for almost 5 hours which does not sound like a lot granted but

I blasted through sonic's portion bc new writing and rerecorded dialogue

I thought I had the sonic jam skin and it's mildly irritating that I don't...I'll figure that out. but the sa1 skin doing speed highway feels mmmm so good and necessary

anyway shadow's shit so far is very- like the 3d white space gives me mild frontiers feelings in that here's a bunch of platforms and rails and springs and open space you don't know where anything goes or what anything does until you play in the space, go nuts and then I go nuts and have no idea where I am anymore

this is not a criticism

but it does make doing things harder than the 2d space

shadow absolutely crushing a dooms eye just for another one to pop up and keep projecting black doom is very ey bing bong you're doing a bad job and I need to stop thinking of the snapcube dub but it's perfect

shadow it's him the devil from the bible

he's got a fucking moon egg biblically accurate angel thing don't worry about it

I will say
that playing thru sonic's and noting how in the first birthday cutscene shadow isn't there, but at the end he's spat out with the others
then starting shadow's and realizing
these campaigns happen at the same time, shadow isn't there even tho he (didn't actually) promised rouge he'd be there bc he's on the ark
was SO fucking funny to me

it's also entertaining how many lil canon discrepancies there are already between dark beginnings, what I've seen of gerald's journal, and the game
(shadow coming out of the pod: is he nakey or is he clothed? don't think about it
gun detected an anomalous bio-signature on the ark? bruh you felt a disturbance in the force and fucked up gun to get here)

mike pollock gerald makes sense of course but I do kinda wish they had just gotten someone else so he didn't just sound like eggman-but-to-the-left

redoing some of the sa2 scenes with the new voices is like yes okay I get it. but nothing will ever, ever beat the original

ALSO WHEN YOU START THE GAME, "SHADOW'S STORY" IS LITERALLY JUST A STORY SO FAR RECAP OF HIS HISTORY. YOU GOTTA GO TO NEW GAME TO PLAY HIS STORY. it's still interesting but boy was I. befuddled for a mo

the white space's music being a slower darker orchestral all hail shadow fucks. the music fucks. the doom powers are...finicky but in the same way most things in generations are finicky

and yes sonic's campaign does look better, things look smoothed out and less fuzzy

faust is canon to the sonic universe, also in an early cutscene from the ark you can very clearly make out north america.

also the amount of LORE for MY GIRL being dropped

even just in incidental dialogue boxes!

she had a little sister /lays on the ground

also she looked about the same in the cutscene with her and gerald presumably on earth in a hospital so I wonder if maybe she wasn't there all that long. it isn't like oh no this baby is deathly ill put her in a microwave

big is here bc why wouldn't big be here

also maria asks if shadow's in pain re: the doomy shit, and he's like nah it's mostly just tingly
cut to each time he gets powers, writhing around and going NO
uh-huh
tingles
sure

oh THERE'S my sonic jam skin code!!!! took y'all long enough lol

aight aight I'm done

like, story-done

I did shed one single actual tear (and hey, so did shadow!) and I have so many feelings

the doom powers seem to have vanished with doom, tho it goes verbally uncommented upon, which feels like an oversight

(the tear was for an earlier cutscene, not the last one, but like. feelios. gosh. you'll know it when you see it. the smile.)

I'm sure I can do neo doom a lot faster in another go now that I know you're supposed to mash x each time you hit him

it does not prompt you to do so. some of the enemies are mash, some are very much not mash

so I can def cut down this fight in half the time. uhhhh did not expect half the fight to be surf tho. that...isn't great

the glide was a lil unwieldy and it doesn't last forever (except in the boss fight) but visually cool

ALL THE VISUALS ARE JUST THE MOST 2000'S-ASS EDGY AWESOME SHIT IMAGINABLE AND I MEAN THAT AS A FULL COMPLIMENT

last boss is just kind of otherwise a nothingburger to play, and the last cutscene hit is like. the leadup is AMAZING but then it's just boom explode and die.
and like. the whole thing was that shadow had the real emerald and rouge needed to trade it out with the fake one sonic picked up?

emerald didn't come into play at all. not once. why did we need it?

mm I guess for chaos control, in theory he does need an emerald for that

out chaos-controlling doom was a very neo metal thing to do lol

I can't wait to listen to the ost and uhhh read gerald's journal pages but I have to make sure I have them all cuz I probably don't and idk how many there are

there are. 50000000 collectables. I hate it. I got all the music from the challenges tho so get fucked those things were a pain

Only one of them will spawn at a time, and they will only ever hold one of the fifteen sets of pages, too mm noted. where I got this from also said that they do sometimes just fly out of bounds. which I experienced.

I have mmmmost of the--wait fifteen sets of pages, shit no nevermind. I have like half of them then

they def learned from original generations. s-ranks weren't a big deal (tho I didn't bother paying much attention to the missions, but many you could just happen to get), but shadow? jesus actual christ even the few times I thought I was doing well it was like no, B, maybe C. the missions you at least get a bar in the upper right to tell you what rank u at

it's fucking tight as shit

but now that I've storied, I can slap the terios skin on him lol
and of course erryone gotta come back in december when the movie dlc drops

NGL THIS SHIT ALSO MADE MY HEART SWELL THREE SIZES

I still can't believe I saw this with my own eyes

this kills the me

and the entire conversation. fight with your wish in my heart.................

he has this one moment of like true-ass happiness and he's so reluctant to let it go and this kills the me!

also the "stand in the light with peace in your heart" also kills me. her explaining to him why she named him shadow and trying to have him let go of anger and be happy and im

god this gif doesn't show it but as this goes on he starts fucking shaking

also I'm not even gonna lie. I still think infinite shoulda been in this. doom's reality-fucking powers are incredibly infinite-like

now, of course, the real problem then is then you would have two bosses that are people shadow straight up doesn't know--one he doesn't due to sonic 06 being erased from existence, and one he doesn't due to it not happening yet

also robbie as mephiles is. fine. They Changed It Now It Sucks is what I'm feeling but there isn't anything bad about it, just, it isn't memphis to me ya feel