Game:

Sonic Generations (2011)

Duration: 2:27

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It's around this time in Sonic's history that things began to get a little hazy. This was the beginning of a five-year descent for poor Sonic, one that he wouldn't finally begin to recover from until Sonic Unleashed's release.

Sonic Heroes is very similar to the earlier Sonic Adventure 2 in that earning points means more than finishing a stage quickly. The big gimmick this time around was that this time around, you controlled three characters simultaneously as opposed to one character individually. There were four teams of three characters, each consisting of a Speed character (ex: Sonic), a Flight character (ex: Tails) and a Power character (ex: Knuckles). You would control one character as the leader and each leader had their own special formation for the rest of the team. The levels were designed for you to decide which formation would be best used to get past the current obstacles in your way, but the game usually made a habit of informing you of the recommended formation for where you are. This would typically dumb down the experience and make you simply follow the trail of breadcrumbs from start to finish. It's not a bad idea to offer advice like that in the earlier stages, but even in the final levels they would have the recommended formations posted throughout the entire stage.

Other changes included enemies that took multiple hits to kill, levelling up characters and a storyline that had almost zero reference to the Chaos Emeralds. Even with that that, I actually really did like Sonic Heroes and would love to see another game that uses that game-play style. However, seeing that the Sonic fanbase is divided so deeply on what the franchise truly is, we'll probably never see an actual Sonic Heroes 2.

... oh well.

As for Seaside Hill itself, the level is actually pretty nice to look at. When I first played this stage, being cast into the water right at the very beginning gave me this huge feeling of dread, thinking that the entire level was going to be a gigantic water level. However, repeated runs through this stage gave me more happiness and I ultimately wound up liking this entire zone. The entire level is very colorful and the music is... well, it fits with the theme of a beach. It's certainly better than Splash Hill's bgm.

FYI, my favourite alternate song to use in this stage is "A New Venture". Unlock it, play it while playing this stage and tell me it doesn't just feel right. Sonic Rush Adventure had a nice soundtrack, but this song is perfect for this level.

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