(DISCLAIMER: It's worth mentioning I am NOT a huge Sonic fan, but I do have fond memories of him and will treat each game fairly).

Hey, guys! So every couple years or so I get a huge Sonic the Hedgehog craving. A week ago it happened again for the first time in a couple years and I found myself replaying Adventure DX, Adventure 2 Battle HD and Sonic Generations in about a week. The goal with this blog series is to give a sort of mini-review for each game and at the end after I've played every single one of them (including 06, which I've never ever played!), give you my favourite to least-favourite. I hope you enjoy! This third blog will be focused on Sonic Generations.

The Story (NA/5)

I've chosen to not " grade " the story this time around because it's just not a big focus in Sonic Generations at all. There is one, and what's there is fine, but yeah. If you must know, the story in Generations is about a time devouring entity that rips a whole through time, causing Classic Sonic and New Sonic to work together to put the timeline back to normal. It may sound like something that could get complicated later, but it doesn't at all. So yeah!

The Gameplay (3/5)

You play as both Classic Sonic and New Sonic in Generations. The game has nine stages (all based of off stages from previous games) and each Sonic gets their own version, making up for a total of eighteen stages. Classic Sonic's stages are entirely 2D and control pretty much the same as the old Sonic games on Genesis. (The first Sonic game is even in here as an unlockable). New Sonic stages are, for the most part, like 40 percent 3D and 60 percent 2D which kinda defeats the purpose of him if you ask me, but hey. I vastly prefer New Sonic stages to the Classic Sonic stages, but that'll all depend on which style of Sonic game you personally prefer. There's also various challenges around the hub world that you can do to earn Chaos Emeralds (that are needed for the true ending), new skills in the shop, etc. The overall quality of the content here, like every single Sonic game in existence, fluctuates greatly, but when it's good, it's really good. The music is mostly pretty good, and the graphics are incredible. New Sonic's model in particular almost looks CGI quality to me. PC port is fine.

Final Thoughts (3/5)

Sonic Generations serves as a short, but mostly enjoyable trip back into some of Sonic Team's favourite levels from past Sonic games, some remixed for the better, some for the worse (Sonic 06's Crisis City is way better than this game's, yeah that's right I said it). It's way less buggy feeling than previous Sonic games too, which is a plus. Overall, I enjoyed Generations, but not really as much as I wanted to.

By the way, the next blog (if anyone actually cares), will take a bit! It will be on Sonic 06, but I only just recently completed Sonic's story which took way longer than I thought it would. So assuming Shadow and Silver's stories are of similar length, it's gonna take me a bit to complete all of them. Anyway, thanks for reading!

Crisis City in 06 is a broken mess of a level. It's pretty much every single thing thats's wrong with that game. A true test of patience like no other. Inconsistent grind rails, ramps that fling you into the abyss... and the end bit. In Generations that final stretch is exhilarating, in 06 it could break the most unbreakable of people.

The biggest difference between the stages is that 06's version is still wanting you to play Sonic like a platformer while Generations wants you to race through the stage as fast as possible (like all of Generations 3D stages)

I totally agree that the 3D side of the game is the better of the two. I'd personally say that it's the best Sonic has ever been in 3D, and I'd have loved them to refine it for the next game, but y'know, Lost World happened... sigh.

Generations in an incredible game.

@gunstarred: Aside from the mach-speed segment, I didn't really find the level all that broken or buggy. The rails especially I at least found better than Adventure 1/2's rails which Sonic never seemed to wanna home-in or land on. Though obviously Generations way more refined rail grinding would have been preferred.

And I hear ya on the Lost World thing. I haven't played it myself, but what I've seen doesn't look particularly great (or even Sonic-y). Weird/interesting that Sonic Team goes from great to terrible so much. But hey, at least it's better than Sonic Boom....? (Which I won't be playing for this blog, the frame rate alone is enough to keep me away from that one).