#ALSO THIS KINDA MAKES BLAZE EXACTLY ONE YEAR OLDER THAN BLAZE??

[emioliravioli]

WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME BLAZE'S BIRTHDAY WAS TODAY

[pahrak-the-sinnoh-slizer]

Game Night: Sonic X Shadow Generations

This being a game all about touring memory lane, I ask you indulge me a bit while I reflect.  When I was a kid my sisters and I were given our older cousins’ Sega Genesis as a sort of hand-me-down, and among the included library of games were several featuring a very distinct spiky blue creature.  This many years later it’s hard to remember exactly why, but I’d estimate at least 85% of the time my we spent playing the Genesis was dedicated to these games in particular—and considering they were competing with a Jurassic Park game for a dinosaur-obsessed kid’s attention, that’s certainly no small feat.  Not long after that, the combination of Sonic X’s English dub and Sonic Heroes turning the games multi-plat solidified this affinity, and a Sonic fan was born!  I followed the franchise quite closely throughout what’s now known as “the Dark Age”—yes, even including Shadow the Hedgehog (2005). (Especially Shadow the Hedgehog (2005).) Alas, when I picked up Colors…I guess you could say things just didn’t click?  So while I was somewhat excited by the announcement of Generations, I didn’t play it.  Following that, I’m ashamed to say I fell prey to the cultural mindset of “Sonic = bad”, and I tried to put the hedgehog behind me.  However, seeing Mania getting rave reviews piqued my curiosity, so I slowly waded my way back in and was in the exact right spot for the announcement of Frontiers to get me psyched.  I’ve already shared my thoughts on that game, but suffice to say it scratched my very specific itch.  I’m hooked once again.

Shadow the Hedgehog (2005) was one of my favorite games as a kid.  I haven’t played a single second of Sonic Generations before now.  Sonic Frontiers felt to me like a joyous homecoming.  And now, you’re telling me that this Generations remaster comes bundled with a Shadow the Hedgehog 2 that iterates on Frontiers?  Sign me the fuck up.

Spoiler-free tl;dr: Shadow Generations may be brief, but it’s also unbelievably sick, proving that short games can still be great and that edge can in fact be used for good.

While I dove straight into Shadow Generations, I feel like for this post I should go over Sonic Generations first.  This game was a HUGE deal when it first released, and it kinda never stopped being a huge deal: I already had a good grasp of what I was getting into, and I guess my expectations were high.  Perhaps too high.  Make no mistake, I am aware that I am very bad at video games, and I do want to emphasize that my expectations were working against me, not to mention playing Shadow Generations first probably skewed my muscle memory and I was kind of exhausted whenever I was able to play.  All that being said.  I didn’t really have a great time.  There were quite a few obstacles and deaths that didn’t feel entirely fair—Boost was riskier to use than I thought it would be, and the Homing Attack lock-on felt very finicky.  Even when the Homing Attack did work I still ended up taking damage from the enemies I was killing a bit too often.  Part of this is down to the controls: I know they changed which button executes the Homing Attack, but while playing it seemed like both buttons worked?  So I hit the wrong button twice as often, I guess.  Again, I’m under no illusions there’s a huge skill issue here, and there were still things I liked about the game!  Classic Sonic using R2 for a one-button Spin Dash felt really nice, and even with my spotty Sonic history I experienced a healthy dose of nostalgia.  I was surprised to see just how many Challenge Acts involved Sonic’s friends—they weren’t all fantastic stages, but I was glad to see these characters had just a bit more of a presence than I previously thought.  I remember liking the challenge where you had to switch between the three elemental shields, as well as the one where Vector picks up and throws Classic. (Did not enjoy either Blaze stage I played, sadly.) But I mean, by now there’s loads and loads that’s been said about this game, and if you were considering playing it you’ve probably already decided if you will or not.  I don’t have anything new to say.  These are just thoughts on my personal experience with it.

In any case, let’s move on to the main event.

