I don't want to be one of those people who judge things before they even experience them for themselves, but I'm pretty skeptical about this particular game. I've actually enjoyed a lot of the recent Sonic games, including relatively unpopular ones like the Storybook series. I'm also a huge fan of the Riders games and I thoroughly enjoyed Unleashed and Colors. But Generations seems to have fallen short of my expectations already.
My main problem with the game so far has been the stage selection. Generations has been advertized as sort of a "best of" title. It revisits numerous locations from previous games in celebration of the franchise's history. So I thought careful stage selection should have been one of the biggest priorities for the development team. In my opinion, a really good list would consist of stages that don't seem redundant, and which epitomize what made each of their respective games memorable. But here are the stages that made it into the console version of Generations:
- Green Hill
- Chemical Plant
- Sky Sanctuary
- Speed Highway
- City Escape
- Seaside Hill
- Crisis City
- Rooftop Run
- Planet Wisp
On their own, these are all great stages (except Crisis City, some would say). However, it seems like none of the developers were really paying attention to how well they fit together in the context of the game. A lot of them are pretty similar--Seaside Hill was directly based on Green Hill, so it seems odd to have it in the game when there were more iconic stages that could've been used (such as Hang Castle or Egg Fleet, to name a few). And the only real difference between Speed Highway and City Escape is that Speed Highway takes place at night and is based on New York rather than San Francisco. I personally think Lost World would have been the best stage to represent Sonic Adventure, because it displays the Aztec motif that is so prominent in that particular game, and that sets it apart from all the others in the series. A city-themed stage is something almost all the games have in some form.
And Crisis City is a strange choice for several reasons. Some would say it's a mistake to include a stage from the nigh-universally loathed 2006 game at all, while games like Sonic CD are delegated to a single boss fight. Then there's the fact that Crisis City doesn't even canonically exist and shouldn't be in the game from a story perspective, but I'm sure very few people care about continuity in a Sonic game. Aside from me, of course, because nerd with no life.
Another thing that worries me about the outcome of Generations is that I've heard from multiple people that Sonic Team still hasn't got the physics down properly. I can't say, since I haven't played it, but it honestly wouldn't surprise me. Sonic Team struggles with physics a lot lately, and it's been one of the fanbase's main complaints. Just look at Sonic 4. It's kind of disappointing, because numerous fan-made games seem to have virtually flawless physics. You'd think Sonic Team would be able to do so too, with all its resources.
But that doesn't mean I'm not excited for the game. I'm currently trying to think of a way to buy it at launch, which is currently looking impossible since I'm low on cash. A recent boss trailer was released, and it got me even more excited for the game; there were a few glimpses of Perfect Chaos, and from the looks of things, he's received a pretty badass redesign. I didn't like his new look when it was first shown, but now that I've seen more of it, I'm pretty much sold. He looks like he could capsize whole fleets of ships with a flick of the wrist--err, tentacle. And the 360 and PS3 do a superb job of rendering water, because he really looks like a massive, amorphous liquid beast now.
Yes, I'm buying this game almost solely for Perfect Chaos. Sue me.
So yeah, even though I'm a bit disappointed, I'm still interested in seeing how things turn out. With luck, it'll exceed my expectations and still be a great game. The success of Colors helps make me a little more optimistic than I might be otherwise.
The boss trailer, by the way:
Gaze upon Chaos' awesomeness. Iblis ain't got nothin' on that.
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