Sonic Generations (3DS)

Original Platform: 3DS
Original release: 1st December 2011
Available to buy: No

While I’ve played the home console version of Sonic Generations a lot, I never played the 3DS counterpart, and it seems I was missing out, as the 3DS version isn’t a downgraded port, it’s a completely different game.

Apart from Green Hill Zone, the 7 level choices in the 3DS version are different to the home version, you have as Casino Night and Mushroom Hill Zone for the other classic stages, Emerald Coast and Radical Highway for the Sonic Adventure games. For the modern games, there’s no Sonic 06 or Sonic Unleashed, instead you have Water Palace from Sonic Rush before Tropical Resort from Sonic Colours. Sonic Heroes also gets some involvement, as the Special Stages are based on the ones from Heroes.

The modern Sonic gameplay is heavily based on Sonic Rush in this version. It’s still a 2D platformer, but with 3D graphics. While playing as modern Sonic, the camera is more dynamic and will provide fancier angles, while the levels will twist in front of itself a lot more. It feels spot on to Sonic Rush and they’re all great Sonic levels. The spectroscopic 3D also looks fantastic, although I did end up turning it off as it doesn’t work well when you’re nodding the head to the game’s music.

Classic Sonic starts off feeling like the original Mega Drive games, and the first three classic levels are fairly faithful recreations of the originals, rather than mixing them up. Unfortunately, the game adds a homing attack to the classic Sonic levels. This blurs the line between the two gameplay styles even more, so you’ll find yourself sometimes trying to boost as classic Sonic. You can ignore the homing attack and still beat the stages, but you skip the better routes. Adding the homing attack is the biggest flaw of Sonic Generations.

But overall, it’s a great Sonic game, and a great counterpart to the main version. It’s not a cheaply made downgraded port, but a second Generations game.