Shadow Generations has several unique additions to your basic Sonic gameplay, to the point where it can almost feel overwhelming.  To its credit, the game carefully eases you into these mechanics, first introducing your basic Homing Attack (more akin to Chaos Snap from 06) and Boost, then the first tier of Shadow’s specific kit with his Chaos Powers.  Chaos Spear is a quick and easy shot able to activate switches and stun enemies, though it doesn’t actually damage them and is thus more of a utility move than a long-range offense option.  Chaos Control sort of merges both of its functions from Shadow 05: time freezes (including the in-game timer!), and while it’s in effect you can use special energy ribbons to perform a Chaos Dash and zip ahead at blistering speeds.  I love that Control is far more accessible this time around; Dash can be handy, but it’s very situational, and the shortcuts it provides in the hub world kept surprising me with where they spat me out.  Then there’s the heavily-advertised Doom Powers, which are unlocked in a specific order as you make your way through the game and have a nicely subtle progression to them.  Doom Spears is a relatively minor upgrade to Chaos Spear (locks onto 5 targets), Doom Blast is an upgraded Homing Attack (great for movement when you can find an enemy tough enough to actually take the hits), Doom Surf sees the corruption building and Shadow forcing it all out of his body to form a manta ray thing (I found this one unwieldy, not being able to stop is irritating), Doom Morph sees the corruption completely envelop Shadow’s body (definitely tricky and a bit situational, but I actually had a lot of fun navigating goop with this), and while Doom Wings might not escalate it still gives you a big power-high, with the balanced visual design showing Shadow’s control over his new abilities.  I wasn’t expecting the Doom Wings to be this game’s stand-in for Super Shadow: you need at least 50 Rings and they drain quickly, but you’re invincible, faster, and jump higher, plus you have nearly unlimited Boost that can be used in midair to glide extended distances!  This being usable in the hub world is perhaps an iteration on Knuckles and Tails’ flying abilities from Frontiers, and I suspect a more targeted experiment on how to integrate on-demand Super Sonic into the Open Zone design.  Big fan of this skillset.

The hub world is another big feature I was excited to see, and it does not disappoint!  The Frontiers influence is on full display, turning Shadow’s side of White Space into a mini-Starfall Island that expands outward as you progress and gain new abilities, which you then utilize to gather collectibles.  It’s somewhat Metroidvania-esque in that sense.  You’re also constantly watched over by the Black Moon, essentially a cross between Black Doom and a biblically accurate angel.  Super creepy!  Everything you can do in stages, you can do in White Space, and the plethora of rings, enemies, and mini-challenges make it a lot of fun to just run around aimlessly.  Primarily you’ll be searching for those collectibles: nearly 100 chests containing art and music and such (unlocked using keys you find in stages a la Red Rings), 80 machine parts used for a certain sidequest, and 13 excerpts from Gerald Robotnik’s journal.  Wait—this game has secret reports?!  Fuck yeah!  I love that shit!  They can actually be a bit tricky: they’re in pods carried by a trio of flying robots, and when you notice a set flying around you need to get high enough to shoot them down, and it seemed they were always just a bit higher than I expected.  Noticing and successfully claiming one is a nice rush, though.  They can be viewed in Shadow’s Collection Room (which has surprisingly nice décor), alongside artwork, movies, music, game summaries, and character profiles.  What surprised me was how few profiles there are: notably, neither Rogue nor Black Doom have entries.  Also Sonic Heroes is placed after Shadow 05 for some reason and that’s really bothering me.  That aside, overall the Collection Room is a very satisfying little side mode for you to enjoy the fruits of your collectible hunting.

