Analysis Battle #2: Sonic World Ultimate vs. Shadow Generations

Still ain’t playin’ it.

CONTENT WARNING!

This post contains sensitive material that may not be suitable for all readers. The material in question includes:

- Bad language
- Violence
- Frightening visuals

Today's Contestants
Round One: Gerald's Game
Round Two: Brain Hurty!
Round Three: You Mean the Bad Guys?
Final Round: Get Your Own Material!
End Results

Today’s Contestants

You know, I was prepared to claim that my reasons for not “””””exploring””””” Shadow Generations sooner was a means of remaining impartial, but I’m fully aware now that it was me (a) actively avoiding the topic for reasons that have since been validated and (b) pretending to have an open mind removed from all the hype when I’m only going to complain about it incessantly. Granted, the subtitle of this post doesn’t lie—I’ve yet to even take a mild interest in playing it—so this will be more of a Spirited Away situation where I’ll have skimmed through two hours of physically discomforting material, just so I’m informed enough to judge something everyone else loves. Nonetheless, I’d like to take a bit of time to channel Stephen King in the trailer for Maximum Overdrive—at no point before which he had his hourly blow fix—and say there are times that, if you want a series done right, you ought to do it yourself. If that doesn’t sound like something any twenty-six-year-old would say about Shadow Generations, then you should stop expecting to see your pre-existing opinions upheld here. While we’ve got that title in one corner, a past champion makes his return across the mat! Shadow Generations, shake hands with your opponent, my ongoing overhaul of the Sonic World fan game’s legacy release!

Remember the fake Chaos Emerald?

Round One: Gerald’s Game

No, this game does not get kinky at any point, but that would at least have been something new. This is where the blind praise it’s received has become somewhat frustrating, as it goes out of its way to needlessly expand on and alter Shadow’s lore as far back as Sonic Adventure 2—no wonder I’ve written Shadow the Hedgehog: The Recollected Cut as my personal escape! As discussed in my Joker and Harley Quinn post here, the character of Gerald Robotnik has been an enigma to me since Shadow the Hedgehog, and not in an interesting way; whereas Sonic Adventure 2 captured the tragedy of his fall from grace while also acknowledging that he was in fact the enemy, Shadow’s spinoff was the start of treating him as a kind soul misunderstood by his own government. In case you haven’t read the other post, I compared this to Harley in that writers like Paul Dini decided she was a whacky closeted feminist instead of, you know, someone who’s ended numerous innocent lives alongside the Joker with a smile on her face? Without ever needing to be brainwashed pre-New 52? Well, since that comparison, I’ve realized Shadow himself is a perfect Harley equivalent, between this game and fans of all ages ripping their hair out at his mid-credits reveal from the second movie. Yeah, I’ve really started hating when an inconsistently defined character marinates in their own obsessive popularity among fans.

Then, we have the new Gerald connection, or rather, the Project Shadow connection. This is something only a Dreamcast and/or GameCube era fan might take issue with, so it would make sense that most of the people who love this game are younger. First off, the game does the honor of finally… oh, sweet Mother Mary, finally introducing Maria’s illness within mainstream Sonic, as it was pretty much Shadow’s entire reason for existing, but Gerald explains in the story that Black Doom went to him expressly (in Shadow the Hedgehog, he described Gerald as having needed his help) and offered Shadow Chaos Control through his own DNA in exchange for the Chaos Emeralds. As Black Doom proclaims himself to be immortal, the insinuation was that his DNA passed the same gift onto Shadow, as games like Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic ’06 have shown that other characters like Sonic and Silver can also perform Chaos Control—passing it onto Shadow clearly wasn’t what made him special. More problematic than that, however, is found within Gerald’s diary, which describes the purpose behind the Artificial Chaos:

“Years ago, I discovered records of an ancient god of destruction called ‘Chaos.’ It was said to command the fury and force of the ocean—or something to that effect. I’ve begun developing a basic A.I.-driven apparatus that can generate cohesion in water and produce controlled shapes for basic actions. I’ve told the top brass these can turn any body of water into an autonomous weapon. Deep down, I’m hoping it can be used as easily deployed search-and-rescue units. Imagine: a flood turned back on itself to aid those in the rubble!”

– Ummmmmmmmmmmm… what?

