I shouldn’t enjoy Sonic Frontiers as much as I do, but I do? The game shows off the worst of me on a regular basis, as I transform into a spitfirer screaming into their fists after hitting the tiniest ledge or fighting a gruesome, gruesome boss. Borders are a fun beast – a mess. Still, it’s fun when you carelessly gather your stuff and slide on the tracks and listen to excellent bass and drum music. It’s a playground of the best and worst, so if you want to test your patience with your precious spare time, you simply can’t get better than this.
The game’s story opens with a bang as Dr. Eggman is sucked into this portal, trapping him in Cyberspace (some AI-controlled realm), while Sonic and his friends suffer as well. the same fate (to some extent). There are also these laughing rocks known as Kocos, which appear to be remnants of an ancient civilization that has undergone some form of apocalyptic collapse. Do you have all that down? Good, okay. So anyway, your mission as Sonic is to like, free your friends and help these rockers and stop Dr. Eggman’s nefarious plans.
To stop Dr. Eggman and save the world, Sonic must navigate the “open area” as opposed to the open world, so it’s more like Mario Odyssey than Breath Of The Wild. Your job as Usain Hog is to collect lots of tokens and skill shards and gears to get to The Big Bad of said regions and bring them into the vicinity. Like so many other rated movies, it’s very much a collection, only this time it’s home to Sonic’s signature stagings, packed with snippets that are sometimes hilarious, sometimes confusing, but often thrilling.
The game’s open areas are vast and obscured by the fog of war for the first time, which you can gradually explore by exploring and ticking off simple – and sometimes conceptual – operations. weird – like: reach the glowing pad overnight before the timer runs out, or draw a magic circle around some glowing orbs. As the map’s fog clears, more icons appear in its place, drawing you in for a variety of exciting activities that lead to one of the many collections.
Dotted around the lush green land and Death Stranding-esque slopes, you’ll find ample tracks to slide that lead to bounce pads and swinging sections. And there is a real pleasure to pull them all and hear the coin ding ding ding ding when you pocket any tokens that you gain access to the nearest Portal. You see, that’s taboo. I’m serious! You’d be hard-pressed to find a better virtual space to flip through all sorts of disconnected bits.
However, there is a caveat to the bitty of the game, as it shows you going fast in all directions, to the point where it’s absolutely the direction.less than. Rails and platform bits rarely work in tandem, and usually standalone catapults that will knock you out in any way. When they throw you into another link, it’s an instant dopamine rush brought about by a sense of speed coupled with a smoothness that can’t be simulated anywhere other than in the Sonic game. But more often than not, you can’t pinpoint your location entirely according to your surroundings, which renders areas lifeless. Soft music and robotic squid flying aside, completely dependent on your map means they come to life like monkey bars in your local playground.
And as soon as you decide that you’re too upset and want to go somewhere specific, doing so can be very difficult. There can be a Chaos Emerald perched atop a cliff that’s only accessible by a single rail suspended in the sky, so it becomes a nasty hunt for a booster pad that won’t throw you in the opposite direction. All of this isn’t helped by the strong pop-in when going out, with obstacles usually only appearing gradually if you get close enough.
Usually you’ll plug in Portal Gears that you find by hitting bosses into Portal Towers, which will take you to Cyberspace levels that are completely separate from the open world. These levels are more like traditional Sonic levels, either full 3D, 2D side-scroller, or a combination of the two. And almost all of them that I’ve played highlight the game’s jank, but they’re also fun if you accept the odd camera angles and depth perception struggles. First, the music moves from the melancholy, relaxed open-world feel to an upbeat musical melody, drums and bass, and soothing melodies that elevate the tempo. Sega, please download that album on Spotify. Congratulations.
Plus, the Cyberspace levels also give you 4 things, each of which will reward you with the Vault Keys you need to get to the next collection on the Frontiers tier list. You – quite literally – have to go as fast as you can to earn an S rank, or collect all the red coins scattered around the levels, among a few other things. These add more replayability to the proceedings, and because each level is quite unique, you almost always have a fun getaway.
What’s less fun are the boss fights, which I consider a necessary evil. Again, like the levels on Cyber, they accentuate the nature of the game but in the worst possible way. Supposedly there are some fun ways to defeat bosses, such as one whose legs contain blue boosters that form a quick path to their vulnerable head – if you Can dodge the red ones that will knock you back. Unfortunately, each battle against a major bad point highlights Sonic’s inaccuracies in the really crucial moments, instead it highlights the game’s sharp edges when trying to Adjust the battle with fast and fast platform.
And when you defeat these Titans and move from one area to another, things don’t change much. Every time you drop yourself on one map and suffer another collection, certainly with some tweaks to Sonic’s scaffolding, but nothing really pushes him beyond its boundaries. This means you can repeat if you’re after any significant changes to a routine that won’t budge.
Conclusion: Sonic Frontiers is a really weird video game. Don’t set your expectations too high and it’s a fun time walking around some of the open areas. However, it’s an incredibly frustrating and extremely dull experience if you want to give Sonic some urgency and get him from point A to point B precisely and on purpose. In many ways, it’s a great foundation for a sequel, as there’s so much potential here that it only takes a little tweaking to take Sonic from simple to transcendent.
