played a little more than 7 hours for work. it‘s not a bad game—but it is certainly flawed in many earnest, obvious and expected way coming from a first-time interpretation of what an “open zone” gameplay could be for a Sonic joint. the art direction is tepid, the collisions janky, the dialogues just sound plain stupid—but it has tight controls and just a nice, free-flowing feel to it.
the linear first 7 “Cyberspace” levels are ok at best, packing decent replay value but i hope they’ll crank up their length and difficulty later on. it‘s very jarring to switch back and forth between the Starfall islands’ Sonic (customized by the various RPG-type upgrades available) and the more grounded, classic Cyberspace Sonic.
there‘s the start of something there ; something good and different.
plus, the sky is very sega blue. what’s not to like?
I got all high off voting & having a fatass coffee today & wandered into the GameStop across the street (I haven‘t been into one of those in years – the one here in Dallas doesn’t smell like human feces like my local one in LA did, nice!) & just straight-up bought the new Sonic on release day. They had a Boglin on clearance in there (heads up DFW locals) & they really tried to sell me insurance on a brand new Nintendo Switch cartridge, but I just wanted to be part of the zeitgeist. It seems like Sonic Team is trying their best here, & Sega sent me a code so that I can wear the Soap shoes from Sonic Adventure 2, so like what was I supposed to do?
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~(this is now one of two physical switch games I own, alongside an unplayed copy of deadly premonition 2, it just feels right)
I like Frontiers. Only played an hour so far but I think when I get a better sense for what all the various… stuff… actually does and I get a better grip on movement it’s going to be a lot of fun.
first post in a while to just come back to say that Frontiers is pretty chill.
Played five hours, loving the jank. Movement is a bit all over the place sometimes and the fact that not all skills carry over into the stages is a shame but hey! Butt rock Super Sonic fight.
I‘ve been playing for a few solid hours now and I’m loving it so far! It‘s definitely got some jank, but in a really charming, Sega-y, vide-gamey sort of way that’s kind of endearing cause it's Sega.
I love how squirelly Sonic is in the open world. He just flings himself around doing flips and stuff all over the place. And the fact that you can boost and go in a tight circle is wonderful and it feels really good. The way he moves reminds me of a combination of Toei Sonic in the Sonic CD opening and SatAM Sonic, the way you can just zip around everywhere and come to a full stop.
The new, gruff english voice for Sonic is hilarious. He might as well be voiced by Tim Rogers.
@“milo”#p91970 I quite enjoy the way he turns, placing a hand down on the ground for balance before flipping around. All very pleasant.
@"billy "#p91971 Putting on my pedant hat (why here? why now? to what end?) to tell you he has improbably had that voice since 2010
||(do you know you have three spaces at the end of your name? is this some kind of secret? where's my xbox achievement for discovering this)||
@“captain”#p91982 oh! I totally thought they were new. Shows how much attention I give the cutscenes in Sonic The Hedgehog games.
(To your second point, I’m not the original @"billy "#201 - I’m an imposter.)
@“Auberji”#p91961 I think none of the skills that Sonic can unlock on the Starfall Islands carry to Cyberspace. it's like two different characters really, which is a bit jarring. Cyberspace levels have been very lackluster though, to say the least
@“billy “#p91986 FWIW the VA hasn't changed but he is giving a very different performance than usual (which periodically snaps back to something more ”traditional” depending on context, which is odd)
I‘m really interested so far, after about an hour and a half, but this game might honestly be too ugly for me to handle on Switch. It’s like I-don‘t-wanna-hang-out-here ugly on this platform, and that’s a bummer
@“tokucowboy”#p92066 yeah, what i've seen feels like an elaborate set built inside of a warehouse.
This is bullshit.
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@"billy "#p92073 lmao i usually get upset really quickly on these types of puzzles but i thought that one was relatively smart
I‘m only two hours in, but this rules, right? Sonic is actually fun to control, just zipping around is a good ol time. I allowed myself to be optimistic in the lead up to this and it’s somehow been checking all my boxes so far.
I am having such an excellent time, to be honest. I‘m liking it so much that I’m probably going to stop playing the Switch version and do the first four hours over again on PC, because I‘m having so much fun playing the game, I want to have fun looking at the game too (I know the PC version isn’t perfect, but damn, just give me a post-N64 texture, please; I am a huge Switch stan, but this whole “dial the settings down until the textures and LOD are total doodoobutt and the resolution is hardly acceptable” look might be my least favorite video game console aesthetic ever – and it's such a crapshoot, you got Nier over here looking great and this looking hardly like a videogame)
Shortly, it's just a very chill time, though, and it's been all I want to play despite having the worst version of it. Zipping around feels great, and the notion of just solving little scenarios -- not so much puzzles, but situations -- by doing innately Sonic things is a good time. Things like the Cyloop ("drawing" shapes on the ground as you boost for combat and environmental reactions) feel so much more like things Sonic should be doing in a 3D world than a lot of the 3D things he's previously been doing (like being a werewolf or whatever). I've always enjoyed the boost-style levels, and these ones are super smooth -- even the combat works better than it ever has for me in 3D, and the music rules. Like everyone, I wanted the game to look more, ya know, Sonic-like (and that sort of art direction might've been waaaaaaaay more tenable on Switch than what they put out), but I've even come around to some sort of genuine post-ironic enjoyment on Sonic's now 20-plus-year insistence on being simultaneously serious and dumb, simultaneously hyper-derivative (they literally put Koroks in this game, they _barely_ don't call them Koroks) and incredibly of-itself, to where I'm just smiling and lapping up the tone wholeheartedly
Also, the fishing is good.
@“tokucowboy”#p92247 my buddy has been telling me about the game so I went through this thread to find the first person to bring up the fishing. You’re the winner. He had this to tell me:
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Sounds legit. Also apparently you have both the ability to upgrade max speed but also there is just an options in the settings to adjust max speed? Genius.
I agree with your friend – I wouldn‘t have thought to say it has a Nier taste to it, but it kinda does. But not subversive. But it does. It sure is piss easy, and I like that; there’s still a level of unpolished 3D Sonic-ness to it (not as much as usual) that the easiness helps smooth out. The fishing is beautiful and the fish are beautiful (approaching Ace Angler aesthetics) even on Switch. Big is an idiot, he‘s still friends with a frog. I was curious about the speed limit thing, because I just got to where I’m trading in my korok seeds (sorry Sonic Team, it is what it is) to upgrade Sonic‘s speed and was thinking “shit, I already feel fast enough at speed level 1/99, am I just going to be completely out of control at some point?” And that option seems to be Sonic Team’s “solution,” which is not really a solution
I believe I saw @"gsk"#70 tweet something to this effect, about how the game is kind of unwilling to commit to its choices under the guise of accessibility options. In my experience, it's to the extent that it sometimes feels like the game sheepishly presents to you its mechanical ideas, and you can just say NO THANKS WITH THESE IDEAS YOU GOT, SONIC TEAM. I would not say it's clever game design, but I will say that it makes for a very chill time
Tagline by my reporting friend:
“Sonic frontiers is a groundbreaking launch title for the Dreamcast 2 that came out in 2004, and the game we are playing is the HD re-release in 2022.”