Quick Look: Sonic Generations

Sonic Generations might just be the game to revive the fortunes of the anthropomorphic hedgehog, with its focus on pure gameplay and the interesting and smart mix between the old and the new of the series.

The main quality of Sonic Generations is that it manages to play up the element of speed that has always been the defining quality of other titles in the franchise and pays much less attention to the supporting characters, that most gamers consider to be irritating.

Sonic first makes an appearance in his modern form and immediately the mix between 2D areas and 3D portions impresses with the smooth transitions, the impressive speed and the well laid out progression paths.

There’s a feeling that Sonic is moving impossibly fast and that I will never be able to really control him, with enemies and traps moving along too fast for me to avoid without re-playing every level three or four times.

But Sonic Generations manages to convey danger and opportunity through primary colors and good design and quickly it becomes a sort of crazy pinball game played at extra speed where the player reacts almost from the gut and without any use of the higher cognitive functions.

I’m not yet far enough into the game to see whether the plot will pop back in to make the game less than it could be but this far this might be the Sonic game to draw in a new generation to the series.

Unfortunately, the developers who handled the PC port for SEGA seem to have been wholly uninterested in making any effort to adapt the control scheme or the menus to the platform.

All the prompts are linked to the Xbox 360 controller configuration and there’s no way I could find to modify the mapping, so I suggest getting a controller and setting it up to get the best experience out of Sonic Generations.

Here’s a look at Sonic Generations in action: