---
title: "My review of Sonic Frontiers"
date: 2022-11-25
series: reviews
tags:
  - sonicFrontiers
  - sonicTheHedgehog
---

[Sonic Frontiers](https://frontiers.sonicthehedgehog.com/) was released recently
and I've got a lot of thoughts about it. I think that it's a good game with
implementation flaws, but overally it's probably one of the best takes on the
Sonic formula that Sonic Team has done in years. Overall, I give it an 8/10
score on that arbitrary scale that you expect from reviewers. Here's why:

## Sonic Adventure 2

I've always been a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog since I was exposed to it on the
Nintendo Gamecube with [Sonic Adventure 2:
Battle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Adventure_2). The Sonic game series
is built on the foundation of high-speed momentum-based gameplay. This has been
accented by the latest and greatest technology, allowing you to _run faster than
the camera can scroll_. Over the years, Sega and Sonic Team have been _so
successful_ with this basic formula that Sonic The Hedgehog is about as famous
as Mario from Nintendo.

<XeblogConv name="Mara" mood="hacker">
  Fun xe iaso dot net cinematic universe lore: The main YouTube channel
  associated with this blog is so old that it dates back to when YouTube let you
  set your own top-level URL off of YouTube.com. That channel's YouTube URL is
  [youtube.com/shadowh511](https://youtube.com/shadowh511). The `shadowh` is a
  reference to [Shadow the
  Hedgehog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_the_Hedgehog), one of the main
  characters in Sonic Adventure 2.
</XeblogConv>

<XeblogPicture path="blog/213610_20221117071425_1"/>

Sonic Adventure 2 is nowhere near a perfect game. It has numerous flaws in its
camera control and I don't know if it would review very well if it was released
today. The version I've been playing for years [on
Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/213610/Sonic_Adventure_2/) only got a
MetaCritic score of 60 [for the Xbox 360
version](https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/sonic-adventure-2). However,
the Steam reviews are overall "Very Positive". I love it. It's one of the games
that I go back to time and time again because I like it. It's in my top games of
all time.

## Sonic Forces

Now with that in mind, let's take a look at one of the most recent 3D Sonic
releases: [Sonic
Forces](https://store.steampowered.com/app/637100/Sonic_Forces/). Sonic Forces
was released in 2017 and was the first sign of the "Sonic Cycle" being broken.
Here are the steps in the Sonic Cycle:

- New Sonic game teasers/trailers get dropped, people say it's going to be
  Sonic's comeback
- Hype is generated as more information is released, people start getting
  optimistic that this may actually be the comeback of Sonic the Hedgehog
- First reviews of the game drop and they are _terrible_, the fanbase rallies by
  saying that reviewers are bad at games and can't rate Sonic games accurately
  (this is actually unironically the truth)
- The game drops and everyone's optimism is shattered instantly
- Some people look back at older Sonic games that they hated upon release and
  then realize that there's something good there

The place where the Sonic Cycle was creaking at the seams was that last bit. I
cannot see a world in which Sonic Forces is seen as actually being genius in the
future. Sonic Forces is objectively a terrible game, but the reasons why are
very hard to demonstrate without video. Here is a video of me playing the first
level of Sonic Forces:

<XeblogVideo path="blog/sonic-forces-level-1" />

Scrubbing through the video and from my memory of playing through the level,
here are the sins that I see:

- The first sin is that it's Green Hill Zone. Sonic team has been overusing the
  asethetics of Green Hill Zone since it was very popular with Sonic
  Generations. At some level, this makes sense from a color theory standpoint.
  Sonic is blue and that contrasts very well with the greens, browns and oranges
  of Green Hill Zone. It's just that we've seen this aesthetic _so goddamn much_
  over the years. I'm getting sick of it.
- It's worth noting that I chose the "yes I have played a Sonic game before"
  difficulty in the menu. I'm still forced to read a help box that explains core
  mechanics of the game series that haven't changed since the first game on the
  Genesis.
- It's not demonstrated very well in this video, but those enemies that I
  boosted through _do nothing_ when Sonic is _standing right in front of them
  doing nothing_. At some level I get it, this is the _tutorial level_ and it
  attempts to explain the game mechanics in an interactive way, probably a bit
  like how Super Metroid has an invisible tutorial at Ceres Station. But overall
  it's just a bit bland to have enemies that _do no damage to you_. This should
  have been a bad omen for me.
- Sonic and Tails _won't shut up_. This makes sense from a story standpoint, but
  I am replaying this level. The story is irrelevant to me at the moment.
- The homing attack reticle shows up _constantly_, even when it's irrelevant
  from a gameplay standpoint. Sonic cannot homing attack unless he is airborne.
  Showing the reticle like that constantly is just insulting to the player's
  intelligence. I can tell there's an enemy there. I don't need to be told that
  constantly.
- The level appears to have multiple paths, but it's ultimately a dichotomy of
  false choice. The route that I went through is one of the fastest. I also
  barely did anything but jump and hit the boost button. I set a record for the
  fastest playthrough of that level on my save file. I wasn't even trying.
- The level is over in a minute. Most levels of the game are like this.

