastic.