Sonic X Shadow Generations announced, releases Autumn 2024

I wouldn't put it past them. Thankfully it'll be a bargain bin pickup in a couple of months

 

Hope the Shadow content gets a much better final boss than crappy time-eater.

 

The very trippy visuals in the trailer make me suspect, and hope, that this will be the return of Infinite. It would make sense considering it was Shadow who set him off the edge, and why he wasn't allowed to come back before. But maybe I'm reading too much into it because I really want to see him again.

E: oh it takes place during Gens' story. Bummer!

 

YOU WILL KNOW HIS NAME

Also damn, a Sonic Battle reference!

 

I certainly was not expecting this to be more than a simple remaster with Shadow tacked on it, but here we are! I am flabbergasted!


...I still hate it being called "Sonic X Shadow Generations" though.

 

Visually I’m very impressed by the new Shadow content. I need to see way more gameplay to have an actual opinion. We briefly see him shoot a chaos sphere so I’m curious what the game-flow of his levels is like. If “Shadow Generations” is built off of frontiers than I hope that Shadow gets a spindash and some of the momentum-based level design we saw in Final Horizons Cyberspace levels.

 

I guess Sega really wants annual sonic releases. Wonder what's on deck for 2025

 

The PS5 and Series X are both fairly new consoles. I have a feeling those consoles haven't gone full steam yet in terms of adoption. I need to know how many Current-gen console players there are compared to last-gen.

 

The Shadow part surprised me. I was just expecting that it was just gonna be like, slightly remixed levels from the original game but you can play as Shadow now.

Glad that they went the extra mile but gonna be honest, I laughed at the sudden dark turn when Shadow showed up. The tone of the trailer just completely changed lol

 

Will be inevitable I'm sure. Just like how all the people complaining about "forced Classic Sonic nostalgia pandering" had no issue with Sonic being unable to shut the fuck up about events from 2000's games in Frontiers.

 

One nagging concern: that shot of shadow kicking while the screen is tinted green looks cool… but I hope this isn’t a repeat of the quick time events from forces

 

At least from what we've seen it looks significantly better than Colors Ultimate. They didn't add a bunch of bloom or whatever. It actually looks like Gens did just with better textures, which is all it needed tbh. Now the Shadow content I'm a little more on the fence about but whatever.

 

>Phoned in remaster that looks barely different from the original apart from higher res textures, doesn’t even seem to be in HE2
>The continued degradation of Sonic CGI trailers with whatever the fuck was going on with Classic’s face, not to mention the stiff posing on the newly animated cuts, here in staunch refusal by SEGA to employ the animation studio that made one of the top 2 sickest openings in the entire series that they actually own
>Once again SEGA is incapable of putting together a trailer that isn’t just stitched together shots showing microseconds of actual gameplay because the game could fall apart under any further scrutiny
>That logo
>Those goddamn 2008 ass renders

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was…

 

I know they want synergy with the the third Sonic movie, but announcing this like 9 months in advance is so dumb. It's a remaster. Do you really need it to come out in that September-November range?

 

I'll give the Generations stuff this much as in so far, it doesn't look all that different from the original unlike Colors Ultimate. Maybe this time they chose to just do a straight port/upscale instead of the enhancements they tried to do with Colors but ultimately botched. So for today--props there for not trying to fix what wasn't broken, I guess.

I am admittedly somewhat surprised that with the Shadow stuff, they are actually bringing in stuff from the 2005 game: Black Doom, the grittier aesthetic, all the way down to even having the Shadow logo/insignia as part of the game logo. The surprise is due to how Sega has strayed away from really acknowledging/re-releasing/bringing in anything from the 2000s era of Sonic between Adventure 2 and Colors (aka what some might still call the "Dark Era"). I guess enough time has passed where they are more lenient about it, or (given it's nearly 20 years) 2000s nostalgia is becoming en vogue again. (I'm also all too sure the upcoming Sonic 3 movie plays a part here.)

Compared to the largely inconsequential additions to Colors (when it wasn't busy making the original game visually worse), I do appreciate the Shadow campaign, in as much that they are making a new sub-game that is accompanying the main title (much like with the already brought-up Bowser's Fury to 3D World). Doing smaller companion games to the "main" Sonic titles is what the series should had been doing a long time ago, given its constant gameplay experimentation/focus on other characters.

If it sounds like I'm grading on a curve, it's honestly because I pretty much am. I had rock bottom expectations from the jump when this was rumored to be announced, and I'd admittedly still not expecting a whole lot out of the final product. It's just that after the extreme mismanagement of Colors Ultimate and Origins, I truly was expecting a explicit demonstration of incompetence and/or lack of effort out the gate.

 

Yeah the actual Sonic Generations stuff looks exactly the same as the PC version.

 

Look I'm Sonic's #1 hater, but there was nothing bad that really stood out here. Everyone knew from the jump that Colors Ultimate was cooked.

The fact that the Generations portion still looks good is a good sign imo.

 

I couldn't quite tell what levels they're brining back. Final Rush/Chase/Space Colony Ark was there, Radical Highway, the Biolizard fight, and I *think* that was Westopolis?