#52 - Sonic X Shadow Generations (Shadow Generations)

Good morning!  Today I'm going to be looking at the latest game in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise: Sonic X Shadow Generations.  This game is a 2024 remake of the 2011 game Sonic Generations, which itself was a modern tribute to Sonic's past games fighting against Dr. Eggman.

Side note: His name was Dr. Robotnik in the old American version of the games, but he's always been known as Dr. Eggman in the original Japanese.  The game Sonic Adventure fixed the discrepancy by making "Eggman" a teasing name Sonic called Robotnik.  Robotnik liked it enough, he made it his official moniker and he's been known as Dr. Eggman ever since.

The original Sonic Generations inspired the creation of new games in the classic side-scroller series, including Sonic 4 Episode I and II, Sonic Mania, Sonic Origins (which was an updated collection of Sonic 1-3 & Knuckles, Sonic CD, plus 12 Game Gear games), a cameo of "Classic Sonic" and his side-scrolling adventures in Sonic Forces, and recently, Sonic Superstars.

Sonic Generations firmly established in the canon that the 2D side-scroller Classic Sonic was a younger Sonic.  Every game since his redesign in Sonic Adventure is the 15-yr old "Modern Sonic," whose 3-dimensional third-person games continue to this day.

Today, though, I will be focusing specifically on Shadow the Hedgehog's story in Sonic X Shadow Generations, since this is the "Year of Shadow" according to SEGA.  He's going to be the new villain in the live-action film Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which is releasing late next month.

I do my best not to spoil the games I review, but I need to be extra careful with this one, as the opening cutscene basically explains Shadow's whole tragic past.  For those unfamiliar with Shadow's games and don't want his story spoiled before they see the live action film, I will be avoiding any revealing details concerning his past.

Shadow Generations starts out with a brief glance at Shadow's past aboard the space colony ARK, a massive station orbiting Earth.  This was where Shadow was created 50 years prior, by Professor Gerald Robotnik, Eggman's grandfather.

Shadow lived on the space station, alongside Gerald's young granddaughter Maria, who was a constant ray of sunshine; the only beacon of optimism and light in Shadow's life.  The two of them were the best of friends.

Long story short (skipping a lot of revealing backstory), Shadow ended up captured and contained in a cryogenic tube for 50 years, where he was awoken by Dr. Eggman in the game Sonic Adventure 2.  After losing a half century of time and everyone he's ever known in his life, the despairing hedgehog agreed to team up with the grandson of his creator to fight Sonic and destroy the world that ruined his life.  Later, he realized he was fighting for the wrong side (and for the wrong reasons).  He eventually teamed up with Sonic to save the world instead, then went off to become an anti-hero, searching to discover the truth about his dark past.

Cutting back to modern-day Shadow, we find him exploring the ARK because of an unusual bio-signature detected aboard the space colony.  He's contacted by his partner, Rouge the Bat, who claims he's missing Sonic's birthday party.  This was the opening for Sonic Generations, showing that Shadow's story takes place at the same time.

Suddenly, Shadow comes across a creature from his dark past: Doom's Eye!  This tentacle starfish alien creature is an extension of Black Doom, a world-conquering alien from the game Shadow the Hedgehog.  Even though Shadow defeated him in the past, he's somehow back!

Doom's Eye can warp reality, trapping Shadow in a Doctor Strange-esque mirror dimension of sorts.

Shadow fights Doom's Eye and after giving him a solid poke in the eye, Doom's Eye runs away through a portal, exclaiming that they'll meet again soon.  You receive an alien-looking artifact that's in the shape of the Black Arms symbol, the mark of Black Doom's alien army.  If you ever played Shadow the Hedgehog, you'll recognize this symbol as part of the game's logo.

As if there weren't enough trouble, the Time Eater from Sonic Generations shows up, trapping everyone at Sonic's birthday party in a time anomaly!

