VERDICT: A+ even with all its hanging chads

VERDICT--It's okay. Solid C+.

The level design is... hot and cold. There are moments which are fantastic and fun, higher than even Armagon's highs, and visually almost as impressive, especially in the second episode which is all about traveling through moments in time corrupted by the true antagonist, themed with egyptian pyramids, aztec temples, and atlantean frescos, plus the levels are layered and loop into themselves much in the way Armagon and Quake did, but in ways that were more surprising and less obvious. Where the problems arise is another moment where I think the developers thought they were probably being very funny. DoE has a ton of very tight narrow corridors, awaiting you after every door or elevator, which would be fine but disappointing on its own, but these developers absolutely loved placing death knights in each one. Use an elevator, a death knight is basically breaking his nose against yours. Turn a corner in a tight hall way, a death knight is already impaling you. Death knight death knight death knight, right there, with almost no room to back up and god help you if you had a rocket launcher out or no lava nails to deal with them quickly. It got to the point where every time I was turning a corner in a tight hall or using an elevator, I would say to myself "I bet there's a death knight" and I was correct 9 times out of 10. The encounter design could be otherwise great at times but too often was there a death knight just fucking you in an area with no room to escape.

And then there's the dragon. A frustrating bullet sponge of a boss who could instantly kill you just by looking at you. It sucks. Armagon wasn't a great boss by any means, but at least he goes down quick if you just hammer him non-stop.

So I'm torn. I would also recommend you play DoE going in with the expectation that for every extremely cool moment, prepare to be disappointed by two others. So many of the levels here were fun and impressive gauntlets and then so many of the areas are just aggravating.

Also, the music is by the same guy who did Armagon and it got even worse. I think someone told him part of the appeal of Reznor's soundtrack was that it was a lot of ambient soundscapes and the composer didn't really understand that, so now a lot of the music tracks, which are mostly the same style as Armagon's, have random noises in them. One song had constant rapid knocking for 10 whole seconds, for example. Just wooden knocking, like someone banging a door. I earnestly recommend you just mute it.

VERDICT--It's DEATH KNIGHT a DEATH KNIGHT solid DEATH KNIGHT C- DEATH KNIGHT

Environmental storytelling. After auto-piloting through the last half of DoE going into DOPA was a breath of fresh air, like I'd just emerged from a crypt for the first time in years.

Something I saw was controversial was DOPA was actually somewhat limited on giving you ammo and health. In Quake, Armagon and DoE, it was rare if you didn't have more than 25 ammo for all your guns, unless you were a particularly bad shot. DOPA, however, wasn't so generous. It's not so bad that you'll be facing down a wave of enemies with only an axe, but there were moments when I was sweating, wondering if the handful of shells, nails and rockets I had on hand were going to be enough. However, if you're careful with your aim, you'll never run out of ammo for more than one gun at a time, and there's plenty of places where, should you need to, you can just run by and avoid combat altogether and the enemies can't well follow you.

Overall, DOPA feels like a natural extension of Quake, moreso than Armagon and DoE, and it definitely feels like it was designed by person who both loves Quake and knows what fun Quake is capable of. I can't recommend it strongly enough.

VERDICT--Short and sweet A-

The environments themselves are gorgeous. You certainly couldn't run these levels in DOS Quake, but that said aside from the new high resolution skyboxes, they don't feel out of place. The textures are still low resolution and crunchy, there's just more of them used to greater effect on environments which just have more polygons. They are beautiful and immense and vast, and each one thus far has a sense of melancholy and environmental storytelling that is just endlessly impressive. Surprising twists and new themes, awe inspiring and breathtaking. Never have worlds so crowded and dangerous felt so cold and lonely.

Enemy encounters are masterstrokes. Just the right amount of ammo, just the right amount of room to maneuver. Weapons are handed out thoughtfully, and if you feel like there's a weapon you need in a secret, chances are you're right. The limited palette of Quake enemies are used in ways that make each fight feel familiar and different, and never cheap. A rematch with the once woefully easy Chthon, now a true boss encounter in a way that still feels distinctly Quake.