The game doesn't get much better from there. The first level in Sonic games is
usually notable at being the most polished from a QA testing standpoint and in
the Sonic fanbase we've come to see the quality of the first level as an omen
for the quality of the rest of the game. This gave bad vibes.

The website How Long to Beat is a good benchmark for how long it will take to
complete a game's main story and side content. [They
estimate](https://howlongtobeat.com/game/44859) Sonic Forces to take about 4
hours. My first playthrough was _three hours long_. At a $40 game, that was an
absolutely awful value for the money. I encountered a bunch of weird bugs and
glitches on the first playthrough too, after consulting with experts we realized
that the PS4 version was actually the most stable one (and probably was their
primary target when developing the game), so I grabbed a copy of that from the
Playstation store and _started my playthrough over three levels in_ and _I still
beat the game in 3 hours_. It is not a long game by any stretch of the
imagination and playing through it again leaves you feeling empty and sad that
the series has stooped to this level.

Going into it, I knew that Forces was going to be a _garbage fire_ but I didn't
expect the garbage to go supercritical.

<XeblogConv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">
  I also _just know_ that somewhere out there there's some kid that had Forces
  be their first Sonic game that made them fall in love with the series and that
  will be the standard that they rate future Sonic games against much like I did
  with Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. This feeling makes me have weird thoughts
  about nostalgia.
</XeblogConv>

Oh, I forgot this initially, but Sonic Forces was actually tied into another
game released that year, [Sonic Mania](https://store.steampowered.com/app/584400/Sonic_Mania/)
Sonic Mania is an _absolute gem_ of a game. It takes the formula of classic 2D
Sonic games (like Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles) and modernizes it without
losing out on the aspects of Sonic that people love. It was a love letter to the
Sonic fandom and the classic 2D Genesis games that is worth picking up and
playing to this day. It was tied into Sonic Forces by a story MacGuffin that is
ultimately not really worth mentioning because of how badly it was used in
Forces. It was also the excuse for Sonic Forces to add "Classic Sonic" style
gameplay to the mix.

<XeblogConv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">
  Don't play Sonic Forces. Not even ironically.
</XeblogConv>

## Sonic Frontiers

By this point, most of the people I know that liked Sonic were anything but
optimistic about the future of the mainline 3D Sonic The Hedgehog series. With
games like Forces and [Sonic Lost
World](https://store.steampowered.com/app/329440/Sonic_Lost_World/) coming out,
who can blame them? It was looking like Sonic Team was utterly devoid of new
ideas and that they would continue to slowly fade into irrelevance as each
release continued to be worse than the previous one.

I don't think this is going to be the case with Sonic Frontiers. Sonic Frontiers
is actually good. Here's some footage of my favorite level in Sonic Frontiers,
1-7:

<XeblogVideo path="blog/sonic-frontiers-1-7" />

As you watch that, take a moment to really let the flow sink in. Sonic has a few
basic moves: jumping, attacking, boosting, and sliding. Every one of these
actions is on separate buttons. Attacking while jumping gives you a homing
attack. Boosting makes you go fast, but in the air it becomes an air boost.
Sliding in the air becomes a stomp, and holding the slide button makes it into a
bounce. Everything flows together from there. This is a stark difference from
games like Sonic Forces or even Sonic Adventure 2 where multiple actions are
shoved on the same button (jumping and doing a homing attack are the same button
as well as an "everything button" that is either to do context-sensitive things
in Sonic Adventure 2 or the boost button in Forces).

Even though I had to _drastically_ relearn how to play Frontiers compared to
past games, it just _flows_ so nicely. This is how Sonic should control. This is
how you should play these kinds of games. I feel like I am _in control of Sonic_
without the engine janking me around through scripted sequences.

Sadly, this is one of the only examples of that in the Cyberspace levels. A lot
of the other Cyberspace levels are copies of level layouts and aesthetics from
older games (with a strangely large amount of them from Sonic Generations) and
they _do not translate well_ to the control scheme and gameplay style of
Frontiers.

Thankfully these Cyberspace levels are largely optional and mostly used to
unlock Chaos Emeralds. The main focus of the game is on the "open zones". This
takes the standard Sonic the Hedgehog formula and turns it on its side. Instead
of getting to the goal ring with minimum haste, you are _dumped into an open
world_ and told to figure out what you need to do.

Sonic can climb walls, fight enemies (with an _actual combat system_ that has
_real mechanical depth_), recover Chaos Emeralds to take out Titans, and even go
fishing with Big the Cat.

