Hello blog I'm writing a post for again! Today, I'm here to state something simple.
Shadow the Hedgehog is the coolest character to ever exist in anything.
Seriously. This is something that’s been documented by just his influence on the internet alone. Someone makes a post on a message board asking if there's a cooler character than Shadow? Pfft. Zero reasonable answers. Not to mention the millions of OCs, fan-animatics, and comics that have been produced trying to capture what made Shadow such a popular character when he was first introduced back in Sonic Adventure 2 (2001). So, what was it about him? Is it just that he’s a dark, edgy version of Sonic that swears, uses guns and takes no shit from anyone? Well, I can’t deny that that’s part of his appeal. And if you played his very own game ‘Shadow The Hedgehog’ (2005), then you might think that’s all there is to him. But, at least in my opinion, I think the reason Shadow’s gotten so much more love than any other side character in Sonic is that his story feels the most human and tragic. Shadow wasn’t always the edgy rival to Sonic that we know and love now, to get to that edge he had to swerve and tumble through acres of heartbreak and loss. And this year, thanks to Sega’s Fearless: Year of Shadow Campaign, a whole new generation (lol) can learn everything that made Shadow the moody bastard he is today, and why he ultimately just needs the biggest hug ever.
This campaign consists of two major things, the 3rd Sonic The Hedgehog film set to release this December with friggin’ KEANU REEVES HIMSELF voicing Shadow (Still can't get over that) and the subject of today’s splurge of my brain, Sonic X Shadow Generations, a brand new collection compiled with both a remastered version of Sonic Generations (2011) and a brand new game called Shadow Generations, which uses the original structure of Sonic Generations, that being revisiting past levels from previous games through time travel shenanigans, to tell a brand new and personal story for Shadow, one that he hasn’t gotten arguably since Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) the game where nothing happened. And just to give an immediate spoiler for my thoughts, I genuinely think Shadow Generations is one of the best Sonic games ever made.
BUTTT before we get to that, I’d also like to talk a bit about the remastered version of Sonic Generations included in this collection! ‘Cause there is honestly more here than I was expecting!
From all the trailers, I assumed that basically nothing about the game was gonna be different here. And for the most part that is the case, but the additions made do generally change the vibe of the game! The biggest change is that the entire script has been rewritten! It’s still the exact same story as the original, but the dialogue has been tweaked in tons of areas in order to fit the game more snugly into Sonic continuity and the writing style of both Sonic Frontiers and Shadow Generations! In that, there are a lot more references to previous games and the story generally tries to take itself at least slightly more seriously than the original game. And I’m all for this! When Generations first came out, it felt like Sonic games were afraid of having continuity or stories in them at all, so to see these changes really shows a positive change in the creative team’s mindset! It feels like Sonic Team have finally reclaimed their dignity! The only problems this creates is that some of the new dialogue doesn’t match the lip flaps of the original game, (which is strange as there are moments where the cutscene animations do change from the original, so why couldn’t they do that for these moments idk) and it can lead to some awkward interactions, as if the characters are saying things as fast as they can to squeeze the dialogue into a scene. The voice direction just overall can feel very wonky sometimes, Roger Craig Smith as Sonic especially sounds all over the place in certain scenes. Overall though, these are positive changes!
On top of this, there are also 3 hidden chao to collect in every stage, though unfortunately no actual chao garden for them to hang out in but they DO decorate the stage entrances when you collect them which is cute, the game is optimised better and now runs at 60fps on the PS5 which is fab, and both Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic now have access to the drop dash introduced in Sonic Mania, a fantastic move to utilise in 2D, but one that’s kinda pointless in 3D. But yeah! Aside from these tweaks, this is still the same game that Sonic fans have been going nutty over since it came out! While some changes like the increased optimisation won’t mean much to some fans, as they’ve already used their ravenous modding jaws to add a billion other additions and changes on PC, again, it’s still so cool to have a better version of the game available on modern consoles now! The “better” portion only equates to about 2%, but that’s still a positive thing! If you’ve never played Sonic Generations before, if you’re a diehard fan or a newcomer, give yourself permission to play this version, you won’t be disappointed!
