My two Big Gripes about Frontiers so far is that the Open Zones are really uninteresting looking at the moment, and I wish the game would stop dropping everything for a dramatic pause to show me a boss name for a boss I already encountered several times.
I find it really funny that from a functional standpoint, CRT monitors were likely replaced with bubble capsules so you could see the item in them from all directions when Sonic made the transition to 3D, but here in this sort of bland world, the item capsules you're breaking for rings and power up items are just crates. Wood crates, slightly harder metal crates, but crates. Can't see anything in them now until you break it! So why crates?? Not saying it needs to be monitors again, but it really is a bland choice in a world that largely isn't really wooing me in any way visually.
All that said, it's the best controlling 3D Sonic I've played in a while, and the little mini games and jungle gyms laid out in the open zones are pretty entertaining and laid back. The dead stop when you let go of the controls is a little jarring, but does make for some more predictable precise platforming if the camera doesn't decide to get in the way. I do kinda wish there was a follow through animation for it though rather than a full stop in motion and full stop on any animation. Sonic still does a kick slide instead of a spin dash which never stops looking weird, but at least there's a drop dash and it does feel nice, especially rolling down hill.
It feels like a prototype that just kept going into being a full game without much iteration. Lots of ideas being tried out, but no real big focus on anything in particular. Sonic Frontiers is sort of presenting me with a plate of stuff and kinda shrugging its shoulders while moving it closer to me as if to say, "Hmmm? Yeah? This look good to you? Oh okay! How about... uhh, this one?" I'm into the idea of this being a tool box for a more focused, iterative game later. That might not ever happen, but it's nice to think about.
I‘ve been playing Sonic Frontiers. It’s pretty janky and feels unfinished in places. I'm enjoying it.
The visual design is my biggest criticism. Almost everything is more boring than it should be. @"JJSignal"#69 summed it up nicely with the Crates being boring and out of place, and incredibly unsatisfying to break. You don't even have to smash them, they just fall apart when you walk toward them.
The fake koroks are pretty rubbish. They're worse than Chao, Koroks, and even Tims from Balan Wonderworld. sometimes stepping on one 'collects' it, but sometimes you just walk through them.
Thankfully I'm fully prepared for a bumpy experience with a bad game. I also spent a good while with Roblox Sonic Speed Challenge earlier this year, so I feel prepared.
Edit: I'm playing on Steam Deck. I also tried it on my beefy PC with 3080TI etc but the higher detail doesn't do the game any favours, so I'll probably just stick to the 30fps 720p version.
(This is not a resposne to the above posts, or anyone‘s criticisms after the release of sonic frontiers, it’s an “I told you so” moment referring to a post I made back when Frontiers was first revealed and everybody was hating)
Just wanna say that I called it-- everyone was hating on sonic frontiers big time, way too early to make such a call, and it turned out to be very good, according to those who have played it (I have not).
Like I said it could have had the potential back then to deliver an experience like "playing the sonic cd intro", I think it may deliver that kind of an experience at times.
I'm not a fan of 3D sonic much anymore, and open world fatigue hit me two generations ago, so I'm definitely not white knighting for the series or this game in particular, (this game is not for me) the point I wanna get across is reminding everyone to chill out and stop dogpiling, being hypercritical too soon of every game reveal.
@“treefroggy”#p92408 well, I made a post a while back saying that making a bad initial showing and then exceeding expectations was a marketing strategy for sonic since the first live-action movie. if people don‘t dogpile, then they’ll defeat that marketing strategy.
My favourite thing about the game is that I agree with all of the criticism. </s>[This ‘1 star’ review](https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/sonic-frontiers-review-ps5/)<e> is very damning, and the points made are valid. Nevertheless, it doesn’t detract from what’s fun here.
I'm here for whoever is hating on the game now, but I just thought it was weird to dogpile something for looking like a tech demo when that is the stage it was at
I tried to replay Sonic Adventure 1 this summer after blasting through every 2D sonic game, and realized it's always been painful
@“treefroggy”#p92501 i agree. i slurped up SA1 and SA2, but it was actually the last level of 2 that made me realize i hadn‘t been having a good time and it was, interestingly, because i really enjoyed that level. i was like, oh yeah, this is what fun’s like.
@“pasquinelli”#p92505 watching that video i realize one thing it has going for it is you're always looking down on the rails. something about the doodle in the sky look is off-putting to me.
