Sonic X Shadow Generations announced, releases Autumn 2024

Rail grinding is still pretty janky in the Dreamcast version, just not as janky as the ports.

 

SEGA are the masters of releasing botched ports of their games that actively tarnish their legacy and general positive reception they might have once had.

So far, at least there aren't any major red flags with SxSG which is good.

 

Usually, the phrase "This game aged poorly" just means that players and their expectations evolved with time, while the game itself remains unchanged, but in Sonic's case, they're literally aging poorly because of terrible re-releases. I hope they don't screw up too much this time, because this will soon be how most newcomers to the series experience Generations

 

Even if SA2's grinding controls worked perfectly, there are so many things working against it. You can see every flaw it has in Sky Rail.

For one thing, the camera is so godawful that it's more concerned with "dynamic cinematics" than showing you where the hell the turns are. Half the time I can't tell if a rail is turning and I have to lean into it because the camera doesn't exactly make that turn clear. And in Sky Rail where it twists and turns constantly, and there is always a bottomless pit at the bottom, it's a nightmare in design.

That's the biggest issue I have. The fucking insistence on using bottomless pits everywhere all the fucking time. For Final Rush/Chase it's fine since falling isn't automatically a death sentence in that stage. But for the most part, "press X to not die" moments do not belong in a fast-ass game like this. Classic and Generations don't have that kind of ass-backwards design and thus you need to play particularly badly to fall into instant-death hazards, which is honestly how it should be. Sonic isn't meant to be exclusive to hardcore gamers.

There's also an annoying quirk where you're supposed to be able to jump and do a trick at the end of the rail. But if your jump isn't perfect, what sometimes happens is that the physics take a dump, Sonic loses all momentum, and thus he simply falls off and plummets to his doom. It's infuriating.

That's not mentioning rail switching, which I'm sorry, but it was always jank and only worked probably 80% of the time, and even then the rails absolutely had to be parallel to each other. Heroes had the exact same problem, except there it was even worse since you were rail-hopping so often.

 

It seems like it was a common issue with Sega's PC ports at the time; the NiGHTS into Dreams port had the same problem, which is really egregious considering the analog controller for the Saturn was built around that game. You can understand why they missed it though, if most people playing these games haven't been able to point it out despite the controls feeling jank.

 

This is ultimately what I meant :p. I'm just not technically minded enough to explain it. This does make a lot of the changes made to the Switch port of 3d World make more sense tho. In the footage I saw Shadow looked like he controlled nothing like Gens. But I guess that's just me. Like when he boosted it looked like nowhere near Gens speeds.

 

Is it just me or are the homing attacks in this game more like Frontier's style than Generations'?

 

They're significantly faster and seem to have a longer range, both like Frontiers. The attack itself seems to have been modified further, though. There's no hitstop, and Shadow teleports directly in front of the enemy instead of homing in on their closest location. So it's basically a Chaos Snap.

It also sends enemies flying into the wall like older games, whereas in Frontiers enemies just explode immediately.

 

Easy to say when we've only seen less than 20 seconds of gameplay. This seems to be an in-house job for SEGA (though unsure whether anything outside of Shadow Generations will be Sonic Team developed), so that gives me more optimism than if Blind Squirrel were attached to the project at least.

 

It took multiple layers of problems to make Colors Ultimate what it was. I like the game and even I can admit it had a lot going against it. It kind of annoys me when people group it with Origins, which is by far a more stable product after all the patches, and arguably even was at the time it came out. I suspect Generations isn't even going to go that bad.

But hey. Whatever may go wrong, at least we'll always be able to pirate the original.

 

It still baffles me how arrogant Blind Squirrel is about SCU. Still to this day on their own website they claim to have rebuilt the whole game from scratch and used their own proprietary engine well after being exposed that they used Godot. Which mind you, their covering up of using Godot is in direct violation of the engine's license agreement, and it's not like their license is super strict they just want you to state that you did in fact used Godot, somewhere, anywhere. And yes, I'm aware it was patched into the in game credits... The hour long slow scrolling text fest, but I'm just referring to their website listing their "achievements".

 

To be fair I also think something's up with the controls on the original version of SADX PC, possibly because of some of the input mods, because playing on Dolphin feels way more restricted (but correct).

 

I have to second this. I recently got a Dreamcast for Christmas and played through both games (with the stories in chronological mind you) back to back. Adventure's controls felt a lot more precise than the PC port but still very good to control. SA2 still felt very slippery, in some ways more so. I'm not sure how the grinding controls were messed up, but it was still a struggle balancing.

 

IMO the absolute funniest part of how they dealt with issues in Sonic Colors Ultimate was that they fixed issues with sound mixing and balance by forcing everything to render as mono. Even though the audio files are stereo, so you can use foobar or winamp or something to play them and hear the audio properly. Just bizarre to me.

