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Sonic Frontiers
3 years ago
I have only been playing Sonic Frontiers for a little more than an hour but I need to take a break because my face hurts from grinning that entire time.
Games media have really undersold this. I was hearing stuff like "Oh it has it's flaws but there's a solid foundation there if they could just build on it."
No spoilers but this game makes Sonic 06 look competent. Every little bit I have seen so far, each component part of this game, has been bad.
I really hope it'll last, this is the most I've been enjoying a game all year.
Update: I've finished the story and calmed down. I also played a bit of Sonic 06 to compare. Frontiers is not as bad as 06. I guess hype runs both ways and was overamplifying my perspective.
The controls in Frontiers aren't great. They work but they don't feel as good as they could be. The base speed feels a little too slow, the boost speed feels too imprecise for the platforming the game calls for.
Running around the open field feels good but accidently stepping on a spring or boost pad and getting locked into a 2d platforming snippet gets old. The combat feels clunky and slow but is basically ok.
The islands are bland, not helped by the day/night and weather cycles making it all look even more generic. You can tell they were trying to copy Breath of the Wild when they do a blood moon, called a star fall or something, that revives all enemies. As well as the koroks, here kocos.
The leveling system seems to be there for the sake of having collectibles do something, because boy are there a lot of collectibles. But while you could go through every set of floating rails, springs, and platforms to get all the collectibles, you could also get them randomly from enemies, randomly from doing the loop on the ground, and from fishing. Which shows a lack of commitment to exploration, which is probably why they padded things out with the cyberspace levels.
Cyberspace levels are the worst part of this game. They take the models and textures from Sonic Generations, then take a stage layout from a previous Sonic game and apply the former over the latter. And I don't mean they take inspiration from previous games, I mean they copy and paste. But then the cruel twist is that while muscle memory may kick in if you played the stage before, the controls are different (and worse). But unlike in say Sonic Generations where you could hold boost and jump and grind and hit rails and springs and the whole time you would still be boosting, here every action cancels your boost. Jumping stops your boost. Hitting a dash pad stops your boost. You can't boost through enemies anymore and the homing attack has just enough of a recoil after hits to make it feel faster to skip past enemies. If you weren't a fan of the boost gameplay before you are in for a treat when you need to mash boost now to get the same effect. Did I mention that boost is on the right trigger?
Games media have really undersold this. I was hearing stuff like "Oh it has it's flaws but there's a solid foundation there if they could just build on it."
No spoilers but this game makes Sonic 06 look competent. Every little bit I have seen so far, each component part of this game, has been bad.
I really hope it'll last, this is the most I've been enjoying a game all year.
Update: I've finished the story and calmed down. I also played a bit of Sonic 06 to compare. Frontiers is not as bad as 06. I guess hype runs both ways and was overamplifying my perspective.
The controls in Frontiers aren't great. They work but they don't feel as good as they could be. The base speed feels a little too slow, the boost speed feels too imprecise for the platforming the game calls for.
Running around the open field feels good but accidently stepping on a spring or boost pad and getting locked into a 2d platforming snippet gets old. The combat feels clunky and slow but is basically ok.
The islands are bland, not helped by the day/night and weather cycles making it all look even more generic. You can tell they were trying to copy Breath of the Wild when they do a blood moon, called a star fall or something, that revives all enemies. As well as the koroks, here kocos.
The leveling system seems to be there for the sake of having collectibles do something, because boy are there a lot of collectibles. But while you could go through every set of floating rails, springs, and platforms to get all the collectibles, you could also get them randomly from enemies, randomly from doing the loop on the ground, and from fishing. Which shows a lack of commitment to exploration, which is probably why they padded things out with the cyberspace levels.
Cyberspace levels are the worst part of this game. They take the models and textures from Sonic Generations, then take a stage layout from a previous Sonic game and apply the former over the latter. And I don't mean they take inspiration from previous games, I mean they copy and paste. But then the cruel twist is that while muscle memory may kick in if you played the stage before, the controls are different (and worse). But unlike in say Sonic Generations where you could hold boost and jump and grind and hit rails and springs and the whole time you would still be boosting, here every action cancels your boost. Jumping stops your boost. Hitting a dash pad stops your boost. You can't boost through enemies anymore and the homing attack has just enough of a recoil after hits to make it feel faster to skip past enemies. If you weren't a fan of the boost gameplay before you are in for a treat when you need to mash boost now to get the same effect. Did I mention that boost is on the right trigger?