Yeah, no, that’s not why the Artificial Chaos were made. In Sonic Adventure 2, the only verbal info you got on them was Omochao calling them research projects, and that was the point—printed on their heads was the Project Shadow logo, so the subtle implication was that they were part of the research that would go on to birth Shadow as well as the Chaos Drives. In and of itself, the premise of discovering catastrophic floods that ended two advanced civilizations four thousand years apart and basing search-and-rescue units off the being responsible makes absolutely zero sense, but in a sneaky little move, the Project Shadow logos were removed from their heads for Shadow Generations. Nice try! Now, sure, the P-1 and P-100 variants of the same enemies are found in Sonic World with G.U.N. logos printed on their heads, but it can be assumed that they were later reprogrammed as G.U.N. units, and either way, I’ve replaced that texture with the classic Project Shadow logo for my overhaul. Plus, the lack of story keeps their initial purpose from being squandered (the gap left is filled by Marathon Mode), and the new models manage to compete with those seen in Shadow Generations, and not just as far as a fan game goes.

Round Two: Brain Hurty!

For an unstable game built on an engine from 2001 (many issues like memory access violations can be fixed with the 4GB patch), Sonic World really flaunts what can be done by crossing the Sonic Adventure and Heroes formulas with modern mechanics like stomping and drifting. Hell, even when putting that aside, it’s bursting with features like its own reimagined Chao World, for Christ’s sake (that itself should be the one reason anyone needs to prefer it over Shadow Generations, or at least enough to give it a fair shot.) Like a perfect fusion of both formulas—teams of two and three notwithstanding, let alone custom teams for that matter—the characters are all given their own unique movesets while having their upgrades omitted like Heroes did; all the while, included bosses like Mecha Sonic and E-101 Mk. II engage in slower standoffs that prioritize timing and observation over… well, things getting so hectic that you don’t have the time to properly observe anything.

Shadow Generations ports over an issue from Sonic Generations, which is sacrificing key aspects like mood and atmosphere for wilder and crazier set pieces. I mean, you can’t just include the City Escape truck! No, to modernize it, you need flamethrowers, buzzsaws, and rocket thrusters that allow it to drive horizontally along the sides of buildings! I understand it’d be lazy to do the same thing again, but you can add weapons to the truck and sequences to the chase without triggering severe nausea—more amusing in the 2001 chase than anything in the one from 2011 was that it ended with, like ED-209 from RoboCop with stairs, G.U.N. having deployed an armored transport that fills both lanes but never once having thought of overpasses. This time, though, the already-tortured Biolizard is the casualty of “next-gen upgrades”, as its eggs combine like a siphonophore, turn into whip-like melee weapons, and even create a floatation device—all cool things if it weren’t for the constant camera shake, grungy cartoon GFX, and a-move-a-millisecond Chaos Attacks on its life support system (remember when all you had to do was grind up its body, hit the thing once, and jump off to repeat the process?) While the simplicity served the original fight well, as Shadow never even said a word until the end, the atmosphere also took precedence—the Shadow Generations boss area lacks the same dim lighting or… well, really any resemblance at all from SA2, and meanwhile, the head-thrashing metal cover of “Supporting Me” that accompanies it misses the point of how the eerily deep tone, reverb, and distortion of the original theme echoed Gerald’s descent into madness and the Biolizard’s pained existence.

Round Three: You Mean the Bad Guys?

To avoid conspiracy, I’d like to make it clear front and center that my past words on Black Doom being a villain with untapped potential has absolutely nothing to do with him being dug up for Shadow Generations. Okay, I guess I don’t know that, but I never said they should bring him back to do nothing for more than three quarters of the experience! He’s up in that Doom Moon thing, sitting on a La-Z-Boy and eating potato chips while watching Independence Day! Don’t keep your old man waiting, Shadow! If you don’t kill him, those cans of Monster will! It would be clever to use Gerald and Maria as a bargaining chip to get Shadow on his side, but at what point does that seem to be the case as opposed to them appearing in the White Space by some happy coincidence? After fading in the first time, Maria’s seen being chased by a horde of Black Warriors, and that’s honestly the first of my villain-related gripes: I had a soft spot for the Black Arms’ various classes and Giger-esque biomechanical weaponry, so it’s underwhelming to see only the Warriors running around with Black Swords that look nothing like the Black Swords from the spinoff they debuted in. This is even after Black Doom says they aren’t extinct after all, but to be fair, I haven’t played the game to know how that’s the case after the Black Comet was destroyed. While his plan to “consume the world” alongside dialogue about Shadow being unable to escape his “destiny” is painfully generic (remember when he planned on domesticating mankind for the sake of his species’s prosperity?), I will hand out due props for finding a solid replacement voice actor.

The same cannot be said about the other returning villains.

