We Sonic fans are an interesting, resilient bunch. For decades, we have survived strings of some of the worst AAA games ever made, punctuated occasionally by an okay game. And yet, we persevered! Whenever people on the internet would make fun of us, we would proudly say “30 years of bad games didn’t kill us. You really think YOU can?” Yet here I stand, hand in hand with my best friend Shadow the Hedgehog, 25 years after the franchise sped into the third dimension with Sonic Adventure – and I can confidently say that Shadow Generations is the best 3D Sonic game of all time.
Sonic X Shadow Generations is a bit of strange release, as it is a collection of two games, one old and one new. 2013’s Sonic Generations has long been called one of the best 3D Sonic games, and that is true, with the caveat that it is still only alright. I spent about two hours with the remastered Sonic Generations before diving into the new Shadow campaign, and can safely say it is indeed a remaster of Sonic Generations. It runs beautifully at 60 FPS with no stutters, and has gorgeous new lighting and textures. A pretty good game is now a little bit better, and this is certainly the best way to enjoy Sonic Generations by every metric.
The other, much more edgy half of the package is Shadow Generations, an eight hour standalone game that follows Shadow the Hedgehog during the events of Sonic Generations. For 11 years, we’ve all been wondering, “why wasn’t Shadow at Sonic’s birthday party?” I’ve been yelling it outside of the White House for years.
Now we know the truth, and the only possible reason Shadow would ever miss a birthday party – as Sonic and his friends are warped into a time anomaly dimension by The Time Eater, Shadow’s old nemesis (and deadbeat absentee father) Black Doom returns to take revenge on Shadow for banishing him to hell so many years ago by sealing him inside his own time anomaly dimension.
If you’re not familiar with Shadow’s long and confusing backstory, Shadow Generations will give you the basics, just enough so that you’re not totally confused. It’s common knowledge that Shadow was cloned from the DNA of an alien demon Black Doom by Professor Gerald Robotnik in pursuit of creating the ultimate life form to find a cure for his sick granddaughter Maria, who is raised alongside Shadow as his sister and teaches him about life, love, and the universe before she is shot full of holes by the US military right in front of him. Everyone knows this.
Shadow is set down into a blank white expanse. At first I was skeptical, but as the hub world reveals itself through Shadow beating bosses, I have grown to absolutely love the execution. The hub world starts off with just one area, featuring the entrance to a main stage surrounded by a few platforming challenges, featuring the classic floating platforms, springs, rails, warp rings, and enemies you know and love. Completing challenges and stages draws out more of the environment, and by the end you’ve got a decently sized mini open world skatepark to blast around. The closest analog to the structure I can think of is Super Mario 3D World: Bowser’s Fury, if it also featured the shrines with classic 2D and 3D stages from Sonic Frontiers.
As the hub world builds itself out, you’ll find more and more ways to quickly (and cooly) traverse the open world, completing overworld challenges and unlocking challenge stages and bonus content along the way. Shadow unlocks a new Doom Power after defeating the boss of each of the six areas. You can use these powers both in the overworld and in levels, each one inherited from his old man through the character growth that comes with accepting his creation. There’s also a great new default power in Chaos Control, which allows Shadow to freeze the world (and the timer) for five seconds after filling up the gauge by killing enemies and collecting rings. It’s a perfectly paced and character-driven way to build out the open world.
Each main stage is two Acts, and takes place inside his own memories. Each of these stages is a total remake of one of Shadow’s stages from a previous game, including Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic ’06, Sonic Forces, and Sonic Frontiers, with more than a few allusions to the less good games like Sonic Boom and Sonic and the Black Knight. Don’t get too cozy running down memory lane, though – each level is constantly being warped and interrupted by Doom’s Eye, who for some hilarious reason loves Radical Highway and keeps trying to turn every other stage into it.