This was the latest plot by Dr. Eggman, to control the Time Eater and thus control time itself.  He planned to rewrite past events and erase Sonic from existence!  Shadow finds himself caught up in the anomaly, although he lands in a barren land of his own past which is frozen in time.  There is a floating orb in the sky with eyes surrounding it, which awakens from the Black Arms symbol you collected.  Every one you collect throughout the game brings it more to life.

Having no way out of this "White Space," you start exploring various stages, reliving places and villains from Shadow's past.  Every stage has two acts, which bring life and color to the area as you complete them.

This area is different from Sonic's White Space in Sonic Generations.  Sonic explores a 2D White Space, where all the frozen stages are lined up in a row.  Shadow gets more of an open map to explore, like the recent open-world Sonic Frontiers game.

Eventually, you find others who have been trapped in the time anomaly, like E-123 Omega, Shadow's other partner; Orbot and Cubot, Eggman's robot lackeys; Big the Cat, a friendly fisherman whose looking for his best friend, Froggy; and... Maria and Gerald Robotnik?!

These two familiar faces from Shadow's distant past are a sight for sore eyes.  Vowing to protect them, he runs off to save more of the time-frozen realm and stop Black Doom, the main villain of Shadow's past. Black Doom plans to use the time anomaly to accelerate his plans and destroy the world before Shadow has a chance to stop him.

Shadow, as the "ultimate life form," has his own powers, including Chaos Control.  It's a way he can use chaos emeralds to warp time and space, which he usually uses to teleport.  In this game though, it freezes time for a few seconds while Shadow continues moving.  It's used as a way to freeze impossible obstacles so Shadow has a moment to cross, destroy, or escape them.  It also freezes your game clock, giving you a few spare seconds to complete an act without dropping to a lower final grade.  Destroying enemies fills the Chaos Control gauge at the bottom center of the screen.

You also unlock Doom powers for Shadow, allowing him to use the dark energy for new abilities.  But the stronger Shadow gets, the stronger Black Doom gets, making your inevitable fight a tough one.

There was an act in Sonic Generations where Sonic goes back in time to a race/fight with Shadow in Sonic Adventure 2.  This fight was retconned in this remake, where modern-day Shadow runs into Sonic in the time anomaly and they chase each other into the past act where they originally raced.  Sonic is looking to take the Chaos Emerald that Shadow has on him, because he needs it in order to stop the Time Eater.  But Shadow needs it to perform Chaos Control, so he has an advantage against the Black Arms.  Who do you think will win this fight...?

This game was a masterful remake of a tribute to the classic games in the Sonic franchise.  Not only modernizing graphics and gameplay, but also adding more lore, exploring Shadow's past games, and introducing his gameplay to elements of more modern games, like Sonic Forces and Sonic Frontiers.

The gameplay is fantastic, seamlessly blending action and speed with the controls so you actually feel like you're moving at mach speeds while controlling Shadow.  And the visuals are just incredible for a Sonic game! Like in the Kingdom Valley stage, where you ride an eagle several times throughout the two acts!  This is a throwback to the game Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), where the eagles provided characters transportation throughout Kingdom Valley.

This game is full of references and updated levels of older Sonic games, but you don't need to play the previous games to get enjoyment out of this one.  There is plenty of story and lore to fill in the gaps, so you don't feel left out.  The important details are fully covered, while also giving you a new full story to enjoy.  The only thing that might stop you from playing it is Shadow's backstory, which might ruin parts of the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog 3 film that's about to release.  But that film series is already deviating quite a bit from the original games, so you probably won't spoil much of the film if you play this game.

As a huge Sonic the Hedgehog fan for over 30 years now, I can say that I really enjoyed this game!  So much so, that I'm actually going to go back and re-play some of the older Sonic games from my childhood.  I wish I could play Shadow the Hedgehog, which introduced Black Doom and his Black Arms, but it only released for the PS2 and it never got a port to any other console.  We need a modern port and/or remake, SEGA!