The levels are either huge sprawling gauntlets which loop into themselves or hubs with paths that lead out into individual tasks and meet back up, both a microcosm and macrocosm of the two styles of levels you'd expect from Quake, with an expert's touch. There were times when I felt overwhelmed, but never lost. Every combat encounter I died in was one where I could have simply played better and used the environments better. How Machine Games managed to update Quake without actually updating Quake must have taken a divine spark of inspiration.

We have no need for a Doom 2016 style update of Quake--Dimension of the Machine is better than we could have ever gotten. The love and care MachineGames feels for Quake is apparent and effusive. Absolutely worth buying the Quake remaster for. I could not be more pleased.

VERDICT--A+++++ S Rank FPS Campaign Of The Year And Possibly All Time

Movement

      This is without a doubt the best Sonic has felt to control in 3D in a long time, especially because you can tune it. You can make Sonic go fast all the time and still turn on a dime, or you can make him go slow and steady. His normal movement and boost movement have different speed caps you can set, as well.
      Now, it isn't perfect. Sonic's air control is very weird at points. If you try to change direction mid-jump, Sonic slowly pivots in the air rather than just go where you tilt the analog stick... unless you air-boost instead. That instantly boosts Sonic in the direction like you expect. It's a bizarre choice and one that I was frustrated by, but there's also not many points where I wanted to turn around midjump.
      There's also a distinct lack of momentum. There's definitely some, but the same problem that's existed since the boost era began is here--Sonic stops and starts on a dime. I still think it's preferable to Sonic slipping and sliding all over the place and it's definitely a deliberate design choice given the amount of precision platforming you have to do in Sonic Frontiers--a surprising amount, actually--but I'd be remiss not to point it out. At times Sonic feels very stop-and-start, and at times the game gives you so much freedom to go as fast and agile as you can that it can be frustrating when these two walls crash upon each other.
      But on that note, the precision you have over Sonic is astounding. After getting used to the way he moves in 3D, I was able to deftly swerve Sonic around corners, up walls, across enormous gaps and onto platforms, around pathways with no railing to protect me from falling, all with no trouble and with so much control I was in awe of it at times. "How the hell did I zip and zoom through this segment without falling off and having to start over?" is a question I asked myself a lot. I was so pleased.
      The best example of how tight the controls are is easy to exemplify via the "cyloop", a new ability Sonic has where you draw circles of light. Holding down the cyloop button and running draws a line of light behind Sonic, and drawing an enclosed circle makes stuff happen to whatever is inside that circle on a context-by-context basis, such as launching enemies for air combos or clearing away leaves or activating puzzles. You can draw big circles or small circles and it never feels like you're fighting the controls to do so. You can also draw a figure 8 to activate an infinite boost that persists until you take damage.
      If they can tighten up the air controls and get rid of that stop-and-start feeling with some actual momentum, then they have a real fucking winner on their hands. The versatility of the movement they've created here is incredible, and the best example of that is how the Cyberspace levels feature levels taken from Sonic Unleashed and from Sonic Adventure 2 and both of them feel like a natural fit for the controls.