One such villain is of course Metal Overlord, who went from the genius decision to have Ryan Drummond voice Sonic as well as Metal Sonic to being voiced by Frankenstein while Shadow bluntly calls him an idiot like a bully on the schoolyard. To an extent, it manages to one-up the intensity of the Biolizard fight; meanwhile, the original boss theme of “What I’m Made Of” was barely changed as it was already fairly metal, and the constant bullet time annoyance I recently complained about in relation to Metroid: Other M comes back worse than ever. But hey, according to the Sonic wiki, it at long last revealed that the Egg Fleet in Heroes was positioned over a body of water! Finally! I didn’t get the impression they were miles up in the clouds at all! Meanwhile, in Sonic World, Metal Sonic has his classic whirring noises for a voice, the Neo Metal Sonic mod uses Ryan Drummond’s, and the Egg Fleet stage has been given an encore version of sorts taking place above the clouds during a rainstorm, as seen in concept art for Heroes.

Then, there’s Crystal Shadow. No, wait a minute. Then, there’s Shadow the Crystal. No, wait a minute. Then, there’s Shadow the Dark. No, wait a minute. Then, there’s Shadow the Dark on Crystal Meth. Aw, screw it, we’re talking about Mephiles. In Episode Solaris of the Recollected Cut, the dark half of Solaris is a moving statue, out of which comes a contemporary and charismatic voice that does not in any way belong—hence how he’s able to seduce Silver into taking out the formerly-named Iblis Trigger, which is Elise in this rewrite. Considering his name derives from a disciple of the Devil, it made sense for me to write him as more of a silver-tongued Faustian dealer, but more than anything, this was to solidify (no pun intended) him as a more distinctly eerie antagonist when Sonic Team didn’t have a clear idea of what kind of villain he was in Sonic ’06. As a result of not knowing in 2006 whether he should be unmoving, zombie-like, or theatrical, Shadow Generations… well… doesn’t really make that any clearer, but they did somehow find a voice actor worse than Dan Greene, so… now, I’ve heard that.

Yes, I can bitch and moan about your favorite modern Sonic game all I want, but at some point, I have an obligation to say, “what would I do differently?” Possibly the biggest hurdle in today’s society is the tendency to focus on the problem instead of the solution, after all. Much of the changes I would make involve the villains, but primarily Black Doom—my first thought was to have him rise up from the crater he formed upon transforming back from Devil Doom, a disheveled czar having failed his race. Due to the Time Eater’s actions, he’s sensed the remaining Black Arm DNA scattered between eras but is too weak to travel through time and collect it. This is when he turns out to have brought Maria to life exactly as Shadow remembers her (sorry, but I would leave Gerald out because fuck him), and she’ll be allowed to grow old so long as Shadow retrieves and restores the DNA via the past stages and bosses (this could be how he acquires his doom powers if you wanna go that far.) Other than adding emotional weight to his decision of leaving her in the past beyond reactionary nostalgia, Black Doom would’ve had some real leverage instead of… whatever the hell he’s doing in the final product. Yeah, I hate to break it to you, chief, but by granting Shadow powers linked to you and your species… aren’t you only making it easier for him to stop you once and for all?! I dunno. Maybe, this’ll be the start of a new and less bitter Shadow. I really don’t give a shit.

Then again, I got a new idea from Sonic World recently, and it’s a perfect segue into the final round.

Final Round: Get Your Own Material!

You can’t go on about the level of originality in Shadow Generations further without becoming a broken record, as it’s not in any way subtle about dredging up things fans remember. As I whined about in my Recollected Cut post here, Black Doom literally starts by saying, “We meet again, Shadow the Hedgehog,” and Shadow literally responds with, “I stopped you once and I’ll do it again.” The characters cut right to the chase and make sure you know it’s gonna be a member berries rollercoaster ride for metalheads in their early twenties to mid-thirties, which they only spell out further with the inclusion of less popular stages like Rail Canyon solely because they’re grittier. Therefore, it’s apparent to me that Sonic World goes well beyond recreations of past stages—before Ultimate touched up and remastered them, most of the returning levels were either fair-quality ports like Emerald Coast or lifeless imitations like City Escape—as my overhaul only further enhances original maps like Tokyo Street, Love Garden, Misty Gorge, and Surfing Waters (Pumpkin Castle is great, but it’s admittedly just Pumpkin Hill and Mystic Mansion sewn together.) Of course, then, you have modded stages, and these display the potential creativity of the fandom instead of its reliance on nostalgia. Those I use in Ultimate include Cobalt Midnight, a stunning holographic realm of blue glass and runways; Celestial Metropolis, a web of space stations hanging over a vibrant green planet; Sunset Beach, a coastal course exactly as the name suggests and deserving of “Copacabana” as its theme; and Desire Drive, an astral afterlife of hanging sakura gardens in which playing as Shadow and Maria together carries a unique resonance, especially after the music’s been replaced with tracks by royalty-free artist Nihilore.

