I think Sega's mascot is about a make a comeback....times 2.
The gameplay of the game is great. Both the classic and modern fit well and pretty much balanced throughout the whole game. In the classic, you got the good ol' 2D view, the platforming, the old school loops and the Spin Dash from the Genesis days . On the Modern side, you have the homing attack, 3D view, and the speeding. Well, both emphasis heavily on speed, but more from the latter, which is delightful. Modern Sonic borrows moves from the more recent games like Sonic Colors and Adventure series. Each prove to be very useful throughout the game. The controls are not bad, but can be a tiny bit frustrating because they do not instantly respond, mainly after you fully recover from getting hit. However, while speeding and jumping around, everything is tight. The stages designs from the originals remain and bring back nostalgic moments while new ones fit perfectly and add either great challenges, slow down, or fun boosting moments. Overall, it's simple, fun, and amazing.
The graphics are absolutely amazing. Each stage from the Genesis, Dreamcast and Modern Eras has been remodeled into beautiful worlds. As said before, the stages brings back good memories and provide fantastic new looks as well. Whether you're walking around or boosting (I definitely prefer the latter), the environment never ceases to display such beautiful view. The characters from the game look great. Sega did a great job bring the Classic Sonic to the modern tech of graphics. Sonic's enemies and friends look well designed.
The story is simple pretty much, but I like how they combined the past and the future together into one fun adventure. Every character has a role regardless of how big it is. Also, the voice-overs are not bad. Shadow though might need a deeper voice. Third, the cutscenes are great. The references to the past Sonic games made me laugh and the fact that the chili dog was added to the canon was even more hilarious.
The replay value of the game hit the roof. After beating the stages, you play many challenges (10 for each stage) to earn keys to fight bosses based on the era. The challenges are really fun, despite being troublesome a bit. Some will have friends you saved to either battle, race, or tag along with you to complete an objective. Others could be finding coins, nonstop boosting, and dodging enemies with enhanced powers. On top of that, the stage structures are different everytime, reducing the repetitiveness of going down the same paths. Speaking of paths, whether in challenge or regular, there are lots and lots of short cuts. It's fun to play the same stage over and over, exploring new paths and beating records like crazy. Then you have the Red Rings. Though only found in regular playing, they are fun to search for and quite rewarding as well if you find all five in a stage.
The bosses in the game are terrific. You fight the rivals of Sonic and Eggman/Robotnik's famous machines from the past and present. Though the moments are short-lived, they provide some good challenges and switch up strategies from their original days. However, there is a Hard mode to kind of make up for short battle, but still wished they took more hits to take down and have more tricks in their sleeves.
By completing the bosses, challenges and Red Ring events, you can unlock art, skills and music from all of the Sonic games. The music part is the best. Though you don't get every single song from each game,you'll have the best and popular ones that either are remixed or remained original. On top of that you can play the songs anytime at any stage. For example, instead of having the Crisis City song playing on the self-titled stage, you can have the Marble Zone from Sonic 1. The songs from the stages are amazingly remixed and overfills a fan's soul with nostalgia. There's a Classic and Modern version for each stage. Both contribute to the music terrifically and make great use of the instruments. Even while in hub world, there's a beautiful version of each song no matter where you go.
The collection room in Generations is remarkable. You can listen to music, look at original concept art from every past game, watch cutscenes, and check out skills. The skills add to the gameplay very well, though I barely use them. Most of them are enhanced versions of items from the original games while some are new and fit right in. You can equip up to 5, but some can take up a lot of room. It make sense as some are more powerful than others. And yes, Super Sonic (or Sonics in this case), returns and even better than ever.
There is a whole lot more to say about this game. But overall, marvelous nostalgia, great mixture of Classic and Modern gameplay, awesome remodeling of the original stages, beautiful music, high replay value, fun challenges and events, nice cutscenes, and lots of stuff to unlock. The downsides are control response not as immediate, and short boss battles. Sonic Generations may not be the best Sonic game of all time, but definitely a big comeback for the blue guy. Great job Sega, and happy 20th anniversary.