Combat

      While Sonic can still jump on enemies or homing attack them, he also now actually punches and kicks and does other fancy attacks. This, actually, was the part of the game I was most worried about going in, because Sonic Team has tried this before. In Sonic 06, Shadow had a little combo he'd do after homing attacks that just slowed the game down.
      But here, it actually works really well and I actually had a lot of fun with the combat. Now it's not Character Action Sonic May Cry or anything and if you're expecting that you'll be let down, but there's dodges, a parry, a combo bar, and a bunch of different attacks that you get out of what you put into it.
      The short version: Rapid pressing the homing attack button leads into a short auto-combo string of punches and kicks. Pressing another button in the middle of the auto-combo interrupts it with a finisher move, like for example pressing the cyloop button makes Sonic do a quick cyloop around the enemy automatically, or pressing the stomp button makes Sonic launch upwards and stomp down on the enemy for extra damage. There's also some other moves that have more unique inputs, such as pressing the dodge button and then the homing attack button makes Sonic do a big zig-zag homing attack that does more damage and has some i-frames, or pressing the boost button mid-air and pressing the stomp button makes Sonic do a looping divekick. The sidestep buttons function as a left and right dodge and pressing them both together locks Sonic into a parry stance.
      Additionally, most enemies, even big ones--including the gigantic bosses--can be cylooped, leading to them having extended periods of vulnerability. The bigger the enemy the more difficult it is to cyloop them, however.
      It's not the deepest combat in the world but it's made fun by having enemies that actually interact with you instead of just stare at you menacingly.
      The bosses are basically gigantic versions of this, too. Gameplay lessons you learn from fighting small fry or guardians actually carry over to the boss fights rather than bosses be an entirely different style of gameplay like the Time Eater from Sonic Generations. You can parry them, cyloop them (if you're good enough!) and do all the same moves. This is the first time in a while that bosses have felt like a natural extension of the gameplay and not just a weird race minigame in a long time.

Open Zone

      The meat of the game is undoubtedly the "open zone". I kind of rolled my eyes when Iizuka first dropped that terminology in interviews but honestly it's pretty apt. It doesn't really feel like an open world game at all, it feels more like a mix of Sonic Adventure and Boost-era levels stretched out to fill a huge map. A bunch of little platforming challenges sprinkled throughout an island for you to enjoy or run past at your leisure. I can't really quantify why it works for me, but it just felt fun to look around the map at all this stuff I could play with.
      There's markers around the map indicating there's a puzzle nearby for you to find and solve. These could be hit and miss. There were a handful of repeat puzzles and a lot of the time the puzzles were just "find this thing and cyloop it" or "press these switches". This was the thing I frequently felt the most disappointed by, but at the very least they were never intrusive or were over with quickly so I could get back to doing more fun platforming stuff. My favorite puzzles were easily the "time trial" puzzles. You homing attack a big hourglass to flip it over and the camera either shows you a platform you have to run to or a series of squares you have to run through in sequence. Completing a puzzle rewards you with map information, leading you to the next puzzle and nearby collectables.
      The point of each open zone is to find memory tokens to advance the plot with whichever of Sonic's friends are imprisoned on that island and to find Cyberspace portals to give you keys that let you collect six of the seven the Chaos Emeralds. Once you have six Chaos Emeralds you're lead to the boss of the zone, who holds the seventh Chaos Emerald. Steal it from the boss and you turn into Super Sonic which lets you fight on even footing.
      Also sprinkled throughout the open zone are little creatures called Koco. They're little stone guys who make cute little sounds (to make them easier to find) and have plants growing on them. You trade them to an "elder koco" to level up your top speed or your maximum ring capacity. There's also "red seeds of power" and "blue seeds of defense" you trade to a hermit koco to level up your attack and defense, which are either rewards from puzzles, killing enemies or hidden in destructible boxes. There's not much to say about this because it's exactly what it sounds like. You can level up each attribute up to a max of level 100. They really desperately need to streamline the process for leveling up speed and rings because you can only do it one level at a time for those two stats.