NOW onto Mr. Shadow man!! The first thing you’ll notice about Shadow Generations is something that’s honestly quite jarring compared to the original Sonic Generations. It looks GOOD. Like UNREASONABLY GOOD. Like JESUS CHRIST WHO GAVE SONIC TEAM THE BUDGET TO MAKE THIS GAME LOOK THIS GOOD?? (i mean obviously SEGA but still!) The cutscene animation in particular looks absolutely stellar and has an almost film-quality, Shadow’s model is super well-detailed and expressive with subtle facial animations giving him so much life, and the lighting and shot composition is much more dynamic than anything even Frontiers did! Legit, this might be the best a sonic game has ever looked visually, and that’s not even getting into the levels themselves, which now have fully cinematic transitions and psychedelic sequences right out of Doctor Strange or Into-The-Spiderverse! Seriously, what happened here, who let Sonic Team cook like this? The Sonic Team cook-ophany doesn’t stop there either!
Shadow Generations takes all the best aspects of both the original Sonic Generations, namely the fantastic level design and the OODLES of sweet-sweet nostalgia, as well as the open-zone free roaming gameplay of Sonic Frontiers to create some of the best gameplay the series has ever had! Not only is all the level design top-notch, encouraging the player to make active choices and decisions rather than just letting them hold one button to win (coughForcescough), but those levels are also filled to the brim with spectacle and gimmicks that makes every stage varied and memorable! They’re also decently long too, longer than any of the levels we’ve had in recent Sonic games, which feels so refreshing! The levels actually have a chance to feel like they end in a good place and their ideas feel fully fleshed out, just like the levels from the original Sonic Generations!
In a lot of ways Shadow Generations even surpasses Sonic Generations, one of those ways being the actual controls! Shadow feels fantastic to control in 3D! Never did I ever feel that I wasn’t properly in control of Shadow’s movements and never did I find it difficult to jump and platform myself up to where I needed! And it works with the open-ended nature of Shadow Generations' hub world! Unlike Sonic G, which had a 2D hub world to fit Classic Sonic’s adorable chubby self in, Shadow G has a full Frontiers-style open world to explore between each level, filled with collectable concept art, music from previous games to add to each level, logs of Shadow’s history to read, as well as old files from Gerald Robotnik’s journal recounting his development of Shadow and his time on the Ark. Also a bunch of screws for some reason. Just like the Open World gameplay of Frontiers, the hub world is so addictive and fun to explore that you’re always gonna be tempted to just keep adventuring rather than playing the actual levels and the levels themselves are fantastic! That’s how fun exploring White Space is, Sonic Team have legit struck gold when it comes to this gameplay formula. Shadow G feels like a full realisation of what Frontiers was doing, except this time given the time and budget to polish the gameplay and remove the janky weirdness! It's just so good!
Not only that, but the new mechanics introduced in this game add so much variety to Shadow’s moveset and feel so satisfying to unlock and use! Throughout the game, Shadow is inheriting new alien demon doom powers from his biological alien dad Black Doom (more on that later), which allow him to do all sortsa crazy stoof, including kicking an alien so hard he teleports to where they are, shooting multiple demon arrows at targets for puzzle solving, riding an alien venom-y sting-ray across water, and growing dark, spiky wings that seriously look ripped straight out of a 2008 DeviantArt account and I LOVE IT. All of these upgrades are super fun to play with and are utilised throughout the game super well, not one feels undercooked! The only one that felt a bit weird to get the handle of was Doom Morph, where Shadow realises how much he stans Callie and Marie from Splatoon and decides to become a squid himself, as the controls and mechanics aren’t conveyed super well. But even so, after getting used to it, it is very satisfying to use! And these moves are employed super DUPER well in one of the game’s best aspects: the bloody BOSS FIGHTS.
While the boss fights in Sonic G were still fantastic in their own way, Shadow G ramps up everything! While there are less of them overall, the spectacle and… well just badass-ness of these fights are on another level! Each one uses a newly acquired Doom power in a unique and awesome way, creating some of the most memorable and epic fights Sonic has ever had! If you played Frontiers, then you’ll know that the titan fights in that game were high on energy and excitement too, and that’s the same energy you can feel with these fights!
Which ultimately brings us to the last thing I wanna talk about in regards to this game, another thing about Shadow Generations that's carried from Frontiers and expanded on fully, the mother-frickin’ STORY. As I stated at the start, Shadow is such a memorable and well loved character because of how human and tragic his story is, but up until now, no game has ever really fully captured the extent of Shadow’s tragedy. Even Sonic Adventure 2 presented his story in a very janky and poorly aged way, despite that story still being heartbreaking and horribly dark. Shadow Generations takes all of Shadow’s potential as a character and just... fulfills it. This feels like the game Shadow has deserved since SA2, even moreso than his own game!
