all hail shadow
I adore Sonic Adventure 2
It's a huge fave of mine, and the highlight of the Sonic franchise for me personally
It was my first Sonic game and essentially defined the character and world for me, everything I want from Sonic is SA2
This isn't to discount any other Sonic games, I still love Adventure and Generations as well as harbor a fondness for Heroes
I lean more towards 3D Sonic than 2D, but Mania and Advance are great as well
Sonic Adventure 2 opening on Sonic busting out of captivity, tearing a metal panel off of a helicoptor and racing down the streets of a big city, tearing through cars and GUN robots is perfectly representative of a lot of what I personally consider peak Sonic
City Escape has got:
- Speed, but not necessarily the actual speed you're going at but the particular feeling of ripping through a level, tearing through enemies and obstacles
- Fuck the Police, being motivated by a feeling of fighting back against an oppressive force helps making tearing through shit all the better feeling
- Variety. This is a big vague one and I'm unsure if I can really fully explain what I mean here, but City Escape starting out with a street boarding section, going into onfoot sonic and then sonic running into the camera view away from a bigass truck does a lot to keep shit exciting.
- Gumption. Sauce. Doing what Nintendon't, sidestepping usual thought of "good design" to just make something cool.
Shadow Generations might be the first time a Sonic game since SA2 has hit all these specific notes for me
Emotionally driven by Shadow's origins, taking him through past locales as expected from what is essentially a Generations expansion pack, there's a real sense of fighting back against past trauma that's been weighing on Shadow's mind
Feels like Maria has become a bit of a meme, but her emotional impact and presence is still as strong as ever
Shadow's moveset in this game actually feels like it is uniquely Shadow's as well instead of a reskin of Sonic's or an avatar for holding guns and driving vehicles, really adds to the variety as he utilizes abilities to tear through his own history
I don't know how they did it but Radical Highway comes back as a villainous presence in the game, Shadow regularly getting torn away from other objectives and literally dropped into this defining moment of his past, the first full level we ever got to play as Shadow in a game
I think there's something to be said about the best of Sonic vs Mario
I know making these comparisons is tired but I was feeling it a lot this time
I love Mario, Mario games are great and there's a lot of incredible craft and consideration in nearly all of his outings, but sometimes there really is no beating rule of cool
Mario is a sitdown concert
Sonic is a punk show