But let’s talk more about that journal!  A physical version was actually included as a pre-order bonus, taking the form of a little booklet inside the game case, and I read through it right away.  A little difficult with the handwriting, but in-game you have an option to display all the text in standard format.  I’m told that this compiles everything from the games that has been attributed to Gerald, including the excerpts from SA2, Sonic Battle, even Sonic Rivals 2!  Additionally, it gives deeper insight into his character and the Robotnik family tree, which is the really juicy stuff.  What probably shocked me most was the reveal that Maria has a younger sister.  In other words, Eggman has another cousin, one who could easily still be around in the present day.  That’s got to be a hint or something.  There’s no way they’d tease something like that and not follow up on it, right?  Right?!  …Well anyway.  The journal also has a few “snapshot” illustrations that add a lot of charm, and, somewhat oddly, contains numerous redacted elements that have been blacked out.  This is explained diegetically by a note in the inside cover: the journal was recovered from one of Eggman’s bases and delivered to G.U.N. Commander Abraham Tower, with the implication that Eggman defaced the journal to keep its secrets hidden.  Or, maybe the Commander made the redactions for some reason?  Come to think of it, this journal most likely passed through G.U.N.’s hands after they executed Gerald, and the note does talk about the previous Commander covering-up the incident, so maybe that’s when it happened…whoever it was, it makes sense canonically.  Most of it can be inferred using context clues, though I’m amused that they used it to hide the names of Gerald’s sons.  Guess they weren’t ready to commit to anything just yet!  Even funnier, though, is that one of Gerald’s explanations of how he Scienced a solution to a problem is just smudged over rather than being redacted.  How did he do it?  We don’t know!  Fact-check us now, nerds!

In a similar vein to Sonic saving a new friend each time you clear a stage, new NPCs show up each time you clear one of Shadow’s stages.  You can talk to them.  That’s…pretty much it, not even any character-specific Challenge Acts like on Sonic’s side.  Still, the only one of these who really feels underutilized is Omega—granted, I’m biased, but bro shows up after the very first stage and doesn’t get a single thing to do, despite being a member of Team Dark!  Utterly appalling.  But, regardless, I’m happy these characters are around to give Shadow someone to bounce off of (even if silently).  After the second stage you get Orbot and Cubot…strange additions to be sure, but I guess they couldn’t overlap with anyone Sonic rescues and pickings were rather slim.  These two are trying to build a rocket to escape, and will give you artwork in exchange for those machine parts hidden around White Space.  Third is the one and only Big the Cat—another bizarre choice, but Big needs no justification, especially since it’s just…kinda nice to see him and Shadow chat casually?  I enjoyed having him around.  Fourth stage gets you important NPCs we’ll discuss later, and fifth brings Rogue onboard for some last-minute involvement in the plot. (Okay one overlap, but y’all would riot if she wasn’t here.) Only five stages then?  Well there is a sixth and final level, but clearing that beats the game.  Maybe it’s time we start getting into those stages and the story tying them together…

Fittingly, Shadow begins aboard the ARK.  As advertised, this stage combines aspects of ARK stages from SA2 and Shadow 05, a sizable pool to draw from and, rather shockingly, the only Shadow 05 level representation.  Sure, it’s something, and plenty of the artwork and music you can collect is from that game so it isn’t being ignored, but I would have expected at least one dedicated full level adapted from Shadow’s first solo outing.  Eh, not a dealbreaker by any means.  You then drop into White Space, where you’re initially restricted to a small area with just the ARK level entrance, Omega, a few level assets you can scale to find a few chests, and an ominous pod next to a sealed door.  Clearing the ARK earns you a “Doom’s Gear”, which is used much like a Portal Gear to unlock that weird pod…a “Power Sealing Device”.  Lame.  Like, it doesn’t matter, I know it doesn’t, but that’s just such a lame name.  Give it some flavor!  Just call it a “Doom Capsule”, there, that’s an easy one!  You might have already guessed, but these are what give you your Doom Powers.  Opening the door reveals a short pathway leading to the next level: Rail Canyon from Heroes.  Honestly, this is probably the inclusion that warmed my heart the most since Heroes was my first 3D Sonic game…not that I ever fully beat it.  Ironically, I recall Rail Canyon/Bullet Station being the farthest I managed to get with Team Dark, so this feels like a chance to resolve some unfinished business!  I even flung myself into the void just trying to change rails—that’s what really made this an authentic experience! (It only happened once, though, the physics here are far more polished than those in Heroes.)