Shadow didn’t come into the world naturally. He was made as the ultimate life form by Gerald Robotnik (Eggman’s Grampa) on the orbiting space colony known as the Ark. After numerous failed attempts at creating a life form that could help cure his granddaughter, Maria, of a debilitating auto-immune disease, Gerald finally perfected his creation after getting help from a certain alien warlord’s DNA. This psychotic subjugator, Black Doom, wanted more than anything for Gerald’s creation to be his greatest soldier for conquering the galaxy. Shadow was a creature born out of both the heartbreak and malice of two people, something that weighed heavily on him during his time on the Ark. But through that edgy angst, Maria Robotnik shined a light through the darkness and became Shadow’s best friend, helping him learn to love himself and what it means to be human, or in his case a hedgehog. They would often talk about what life would be like on earth, and Maria was ecstatic to visit it with Shadow after she was cured.
But as most Sonic fans are far too aware, that never happened. In a tragic raid of the Ark commited by the Guardian Units of Nations (G.U.N), Maria lost her life and Shadow was sealed away. Gerald went insane after the loss of his granddaughter and Shadow, filled with hatred and anger towards humanity, was awakened by Eggman 50 years later with the singular purpose of ending the world as revenge for his best friend. It was only after interacting with Sonic & friends (particularly Amy who is the BEST) that Shadow remembered how much Maria loved the Earth and that her ultimate wish was for him to protect everyone’s happiness. Since then, Shadow has vowed not to let the trauma and heartbreak from his past define him, and instead better the world in ways that honour Maria’s wish.
Shadow Generations is the ultimate test of this conviction for Shadow. Shadow has had them tested before, such as in his own game when Black Doom returned to conquer the earth before Shadow exploded him or when he erased a time god from existence, but now thanks to even more time travel shenanigans, Shadow has no choice but to confront his past head on. Black Doom is back and can now bend time to his will and is hell-bent on making Shadow into his perfect warrior this time. And Shadow, as hard as it will have to be, has to fight his way through his memories, even if it means saying goodbye to the people he once loved for good.
SO YEAH all that to say this game’s story is bloody fantastic. The way the game embraces Sonic continuity, having Black Doom return as a bad guy and even bringing back the fake Chaos Emerald made by Tails in SA2, is absolutely brilliant. There are some brilliant writing tricks that help fit this game into the wider Sonic canon and Shadow’s story that, as someone who LOVES the world and story of Sonic games, is more than I could ever ask for. Sega, keep Ian Flynn for as long as you possibly can, he knows what the feck he’s doing. Not only that, but the characterisation is incredibly on point. Black Doom is so much more entertaining as a bad guy than he was in Shadow ‘05 and Shadow feels the most like himself that’s he’s felt since the game where nothing happened! Kirk Thornton’s voice direction has also improved so much since he started voicing Shadow, and it’s here where he feels like he finally fully embodies the character! Some of his lines in this game sound like they came straight from David Humphrey, Shadow’s OG Voice Actor, and that makes me so happy as someone with eternal nostalgia for SA2. As stated, Shadow’s arc in this game revolves entirely around him confronting his past and finally learning to move past it, which is admittedly very similar to his arc in Shadow ‘05, but the way it’s executed here is leaps and bounds more powerful, it’s not even comparable! This game’s ending made me CRY! Seriously! I’m not alone on that either! See any streamer who’s played the end of this game and no doubt they’re sobbing as well! The game just shows Shadow’s arc come full circle in such a brilliant and tragic way!
So yeah! Overall, I am so bloody happy that Shadow Generations is as good as it is. This feels like the game that Year 7 me would dream about in class and still doesn’t quite feel real. To have Shadow, a character who has been derided for so long as just being an edgy angry sonic, finally feel like he’s been given the justice he deserves after so long, is just so liberating and cathartic. This might genuinely be the best 3D Sonic game ever made and Sonic isn’t even the main character! The only major flaw the game has is that it honestly deserves to be longer! The game took me around 8 hours to finish on top of doing a bunch of side content, which still leaves you wanting so much more! If Sonic Team takes this formula and refines it into a full Frontiers 2 style game, I’m serious when I say it could be one of the best platformers ever. If you’re a fan of Sonic OR Shadow, you are doing yourself a disservice by not playing Shadow Generations. Add in a better version of Sonic Generations, and you have the biggest bargain you could possibly get! The future of Sonic and Shadow is in safe hands and that makes kid me overjoyed.
I give Sonic X Shadow Generations a 9.5/10!
Thanks for reading!
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