#51 - Tavern Manager Simulator

How do you do, fellow gamers?  I'm back with another set of video game screenshots!  And today's game is a simulator game.  I actually love simulator games; I have a whole category in my Steam library dedicated to them.  It's the only library collection I've made that's specifically for a genre of game.

I got Tavern Manager Simulator on sale yesterday, and whereas there are probably better simulator games in my collection, I did enjoy this one in particular.

It opens with you acquiring a run-down tavern just outside a large castle.  The place is boarded up and you need to remove some planks in order to get in the back door and open up the tavern.

The place is in disrepair and you spend some time picking up trash and cleaning stains on the floor before you can open the place.

The large piles of garbage are too much for you to deal with right now, so you just throw a cloth over them to get the place open and running.

You have a small private room just off to the side of the bar room.  There's a bed in here where you can sleep until 6 AM the next morning.  There's also a desk where you do all the "paperwork" for the tavern.  This desk is where you can upgrade your tavern and its amenities.  The more you level up your tavern, the more variety of foods you can sell, and the larger the tavern will grow.  Literally; it will actually expand into a proper dining hall if you upgrade it enough.

Although the most important category is the Delivery tab, where you can order resources (food), furniture, and decorations.

You will need to make regular food orders as your supplies dwindle.  You can place an order anytime and it will be at your back door in less than a minute.  You can actually watch a horse-drawn cart show up down the road as soon as you order.  Almost half the wait time is just watching it turn in a loop before stopping for you to unload it.

Next, you need to fix your sign out front.  This is what you will use to signal when you're open.

When it's facing the tavern, you're closed.  But when it's turned to face the road passing by your tavern, you're open.  You can switch it anytime, day or night, to start or stop the flow of customers.  You can also customize your new sign.  Here is my tavern's sign, turned to signal that I'm open for business:

To start, you'll only have ale.  Pouring ale is a bit of an art; you have to hold the pour button until it fills to the green line on a bar.  Any less and it's just a "good" ale.  In that green, it's a "perfect" ale and will have a sparkle to it. And if you go over, you will spill on the floor (requiring a clean-up) and it will be a "bad" ale, with a puke-greenish tint to it.

Make sure you hand out as many good or perfect ales as you can to customers!  You're earning reputation to help improve your customer base and upgrade your tavern, so keep those customers happy!  I don't know what the customers will do if you serve them a bad ale.  I've just been dumping them in the trash and taking the financial loss so I don't hurt my reputation.  Here was my very first customer:

You have a limited supply of dishes, so make sure to clean them as often as you can in the kitchen sink.  You can get water from the well behind your tavern, and every dish you scrub counts for 2 cleaned dishes.  It's super easy to clean, just swirl it in the soapy water for a few seconds and all the gunk will disappear from the dish.

You also have to clean your tavern as you go.  Most patrons will leave a mess on the table when they leave.  Collect their coin and dishes, but also don't forget to wipe down the tables as needed.  Some customers will also leave footprints all over your floors.  Don't forget to sweep them up!

Most customers will only make a single food/drink request, then leave when they're done.  But this guy kept requesting more beers until he passed out on the bar.  You can literally pick up these drunk customers by the scruff of their neck and toss them out.  You can also ask anyone to leave anytime you want, but it's more fun to throw them out while they're black-out drunk.  Plus, you collect a ton of coin from all the booze they consumed.

There are also beggars who might come into your tavern.  You can give them what they ask for, which will give your tavern a boost in reputation, or you can tell them to scram.  Later, you acquire a frying pan, which you can brandish as a weapon against unruly patrons or beggars.

This beggar lady came by pretty often.  I had one guy come by saying he was dying of thirst and just needed some water.  I went to the well out back and got a pail of water and he was very satisfied with that.