And here’s where we encounter the first Boss Gate.  Interacting with the Gate causes Challenge Acts to spawn, and clearing those will get you Boss Keys—the basic structure of Sonic Generations, with a few tweaks such as there being fewer challenges and needing to (eventually) clear all of them to access all the bosses.  These all seem pretty straightforward: collect a certain number of rings, defeat a certain number of enemies, stages built specifically around one of Shadow’s abilities…I had fun with them.  I will say that it’s a little weird that you need to interact with the Boss Gate before these spawn, if only because the second and third Boss Gates are tucked away in their own areas you have to navigate to get to them—definitely cool, but feels a bit more like a chore when you have to go back after leaving to get the keys.  It’s no surprise that the first boss is the Biolizard, which starts with familiar patterns before shaking things up in its later phases.  I had a bit of trouble, but it wasn’t too difficult a fight; it makes a point of utilizing Chaos/Doom Spears and ending with Chaos Control, both of which you’re expected to know your way around before moving on to the mid-game.  It’s after this that Black Doom makes his first real appearance after taunting Shadow through Doom’s Eye across the preceding stages.  He’s a bit cryptic, but notes that the temporal anomaly caused by the Time Eater has allowed him to accelerate his pre-formulated plan to revive himself.  For whatever reason, I like that the thing “connecting” Black Doom and the Time Eater is nothing but sheer happenstance: Doom saw an opportunity and seized it, that’s all.  Certainly makes it easier to write around Sonic Generations and not interfere with its established plot!

With the Biolizard defeated, the hub world expands to include a new area across a big lake.  This is where you get Doom Surf, and again, this one proved difficult for me; despite that, I appreciate how the next few stages and upcoming boss are designed to incorporate it, rewarding players able to master the move for their skill.  Speaking of stages, we now get access to two: Kingdom Valley from 06 and Sunset Heights from Forces.  I wonder if there’s something to said about this juxtaposition.  But in all seriousness, these levels are just as good as the rest—my knowledge of and ability to analyze Sonic level design may be lacking, but even I can feel the difference between this Sunset Heights and Forces itself.  It’s around Kingdom Valley that Big hangs out!  He says he’s visited Soleanna to fish before, which makes sense, and he even mentions meeting Elise! (Not by name, but it’s still nice to see.) Sunset Heights, on the other hand, is home to two NPCs…Maria and Gerald Robotnik.

I mean, y’all saw it in the trailer.  And it’d be a missed opportunity to NOT do this.  But uh, still hits pretty damn hard.  They’re from a point in time before the ARK incident, obviously, lacing their every word with potent dramatic irony.  Shadow reacts to this as one might expect, which…is actually kind of a big deal!  If you cared enough to read this far I probably don’t need to tell you that Shadow’s characterization has been quite a hot topic (heh) in recent years, and his portrayal here could easily make or break the game.  Without getting too ahead of myself, I want to say that—at least in my opinion—it’s good news.  I remain a bit unsure about some of the pacing, perhaps necessarily due to the length of the game, but Shadow is fleshed out remarkably well and with appropriate nuance, and is once again recognizable as the character we all came to love during his debut.  Not to get controversial, but maybe this’ll help to convince more people that Ian Flynn kinda sorta knows what he’s doing?  Anyway.  Time to fight Metal Overlord!  Again, never actually beat Heroes so I can’t properly compare this fight to his original, but this one seems pretty good.  You spend the whole fight using Doom Surf (ah…), hitting rubble and projectiles at Metal while he tries to blow you to bits.  His tail swipe attack felt unfair at the end, when you have to jump twice in quick succession—Doom Surf is NOT built for that.  One cool thing is that if you use Chaos Control, Metal will be unaffected and gloat about how he has the same power.  It's a neat attention to detail that actually comes back into play later on!

