This one hurts.
A quarter-century later, almost nothing has changed Sonic AdventureSega Dreamcast, and five years after the terrible Sonic Forces), everyone’s favorite blue hedgehog is back to break our hearts once again in Sonic Frontiers. Yes, Sonic has taken some time off to be more active. a big-time movie starHowever, he hasn’t forgotten his gaming roots.
With FrontiersSega and Sonic Team were determined to bring 3D to life. Sonic the HedgehogPeople have dreamed of this game for years. It’s a freeform, open-world adventure about the joys of running extremely fast across a vast field without a care in the world. That’s fine. Rest? It’s okay.
Sonic is lovably frustrating. FrontiersIt is no exception. The game, which launches on Nov. 8, is not without merit in its storytelling and soundtrack, but unwieldy controls, bang-your-head-against-the-wall boss encounters, and a spirit of dull repetition mean it might be back to the drawing board Once again for our hedgehog friend.
(Barely). In control
Sonic FrontiersOur hero, along with his friends Tails and Knuckles, travel to Starfall Islands to search for the seven Chaos Emeralds. The initial premise is familiar, but what follows is, to Sega’s credit, pretty novel for the long-running series.
Sonic is separated from his friends, and is forced to search the Starfall Islands in order to save them. After a brief tutorial, Sonic can explore each island in his own order. Each island acts as a mini-open world, with many small activities and few restrictions.
These activities include miniboss encounters and small puzzles that reveal portions of the map when you solve them. This loop involves killing minibosses in order to gather gears that will allow you to access portals throughout each map. These portals can lead to linear, traditional SonicLevels that earn vault keys can be used to obtain Chaos Emeralds. You’ll also have to collect dozens (if not hundreds) of little “memory tokens” scattered around each map to speak to certain characters and advance the plot.
It made an amazing first impression. I’m a sucker for any game that drops me in a big expanse and gives me a fun way to traverse it. And, at first, that’s what Sonic Frontiers delivers. Speedily maneuvering Sonic across the Starfall Islands’ terrain is a basic, cheap thrill, but it works. Although the tasks mentioned are common in video games, zooming around each map to complete them was an enjoyable and relaxing activity. It’s especially awesome when you collect the maximum number of rings you can hold, as Sonic gets an enormous speed boost at that point which makes traversal a breeze.
Unfortunately, that’s about where the fun ends when it comes to controlling Sonic.
You will eventually need to engage precision platforming, either in the open-world or in the linear levels. This is often more frustrating and tedious than enjoyable. 3D Sonic games have always had this problem where you can never tell if you’re supposed to be in control or not. Sonic will run through a big loop or grind a long rail without your input before you’re suddenly back in control. You may lose progress or even die if you accidentally jump out of bounds if you press a button during these unspecified, unmarked moments.
Sonic’s movement is just too loosey-goosey for many of these sequences. It’s not a good thing when the most fun parts of a platformer are the ones where the game rips control away so you can watch Sonic run really fast for a few seconds.
Bohemia from button-mashing boredom
In FrontiersSonic’s base stats are attack, defense and max speed. These can be increased as you do things in the open. Sonic will feel weak from the beginning of the game. The basic combat skills that make the game enjoyable to play are locked behind a skill-tree that can be completed in the entirety of the main story.
Sonic can take a while to become comfortable with combat, and even then every fight quickly becomes tedious. You have a basic attack button to mash out combos, which can be interrupted for a variety of special skills that do a lot of damage and are really the key to victory in later fights. Sonic can do a big spinning kick, shoot multiple kinds of energy blasts, and zip through the air to unleash massive blows to the enemy robots’ faces.
It certainly looks cool at times, but it’s never fun. It’s button-mashing gruel with very little depth or technique, and you have to do It is so abundant!I found that I hated combat more than I thought.
Painful boss fights in both the open world or in scripted story scenes can make this worse. The miniboss fights that take place on the islands can be repeated several times. They last between 30 seconds and several minutes depending on how cooperative the controls are with you. Sometimes, you’ll take damage from an offscreen projectile and be knocked down to ground level during a fight in the sky, or simply clip through the ground and die.
I won’t spoil the specifics of the big set-piece boss fights throughout the main story, but these are somehow even worse. Sonic’s moveset is inexplicably limited by the design needs of each fight and achieving success seems like a roll of the dice in some of them. I spent each one of these fights feeling like I wasn’t truly in control. It’s not a good time.
We are grateful to you for being a friend
Let me be clear: I love certain things Sonic Frontiers.
With There are rare exceptionsEach 3D Sonicgame often has SomethingIt’s worth trying. That’s why being a fan of this series is so frustrating: You can see a good game hidden inside each bad one, trying and failing to break out.
Cutscenes and music are what make this game so enjoyable. No spoilers here, but Sonic and his friends have a lot of very intimate and sincere conversations about their relationships. It’s charmingly self-aware, with characters explicitly referencing levels and even design staples from past Sonic games. However, self-awareness is not a substitute for sincerity.
And heck, there’s even some real-deal lore to flesh out the world of Sonic in here. It may be a maddening game to play at times, but there’s a carrot at the end of the stick for big-time SonicFans, at the very least.
And the music is fantastic. Whether it’s melancholy piano notes out in the open world or delightfully cheesy metal songs with vocals during boss fights, the soundtrack did what it could to spice up the moment-to-moment action.
That doesn’t change the fact that Sonic FrontiersThis is not a very good game. The wonders of the first hour quickly give way to about 12 more hours that range between “kinda boring” and “I want to tear my hair out.”
It doesn’t bring me any joy or pleasure to tell you this.
Listen, I grew-up in a multicultural environment SonicFan and have long longed for an open-world game. Sadly, it just doesn’t work. Big the Cat appears with a fishing minigame. That’s… something. It’s always nice to see the big homie. Sega should give him his own Sega.
Sonic Frontiers zooms onto PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on Nov. 8.