 

Yes, definitely! An Adventure remake needs a lot of work as well, the basic gameplay is great but lacks polish - a remake of a 50:50 Boost/bad 2D "looks like sonic but plays like crap" game from 11 years ago, that was there to celebrate the anniversary -> not for me - but I also enjoyed Lost World, so I am aware my opinion doesn't hold too much value in here ^^

 

Nah, 06' is my guilty pleasure, so to each their own.

It's just surprising to me, that people view Generations as a bad game. I love SA1 and SA2 with all it's faults, but it never occured to me that Gens can be considered a bad game.

Forces is basically Generations gone wrong.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'd love Generations to get some tweaks/changes to make it as good as it could be - however, given the history of bad Sonic ports, if a straight port is the option least likely to screw up what's already there then I'd gladly take that over any attempt at meddling with it.

If I actually trusted they wouldn't break things when attempting to improve/update things, then don't get me wrong, I'd love them to do so. My ideal updated version - assuming no actual extra in-game content of substance - would rejig the physics for the Classic stages (and especially the Spin Dash) to better resemble the Mega Drive games or Mania, while removing any scripting that's not necessary, and would expand the story scenes a bit to make the narrative feel a bit more fleshed-out. It'd also probably swap out Classic Sonic's and Tails' models for the ones used in Superstars, and add classic Knuckles/Amy into the White World hub since official models for them exist now. I'd also want them to add more music tracks and museum statues to give at least some reference to the decade-and-a-bit of games that have released since the original!

If they actually managed that without breaking things and decided to add new content too, then a whole new era on the world map would be a good addition, too - show us some reimagined levels from more recent Sonic games like Lost World, Mania or Superstars.

Of course, it doesn't look like any of that is on the table here - any actual new content seems to be confined to the separate Shadow Generations mini game - but as I say, since I don't trust them not to mess things up Generations in an attempt to add anything substantial, a straight port just is fine and dandy with me. Still burned by what happened with Sonic Colours Ultimate - if they'd just done a straight port of the Wii original, the Switch version would have been a must-purchase for me, as I enjoyed the original so much it's one of the few Wii games I actually 100%'d. As it is, I never even bothered to pick up the remastered version in the end.

 

Really I'm curious if they're going to do anything crazy with Black Doom's beef with Shadow this time around. Is this a version of Black Doom from right before his demise in the Final Story who realizes Shadow is going to kill him? Or is it a version of Black Doom that was betrayed in a 'non-canon' route of Shadow's main story?

Those expectations are probably a bit too high and it might be as simple as time travel shenanigans somehow revives Black Doom after his death in Shadow, but it's still interesting to see them acknowledge Shadow at all.

Really my biggest beef with Generations is that it kinda kick-started a lot of the really 'basic' nostalgia winks and nods that have cropped up in the series afterwards. Green Hill/Green Hill's aesthetic went from being a small rare occurrence way later in the game to basically cropping up everywhere after Generations. It's inclusion in Forces' Cyberspace levels when the levels weren't entirely themed after Generations Green Hill is...odd. So it's pretty interesting and refreshing to see a more divisive entry be referenced so heavily. I feel a wee bit more comfortable with that.

Honestly the remaster seems pretty good just on the basis that it seems little in the way of the base game was touched. It seems like a 'Bowser's Fury' situation where a majority of the port's new shining features are in this side mode. So if it's just a port for modern consoles with little in the way of touch-ups, I'll be happy! Generations is already a pretty gorgeous looking game.

My only concern which has been discussed here already is the potential delisting of regular Generations on Steam just because of the modding scene kinda getting set back. I do not want that at all. Really hope a resolution is found there since it's not quite like being able to find an .rdsk of Sonic CD 2011 (which can still be extracted from other versions of the title) or the 3K ROM (which has a few methods of being obtained). Generations is a bit of a different beast and would basically require that newcomers turn to other methods to grab the title if they want to experience something like the Unleashed Project. Porting mods to this new version of Generations is a possibility, but would probably be cumbersome or we'd have to rely on interest in it getting ported in the first place.

 

The psychedelic warp effects as levels change from one place to another and the Cyberspace-esque oddness of buildings floating around along with the unfortunate return of chromatic aberration make me suspect we aren’t looking at time travel but Shadow being somehow trapped in his memories, maybe triggered when he’s abducted by the Time Eater? I’ve also noticed during the change to the city that either a middle part is cut out or it’s showing different instances of going there suggesting you’ll be shifting between different level themes possibly even seamlessly through the game rather than having loading screens or a hub/level select between them.

 

Shadow being trapped for whatever reason makes me wonder if (and hope) we are getting a Silver DLC. Both were the Rivals in the original game, with no internal explanation of why they were there.