Cyberspace

      Throughout the open zone are "cyberspace terminals" which lead you to a more traditional linear Sonic level, which have their own static set of physics and stats separate from the adjustable and upgradeable ones in the Open Zone. The cyberspace levels range from very short to about 4 or 5 minutes long, and each have four "missions" to do, which are just finishing the stage, finishing the stage in a set time, finishing with a set amount of rings, and collecting five hidden red star rings. These missions each give you a "vault key" for unlocking a Chaos Emerald vault, and completing all four missions in a Cyberspace stage gives you an extra one as a bonus.
      To get it out of the way--most of the Cyberspace stage layouts are reused from earlier Sonic games. To some people this is an egregious, unforgiveable sin. Personally, I don't really care. Following pre-release reactions to this in real-time was funny because, before they noticed much of the level layouts were reused, people complained that the levels looked 'railroaded' or 'automated' and went on and on about how much better the levels were in Generations and Unleashed, and then when they figured out the levels were in fact from those games those complaints mysteriously stopped. This isn't a diss directed at anyone, I just couldn't help but notice it.
      What makes that interesting however is the fact that these stages aren't just reused from the Boost era of Sonic games, but there's also stages from Sonic Adventure 2 in here. And if you ever messed around with modding Sonic games you probably know that taking a stage from Sonic Adventure and slapping it right into Sonic Generations doesn't work, just as the inverse wouldn't work either. One game's gameplay is incompatible with the other game's level design, certainly.
      But here? It does work. As I mentioned before, Sonic controls really well in this game. Sonic's controls now actually fit both styles of play represented in the Cyberspace stages. When you're not boosting, Sonic's movement is tight and responsive (except turning midair, as mentioned, a really unfortunate blemish), even moreso than how he felt to control in Adventure and Adventure 2. While boosting, his boosted movement is just the boost era Sonic, except instead of having to drift, Sonic is now more capable of taking sharp turns without it. It's actually remarkable.
      That having been said, there were some growing pains. The stop-and-start feel of Sonic is felt especially hard in the Cyberspace stages, and getting used to that was rough, especially since the game decides to crash you against the rocks that is Cyberpsace stage 1-2. Eventually I got used to the stop-and-start and ended up enjoying the Cyberspace stages a great deal, but it does feel unnecessarily rigid especially if you use Sonic Generations or Sonic Unleashed as a point of comparison.
      The most annoying part about Cyberspace gameplay is the fact that, as in all boost games, the boost turns itself off after you land from a jump, a spring, or from coming off of a rail, so you have to press the boost button again once one of these things happen, and this is something that tripped up not only myself but also a lot of other people whom I watched play the game. The best example of this is stage 3-6. There's a part near the end where Sonic runs up a spiraling, rapidly crumbling pathway that you need to boost on to outrun, and the level is constructed in such a way that you have to boost in mid-air or hit a spring to cross a gap and reach the crumbling pathway. You have to press the boost button again as soon as you land on the pathway, and if you don't the pathway crumbles out from underneath you and you plummet to your death. Why does the game require you to press the boost button again? It's a button that you have to keep pressed in order to boost, so having to release the button and press it in again over and over just feels unnecessary. In my opinion, as long as the boost button is held, the boost should automatically reactivate as soon as it's able to be reactivated on foot if something necessitates it deactivating. It would contribute a lot to eliminating the "stop-and-start" feeling of the boost gameplay.
      The other thing that makes Cyberspace feel less good than it should is almost all of these problems do not exist in the Open Zone. There's segments of the Open Zone that are essentially laid out like Cyberspace levels, in 2D and 3D both, which feel fantastic to run through, almost completely without the sticky stop-and-start feeling of the Cyberspace stages.
      It's a lot of peoples' least favorite part of the game and I can see why. I did end up enjoying the Cyberspace stages a lot once I "got used to" how they felt, so much so that I cleared all their missions and got S ranks for each one, but there's no reason for them to have their own set of physics compared to the Open Zone when segments similar to Cyberspace levels exist in the Open Zone and feel great there. Again, if they can address the stop-and-start nature of Sonic's movement for the next game they'll have a home run.

Camera

      I think the most frustrating lynchpin throughout my playtime was the camera. It was fine most of the time, but occasionally an object would get between Sonic and the camera and the camera would freak out and snap directly to him and block the thing I was trying to focus on. This could be especially bad during combat, especially when fighting the gargantuan Asura on the first island. I frequently saw people struggling to fight the Asura and get frustrated and give up trying to wrestle the camera into the right position to hit its weakpoints. The Asura is a cool enemy in theory but it clashes with the way the camera works in really unfortunate ways.
      The camera could be especially bad when trying to cyloop the enemies which shield themselves with a metal cylinder.
      I eventually got used to it and learned how to best position the camera so as to avoid these things happening, and even though situations where I had to actually be conscious about where I positioned the camera were rare... I unfortunately can't blame anyone who doesn't want to bother with that and writes the game off due to it. We all have different things we're willing to tolerate in games, after all.

