Still holding off on the Personal Computer version of Sonic Generations because you are afraid that it would be a horrible port like I did? Well, you can now breathe a sigh of relief. After playing through the first four Acts in the game, I can assure you that Devil's Details has done a great job with this game.
Nostalgic... But the feeling doesn't last.
They did such a great job as a matter of fact that this is definitely the best looking version of the game. I am able to run it on my PC at native 1920 x 1080 with all the graphical settings maxed out and everything ran very, very smoothly. The game looks sharp and colorful with a highly improved level of clarity compared to the PlayStation 3 demo I tried out the other day. I did notice some slowdown when the environments were moving really, really fast but they didn't occur often enough. The compression quality of the full motion video introduction sequence is not the best however, which is unfortunate because it could have been accomplished using the real time engine easily on the PC.
I love the warping effect of the burst move.
Now for the bad, and it doesn't even have anything to do with the technical standpoint of the game as a port. It actually has a lot to do with Sonic Team's design of the game itself. This is another "confused" Sonic game, a downgrade from the excellent Sonic Colors on the Nintendo Wii. After completing the two Acts in one area, there is no boss fight. Sonic Team has forgotten that we love destroying Dr. Eggman's in his crazy contraptions no matter how easy they are to beat. Instead, you have to unlock boss stages from the main hub and they are not interdependent to your ability to move on to the next themed area. I don't know, everything just feels disjointed. Still, there is no denying that the actual stages - both for classic Sonic and modern Sonic - are really, really fun. At $29.99, the PC version is the one to get and despite that very low price, it's an excellent port, and surprise! It even comes with an online mode where you can submit your best stage time to a leaderboard and play a trial challenge.
As a console port, Sonic Generations gets a rating of "S"!
4 comments:
I disagree with you about the bosses fight. I concur that it doesn't feel like the previous sonic games to beat egg man in one level related to the stage that you are playing but at least it does have the same feeling that the game has about random stages and random bosses. also if you are fighting for the chaos emeralds you have a mini boss fight. One thing that I miss. It is the bonus stages. At least they should do one of each classic sonic bonus stage.
I STRONGLY disagree with your "excellent port" statement. I have no idea how you could think it's even an OK port! It doesn't list controls, you can't change key bindings, it doesn't TELL you the controls, hell, it even tells you the XBOX CONTROLS! The keybinds are stupid too, "S" is select?
In regards to the key-binding comment from anon: The game is meant to be played with a gamepad so I would consider the game a "bad port" if it didn''t provide PC players with the ability to play the game with a gamepad. More PC gamers need to realize that when we get good console ports, be happy and just play those games with a gamepad because they are mostly designed that way. A little flexibility goes a long way.
Launched the game again today while browsing my Steam library and I went to double check the claim about key-binding because I was reminded of it when I was looking at the configuration screen since I had to reinstall the game. You can fully customize the keyboard control to your liking. Not sure how anon could have missed it. If that "Input Configuration" tab was a King Cobra, it would have bit anon in the nose. Thought this information may be important to those crazy enough to insist on playing a Sonic game with the keyboard.
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