With Doom Morph now acquired you can navigate some goop to reach Chaos Island, which, yeah, does feel like a weird inclusion since Shadow wasn’t in Frontiers.  That it and Sunset Heights come from the future is actually something I like, something you’d expect in a scenario about breaking the timeline but can only be done in a situation like a rerelease for obvious reasons.  This is around where things really began to get tough for me: early on I was at least getting B Ranks, but from here on it was all Cs and Ds.  Difficulty is a tricky thing, of course, but I think it progressed pretty well here.  This is also where we begin to enter the endgame, with some pretty big things happening after beating Chaos Island and around doing the Mephiles boss fight. (Very fun and frantic, built around using Doom Morph and Doom Blast, honestly might be my favorite boss in the game!  Shadow also ends things off with a badass one-liner about Mephiles not having a future. “Ever.”) One of the first is a cutscene where Shadow ends up in Sonic’s area of White Space.  They bump into each other, have a race as a stand-in for the rival battle you fight while playing as Sonic, and Shadow goes to use Doom Spears but decides against it because he only wants to beat Sonic if it’s on equal terms.  Rad.  Of course, this loss of focus leads to Sonic beating him and taking the Chaos Emerald he’s been carrying, and this is when Rouge shows up to ask how the hell he could let himself lose.  This scene is great, maybe the best example of how this game is careful about precisely maintaining continuity and making it look easy.  See, Shadow’s been carrying an Emerald around because it’s been established he needs one to use Chaos Control.  Okay, gameplay mechanic justified.  At the start of the game, while exploring the ARK, he comes across the fake Chaos Emerald Tails made in SA2, actually sort of compliments Tails saying that even he has a hard time telling which one’s a fake.  Huh, okay, neat callback I guess?  So now, problem: if Shadow Generations takes place at the same time as Sonic Generations, then Sonic has to be the one to take the Chaos Emerald, that result has already been established.  Does that mean Shadow loses Chaos Control past this point?  Nope!  Because the Emerald he dropped was actually the fake Emerald!  He even asks Rouge to swap it out for the real one as soon as he’s done with it, so the two Sonics going Super against the Time Eater still works!  I’ve seen it mentioned that this even explains why you can’t use Super Sonic before that point despite having all seven Emeralds, because you’re unknowingly carrying a fake!  That’s awesome!

The next big thing: Shadow goes to check in with Gerald and Maria, only for Black Doom to show up.  Shadow immediately gets between them and him (he protecc!), and Black Doom assures him that he’s learned from his past defeat and won’t make any mistakes this time.  We also get to see Maria shout at Black Doom that Shadow’s nothing like him, points there for sure.  I believe it’s here the game states that Black Doom is using his connection with Shadow to grow stronger as he does, allowing him to revive faster and simultaneously corrupt him so that he can possess his body and become the Ultimate Lifeform himself.  It seems to be working, too, since Shadow gets pissed off and starts shouting about how he’s going to wipe out all the Black Arms.  However, Maria steps in to calm him down, saying she can’t bear to see him driven by hatred like this, that Black Doom isn’t his real family, that she and Gerald love him and just want him to be happy.  Shadow doesn’t really know how to respond and runs off.  His next stop is the last Power Sealing Device…I think an extra scene or two might’ve helped here?  Just so he doesn’t go straight from nearly giving in to corruption to absorbing even more corruption.  Whatever the case, this is where you finally get Doom Wing (after a small taste all the way back in the ARK stage), and now that Shadow has his full set of powers, Black Doom enters the final stage of his plan and turns White Space red while calling Shadow to come and finally face him.  Shadow goes to Maria first, and tells her that while he has let go of his anger, he will continue to fight with her wish in his heart.  The change in White Space causes it to shake and throw Maria off her feet, but Shadow stoops down to help her up—which is such a great way of showing that he’s still in control of himself, love it.  One short platforming challenge later, it’s on to the final stage…