Short version

      The game feels really incredible 90% of the time and then 10% of the time it's like someone grabbing you by the wrist while you're in a full sprint and your legs fly up in the air and you land on your ass. Depending on who you are, that 10% might ruin the game for you, but oh my god that 90% is really something special.

Characterization

      Present in the game are Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Eggman, and newcomer Sage. I'll just run through a quick bulleted list of my thoughts on how they were written.

• Sonic. For a while Sonic was kind of written as an asshole and it seemed like he didn't actually care about what he was doing. He was the protagonist, Eggman was the antagonist, and so they fought as if an invisible force of nature brought them together. In Sonic Frontiers, Sonic is still a wisecracker, but he shows concern for his friends and even when he's constantly interrupted by and has his doom foretold by new villain Sage, he's steadfast and understanding. He tries to reach out to Sage each time and his friendly with her, and doesn't even hold a grudge with her after she summons a giant robot to try and kill him. Later on he can tell something is troubling Sage and pleads with her to let him in and help. He sees the human side in the new villain--a much welcome trait, and one that's ever-present in the IDW comics.
• Amy. For basically her entire duration as a character, Amy was defined by her one-sided obsession with Sonic. It was always about finding Sonic, convincing Sonic to go out with her or marry her, trying to impress him. Her rare moments of agency always related back to him in some way. In Sonic Frontiers, she's her own character for basically the first time, revealing a new motivation to "spread her love with the world", even if that means--gasp!--leaving Sonic behind. Sonic, for his part, encourages her, telling her "I wanna hear all about it when you get back." There's no mean line about Sonic finally being free of Amy or anything of the sort; his friend expressed a new ambition and he's completely supportive of her.
• Knuckles. I could write a book on Knuckles but I'll instead just say that in Frontiers, he and Sonic butt heads like old rivals again and Knuckles is actually smart about things he has a reason to be smart about instead of being completely brainless. It was really gratifying seeing these two interact the way they did and their shared screentime was the highlight of the game for me.
• Tails. For a while, fans have commented that Tails is wildly inconsistent, probably due to the revolving door of story writers the series has had not being sure how to write him. In Sonic Adventure he saves Station Square by himself while Sonic is otherwise engaged, and later in Sonic Forces he cowers in fear against foes he's already familiar with. This is directly addressed! Tails himself asks Sonic if Sonic feels burdened by him, and when Sonic denies this, Tails says he's "wildly inconsistent" verbatim. It's cheeky and maybe could've been integrated into the dialogue more naturally, but I for one am fine with it because it's basically an admission by Sega and Flynn that Tails has been handled poorly and that they want to work to address it. Also Sonic calls Tails his "little bro" a bunch of times and I'm happy about that.
• Eggman. Allow me a moment to gush about Eggman in the IDW comics. In the IDW comics, Eggman rules. He's a proud, brilliant tactician who is funny, menacing, inquisitive, and jovial. He gets into a physical scuffle with an adversary, one of the diminutive animal people like Sonic or Tails, and picks them up by the leg and slams them on the ground one-handed, instantly finishing the fight. And on top of all this he has moments of introspection, whereupon he recognizes his mistakes and moments of squandered opportunity and vows to learn from them. He's a true villain and foil for Sonic and he works incredibly well. And there were shades of that incarnation of Eggman present in this game, especially during interactions with Sage. This is the best Eggman's ever been.
• Sage. Most of what we saw with Sage was very good, though there was a lot of "Sonic asking Sage to tell him stuff and Sage saying no and vanishing". As Sonic and Sage interact more and more throughout the story and Sage sees Sonic defying seemingly impossible odds, there's hints of Sage doubting her supposedly objective simulations which always end in Sonic's demise, with Sage sometimes acquiescing but never fully admitting she's wrong--which started to grow wearisome but eventually flips over into being somewhat inspiring on the final island of the game. There's also a scene where Sage sees Sonic and Tails interacting and learning what familial love is and wishing she could experience it herself someday, which was a fine scene on its own... and then for some reason Sage starts singing a sad song to herself while reminiscing about her very limited time knowing Eggman. The eventual reveal is that, while Sage sees Eggman as her father, Eggman does not yet see Sage as his daughter, upsetting her. That eventually does happen and it's a very sweet plot development and much welcome character growth for Eggman, but the introduction of that plot thread is handled with the subtlety of a sledgehammer thanks to the singing part. Just... just take the singing part out. It would've been fine. However, despite the rough edges, Sage is fantastic and she's a great counterpart to Eggman. Eggman's minions had a tendency to be stupid and cowardly and never question his methods, whereas Sage questions them constantly and Eggman is stubbornly forced to acquiesce due to the fact that Sage is a supercomputer AI who knows better than him and he knows that. It's an interesting and much needed addition to Eggman who was often portrayed as too proud to avoid tripping over his own mistakes.

The plot is good, the structure is bad

      As you can tell I have no end to the praise I can offer Ian Flynn's writing, but as much as I loved it, his writing felt constantly at odds with Sonic Frontiers being an open-ended game. When the IDW writing crew are in control of the pacing, the stories are great and move at an even pace, even when the plots themselves can take a little long to resolve. Each character is given something to do, and if a character isn't seen on screen, they're likely off doing something important--very rarely is a character truly just sitting on their hands. However, due to the fact that Amy, Knuckles, and Tails are rendered incorporeal by the game's events, and due to the fact that by necessity the player is given all the time they want to advance the plot, it's mostly just Sonic solving everything while the other three are stuck waiting for you to talk to them. This does lead to Amy, Tails, and Knuckles having epiphanies about their stagnant character growth, but it's disappointing that they, by necessity, aren't able to do much. In fact, Sonic says that each of them are in fact helping him find the Chaos Emeralds, but that's not even true, as by Sonic's own admission, the layouts of the islands, Chaos Emerald vaults included, are being beamed directly into his memories by the island. (A plot explanation for Sonic having access to a map in this game.)
      Still, even though the structure is a bit of a letdown, the actual plot is very good. It's that earnest but cheesy Sonic Adventure era style again, where the stakes are high and the dangers unknown but still silly Saturday morning Anime stuff. The mysteries of the ancients and the Koco are fed to you slowly enough that I was intrigued and curious the entire time, and once it all came together, I was so entertained.
      If I had ONE complaint about the actual plot, it's that I found it very odd that Sonic and friends were seeing flashbacks beamed to them by cyberspace of the Ancients' memories, who are water creatures like and clearly the ancestors of Chaos, as in the "God of Destruction" from Sonic Adventure... and they didn't freak the fuck out? They didn't even comment on it once. Not even a single throwaway "Wow, they look like Chaos! Are these his ancestors?" line. The only attention drawn to them being related to Chaos is in an audio log by Eggman who figures out that Chaos is a mutated ancient that survived whatever cataclysm wiped out his race, discovered by comparing the ancients' DNA to his, and that's all of the acknowledgement that gets. It's very weird to treat such a cool connection with such little importance. Maybe they were afraid to dwell on it out of concern that it'd be too navel-gazey or cheesy, but come on, that's what we're here for!
      Overall though, between how the characters themselves were written and the seriousness of the plot without tipping the line into grimdark, I constantly had this feeling throughout my playthrough of "Sonic is back!" and "They finally hired writers who care!"

