As any Sonic fan can attest, the blue blur has had a pretty hard time adjusting to modern platforming. Ever since the Dreamcast days, Sonic’s jump into 3D has been paved with lots of pains. From really bad camera placements to sluggish character controls, Sega and Sonic Team have been fighting an uphill battle to make a decent game featuring the titular character and pals. Every since after Sonic Heroes, Sonic has been crammed into one bad game experience after an other and fans of the series had all but given up all faith of returning to the good ol’ days of the Master System and Genesis days. That was until Sonic Colors was released back in November of 2010 on the Wii. At long last! A good Sonic game! Of course, this was only on the Wii. The XBox 360 and PS3 were left out in the cold. What to do? Well, release a new game for those systems of course! But will Sonic Team’s lighting strike twice?

Well, in short… YES! Let me make that a little bit more clearer if you didn’t get it. Sonic Generations is a very good game. For his 20th anniversary, Sega pulled out all the stops to make sure this would be a game that fans would be proud of. Which is great, considering the premiss of the game could’ve potentially made things very, very bad. Classic and Modern Sonic meet and must traverse through a hodgepodge of stages composed from various eras in the series’ history. From the Genesis’ Green Hill Zone to Planet Wisps and everything in-between. Sonic Team carefully picked the very best stages from each era represented and remastered them for both modern 3D and classic side-scrolling. Can’t tell you how many times I replayed City Escape just to grind down the hill and escape that mad truck over and over again while rocking out to “Escape from the City” playing in the background.

Of course, that’s not to say that Generations doesn’t have it’s faults. Right from the beginning, you’re rushed with a sense of nostalgia while running though Green Hill Zone and you remember what made Sonic so great back in the day - pure speed! It’s a great rush playing through the first 2/3 of the game. But then you hit the modern era stages and the fun factor takes a dramatic hit. It’s at this point that you realize that classic Sonic is ill equipped to handle the challenges of modern platformer level designs. You can no longer speed your way through the stages anymore. You have to spot, concentrate, and pray that classic Sonic’s chubby physique and stubby legs can make it to the next ledge. At this point, his spin jumps are no longer very effective to most of the enemies and spin dashing will probably send you flying off a ledge or immediately slamming you in a wall.

As for Modern Sonic… Things start off great until stages start to get a little cramped. He just controls like a tank being driven by a sloppy drunk. It’s nearly impossible to make him walk straight ahead, let alone navigate narrow ledges. There are plenty of times where you must use his homing attack to cross bottomless pits, but it sometimes fails to lock on to an enemy or spring and you can do nothing but watch Sonic fail. Time, after time, after time. Needless to say, you will die… A lot!

As for the stages, as mentioned earlier, Sonic Team made sure to pick the best stages from each era and remained them with brand new designs and visuals that faithfully recreate each stage for modern platforming. Of course, there in lies the problem. Can you name a good modern Sonic stage? And no, not City Escape, that’s from the Dreamcast era. We’re talking about from modern Sonic The Hedgehog on the PS3 and 360 to now. Yeah, that’s right! For the first 2/3, the levels are amazing. But once you reach the modern levels, they become a test of wills. They’re extremely long, tedious and very difficult.

Despite all this, Sonic Generations is still a very fun and excellent game. If you’ve been holding out for Sonic to get back to his roots, this is the game for you.