Sonic Frontiers - 4.5/10
Sonic Frontiers is the newest game from our favourite funny little guy, Sonic from Hedgehog. Following the general failure of the last mainline sonic, Sonic Forces (a name that is too similar to Frontiers for comfort imo), which was I think the first mainline game I straight up didn't play, Sonic fucked off and let us all marinate in Sonic Mania, or to bathe in the bubbling hot sauce of filmed movie.
Sonic has always beeeen one of those game franchises that has a weird relationship with the movements and development of the rest of the industry. It's like the inverse, unfortunate counterpart to Pokémon's never-ending success; Sonic team only takes notes from other games when they randomly get in the mood to, then discards most of that next game.
Where Pokémon infallibly attracts an audience through this, Sonic has always come out the other side of Sonic Team's random whims weaker and weaker for it, always trying to reset, change everything around, and try to be bigger. Sonic, the franchise, is defined by the ever-growing chip on its shoulder.
So where Pokémon's rough transition into Open World felt vaguely surprising and like the overextension it ended up being, for Frontiers, it feels a little more like you could see it coming, and a little more like they knew how to make it.
I don't know if that leaves us with a good game or not. It's still a weird, isolated little fucked up creature of a beast, with controls that don't quite work and an obvious lack of finish.
But at least it feels like I'm playing a video game. At least I am picking up the controller and ending up engaged enough to finish it. It feels like they made the game they wanted to make, made (and, crucially, written) with a clear concept of how to get to the fun zone. Sonic still has a lot of little points of weirdness weighing it down... But, if they keep going in this direction, the franchise finally has some momentum to go forwards on.
It's amazing how they don't make games with post-games anymore. Not because there isn't ongoing content to keep playing after the credits, of course. Theres plenty, entire open worlds full of blips on your map to blip off.
But, see, that's not the postgame, thats just the... Game. That's just stuff you could have done already, but you just didn't get around to doing in favour of story missions. You, the player, are the only one in control of the game's pace. There's the implication that some stuff is more important, but you're also supposed to do most or at least some of the other stuff, right? It's the open world experience you paid for, after all.
Its a weird dynamic, pressuring you into the directorial seat of the finished game that you paid to play. It's kind of my big issue with quite a few of the current upswell of open world games that someone learning UE4 way back in 2014 birthed off of a monkey's paw.
So, Sonic Frontiers doesn't have that much content, whiich i'm more or less glad for. There's plenty to collect, plenty of little obstacle courses to put Sonic through, but only so many types of collectables, all easy to grind through in terms of quantity. The obstacle courses aren't really unique enough that I gotta do em all or I'll feel I'm missing out.
Buuut that means the game can feel kind of sparse. Other than the primary story-progression and a few extra Memory Token scenes, theres like, one collectable that's actually of any importance, has any meat to it -- and you get it through the fishing minigame.
Everything is just a collectable that unlocks another collectable. There is something refreshing about it being easy to just get things by playing normally, and there's a nice flow where you do one type of gameplay to get the thing to go onto the next, cycle back, repeat and so on.
Well, beyond just the story collectables, I'm sure unlocking the levels was supposed to feel exciting too. But it's probably for the best its easy enough to get everything you need, 'cause that drive just isn't there, because, well, the levels have this little problem of mostly being extremely fucking bad.
(and also I played a third of them in generations already lmfao)
And that story content, while fantastic for Sonc Hedgehodg, half consist of spartan cutscenes of models just standing around, which doesn't help. Underbudget one-and-done, generally underwhelming main boss fights disconnected from the rest of the game don't help -- though, I seeee how they were trying to make those work and tie them into the mechanics set, and I really wish they got the time/resources to fully realise those setpieces.
The third island doesn't help with that. Just, like, in general. The game lacks polish, flair, and presentation, in gameplay and especially in story.
But once I got past the underwhelming opening, and before the underwhelming ending, the core gameplay loop -- runnin through and doing bite-sized, tasty bits of platforming to unlock character-focused cutscenes -- pleasantly surprised me. It finds its footing for a period of time after that glib opener. The narrative you'll hear from pretty much all corners on this game is that, yknow, with Sonic's reputation by now, it's an actual triumph we have a pretty OK sonicker.
But it makes me wonder, what if this game was half as long, and then they just crammed everything else they could get done by release date into a post-game island? No need to do high-effort cutscenes at all, dialogue, any of the other little extra costs you could cut corners on. And then the rest of the game can just be... A game, a single cohesive experience from start to finished. Not these disjointed islands of core gameplay bracketed by long periods of half-realised fluff.
You don't see that in open world games. You like, never see that in open world games, and im not sure why not. Whats the advantage of crammin it all in there as early as possible, other to distract the player with undercooked content (compared to the main plot)?
Well, it's for exploration's sake, I suppose. The vastness of the world is it's own reward. But it's played out, we all know it's played out by this point. And in Frontiers' case... despite being a game about sonic running around very pretty environments, theres not, like, much to explore or anything. You're just running around point to point, unable to see anything in the distance for the lack of draw distance. The later islands even moreso.
So the open world coulda been better, coulda been worse.
They know what people want from Sonic, they clearly clearly do -- and that's the first time it's felt like that's true for a looong time.
(Not counting mania because, well,)
That alone is exciting for the franchise. But the game isn't actually, like, good. It falls below average.
As Sonic's narratives get better, the boost-era gameplay gets incrementally, inevitably worse. Physics feel off in the level sections, your moveset feels deeply, fundamentally incoherent in the 3d sections. Sometimes you're magnetized to the ground, sometimes you go flying off a random rock a mile into the air, sometimes you can't Cyloop properly over the slight variations in ground terrain.
Fewer options and even fewer viable options. One criticism I see surprisingly little, but is literally inescapable, is that almost every single piece of platforming in this game is in some way on rails. You don't duck and weave onto a side-platform and feel smart for doing so, or if you do, it feels weirdly hard to do, slippery, 'cause those are usually in the level sections. In the overworld, you basically never see opportunities to skip ahead or go to a side-section unless you're literally sequence breaking.
Well, sequence breaking and speedrun tactics have always been de-facto encouraged in our ol' guy Sonc, buuut this moveset doesn't feel like it makes any of that intentional or feel like I was being slick. I'm just fighting the game to go fast in any way other than running across blank open fields.
I finished it, though. It's sincere, it draws you in, at least if you like the characters already. The final boss is the most interesting sonic villain thing in a while, and it also sucks. The core gameplay loop is really quite good when it's not bad, though it'd be nice to have a wider variety in platforming. The combat's kind of cool, if extremely easy and, well, very stilted and un-sonic.
Oh, also, why dont you keep moving while parrying, especially if there's no timing difficulty? Why aren't all the moves alterations to your movement in some way? Most of them would fit as is if they were just snappier. Are you scared people will sequence break with it? Because I legitimately don't care.
That alone would bump up this game, like, two points.
i guess it's true what they say... Soncic doesn't . What nitnendogs.
Play it if you like blue hedgehog video games already, or you want to see one of these Nintendo Hired That Man open worldsers breath of the wildsemups that actually plays pretty well. But don't expect the issues modern sonic has always had to be too much less present just 'cause people say this one is better.
mostly just rechogging this for the mashup at the bottom :3