Each of these stages retains the aesthetics, enemies, and signature set pieces of the original, but has been totally remade and remixed to work with Shadow’s new powers and the movement physics that Shadow Generations has inherited from Sonic Frontiers. As much as I loved the actual gameplay of Frontiers, it was undeniably messy and a clash of many different creative visions. Shadow Generations has masterfully blended these new movement physics that I fell in love with on the Starfall Islands with better versions of Shadow’s most iconic stages. The remix stages in Shadow Generations flow better, have better pacing, have no bugs or glitches, and require a lot more thought and creativity from the player than the original. For example, I’m a huge fan of Sonic Heroes. This remix version of Rail Canyon is better in every aspect, from moment-to-moment feel to execution of level design.
Each stage also features a remix of the original song mixed by none other than Jun Senoue, the foremost authority on Sonic music in the world. I love these remixes, and they give a fresh feel to everything, but luckily when you’re doing a rerun of the stage to try and get a better time or repeating challenges to improve your score, you can select any song from your collection of music. New (old) tracks are acquired through platforming mini-games in the overworld and by collecting keys during main stages, alongside filler bonus stuff and some admittedly cool unused concept art.
Sometimes I themed the tracks, such as when I reran Sunset Heights. As it is a medieval castle, I thought to put on some music from Sonic and the Black Knight and had a blast. Another time I put on the Biolizard Boss Theme Supporting Me while spending half an hour going for the S-Rank on a challenge, just because I could. The new music is on par with Sonic‘s long history of bangers, with every old favorite you could wish for such as All Hail Shadow and I am All of Me coming back in a big way. My only small complaint is that Kirk Thornton, who has voiced Shadow since 2010, still just doesn’t hit the same way original voice actor Jason Griffith does, although he does do a great job.
Sonic games are not typically known for well-crafted stories, and I’ll be the first to admit that. Yes, Sonic has a library’s worth of incomprehensible lore rivaled only by Kingdom Hearts, but the games have never been great at forming a coherent story. Frontiers featured a well-structured story from Ian Flynn (writer of the comics), but lacked charisma and personality. Flynn returns to pen the script for Shadow Generations and this time knocks it right out of the park. A beautiful line from Maria caught me so off guard I actually dropped a tear while playing a game about an emo hedgehog with demon powers who is truly ambivalent towards good and evil. Flynn holds nothing back – there is not an ounce of subtlety in this game, and it is a near masterpiece for that exact reason.
Shadow the Hedgehog has, since I first played Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on the GameCube at age eight, been my favorite video game character of all time. I don’t know what I loved so much – probably the fact that there’s nothing cooler than an anti-hero with everything to lose that can’t afford to care about the things he’ll die to protect. The motorcycle and guns probably helped too. Shadow Generations oozes ridiculous cool at every step, whether it’s Shadow doing flip kicks to blow up the Death Egg by reflecting its own lasers back at it or turning into a demon fish to swim on the ceilings.
It’s so unashamed in everything it does – the last word you’d ever use to describe this game is “restraint”. On top of how excited it is to be so edgy, the levels are designed better than they have ever been before – the perfect mix of on rails, cinematic set pieces, platforming challenge, boost control, player choice of many routes, fun challenges, and great replayability come together to make Shadow Generations the hands-down best 3D Sonic game ever. I know game developers hate hearing this, but it really is like someone at Sonic Team just flipped the “but make it good” switch. I also need to point out how well this game runs, with amazing visuals and unbroken 60 FPS with not a single bug or glitch to be found.
Shadow Generations is the most unapologetically edgy thing I’ve experienced since leaving high school, and it has done exactly what it set out to do. As I approached the end of the game, I could only wonder how to go on with my life after the truth came to me. I am Shadow. I am the Ultimate Life Form. I will save Maria. I am truly ambivalent towards good and evil. I am chaos and order, I am life and death, I am light and darkness. Black-hearted evil… brave-hearted hero… It’s all me. I am… I am all of me.
Nirav reviewed Sonic X Shadow Generations on PlayStation 5 with his own bought copy.