Over time, you start to expand the menu; first to sausage, then vegetable soup, and then grilled meat.  It gets more complicated as you go on, because you now have to pay attention to customer's requests and not just hand out ale to every customer.  Eventually, your kitchen gets fixed up as you level up your tavern and expand your menu.  It starts to look like a nice place to work!

You will also unlock fairy helpers, whom you can assign jobs in the tavern.  Which is nice when you have to cook soup, grill meat, chop firewood for the stove and grill, pour ale, clean the outhouse, and do dishes.  PLUS ensuring customers are getting the food they want in a timely manner, cleaning up after them, and ordering more food when your supplies are getting low.  It can get intense.  Thankfully, I have not been completely swamped with customers yet.  I got maybe 1-3 orders at a time, so I have a little time to balance everything.  Just having a fairy to do dishes is a huge relief during open hours.

When you're closed up for the day, if you explore the grounds outside your tavern, you'll find hidden tributes to other medieval fantasy series.  So far, I've seen references to Zelda, Dark Souls, Shrek, World of Warcraft, and Lord of the Rings.  Let me know if you find any others!

If you catch a break (which I rarely did), you can chat with your customers, which gives you a +1 to your reputation.  Although they usually just have either something weird to say, or a medieval dad joke.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable game.  I had fun running back and forth, trying to keep food and drink prepared and dealing with customers as they came in.  I had to make a lot of orders in the middle of the day to keep my stock up initially, but as I got used to the game, I was able to more effectively plan my food and drink and I was mostly able to make an order at night and be ready for the entire next day. It helps that none of the consumables ever went bad, so I could prep a bunch of stuff and leave it sitting out until customers ordered it.

I always felt there weren't enough hours in the day, though.  Every minute of the day was a real-time second, so I basically had 24 minutes max to host customers every day.  I'd run my tavern until I was almost out of everything late at night, then I'd spend the last few hours of the night/morning restocking and prepping for the next day.  If I went to bed, it was usually with only an hour or two of sleep before getting up the next day.  So far, I don't think sleep deprivation is a thing in this game.  I ran my tavern for 3 days straight without any side effects at one point.

So if you like restaurant managing/waitressing games, this was a pretty fun medieval spin on the genre.  Come grab a pint and enjoy!

#50 - Remember Me

Happy (belated) Veteran's Day!  Sorry for posting this so late; I'm a recently retired veteran, so yesterday ended up busier than I expected.

And speaking of busy... I started these daily posts as 1.) a writing challenge for myself, 2.) a way to geek out about the games that I've been enjoying lately, and 3.) with the hope of adding some interesting and unique content to online communities.  But my ADHD/hyper-focus has been taking the wheel lately, and I've been taking longer and longer to write these up, not counting the several hours of gaming I do every night to acquire screenshots in the first place.

I was trying to find something to play the night before last and I ended up bouncing between several games that I just couldn't get into.  Then I found Remember Me and it was so much fun, I didn't want to stop playing to write about it.  I stayed up until dawn playing, then had so much on my schedule for that day, I didn't have time to write until later that night.

Basically, I've been spending most of my free time preparing these posts (which is a lot, considering I'm 100% retired now), and as much fun as it is, I need to cut back a bit and focus on other stuff in my life.  Like actually finishing some of the fun and interesting games I've been writing about.  I can't complete most of these games in a single night, despite my best efforts.  But I don't want to make multiple posts about the same game several days in a row; I want to provide new and interesting content for you to read.

I'm not going to stop writing detailed (and spoiler-free) posts about video games, but I will cut back a bit on my posting schedule so it's not eating up all my free time.  I never promised to do daily posts anyway; that was just a personal writing goal of mine and I've made it to 50 posts with only 3 days missed (including this one), so I'd consider that a win.  I'll try to aim for an absolute minimum of a post a week; although I may post more often as I find and play interesting games.  I still have a list of games I want to write about, so there's still plenty of content to come.

