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I remember the exact point I started believing that Sonic Generations would actually be great, and it was when the classic City Escape music leaked, and it was this unbelievably corny but also completely earnest techno remix that heavily sampled That Genesis Sonic Snare Drum Hit Sound and also set a verse to the tune of Endless Mine for absolutely no reason. I don't know how the hell those Cash Cash guys wound up working on Sonic but I'm glad they did and sad they stopped. Also, the whole game looks really good (especially running on PC at a nice high framerate) but City Escape is the first level that briefly shows you some of the unbelievably good downhill vistas that the Hedgehog Engine is very adept at rendering for some reason. I don't know exactly what they changed between Unleashed and Generations but somehow Unleashed was even better at it, and I still maintain that one particular scene from Unleashed that Generations is going to liberally recreate later is some of the best graphics I've ever seen in video games. Shortfuse & Tekno 4ever.
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Jul 9, 2019 00:22
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 11:16 |
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Something I really appreciate about Generations is how they had different composers working on each of the three eras, lending each one its own personality on top of what was already in the original tracks. In the Genesis era, the classic tracks are more or less direct reads of the originals done up in a nice soundfont with some occasional backing additions, while the modern tracks are mostly straight arrangements of those handled by Jun Senuoe (but not doing his usual guitar schtick). In the Dreamcast era, the modern tracks are faithful recreations of the originals by Jun Senuoe (absolutely doing his usual guitar schtick) (they even rerecorded the vocals for City Escape with Tony Harnell and Ted Poley) while the classic tracks are basically Cash Cash remixes that heavily sample Genesis Sonic staples (again, That One Sonic Snare Drum Hit). For the Modern era, all of the tracks are surprisingly interpretively arranged by Tomoya Ohtani (for my money the best composer working on Sonic right now) and accordingly feature pianos, drum machines and entire string sections, with the classic tracks being more upbeat and bouncy and the modern tracks being more sweeping (Crisis City and Rooftop Run are incredible salvage jobs of mediocre source material and it's impressive how original they sound despite recognisably being adaptations. Crisis City is like the same three riffs over and over again on top of the amen break and somehow they just made that work. Unbelievable). ...And of course, into this mix is thrown a whole pile of extras when it comes to the challenge acts and extra music, which are mostly Jun Senuoe and Cash Cash having a blast and occasionally inviting Richard Jacques.
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Jul 16, 2019 01:57
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Okay, so, Planet Wisp. Actually, no, gently caress it, Generations stage choice generally. Generations has this problem where it needs to distil an entire Sonic game down to a single memorable stage. A lot of the time, this ends up being an early stage. We've got the obligatory Green Hill but okay fine this was a pretty justified use of Green Hill. We've got Chemical Plant, the second stage from Sonic 2 but we couldn't have Green Hill and Emerald Hill. Sky Sanctuary is a standout and a bold choice (and a good one), I would have guessed they'd have gone with Ice Cap but, uh, that would require Sega to acknowledge some longstanding rights problems. In the Dreamcast era we have Speed Highway (from the middle of Sonic Adventure) followed by the first stage of SA2 and the first stage of Heroes. City Escape is a great choice despite its intro stage syndrome because it is so emblematic of SA2, but Seaside Hill is just kind of nonsense, because it's just so aesthetically similar to Green Hill and it's not even a very memorable stage from Heroes (like, come on, Grand Metropolis? Hang Castle? Egg Fleet?). Then we have Crisis City, an early stage from '06, and Rooftop Run from right in the middle of Generations. We are at this point four for eight on Very Early Stages. This brings us to Sonic Colours. The whole point of Sonic Colours was that you're fooling around this orbital theme park that's chained to and exploiting Planet Wisp (in an effective return to the anti-industrialist roots of the series), and all the stages have this set-in-space aesthetic. It was honestly really cool and sort of the first and only time an Actual Sonic Game has really felt like it had a Setting. Then it sort of really low key revolutionarily put the obligatory Green Hill-pining stage at the end of the game, which made getting there feel a bit more special, and it was notable for being so unlike every other stage in both looks and composition. All of which makes putting Planet Wisp in Generations really weird... right? The irony is it's not even really the most distinctive or memorable stage in Colours in and of itself (that would be Starlight Carnival or Asteroid Coaster for my money) because most of what made it special was contextual; it's the last stage, but it's designed to call to mind the beginning of a Sonic game. And yeah, the other problem Planet Wisp has in Generations is that it is Too drat Long. I don't understand why they keep doing this. A Sonic stage should never take more than four minutes on a reasonably fast run. Stages taking too long was a defining problem in '06 and the bad half of Unleashed (the time trial time for Eggmanland is forty five mother loving minutes) but somehow, every game, someone gets the idea of having a marathon-length final stage. Even Sonic Mania. Oh, and they messed up the music. I'll go to bat for Tomoya Ohtani until the end of days but I have no idea what he thought he was doing killing the sustain on the opening piano riff. It's so jarring. I hate it. I don't think Planet Wisp is a bad stage fundamentally, there's just too much of it, it's thematically weird, and they messed up the music. It's the one very big misstep in Generations... okay, fine, the first of two. We'll get to the other in due time.
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Jul 18, 2019 01:01
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