The 20th anniversary of Sonic the Hedgehog is taking place this year, so to round off my extended personal retrospective I managed to have a go at a demo of his latest crossover game, Sonic Generations, at the Summer of Sonic convention in London. With the bitter memories of Sonic’s 15th anniversary game repressed and after being quietly impressed by last year’s Sonic Colours, I approached the game with no expectations. Here are my initial impressions from the time I managed to spend with the game...
The justification for the crossover aspect of the story is that a strange entity is screwing with the space-time continuum, draining the colour out of Sonic’s world in different periods of history. Sonic and his friends get caught up in the mix, and Sonic ends up meeting and teaming up with his younger self to rescue his friends and restore life to the world.
The developers have talked about wanting to capture as many elements of the Sonic series as possible from 20 years of history, and what this basically amounts to is that the game is split into two types of gameplay. First there are the “Classic” acts, which the younger, shorter Sonic navigates in traditional platformer style. He has only his old moves available, such as the Spin Dash (which can be activated by either a single button press or the traditional method of ducking and tapping the jump button to get more revs), no homing attack and having to build up his momentum gradually to get up to top speed. The levels are designed to focus on more traditional platforming, as Sonic will come across various mechanisms and traps that require careful negotiation. There are also multiple pathways and some of the walls can be smashed to reach these paths, so there’s more emphasis on exploration in the parts too.
Of course, a key aspect of this, and one of my criticisms of other modern games, is in how the physics work, and for these stages to work they need to be as close as possible to the original games. For the most part they seem to work fine; definitely superior to what was present in Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1, anyway. However there are some odd moments, such as Sonic actually gaining speed when going uphill. Most baffling of all is that going downhill when curled in a ball actually seems to slow Sonic down, rather than speeding him up as it should; you have to have him standing up and running to go faster, making him more vulnerable at such speeds. This happened in the Sonic Rush series too and other modern Sonic games, and I certainly hope that is rectified before the game’s release. My complaints may seem minor, and indeed the game is perfectly playable at this point, but if Sonic Team is going for authenticity they’ll find that it’s the little things that really matter.
The demo also allowed me to try out the second act (something the recently-released downloadable demo for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 does not), which involved playing as Sonic’s modern, thinner self. His style of gameplay will be more familiar to modern gamers, as it places more emphasis on dashing through a more roller-coaster like level as fast as possible. Modern Sonic gets the Homing Attack and the Boost to blast through most obstacles and enemies at absolutely eye-melting speeds. The level design does take this into account; falling off the high road would often just put me on a different path, and there’s a rail-grinding sequence which culminates in Sonic getting chased by a giant fish Badnik.
Modern Sonic’s stages do contain some platforming, though at this point it feels rather rudimentary. As with Sonic Colours’ initial stages, however, I imagine that this is simply “First Level Syndrome” as the player is eased in, and these levels are more intended to showcase the speed anyway, with Classic Sonic getting the bulk of the platforming.
The demo level, Green Hill Zone, certainly looked the part, with a bright and vibrant 3D re-imagining of the iconic stage from the very first Sonic the Hedgehog game, though I felt the background looked slightly cluttered with a lot going on. The classic Badniks look great in 3D, however, and have some lovely little animations such as Crabmeat’s victory jig if he damages Sonic. The remixed music couldn’t be heard in the game itself due to all the background noise from the convention, but Jun Senoue himself played a few riffs from the remixed tunes live on stage, and they sound impressive, with Classic Sonic getting a more nostalgic tone with contrasts nicely with Modern Sonic’s more frenzied remix.
However, the demo made it very clear that the game is still early in development, as a variety of bugs and glitches cropped up. Some enemies wouldn’t die when attacked, and I found that the Boost button often didn’t work. Some con-goers found even more ludicrous bugs, including one that seemed to reduce the level to an enormous empty lake with Sonic running on the water itself.
Still, it’s early days, and both gameplay styles show promise. The re-working of Green Hill is lovely, the platforming works and it gives off just the right nostalgic feel. I’ve been let down by a lot of Sonic Team’s recent output, however, so at this stage I’m approaching with a sense of cautious optimism; if Sonic Team can continue to build on the strengths of Sonic Colours and iron out its flaws, then they’ll be on course to deliver a solid product that’s worthy of the 20th birthday of one of gaming’s most iconic mascots. The question is whether said product can be realised in the short development time this game has left if it hopes to keep to the anniversary year...
