Exactly why I thought the narrative was going to be more substantial (no, that's probably not the best word, but I thought we'd get more character interaction and poking fun at Sonic's less-than-stellar moments throughout the series). Here the narrative just seemed like an afterthought or even rushed with a lot of obvious things being pointed out to the player or doesn't do anything good with the time travel concept (which they probably could have taken their time and ran with).
In a way, I guess you could say that might have been a good thing, with level design and gameplay mechanics being the primary focus and the narrative being a secondary focus. But in effect, that makes the game a bit of a less cohesive product. There is a very thin layer of glue holding the entire package together, but it doesn't seem like it's enough. The lack of cohesion isn't just limited to the narrative, but the narrative sure does play a large role in making it feel that way.
Colours struck a pretty good balance of dialogue/narrative vs gameplay, a fantastic soundtrack, and good tongue-in-cheek dialogue (even if it seemed a bit cheesy for some, it was
miles better than what we got in other Sonic games). I liked Colours' narrative and script, hence my disappointment with Generations' story. When they said the Colours writers were going to be used, I was perfectly fine with it because I liked their work before. The Colours plot made sense, the dialogue was funny, the
extras were kind of witty, and the game was wrapped up in a neat little package at the end. Colours also had a better balance of
meaningful behind-the-back sections vs platforming sections, imo.
Like I said in other threads, Colours just has better cohesion and was put together better than Generations. It felt
complete. That doesn't mean Generations is
bad, though. Outside of the game's ending bits, I thought it was a great anniversary game. It has a lot of good Modern stage design with a ton of pathways in the behind-the-back perspective. I liked how the modern mechanics were utilized (and I agree with the other guys; the lightspeed dash felt shoehorned in the game for old times' sake). It's clear, though, that this game served mostly as a game for Sonic fans. The amount of fanservice throughout the level design, the music selection and remixes was incredible. I enjoyed it a lot despite thinking that it could have been handled a lot better in a few areas.