Shadow Generations is a master class in confronting grief and moving on

digitaltrends.com:

If you had told me as a kid that there would be a sequel to Shadow the Hedgehog nearly 20 years after its release, I would’ve scoffed at you. Shadow already dealt with his past, cured his amnesia in the process, and moved forward with his life. Why put him through that ordeal again? Imagine my surprise when Sonic Team announced Sonic X Shadow Generations, a remaster of Sonic Generationswith a new Shadow-focused story added to it, the day before my 30th birthday in February.

The first thing I did when the collection came out was play Shadow Generations, which made sense to me given I already played the Sonic Generations years ago. After playing through the game for more than four hours — and watching the Dark Beginningsprologue animeweeks prior its release — I was surprised to find what felt like a true sequel to Shadow the Hedgehog.

Shadow faces the return of Black Doom, whom he thought he defeated in his eponymous game, and gains new powers that bear the name of his alien surrogate father, including Doom Spear, Doom Blast, and Doom Wing. All of these power-ups, plus his refined power of Chaos Control, help him progress through select levels ripped from the games he appeared in — from Space Colony ARK (Sonic Adventure 2and Shadow the Hedgehog) to Rail Canyon (Sonic Heroes) to Sunset Heights (Sonic Forces) — and navigate the temporal anomaly the Time Eater sent him to. However, the Doom Powers come with some strings attached: Black Doom gave them to Shadow as a means to take control of his mind and body and either make him his servant of destruction or be reborn in him.

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