so im gonna write a big ol post about my assorted thoughts on the experience. Spoilers Probably! i'm sure everyone has been waiting with bated breath for my Hot Take on this New Look For Sonic The Famous Hedgehog. and well, click on a little button called Read More to Find out:
well i liked it quite a bit!! i think its a solid 7 outta 10 overall from me. pretty fun, pretty breezy, story and writing carries it weight mostly, kinda ran out of steam for me towards the end but overall the format of the game was plenty fun. the highs are exceptionally high!
lets dive into it more: i've especially been chewing on sonic frontiers as "An Open World Gaming". it makes a funny companion to Elden Ring, the last open world big style game i played. i suppose this is where i should mention that i've spent the last 3 years of my life earning money by working on a Triple A Open World Game. (please dont pry and ask which one, although i'm sure if you really wanted to dig it up you could easily put two and two together about it.) so my relationship with the genre is kind of... well, i've seen behind the curtain. the illusion of That Mountain You Can Go There is fully shattered for me. but that doesn't mean i can't enjoy an open world game that's at least making some bold swings in its format or its design.
i dont think sonic frontier's swings are all that bold, at least in the context of Open World Gameing, with one major exception. i've been chewing on what Freedom In Gaming really means. its a classic of trying to sell the open world, but even the most Free and Untethered open world gaming is still designed in such a way that the player will be guided to, if not all of the content, enough of it. the tension between The Alluring Promise of Freedom and The Developers Who Make Something Really Cool And Interesting And Dont Want You To Miss It, or the Fear that a player might miss something Critical and Crucial... these are the tensions that standard open world games are not interested in reconciling. even elden ring suffers from this -- its structured so freely that the few mandatory chokepoints feel absolutely suffocating by comparison to the rest of the experience.
but along comes sonic frontiers, where "if you dont want to engage with a section of this game anymore, you can just farm fishing tokens to buy whatever collectible you need." cause guess what -- i did indeed run out of steam towards the final island of this game. i did indeed grab the last few vault keys + memory tokens from the Generous fishing tokens i'd accrued. and the game never put a chicken hat on me for it, and my victory was as legitimate as anyone's! and like, this isn't the most elegant solution in the world -- the fishing minigame isn't exactly deep enough to make the idea of grinding it especially appealing -- but giving the players this level of control about what kind of content they want to engage with, instead of running on the assumption that this world is so epic that you'll absolutely LOVE collecting all the goodies... thank you for respecting my time, sonic frontiers and big the cat.
so, i know i just said i grew tired of the game towards the end, but overall i think the "separate distinct islands with various collectibles, tasks, and even 1 to 2 minute long levels" format works really well -- its less BotW and more Super Mario Odyssey. and the main thing that tethers it all together is "It Feels Quite Nice To Play". running around as sonic in the overworld is just... its just nice! it really does feel like you're goin quite fast, whether you're beelining from one point to another or taking the guided tour through the various rails or platforming sections. its not PERFECT, there's a bit of jank sometimes where sonic hits a dead stop out of nowhere, for instance. not a dealbreaker by any means, but i believe that this game needs some better feedback for when you do something wrong, cause when you're hitting all the right buttons, boy oh boy its a blast, and its always a shame when you accidentally hit a button that does something unexpected due to context confusion. and it can be a little silly when you accidentally trip over a dash pad that hurtles you in the opposite direction, but its easy enough to break free of those little mini sections that it was mostly fine.
the variety in quality of Overworld Activities that reveal the map is pretty funny. some of them are great, textbook examples of "design a world THEN figure out an activity that shows it off". and some of them are just Hilariously Nothing. seeing sonic play the witness or do a laser beam puzzle in previews is what made me think "im not going to buy this game." but seeing sonic actually run around controlled by someone who wasn't trying to do bespoke trailer camera movements is what made me think "im going to buy this game". you really can tell that some design choices were made quite late in the development, and some of the Overworld Activities took the collateral there.
the other surprise is that the combat feels Very Fun. i'm not a character action expert by any means but sonic having a combo counter just feels Right. and the bosses (with a handful of exceptions) are all Fun To Figure Out Optimizations For. i usually bristle when a boss's design comes from the donkey kong country school of "avoid their attacks for 10 minutes until they reveal their vulnerability", but it feels quite sick when you manage to deal enough damage to kill the boss in one cycle.
the aesthetic of the overworld, on the other hand. yeah, its not great imo! instead of looking up this movement's name and sounding smart, i'll just be honest and say that i am vaguely aware of some kind of theater movement where you deliberately use minimalist or stripped down sets as a way of drawing attention to the artifice of it all, or something. its probably giving this game too much credit to claim that this game's aesthetic belongs firmly in that lineage, eh? but i certainly felt some kind of strange way when sonic began explaining that he can Actually See those placeholder-looking map markers in his brain like a GPS. the characters are at least a little bit aware of how uncanny it feels to be in this world! and thats an interesting choice i wish the game leaned into a bit more!
but yeah. i dont think the game looks like TOTAL dogshit (i played it on the ps5 for what its worth), the pop-in didn't really bug me that much, but the aesthetic of the world being "An Island, With Ruins..." whatever! snooze! it felt fun enough to run around, fight, and collect little guys for the first half that i didn't mind too much, but the last two islands were where i started to hit my limit, since they were just "also grassy". we all love to grind on a rail, but if everything is a rail, then nothing is. or something.