<XeblogToot url="https://pony.social/@cadey/109309523632526075"></XeblogToot>

I'm not kidding. There's a fishing minigame with Big the Cat and it _breaks the
game in half_ in the later parts. You can use fishing to skip the Cyberspace
levels you don't like playing through. There are also some surreal and realistic
3D models of fish. It is quite bizarre, but somehow a lo-fi hip hop fishing
simulator was just that little bit of icing on the top that pushed this game
into one that I love.

Going back to the open zone, here's a small video of me playing around in Kronos
Island (the first open zone):

<XeblogVideo path="blog/sonic-frontiers-kronos-island" />

You have _control_ in this game. You can _move_ Sonic to places as opposed to
vaguely influencing his position like in other games. The open zone gameplay
also means that you don't need to be at 100% speed 100% of the time. You can
take your time to _explore_ and walk around the islands you find yourself on.
You can go out of your way to discover things like the Eggman bases scattered
across the islands that you're trapped on for plot reasons or the portal to the
lo-fi fishing vibe zone.

One of the biggest things that I think Sonic Frontiers is going to end up
solving is the "now what" problem of open world games. After you play through an
open world game for some time, you eventually hit the end of the content in
there. This ends up leaving the world kinda empty and a lot less magical because
those questions you had about "what is over there?" and "what does this do?"
have answers.

Sonic Frontiers solves this by having the world be kind of empty _out of the
gate_. You look off into the distance and see just about nothing. As you run
around and explore you'll occasionally come across little puzzles. When you
complete them, you unlock more view of your map; but more critically you will
unlock more game objects in the world. This means that completing the game
populates it with rails to grind on, rings to fly through, springs to bounce off
of and targets to hit. Over time this gives you _more things_ to do rather than
the world just being boring.

This is all accented by the soundtrack. Sonic games have always had _absolute
bangers_ in the soundtrack department. This game is no exception. I can't wait
for the OST to drop in order to add it to my working music playlist. The lo-fi
hip hop beats to relax and fish to are marvelous.

### The bad

I've been trying to focus on the good parts of Sonic Frontiers because I'm
trying to be a more positive person in general. All that's left are the
downsides, but please keep in mind that with 20+ years of experience playing
Sonic games I have a much more critical view on this than most would.

The game isn't perfect. There's huge problems that either are _core to the
movement_ of Sonic or have to do with the level designers _seemingly copying and
pasting layouts and textures from previous games_. The biggest problem is that
they seem to think that Sonic has only ever been in 4 levels:

- Green Hill Zone
- Sky Sanctuary Zone
- Chemical Plant Zone
- Some Random City Zone

That's it. The Cyberspace levels only have one of those four themes. It's
excusable for the first level (or the tutorial) to have Green Hill Zone vibes,
but when over _a third of the levels are Green Hill Zone_ something is horribly
wrong. I wish Sega and/or Sonic Team would have a corporate mandate forbidding
the aesthetics of Green Hill Zone. They're creative people. There's surely other
levels they can use the aesthetics from. They did at least give each Cyberspace
level its own song, but overall all of the levels feel like they end too soon.
It's not as bad as Sonic Forces' infamous 45 second level with the player only
having meaningful input for 15 of them, but I wish I could have heard more of
the "Flowing into the light" song in Cyberspace level 1-2.

That Cyberspace level I took a video of was hilariously cherry-picked. There are
only a few Cyberspace levels that flow that well. That is one of them. Most of
them feel like garbage because they were obviously designed for a different
Sonic than the one they use in Frontiers.

Sonic also doesn't seem to have any momentum. You can go at a billionty miles
per hour but if you stop pushing the stick forward Sonic stops on a dime. I get
that they did this for making the platforming easier (it really does help), but
I would have preferred the speed rodent to have a bit more weight and momentum
in the equation. At the least I'd like scripted events like homing attack to not
cap my speed and slow me down.

The other issues I have with the game boil down to implementation details like
Elder Koco not having a good way to upgrade multiple levels of speed and rings
at once. It's an implementation issue, not an issue with the game itself. It's
not really worth mentioning in my book because there's a [PC mod to fix
it](https://gamebanana.com/mods/411443). It will surely be fixed on the other
platforms. Give them time.

## Conclusion

Overall, I think that Sonic Frontiers is well worth playing, even if you aren't
historically a fan of Sonic games. I enjoyed my time with it. I can easily see
myself going back to replay it, especially with the final boss fight that it
had. I'd love to see what they can do with this formula next time. There is a
lot of promise in an open-world Sonic game.

Just please without Green Hill Zone everywhere.

My clear time was 20 hours. I played most of my playthrough on my Steam Deck. It
ran perfectly. I got 4-ish hours of battery with 600p, and a 75% render scale
capped at 30 FPS.

<XeblogSticker name="Mara" mood="happy" />
