Sonic: Generations

Welcome to another year of Tophat Gamer, I hope you all had an awesome holiday break. This year promises to bring us many fantastic titles, but to kick of my reviews for 2012 I'll be talking about a title I never got to post about last year. And it's a title thats close to my heart, as I grew up with the original Sonic games and Sonic and I are both 20 years of age.
So has the blue blur outrun his streak of bad to mediocre games, or was the hype for Sonic: Generations undeserved.

STORY
Sonic: Generations begins with Sonic's friends throwing him a surprise party. As the party begins, a large, shadowy figure swoops in, kidnapping all of Sonic's supporting cast in the process. After regaining consciousness, Sonic finds himself in a blank zone of time and space, where he meets a younger version of himself.

It's here that both modern and classic Sonics must race through areas from their history to return them to their rightful time and space, and in doing so, saving their friends.

Used mainly as an excuse for modern and classic hedgehogs to unite, the story is surprisingly funny and entertaining, with classic Sonic's silent emoting providing a few laughs. On top of that, Modern Sonic's obnoxious "attitude" has been dialed back to reasonable levels. The game throws in a couple of unexpected twists, which I found quite interesting.

PRESENTATION
Sonic: Generations is a bright and colourful game with a cheery visual concept that was a breath of fresh air to me after playing so many gritty, realistic games at the end of last year. The game is surprisingly quite good looking on the technical side, and there's little to no framerate drop.

On top of a smooth, colourful visual style, lies an upbeat soundtrack torn from the sega mascot's past. Each level has had it's signature theme added, which gives the game another drop of nostalgia. And that couldn't hurt, now could it?

GAMEPLAY
The gameplay of Generations can be split into two sections: the sidescrolling Classic Sonic, and the mostly 3D, but occasionally sidescrolling Modern Sonic.

The Classic Sonic Act's run really well, with the speed being just fast enough to maintain Sonic's classic signature power, while not sending you flying into traps with no time to react. The jumping also feels just right, avoiding the Sonic 4 part 1 problem of not having enough "float" to it. That said, theres not so much float that it makes platforming imprecise, like LittleBigPlanet.

The modern Sonic sections are some of the best that I've seen in some time, but aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. The homing attack works as well as it ever did, and Modern Sonic feels much faster than classic, while still leaving players with enough time to react to most situations. Being able to sidestep with the shoulder buttons helps with dodging obstacles, but like I said, these sections are NOT perfect.

If Modern Sonic comes to a complete stop, starting a run again can be quite tedious without the use of a speed boost pad. His path finding (when slowed down)is surprisingly sensitive. In this situation, using his speed boost ability can give the undesired effect of falling of the edge of a path and to the blue blur's death.

Aside from this rather annoying problem, the gameplay is quite satisfying. The boss battles in particular are both fun and intense, and it's great to see Sonic back at his best.

REPLAYABILITY
Sonic: Generations is one of those games that, despite the lack of multiplayer, I would find myself coming back to, simply because the gameplay is in such a sweet spot, as well as the massive nostalgia hit. However, if you need more stuff to do, there are plenty of side challenges that unlock concept art and music tracks, which are all really cool.

OVERVIEW
This game is a near perfect mix of colourful and vibrant visual design, cheerful soundtrack, above average gameplay and the power of nostalgia, and the result is a great platformer which leaves the past few mediocre attempts to reinvigorate the franchise in the dust, as the hero speed boosts on to better things.

Alot of today's "hardcore" gamers may look at the colourful design and platforming gameplay and think of it as a second class game, and to them I say, I'll take a hundred games of this calibre over a hundred CoD clones any day of the week.

Next week, maybe a review of MGS HD Collection (unless it's been delayed again. If so, perhaps Super Mario 3D land, or pokemon white? We'll see.
See you next time!