Sonic X Shadow Generations review: one of Sonic’s modern classics well-refined, with a strong (but short) new campaign

Sonic X Shadow Generations requires a bit of explaining. Sure, if you’re a series fan that’s been following the marketing beats, you may already know – but something I’ve realized over the last few weeks is that a lot of people are blissfully unaware as to what this actual package is. Is it a new game? A remaster? Well, the answer is something in between.

The lion’s share of this release is a remaster of 2011’s Sonic Generations, an old-meets-new nostalgia tour where the pudgy, cutesy ‘classic’ Sonic of the 2D games meets the lanky, chatty, modern iteration – and players go on a wonderful tour of levels from throughout Sonic’s history with both characters. But then there’s Shadow – who stars in his own discrete new adventure as part of this remaster.

Thus the name, Sonic X Shadow Generations. While it has cleansed the google results for searching “Sonic X Shadow”, it’s also an accurate description – this game basically includes Sonic Generations and Shadow Generations. The concept of both games is the same – a whistle-stop, rollercoaster tour through the history of their titular characters – but they’re also quite different.

Like the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie trailer needle dropping a dramatic orchestral version of ‘Live and Learn’, much of the Sonic X Shadow Generations package feels laser-targeted to stoke the nostalgia of Dreamcast-era fans. The original Generations was a series-wide celebration that nevertheless felt like it traded most heavily on the return of ‘classic’ (by which we mean Mega Drive era) Sonic. Here, the heavy focus shifts subtly to the Dreamcast era.

When you launch the title, a ‘game select’ screen offers you a choice between Sonic Generations and Shadow Generations, which are depicted as two different games. The Sonic game features a new remix of Sonic’s theme tune from the Dreamcast games, ‘It Doesn’t Matter’, but with retro-evoking synths to nod to the classic-meets-modern nature of the story. ‘Shadow Generations’ is represented by a new, grinding remix of ‘Throw it All Away’, Shadow’s original theme from Sonic Adventure 2.

As someone who was 12 when SA2 launched (young enough to be a mega-fan, old enough to navigate eBay and plead for mum’s credit card to import the game to play it a few months early) it’s palpable nostalgia, the sort that makes the hairs on the back of your neck prickle.

It’s not all for elderly fans, obviously. It’s telling that when you open up the Shadow Generations menu, the very first option is not to play the actual game – it’s to watch a short recap movie that tells Shadow’s origin story in brief. This project exists as the original Generations did, then. On one hand it does indeed want to get the hearts racing of those who remember the original; on the other it is a history lesson, and a timely introduction to the Shadow ‘lore’ for kids set to meet him in the third movie in a couple of months.

Focusing on the all-new Shadow Generations section of the product in particular, it’s a pleasantly surprising experience. Framed as a parallel story to Sonic Generations, Shadow is also sucked into a monochrome space made up of his memories. Sonic’s is 2D, but Shadow appropriately gets a 3D explorable space – like a minimalist Peach’s Castle from Mario 64. This space is so sparse that it feels a little like a development environment, to be honest, but it connects the stages well enough.

Each stage represents a period of Shadow’s history, starting with Sonic Adventure 2’s Space Colony Ark. As with base Generations, your mileage out of the stage selection will vary. There’s a pair of stages from Sonic Adventure 2 (with Radical Highway, arguably Shadow’s ‘Green Hill’, serving as a recurring motif throughout), then a level each from Sonic Heroes, Sonic 2006, Sonic Forces, and Sonic Frontiers.

Those last two are interesting, as neither are stages Shadow actually played through – though he’s associated with them. And Chaos Island from Sonic Frontiers is most curious, as it re-envisions one of that game’s open-world zones as a more traditional and linear Sonic level. I really enjoyed every stage, with them even evoking a sense of nostalgia for some original games I really didn’t like that much.

I don’t know if Sega announced this and I was just oblivious, but from the preview sessions I had with the game I didn’t even realize as well as the 3D Sonic gameplay, which here feels like a solid halfway house between the ‘boost’ style and a modern interpretation of Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic ‘06, there’s also semi-2D ‘Act 2’ for each of the Shadow levels. Shadow of course never had an outing as a strictly 2D character, but these stages imagine what it might’ve played like if he had. It’s neat, and retains the structure of Generations, too.

Shadow has been a lot of things over the years – a Sonic clone, yes, but also gun-toting, teleporting, and vehicle-driving. There’s not a glock in sight in this game, nor does Shadow mount up on a Harley – but the different aspects of his characters are represented in ‘Doom Powers’, special skills that are gradually unlocked and change how he navigates each stage. Some powers are cooler than others, naturally. I love the power that lets you launch an enemy towards another and then teleport to follow them – it can be used to skip vast sections of stages if you’re clever. Other powers are progression-gating, like the ability to surf over water.

It’s all rather nice, honestly. I think the stages are well-built, and don’t have nearly as much of the ‘oops, fell off the level!’ jank that is often present in Sonic games. The final couple of acts, arguably the most ambitious, are the only ones where I experienced this in the Shadow portion. There’s a sense of polish and style that the Sonic franchise doesn’t always enjoy – it feels like the team enjoyed both making a more constrained, smaller experience and clearly love Shadow as a character very, very much.

In all, it’s a really worthwhile addition to the Sonic Generations offering. Brevity is the Soul of Wit, as old Wills said – and it doesn’t outstay its welcome, either. Main-lining the Shadow content, I saw everything core in the offering in three to four hours. That’d be a tall order if it were a full price game on its own – but of course, it ships alongside a remastered Sonic Generations.

That remaster is fine, by the way. On PS5 it looks good and runs well, though I notice fans with leaked Switch copies reporting that version is stuck at 30fps, and apparently the game features some subtle, strange story changes as the Sonic franchise has become even more squeaky clean over the last decade. There have been Sonic offerings since Generations that have nailed the 2D physics more; obviously Sonic Mania is better. With that said, arguably Generations is one of the best if not the best Sonic games of the modern era, and it’s well worthy of a remaster.

If I can nitpick – and I will – I remain disappointed that this version doesn’t stick the landing of becoming the definitive version of Generations.

Back in 2011, Generations released in two formats – PC and console and a handheld version on 3DS. The 3DS game featured a different set of zones, the two only sharing Green Hill – and this Remaster would’ve been an ideal place to restore and upgrade the 3DS levels, which would double the nostalgia factor. This sort of thing has been done before, like how Super Smash Bros. Ultimate unified all of the stages from the 3DS and Wii U versions of the previous game. I would’ve like to have seen that here, but not so – Generations here is functionally identical to the console version of the past, with no 3DS bonuses. It’s a shame, and a missed opportunity.

Some would argue, however, that those resources were better spent crafting something all-new in the Shadow story – and I get that. Indeed, one of the 3DS-exclusive stages (Radical Highway) appears as one of Shadow’s levels anyway. So, I digress – that’s my nerdy Sonic fan nitpicking. Really, I just want Mushroom Hill and Emerald Coast.

All told, this feels like a solid offering from Sega and Sonic Team. Generations remains a perfect history lesson for younger fans, while Shadow’s new narrative provides a tantalizing introduction to the character before he hits the Hollywood big time just before Christmas. It’s one of Sonic’s better recent outings made just that little bit better – and you can’t really complain about that.

Sonic X Shadow Generations releases for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, and PC on October 25.

This review was written based on the PlayStation 5 version of the game, with code provided by the publisher.