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While we weren’t able to get a review into this issue we have had a chance to play a preview version of SonicXShadow Generations on PS5, so we thought we’d share some first impressions with you all. Playing through Green Hill and Chemical Plant in Sonic Generations, it feels like the remastered version will be a great way to play the game. Muscle memory meant that we didn’t click with the revised controls, which are more like those of Sonic Forces, but it’s possible to change them back. We did find some of the Chao, and they’re a neat little addition.
As for Shadow Generations, we were able to play Space Colony Ark Act 1 and Kingdom Valley Act 1, and they lived up to the expectations we had based on the quality of Sonic Generations. Both captured the essence of what made those stages exciting in their original games, and we saw what Iizuka meant about representing a variety of past stages when the space colony gave way to Radical Highway. Shadow’s Doom Powers ensure that he feels sufficiently different to Modern Sonic, while still offering similar high-speed thrills, and the new control scheme feels better here. Both stages took over five minutes to beat with the top S rank, so they feel nicely lengthy.