Radical Highway!  Yep, SA2 gets a full stage in addition to contributing to the ARK stage.  Both Acts are built in a way that encourages you to test out the Doom Wings, but can be cleared without them.  Also these Acts are HARD.  I died repeatedly here, really driving home how happy I am that lives are no longer a thing.  Eventually you reach Black Doom, and after exchanging some final words, he goes straight to Devil Doom form and the battle begins!  You start out using Doom Surf, but after getting his health down to half, he changes the arena and you need to use Doom Morph to take out the other half.  Then Doom transforms AGAIN, becoming Neo Devil Doom, and you enter the traditional “fly around in Super Form” type of final boss using a modified Doom Wing while a new version of “All Hail Shadow” plays in the background.  Not really one of my all-time favorite Sonic songs but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was hype as fuck.  Once you finish off the second health bar, Doom uses Chaos Control to freeze Shadow and goes in for the kill…but, hey, remember how Metal Overlord could cancel out your Chaos Control?  Now YOU get to cancel out DOOM’S Chaos Control!  And Shadow finishes him off with a volley of giant Chaos Spears followed by blasting through his chest Goku-style!  It’s such a good final fight—I may love Frontiers but Supreme was a pushover, this is leagues better.  After the fight Shadow’s wings shrivel up, so he probably won’t be using them again any time soon (sad…), and he hands his Chaos Emerald off to Rouge before going to say goodbye to Gerald and Maria.  When they start to fade away, returning to their time, Shadow says he can stop Rouge and use Chaos Control to keep them in this moment, but Maria doesn’t want that.  He tries to argue that they don’t know what’s going to happen, but she tells him that even if they’re pulled apart from each other, her love will always be in his heart.  Shadow leaves, and as he runs past Rouge, a single tears flies off.  They let him cry!  Not on-camera maybe but they let Shadow cry at seeing his family ripped away from him again!  This is the good shit!

You know, I worry that in these posts I spend too much time summarizing and not enough actually commenting.  But in a case like this, what is there really to say?  Shadow’s in-character.  That’s best demonstrated through example.  After the way he’s been written through the 10s (as well as his previous solo outing), that alone is worth the price of admission for quite a few of us.  Let’s see, what else did I want to bring up:

-Shadow’s first thought upon seeing Maria and Gerald is that he might be able to change their fate, but I felt like this wasn’t really followed up on.  There is the scene at the end where he considers Chaos Control, but by itself I’m not sure it’s enough?  Plus, this game is about Shadow defying the destiny Black Doom chose for him, so seeing him successfully do that while not being able to change Maria’s fate feels a little at odds.  But the former is about the future and the latter is about the past, I suppose.

-There are points where the dialogue very clearly echoes some familiar Shadow lines like “This is who I am” and “I will fight like I always have”, but do so without directly quoting those lines.  I may not be part of the faction that seems to view call-backs as a grave sin, but even still, this approach definitely feels superior to direct quotes.

-In contrast…the Shadow vs Sonic scene repeats that one exchange from SA2, and even a line from the Team Battle in Heroes.  These felt forced to me, especially the latter.

-This is probably the most Maria’s illness has actually been focused on?  We see her getting weak and fainting, and there’s even a picture in Gerald’s Journal of her in a wheelchair.  Part of me wonders if this is an attempt to make Maria better representation for people with chronic illness; I don’t feel qualified to evaluate that if true, but as a writer I’m very curious to see if it does or doesn’t work for people so that I can learn from it.

-It’s been confirmed we’re getting at least one DLC level based on Movie 3, though I don’t know if it’s been stated whether it will be free or paid?  I have to wonder if there will be any other DLC; it could certainly help combat dissatisfaction with how short the game is, and I know I’d be willing to pay money for an excuse to keep playing.  Although Frontiers did give us a LOT through free updates, and I’d be ecstatic if that were to become the norm.

Sonic Team has always experimented, something I think they should be commended for even if it hasn’t always worked out.  Shadow Generations, however, feels more like a culmination of lessons learned from Shadow the Hedgehog (2005), Sonic Generations, and Sonic Frontiers—the fully-realized fruit of all those experiments, if you will—and it’s definitely stronger for it.  As someone with vivid and fond memories of that road’s starting point, not caring or even realizing I was playing a “bad game” because I just fucking LOVED Shadow, my heart’s telling me that nearly 20 years was more than worth the wait to experience its endpoint.  If you have the chance, I absolutely recommend you try Shadow Generations and behold the ultimate power for yourself.