
In other words, you're basically playing a prerendered cutscene. The whole point of the engine was to emulate the look and feel of CGI in-game thanks to really clever lighting tricks. I really love that the Series X and PS5 can bring new life to old games even without the developers remastering the games themselves. This is cheating a bit, since it is through emulation and not an official release/upscale, but Sonic Colors too can look really great if given the upscaled treatment via Dolphin emulator: While Sonic Unleashed definitely comes off a little more dated in the graphics department, it's still wonderful showcase of the environment and art design and how even minimally upscaling it does wonders to the presentation. Graphics that push the consoles, gameplay that is solid regardless of style, an amazing soundtrack and just general love and care with the character, world and details. When we as Sonic fans say we want a big budget Sonic game, this is what we mean. Now in 2020/2021 because of the BC? Buttery smooth (as smooth as it can get that is).Īnother great example is Green Hill Zone, just look at all of that green and the scope of the level. And in this case for Speed Highway, towards the end of the building run, the original game on Xbox 360 and PS3 infamously dropped an huge amount of frames as Sonic crashes down.

I played around with a few stages in the past few days and god it's a rush to play through these again. Just look at this footage from Speed Highway, it can legitimately hold up to modern gaming standards graphically and the amount of insanity that is happening at once:

And my god, do these games still look amazing 10+ years later. One of the first games I downloaded was Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Generations because I wanted to experience them again in their full potential.

There was a whole debacle on me getting my Series X, but it's finally here and it's gorgeous.
