i'm not ready to write a full blog on this yet BUT
but
prefacing this with i've only 100%'d the first island & beat its boss, so i'm definitely still "early" in sonic frontiers. however, i just beat the first boss & my initial impressions of what a "level" package is (island + cyber space levels + minibosses + big boss) makes me feel really positively about what frontiers does for the promise of a "sonic" game.
getting out of the way the fact that game is janky as hell (all of them have been, in one way or another. it's just a thing.) like, yeah, there's inconsistencies in how weird it controls, reacts, etc etc. however!
i think the game understands on a deep level why, conceptually, people like me have been drawn to the sonic franchise. i don't even think the original genesis sonic games really got it on a design level. they were fast, sure, and there were ways to navigate its levels in optimal ways if you memorized them, but there were very few tools to route your way through the levels in a way that felt good as a casual player. ultimately it boiled down to holding a direction disrupted by enemies, walls, or slow platforming.
but what they did was establish a setting that inspired comics, cartoons, and fans to imagine what the ideal might be. that's continued basically ever since, with fan games pouring out of the community & former fans now effectively running the franchise.
but getting back to frontiers: it delivers the promise of what i longed for after watching the animated intro to Sonic CD. it gives you a vast space to run through, winding your way across environments, utilizing the various rube goldberg machines to thread through optimal routes to new spaces. and yet at the same time, it also gives small, focused levels to sprint through as fast as humanly (hedgehogly?) possible. it brings to mind neon white earlier this year, where each level is short enough to memorize, experiment, retry, dive off a cliff, shave off some seconds... i honestly think the next logical step would be to implement leaderboards much like 'white before it. maybe for the next one. maybe for a patch. either way, it takes the conceptual idea behind "Sonic Level Design" as has been developed in the 2D and then 3D games, but places them in a small enough package to fully digest and iterate on. that's how it should be!!
so you have the promise of sonic the game design, you have the promise of sonic the experience...and the final piece:
big THE cat is back!!!
okay no actually that's not it. the real final piece is the absolute adrenaline of the first major boss fight. i won't spoil it, and like everything else it is JANKY. but!!! (i keep saying this. but!!!!) going head to head against this ridiculous encounter with this ridiculous music and its ridiculous QTEs and the PHASE CHANGE, and the FINAL FINISHING BLOW?? i literally yelled. because sonic is goku, you NEED sonic to just be goku sometimes. you need it!! frontiers understands.
anyway this did end up being a full blog. i'll have more to say once i'm further into the game. but, hey. sonic the hedgehog huh.