I don’t think I have ever received such a wide spectrum of opinions from friends and acquaintances on the same game simultaneously. I got questions about hardware makers’ customer services’ policies for refunds in the same breath as friends genuinely wondering whether this game could get some prizes at the end of the year. Definitely one of the most divisive and de facto interesting releases of the year.
My own impression is they stumbled into the right formula and need to be given two more years to polish it into a genuinely great game. Surprisingly, they seem closer to have solved the open world part than the now frankly outdated Sonic Colors-style linear stages. The half-derisive BOTW comparisons were obvious on the surface but the structure of Sonic Frontiers’ open world is actually closest to the different activities in last year’s [Bowser’s Fury](https://youtu.be/jB3RObyR9Qg). I wish Sonic Team would find a way (i.e. be given more time) to make these activities more cohesive with both the world being explored and each other.
I am frankly surprised the janky as fuck graphics are not causing more uproar. Makes sense that a place like Insert Credit would be able to look past it, but I would have expected the God of War-targeted masses to raise pitchforks. Maybe Elon Musk is a huge Sonic dork and elaborated a $44Billion trash fire masterplan to turn away Twitter’s attention from discussing and sharing regrettable draw distance videos.
@“chazumaru”#p92536 I think “stumbled” might be exactly right, and I wonder if two more years of refinement might actually have sucked all the charm and fun out. A polished version of this game might have seemed soulless and dull.
This is a clone more blatant than any in recent years and _I don’t care_. I’m having a good time.
Interesting thing to look at and think about:
https://youtu.be/DcqwFtF3lxU
The Zelda DLC for _Lost World_ predates BotW by a couple of years and actually does look quite a bit like Frontiers if you squint (not that they didn’t also steal a bunch of BotW stuff).
I did end up returning the Switch version and going with the PC version (so some credit to GameStop, I guess, it was good I had that impulse rather than buying digitally as I usually do and just being out $60). The plan was a success, as I‘m now also enjoying looking at the game while playing it. Valid art direction qualms aside, I do think it’s a nice looking (not on Switch) game, with egregious pop-in (which doesn‘t bother me somehow, I think because of how explicitly game-y this world is). John from Digital Foundry did a video on it, and I jell with a whole lot of what he says; @“chazumaru”#146, he even mention’s Bowser's Fury, which is funny because earlier that day I was thinking of Mario Odyssey while playing it, despite the overt Breath of the Wild dressing (and god darn koroks). It is far less exploratory and more of a large but contained playground full of very many little situations
Speaking of those situations, I think it's fair to say that, especially in terms of how creatively the game gets you from one place to another in the open zones, some real credit is due. It's easy to fall into the rhythm of "oh Sonic Team, there you go again" (and they do go again! it's interesting how many of the problems the game has are exactly the same problems Sonic Adventure had, or even exactly the same player telegraphing problems you'd find in 2D Sonics). Some of those grind rails in the sky are connected and traversed in some wildly fantastic and creative ways, though, and that's really...really Sonic
Also, an immaculate detail: when Sonic goes wildly careening off a cliff and into the ocean -- like he's been doing since Sonic Adventure -- the voice actor just does the most naturalistic little "ope" laugh sometimes. It's like 20 years of flying off the screen for no reason encapsulated in jovial defeat. It's exactly the sound I've been making when Sonic weirdly zooms out of bounds since 1999. Sublime
I finished Frontiers over the weekend, then went straight through the arcade mode. I love it. It's flawed but it might just be my favorite 3D Sonic game now. Had an absolute blast despite some of my gripes in my previous post. The boss name thing is less troublesome in later islands, and island 2, 3 and 5 have glimmers of areas that made me say, “Oh! This does look like a Sonic game!”. I put it down after finishing the arcade mode, and just kinda wanted to pick it up again and get any challenge spots I missed on some previous islands.
A thing that also helped was this mod that replaces Sonic with Fighters Sonic. It rules.
https://twitter.com/jjsignal/status/1591951093667594241?s=20&t=NQ8GTcg9ej-s4UAcN2aOBg
Kinda wish there was a music player for the open zones, but whatever. Great game. Shockingly better than expected.
the one thing that makes me think maybe some day I should order a ridiculously expensive PC is how you folks can go STRAIGHT to playing with mods right away
@“connrrr”#p92947 They’re still around! You can indeed play Sonic Frontiers through a Sonic Frontiers amp (although they changed their name to Anthem a while back).