Open Zone

      The music of the open zones are moody and acoustic. Each island's music is split up into movements, which advance once you complete a certain objective, usually collecting one or more additional Chaos Emeralds, and grow more complex with each one. It's definitely a new direction for Sonic and overall I think it works better with the pacing of the Open Zone than typical Sonic music would, but I definitely get it won't be to everyone's taste. To me, it shows the immense level of range Tomoya Ohtani has. The same man who composed "Aquatic Mine" and "Pumpkin Hill" is able to write actually effective acoustic atmospheric music. A particular standout to me was the third movement of Chaos Island. It was rainy and cloudy and a conversation between Sonic and Tails about the islands being devoid of a once thriving civilization fighting to its last breath was hanging on my mind... and then this song just bowls me over with choirs and orchestral hits and deep drums over a contemplative major key piano melody. I was really impressed.
      Similarly, I was also a big fan of the first movement for the Ouranos Island, the final island. It's substantially dramatic, especially given the plot reveals that happen moments before you hear it for the first time, and additionally mixes in some synths and electronic bass, fitting for the game, and it's just a really good song on its own.
      In addition to the islands having their own 'theme', there's also unique music for other events. Occasionally one of Sonic's friends will assign him a quest related to that character's side story on the island, and these are short little mini games that have upbeat big band jazz themes. Fans of the amazing Sonic Unleashed werehog battle music that went entirely too hard will feel right at home. There's a brief pinball segment which uses Sega System 16 bass and instruments in its music, as well as Fantasy Zone whistles, a song that I absolutely adored. Each island island's ambient guardians also have their own themes as well, usually with more than one part too. The big standout for me was the theme for the Fortress guardian on the third island.

Cyberspace

      The music of Cyberspace was composed by Tomoya Ohtani with a handful of new blood who typically make EDM tracks for some of Sega's rhythm games. The variety present in these tracks is actually great and literally every Cyberspace stage has its own song, so there were tons of songs I was really bopping to. I think my overall favorite is Floating in the Blue, but I also really enjoyed Enjoy This World and BMB.
      It'd also be remiss of me not to mention that incredibly chill lo-fi hip hop track that plays when you go fishing with Big. Apparently Tomoya Ohtani loves making this kind of music, so he must be happy he managed to slip one into a major game release.

Vocal themes

      There's seven of them in this game if you count the licensed song, Vandalize by One OK Rock. There are four major boss fights in the game, and each one has a unique vocal theme, and then there's a fifth vocal theme that plays during the credits that's either a new song or Vandalize--I think based on game completion or difficulty played on, I'm not actually sure. I got Vandalize the first time and then got the other one, called "One Way Dream", the second time after I fought the final boss again after getting the last sidequest I missed.
      Anyway, the best way I can describe the boss themes is that they are scream metal pop rock, and one of them also has a rap verse. The lyrics are very edgy but they're also weirdly positive. Check out this bit from the first titan boss theme, "Undefeatable".

It's time to face your fear
'Cause when your time has come and gone
I'll be the one to carry on
And you can throw me to the wolves
'Cause I am undefeatable

I'm hanging on to the other side
I won't give up 'til the end of me
I'm what you get when the stars align
Now face it, you're just an enemy

      I hesitate to say it's bad per se, but scream metal is already a hard sell for a lot of people versus something safe and familiar like the cheesy (and I mean that in the best of ways) Crush 40 ballads we've been singing for 20 years now. I grew to love the boss themes, especially because the lyrics are so fun and earnest, but I don't think I can fault anyone whose cup of tea these songs are not.
      One Way Dream, however, is like a sequel to the Sonic Unleashed theme "Endless Possibility".

Boost your spirit off the ground
I'm a spark that won't go out
We can go much higher now
Gravity can't hold us down
We're only at the beginning of this one-way dream
Ignite dreams to life

      I was grinning like mad at the end of this song. If you showed me this song without context and said "This was going to be the credits theme for Sonic Unleashed before they got the guy from Bowling for Soup to do it" I would've believed you immediately.
      Another vocal theme is the one that plays first when the credits roll, called "Dear Father", "performed" by Sage. It's the lyrical version of the sad song she sings to herself after witnessing Sonic and Tails familial love for one another. It's a sweet little song, and unlike the earlier version of it, its weight and moment are entirely earned. It's still a little out of place, but to be fair, you can say the same thing about Sage herself, but that's why I feel she works so well as a character.
      And finally, Vandalize is a cool song but its lyrics don't really fit the game at all, but then again it's not like that's unusual for a Sonic game or licensed third party music for games in general. I really like the song and was pretty surprised it was relegated to just a credits theme, especially given the song's marketing push.