All of my screenshot posts have been archived here.  I draft them on this blog initially, then copy/paste to other online communities and post both simultaneously.  I have another blog where I review movies, although I've been ignoring it for over a year now and would like to get back into it; another reason I want to slow down these gaming posts.  You can find a link to that blog on my profile if you're interested.

And now back to today's game...

Remember Me is a fascinating cyberpunk game taking place in Neo-Paris in the year 2084, a dark future where people have merged their brains with technology and can now have their memories accessed digitally.  This has created a market for buying, selling and trading memories.  This has also led to a surveillance society, where corporations can access memories and either wipe or replace them as they desire.

You play a French woman named Nilin, a memory hunter who can not only access memories, but has the extremely rare skill of editing details within them to give a person false memories.  She's part of an underground resistance movement, fighting against Memorize, a corporation trying to create a monopoly on human memories.  She's classified as an Errorist, which is not only the name for people who can create "error" or false memories, but is also a brilliant take on the word "terrorist."

I'd like to point out that this is a game developed by a French studio, the story takes place in Paris, and the French language is written on signs and billboards and graffiti throughout the game's world, so I felt it was appropriate to play this game in French with English subtitles to get the full effect.  It's such a beautiful language and it felt wrong to play this game in English.  Especially when Nilin has a British-English accent in the English version.

Unfortunately, this game originally released in 2013, so it wasn't designed for 4K displays and despite having that resolution option on the Steam version, the subtitles don't scale to the size of my screen.  They're extremely tiny in these screenshots, so I apologize in advance for that.  If you see a fuzzy white line across the bottom of a screenshot, open the image in a new tab and you can zoom in to read the subtitle.

Remember Me opens with Nilin squirming on the floor of a prison cell as her memories are erased.  When the procedure completes, a doctor approaches her and asks her name.  Surprisingly, she's able to remember her name!  She doesn't remember much else though, so the doctor consults the head of the department, Dr. Quaid, and Nilin is scheduled for a more detailed memory wipe to scrape out any remnants.

Barely able to stand, she's directed to follow an orange line down the hallway, where she joins a queue for another memory wipe.  While waiting in line, a voice pops into her head.  A guy by the name of Edge, who claims he's attempting to rescue her.

The power goes out and a blast door next to Nilin raises a little bit, exposing a small gap.  She's instructed to slip through the doorway.  Her escape is detected though and she's pursued by a large robot, which she's barely able to stumble away from in her dazed state.

Eventually, she falls down an air vent and stumbles across a machine loading up bodies into caskets.  She's told to climb into a casket, which she does begrudgingly.  The machine seals her in the casket, then launches her out of the prison facility and into a river.

Edge explains who Nilin is and why she's had her memory wiped.  Apparently, their resistance movement failed and everyone was rounded up except for their leader, Edge.  Nilin was his best fighter though, so he's rescued her so she can help recover their resistance.

Her casket drifts up to Slum 404, a garbage-filled slum of Neo-Paris.  She's freed by some scavengers known as Leapers.  The correlation to lepers is not lost; deformed and monstrous, they're the corrupted and insane remnants of citizens whose memories have been edited too many times.  Their instinct is to attack Nilin when they find her.

Suddenly remembering some basics on how to fight, Nilin is quick to take them down.  Her memories start coming back a little at a time throughout the game, although only enough for her to remember key details.  Edge informs her to travel to Tommy, her best friend and former memory hunter who is loyal to their cause.  He runs a bar in the slums called The Leaking Brain.

He is grateful to see her, even though she doesn't remember him.  He rescued her glove that she uses to manipulate memories, as well as her combat skin.  He comments that it's a good thing they caught her on her day off, or else they would've gotten their hands on her high-tech gear.

But just as soon as she's suited up, a bounty hunter jumps out of the shadows!  Olga Sedova, one of the best in the business, and she's out to collect the bounty on Nilin's head.

Before she can secure her though, Nilin gets her glove close enough to Olga's neck to grab hold of her memories.  We're transported into her memory from three hours ago, when Olga was at a hospital watching Dr. Quaid tend to her husband.