Finally, there’s Chrome Core. The mod description doesn’t harbor many details, although it does end with some OC inside a red polygonal container that’s harmful to the touch. With some thinking, however, I’ve found a new way to interpret it. See, in Shadow the Hedgehog, we get to explore G.U.N.’s Cyberspace mainframe in the form of Digital Circuit and Eggman’s in the form of Mad Matrix, but never the Black Arms’, which I’ve chosen as a new premise for Chrome Core. This way, Digital Circuit is home to G.U.N. and Black Arm units, Mad Matrix is home to Eggman and Black Arm units, and Chrome Core is home to G.U.N. and Eggman units. The logic I’ve come up with for this third concept is that, after the Black Comet’s destruction (or its expulsion in the Recollected Cut), G.U.N. discovered their secret mainframe, upon which a turf war with the Eggman Empire ensued. On top of that, I’ve updated a character mod of Eclipse the Darkling from the Archie comics to, among many other enhancements, share Black Doom’s voice and replaced the OC in the capsule at the end with him; and with that, I had my headcanon. A backup Shadow with one hundred percent Black Arm DNA has been developing in the mainframe. Black Doom’s consciousness was transferred into Eclipse after his death, and because he shares both Shadow and the phantom’s DNA, he goes on to take the mainframe back from both opposing sides and effectively replaces the Black Comet as the aliens’ hive. In the process, he detects the Black Arm DNA strewn across the timeline and challenges Shadow to fetch it in exchange for Maria—time-traveling requires two Emeralds from two individuals, after all. If I had the time, this would act as the opening of a Sonic World short film titled Total Eclipse, which is derived from the name of an Eclipse character mod for Shadow Generations, so… at least the fans feel encouraged to get inventive.

Also, it’s not really my headcanon. That’s still the Recollected Cut. I’m just trying to drown out the nostalgia bukkake over Shadow Generations. Also, Mephiles has come to share Infinite’s voice with some line differences, as it comes out fairly close to how I imagine him sounding in Episode Solaris. Other than, you know, sounding more intimidating and less deafly annoying.

“Black Doom tried to warn you, Shadow. These rats never learn their lesson. They tore your life away because they feared you, they locked you away because they feared you, they deemed you in league with the aliens because they feared you, and in spite of all your good will and sacrifices, they’ll turn your friends on you because they’ll still, without reason… fear you. Come on! What do you REALLY owe them? That’s right, NOTHING. Nothing but what WE can promise them. However they might evolve to dominate the cosmos, WE will be their gatekeepers. Just you… and me… and Iblis. Demigods for life.”

– Crystal Meth Shadow, only recollected.

“I WANT TO EXIST!”

– The other dredged-up Mephiles.

End Results

I should really change the order of the two contestants in the title, shouldn’t I? Yeah, whoop-dee-doo, Sonic World Ultimate wins, and no one will ever agree with that. Ever. EVER. Yeah, I get it, it’s highly unpopular, but remember what Jackie Gleason once said: you don’t have to be Alexander Graham Bell to pick up the phone and find out it’s dead! For reference, quoting the late great Jackie Gleason is reflective of this entire post. Going in, I understood that no fellow GenZer with any desire for social acceptance would openly share my point of view, but I still threw it out there because I’m too old and jaded to care anymore. Think of it this way: I’m able to see the flaws with Shadow Generations and power through my withdrawal from the mood-altering brain candy that is nostalgia, especially when a far better fix exists elsewhere. Moreover? Internally, I get annoyed whenever the game gets brought up, and I just can’t take it anymore. I had to get the word out.

From this point on, I’ll be documenting my progress with Sonic World Ultimate more consistently, if indeed with more text and images than video because they’re easier to produce and upload. Why go on with it, though? The graphics are poor, it’s prone to bugs and crashes, and the build I’m using is deprecated. The first two reasons are simple, those being the increased stability mentioned earlier and the improved visuals I’ve introduced. The third lies at the core of Shadow Generations—I get that fans will claim the soundtrack is full of “bangers” (I feel embarrassed just using that term), but between them, the coked-up intensity of the action, the lack of innocence in the writing, the grotesque nature of the doom powers, Shadow’s creepy modern voice and mean-spirited personality, and the overindulgence in how awesome and metal he is as opposed to the heart Sonic Adventure 2 gave him, it maintains the tradition of what Sonic has meant to me for a while now: nothing. The metal soundtrack, the one or two gameplay styles, the weird anime voices, the incessant callbacks? That’s not what Sonic is to me, and I’ve started to realize the brand and I have gone our separate ways. So, with the illustrations for all three episodes of the Recollected Cut still in the works, this takes us back to where the post began. Say it for me, Steve.