Sonic the Hedgehog is 20 years old, but he's not showing it in this hyper-charged release, which takes the spiked one's colourful history and runs it through a blender, with mind-blowing results.
Sega's mascot has had some seriously lacklustre outings since his peak in the mid-1990s, but Sonic Generations puts the focus back to where it needs to be: absolute, maddening speed. The faster you go, the more skilled you need to be to take advantage of each level's different routes, boosts and bonuses, meaning there's no more reliance on just holding the d-pad forward and hoping for a crack at a chaos emerald for your efforts.
The storyline is neither very interesting, nor vital to the experience, but it centres on a plot to undo all of Sonic's previous good works. The resulting time-space-mess forces his past self, represented by the mute young thing of early Sonic games, to join forces with the contemporary version.
This allows the player to tackle each zone - pulled from different Sonic games - in either 2D as classic Sonic or 3D as the modern hedgehog. On top of each core zone stage is a range of challenges. Some, involving the supporting characters, are a tad dull, but the doppelganger races and speed boost trials in particular are well-worth the effort.
The level design is smart, swish and true to the franchise's roots, while retaining enough surprises and pitfalls to punish players for not paying attention while running their courses.