Her husband had deleted too many memories over time, causing a syndrome that is breaking down his mind.  It's implied that he may be turning into a Leaper.  Dr. Quaid promises he can fix it; although it will be very expensive.  A bounty for Nilin pops up and Olga promises she can pay, heading off to hunt Nilin.

At this point, you're able to fast-forward and rewind the memory, finding small glitches that you can edit in the details, like unfastening the husband's mask or removing one of his wrist straps.  Changing these little details leads to a different outcome for the memory.  Your goal is to find the right edits to make Dr. Quaid appear to have killed Olga's husband instead of saving him.

This part may take a while and some tinkering with various details until you find the right combination of edits, but once you figure it out, Olga is forced to watch as her husband dies a violent death due to Dr. Quaid's incompetence.  Snapping out of the memory, Olga suddenly decides to side with you as revenge against Memorize for killing her husband!  She offers to give you a lift to your next objective.

From here, you carry out missions for Edge, fight more people from your past whom you barely recall, return to the prison to regain more of your memories from their memory backups, and along the way, question who you really are and what you're actually fighting for.

This game is kind of like a cyberpunk version of Assassin's Creed.  You're part of a shady underground organization, sneaking around, climbing all over the structures of Neo-Paris, and fighting the controlling organization ruling over the land, all while stealing and/or editing people's memories.

You can't free-roam like in Assassin's Creed though; you're stuck on a singular path toward your objective, which prevents you from back-tracking even a couple rooms as you progress forward.  It does help keep you focused on the story, though.  I've played nearly 7 hours and I just finished episode 4 out of 8 total.  So the lack of exploration doesn't make this a quick story to burn through.

The combat is extremely fluid, too!  You have combo streaks that you can build yourself from various types of attacks (power, healing, cooldowns for special attacks, and chain abilities).  Completing combos will grant you points to eventually unlock even longer and more powerful combos, which can make defeating even the toughest enemies no effort at all.

Not to mention, Nilin is extremely light on her feet.  Every time an attack is incoming, you can just press your jump button and she immediately cartwheels out of the way, or even flips over enemies' heads if she's up close in combat.  You can weave and dodge in and out of a dozen enemies without taking any damage because they always indicate when they're about to strike.

You can also find collectibles in each level called Mnesist memories, which are cultural memories of Neo-Paris, preserving actual history so corruption from edited memories doesn't wash away what actually happened.  These are more background lore, if you're interested in world building.  They give a history of the fall of Paris during a global war in the 2040s and how Neo-Paris and its current social and economic structure sprouted from the ashes.  As well as many other detailed bits of lore to flesh out the world.

One of the only things I didn't enjoy about this game is the camera controls.  They're a bit dated and erratic.  It is an older game, so it doesn't have smooth modern camera controls.  It keeps trying to default the camera to a position that doesn't give a good view of your surroundings, so I found myself constantly adjusting the third-person camera, which didn't want to move smoothly and precisely most of the time.

Also, the shadows and lighting effects are pretty bad.  There were tons of dark scenes where I could hardly make out Nilin or others.  Her skin tone is so unnaturally dark and shaded in this game, it looks like she spent way too long in a tanning bed.  The only time she looks halfway normal is when her face is directly illuminated in a bright space.  But if the light wasn't directly on her face, even in bright sunlight, she was unnaturally shadowed.

But again, those are problems due to the age of the game.  Physics engines have evolved a ton in the past decade, and if this game was remade today, it would look absolutely stunning.  Even for its time, this is a gorgeous look into a future cyberpunk Paris.  And the story is captivating and kept me engaged for hours.  This is an incredible game, it just needs some tune-ups to the graphics and controls to be perfect.

The orchestral soundtrack gives this game a very cinematic feel, too.  I wish they released the soundtrack on Steam so I could listen to its music outside of gameplay.