as for the cyber space levels (the bite sized levels which are the game's equivalent of BOTW shrines), i liked em! i have minimal experience with "Boost Era Sonic" (roughly between unleashed and forces), but i never super loved that format of sonic -- the levels felt too "on rails" for my tastes. but in the context of an open world, i think they really hit a lot better for me. a fun little break from the norm. and its fun to try and optimize to get all the optional objectives in one go! my main complaint about them is i wish there was a bit more variety in the tilesets. we all love chemical plant but it feels like, from one island's cyberspace levels to the next, there's not really a noticeable sense of escalation or progression. i guess that's what happens when you shrine-ify sonic levels!
now the story. the writing. here's where the real spoilers are gonna be, so be warned!
i agree with that one docfuture tweet: its very interesting to see the sonic writers suddenly attempt to genuinely cohere 30 years of contradictory sonic history. you really can tell that its a new voice behind it, and having sonic and company be mention Station Square out loud really does a number to make them feel like... this isn't some New Distinct Iteration of Sonic, this is the same sonic (and tails, knuckles, amy) that we grew up with, who've gone through adventures and are continuing to change and grow and evolve. i appreciate that the characters express curiosity about the world around them, and i think having the setup be so simple -- "we tracked the chaos emeralds to these weird islands, lets check it out, oh no we stumbled onto some ancient alien cybertech! oh no!" -- does a lot to ground these conversations. and having sonic and company talk in a slightly more subdued way helps sell it imo -- some of the voice performances feel a LITTLE too quiet and mournful, but it does more good than harm imo.
now, SOME of the conversations get a little too cute with it. "hey, sonic, dont have too much fun running through this incredible and majestic world of rails and collectibles and platforming challenges!" amy this isn't an e3 demo, relax. and yes -- sonic does learn about The Terror and respond with a line that may as well be "so, uh, THAT was a thing". the balance isn't always there, and its in those moments where you can feel the weight of the load-bearing writing. but when the characters talk about how strange it feels to be stuck in their cyber-holo-forms, or when they reminisce about past adventures, thats the juice to me.
the actual lore of ancient aliens... sure! i guess they invented pinball along the way to Containing The Terrible Power Within Cyberspace. this is the problem of making the sonic world lore too coherent for this adventure specifically -- it places a lot of importance on these islands and these aliens in particular, and while i really like a lot of the enemy designs and boss designs, i don't... yknow, i dont CARE. the chaos emeralds are famously a macguffin that does whatever the plot says, so... there's really only so much i can buy into it. and that unfortunately reflects onto the Stakes of the Story. sonic starts to exhibit Cyber Sickness around halfway through, and eventually the toll is taken, but then his friends decide to cure him. sure! look, the power of friendship is great, and i think that the subdued tone helps these beats land a biiiit better, but its not like i'm actually worried about Sonic The Hedgehog Fucking Dying. like, the story beat moments themselves aren't Poorly Executed or anything, they're fine... but i think i never quite bought into the Existential Threat in the same way the game wanted me to. its fine though. the characters were bought in enough for me. like, i didn't believe in the threat, but i believed that sonic believed in the threat. yknow?
sage and eggman. god damn, they really went all in on giving eggman Pathos. as for sage, she's pretty good! i do like how quickly she turns from "I've run 5 dillion simulations and there's no such thing as Friendship" to "Wait... Sonic is ... nice?" and as soon as i heard the name of Maria in the egg memos, i realized "oh, sage is going to sacrifice herself. ok then." again, i dont think the tonal balance is always there -- any time eggman veers towards "Ouuuu I HATE THAT HEDGEHOG" mode especially, and the weight of sage's sacrifice feels pretty artificial due to the aforementioned lack of stakes -- but i mean... lets be real. i talk a lot about tonal balance, but if i wanted a perfectly balanced experience i wouldn't be fucking around with sonic games. i think something about the dials being tuned to this kind of ... relatively self-serious anime melodrama thats still somehow one of the more muted sonic storylines in a hot minute? it does indeed sometimes hit! the last shot of eggman looking out over the sea?? i mean, jeez.
finally the music. i'll do this one quickly, god this post is too long: -the Bespoke Nier Piano music of the overworld... lets just say, i'm glad they had the sense to update the music as you progress through the island. its Fine, its good background music, but i'm not looking up a 10 hour compilation on youtube any time soon. -the Battle Music all goes really quite hard!! very fun!! there's one guardian's theme that switches to a really majestic section as you're falling back to the earth... that was probably my favourite non-vocal track in the game. and the screamo song that plays during the first time you go super sonic... thats the good shit. thats gonna be a classic of sonic vocal songs, if it isn't already. -the Cyberspace Music is pretty good!! i like some of it more than others, and some of it is a little bit "dollar store skrillex", but again, in the moment it works! still, it can be disorienting to hear the most generic dubstep drop of your life in what is clearly chemical plant zone
here's my silliest takeaway, i think. a spectre haunts sonic frontiers: the spectre of sonic the hedgehog 2006. it can be felt in the loose crates that litter the island, in the activities built out of other assets, in the credits hip-hop tragic ballad, and in the moment where sonic dies but gets revived by the power of his friends. and frontiers, too, was somewhat rushed as i understand? however despite some criticisms, frontiers does not seem poised to become The New Nadir Of The Franchise. in fact, its quite fun! it helps that the story, for all my gripes, is pretty straightforward, but even still, its definitely greater than the sum of its parts. perhaps we can now collectively look at various activities slapped together from other existing assets (koco herding, running through rings, hell, the rails and platforms throughout the overworld) and recognize their potential for creative and economical world design, instead of simply writing them off as Signs Of A Rushjob. perhaps sonic 06 will be retroactively vindicated. perhaps sonic will muse about soleanna while idling in the upcoming DLC. much to think about.