Am I a glutton?i can’t stop thinking or playing sonic frontier Now though it has some pretty heavyweight competitors vying for my attention (including some high profile reviews). I’m enjoying the other games I’m working on – a lot, in fact. But man… Sonic Frontiers has something. Some useful stuff, even if the game is kind of rubbish.
Playing Frontiers on Steam Deck and a high-spec PC with an Nvidia RTX 4090 for the past few days, I totally understand why Sega pulled back on a classic protectionist PR move, telling iGamesNews it doesn’t have any early review code left for the game, even though we know colleagues Been enjoying the game for a whole week already. This is natural PR stuff: look at outlets to see who might be censoring, and if you anticipate you might get kicked, maybe quietly don’t send them the game. Or, at least, delayed sending. Finally, Sega gave us a Nintendo Switch code a few hours before the embargo was lifted. very fair.
Tom has his own list of issues with the Switch version, mostly about how that version of the game is optimized (or not, really) – but the truth is, Sonic Frontiers is plagued by a million and one issues even on top-spec PCs . but you know what? It’s… kind of unimportant? The game itself…is it fun? OK? participate? Addicted? Add clichéd gaming catchphrases of your own choice here.
Here’s the thing about Frontiers: It’s kind of like the world’s best proof-of-concept demo? Regardless, one of the best. The core of the game, its flow and feel, is massive. Its eerily empty Death Stranding open world actually serves a brilliant purpose, as its expansive and sparse nature means that, in the 3D era, Sonic has room to run at full speed in free-form fashion. There have been a few Sonic fan games in the past that have used this concept, but Sega-developed games have always either focused on highly choreographed high-speed stages that reward twitch responses and muscle memory, or by slowing down the blue blur, usually by using trash friends Or stupid sickness dragged him down.
Borderlands has none of that. You can use tools all over the world, and at best travel around, complete silly little puzzles and fight weird enemies, it feels a bit like running through a tightly designed Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater level – weird comparison ,I know. While the open world looks empty at first glance, there are few triggers and activities here and there. Many of these campaigns aren’t all that dramatic, but Frontiers is the definition of a game in the sense that it’s more than the sum of its parts. The open world is so compelling, the fact that the more traditional “Ascension” stages (represented here as “Cyberspace” levels, somewhat recycled from other games) is a bit of an afterthought and distracting. In other recent Sonic games, these are some of the best parts of the game. Not so here.
So what makes Frontiers feel like a tech demo? Well, check it out. I’m not talking graphics here either (they’re not great, but the game does have to load geometry quickly when Sonic is moving fast, so I forgive it). I’m talking about these weird, realistic-looking world biomes populated by more fantastical enemies, Sonic, and friends. None of these biomes matter either – they just feel like skin swaps. A pile of leaves in a verdant green field will be replaced by a small sand dune in the desert. Regardless, a lot of the level geometry you interact with is the same in every biome.
So you take this relatively stable desert terrain and populate it with millways and metal platforms and redirecting shooters and springs and all kinds of other stuff. These elements are fairly natural to Sonic, who has his roots in recreating the pinball feel, but in most of his past outings, these elements have been rooted in world design and logic. Here, they just spit on the world, used the same way in every biome. For example, no one has tried to prove that desert-grade grind rails are vines or wood. That’s even what Sonic Adventure 2 does. The metal track just spawned and floated in mid-air.
I think that’s why Frontiers often looks a little pantsy in pre-release screenshots – you look at Sonic overlooking an open world, only to see a bunch of junk floating in the distance. It’s important to contextualize platform fun, but none of that is here. It almost feels as if the developers reasonably thought it was a total waste of time. Those cyberspace planes also push this to the bone because they have a colorful world that is comical but still logical. In the main game, you’re in dark, flat biomes with little internal logic. But I guess it does look cool when you get around those haphazard looking springs and rails. Then you end up back on the ground and look up and it looks stupid as hell.
In fact, that’s what really breaks the game for me. I could fly through the world and fall to my death, or physics glitches randomly destroy your momentum, or force poor Sonic to fly into the sky. I can even understand how inconsistent the lockup feels, even the aggressive popping on a PC powerful enough to melt a person’s face. This is mainly because what the game presents is quite compelling in a raw gameplay sense. Still, the way the world looks confuses me. It looks unfinished – like they fell into rails and springs to build a satisfying layout, plan to build logical geometry around these traversal elements, and then just… forget.
Part of Sonic has always been about going with the flow: if you can’t accept him in his labyrinth area, then you don’t deserve to accept Sonic in his astral area, after all. I guess there wouldn’t be an Emerald Coast without 10 damn Emerald Hunt levels. But Frontiers takes that mantra to the extreme. Good is good, bad is… so bad.
This added fuel to my overall feeling about the game, which surprised me as much as anyone: It felt like Sonic Team had finally cracked it. For the first time since Sonic Adventure, I really felt the excitement and exhilaration of modern 3D Sonic the Hedgehog gameplay. it works. I’m fine with that. I have no intention of letting it go.
But at the same time, what’s presented in Frontiers feels like a first try at these ideas.It feels like there’s a kernel inside real Great game here. Instead, what we got was great ideas with very moderate execution. It’s one step forward, two steps back. But I feel more positively about Sonic than I have in years (except for Mania). I look forward to the sequel running with what they’ve built here. In the meantime, consider the recommended Sonic Frontiers – if you have the patience to deal with its shortcomings.
