Playing Sonic Forces: Boost too Thin? (Analysis/Review)

[Music] for the last few years the remit for the Sonic games has been this why on story light on tone light on playable characters and with this in mind forces [Music] well it looks like we'll be bucking some Trends get Shadow in here because this series is attracted to Edge Eggman has conquered the world with the help of four returning villains and his own original character infinite with the world in Peril it's going to take more than just Sonic boosting all over the place to fight back so classic Sonic has been dragged back in to help save the day and that's not all a bunch of people's dreams came true and was shattered all at once with the reveal of the Avatar a customizable third playable character who joins the two of his wrist mounted grapple and a gun and these three set off to take back the planet so before we get started do I like forces yeah a bit is it a good game no I like it to a degree in spite of itself it's a mess a complete mess that I could only genuinely recommend to a handful of people if you just want more boost gameplay and can accept it having gotten shallower you're in if you enjoyed Shadow the Hedgehog ironically and can accept this game won't be as edgy you're in if you like Jank flawed games with a lot of little things to pick at you're in if you browse the Sonic fan and Wiki and are a big fan of crush the Bandicoot you're not in bandicoots aren't playable it opens in robotnik's lab Sonic how I hate him Eggman is reflecting on how Sonic has defeated him at every turn but with his latest creation he will finally have his victory even the comic relief is scared cut to Sonic he's rushing through Green Hill Zone when Tails Rings him up it seems eggman's attacking the city so Sonic shoots off to put a stop to him as we head through Green Hill it's revealed that it's turning into a desert this stage has no desert elements gameplay wise anyway and future Green Hill zones will barely have them everywhere Green Hills looking a lot more like Sand Hill right now we won't even fight that giant worm Sonic doesn't seem too concerned I've got no idea how Sonic plans to combat climate change but I hope it's more than a dustpan and brush also this game is going to feature a ton of Mid Mission dialogue it can be disabled but for various plot and comedy reasons I'd argue against doing so at least on the first go-round and Sonic arrives just didn't a good time to save tales and a collection of other freaks from eggman's robots which I will confess are not very threatening you mind your business they mind theirs and as Sonic moves to put an end to this he's blocked by shadow but it's not just Shadow he's blocked by several memorable faces [ __ ] and zavok seriously Sonic how the hell do you remember him and they're led by infinite this guy is faster than Sonic what follows is a hilarious cutscene of Sonic getting absolutely pummeled while asking tales for information [Music] nice gotta scan him and figure this out I realize you've been useless for a number of years now but do you feel like helping or is the whole bloody World become complacent oh I suppose so cut to several months later and the token resistance comprised of a bunch of useless layabouts have made exactly zero Headway without Sonic it seems that people are just plain giving up I'm an optimist but I'm also a realist Sonic is gone Amy and Tails is Tails has just lost it and we're just gonna let this nuts child wander around in the war zone outside so that's the case they genuinely believe Sonic is dead I mean Tails didn't even see him lose a ring so I don't know how the hell they got that idea enough about Sonic though a brand new recruit is joining the resistance a Survivor from the city and we get to make him the Character Creator is light we start with gender and then we pick our species each species has a small benefit dogs cats rabbits and hedgehogs get small things to help them with taking damage or recovering Rings this is quite boring wolves have a greater pickup radius Bears have a better attack and birds get a double jump being rather crap birds still Sega realized that a double jump would likely rule the roost in a platformer and as such they made the double jump near useless to compensate each species then lets you set their face eyes mouth and fur color and gender decides which of three voices you can give them [Music] as I said it's not terribly in depth but don't panic there's enough to create a semi-unique monstrosity I went through about three designs before settling at first I attempted to make grommet this was as close as I could get but then I realized I didn't really want to put grommet through War so I moved on to trauma the rabbit a rabbit who has seen the horrors of War but I rejected him as well based on a simple philosophy eggman's world-winning weapon was making his own edgy OC giving it some jewelry and setting it loose so I decided to Fight Fire with Fire and the conclusion I came to was gun the wolf there's no backstory option so it's all up to the player as such Gumball wolf is a street smart kid and the only thing he fears is his own strength before we can get this ball rolling however there's a few more pieces of bad news defenses at Green Hill have fallen infinite is tearing through the city and worst of all Knuckles is in charge of the resistance this game should be called Knuckles forces but oh well this guy's a glory hog beyond that it's more than a little bit concerning that Eggman could instantly win if he just told Knuckles the resistance was after the Master Emerald but he never does and Knuckles gives gun A gun and he's officially part of the resistance okay let's get going everybody the world's not gonna save itself on to level two I just received some incredible news Sonic is alive well that drama didn't last long did it as one of knockers spies on the defect has found him locked up they've been torturing him for months oh lovely so Gunner resistance head off to steal a spaceship and save Sonic from the Death Egg meanwhile Tails who appears pretty Lucid to me is fixing Omega and he's then attacked by chaos but before he can strike chaos is taken out by New Classic with basically zero impact or Fanfare Tails then adopts New Classic and they set off to take down Eggman together by the way that is the most we will ever see of chaos he is defeated back on the Death Egg Donald wolves it while the rest of the resistance gets tied up by eggman's defenses I choose to believe he was ignoring knuckles's orders and in doing this he manages to free Sonic's binds at least I think that's the chain of causality here that beating the stage freed Sonic because the last I saw of gun he was sprinting down a hallway despite supposed months of torture it seems Eggman never got around to the legs so Sonic escapes from his cell beats up zavok no abandons everyone in the background because hey he's only chaotic good and then he starts looking for a ship to escape on his eyes he arrives just in time to save gun from some trash and in doing so gets in contact with the resistance [Music] the two head back to the planet with Knuckles welcoming someone who can do all the leg work and with that the gang's all here that is free playable characters with four play styles oh and Shadow is playable as well for the first time in over a decade Sonic retains his boost gameplay reminiscent of Unleashed generations and to a smaller extent colors with some adjustments it's a mixture of 2D and 3D the platforming and obstacles are rather simplistic stage flaws tend to be large and if in 3D wide since Sonic covers a ton of ground very quickly and his movement even without a boost accelerates quickly and slows fast it's rather imprecise when in 3D and 2D segments are hardly better about it it's not really about Precision mind his stages are made for the large distances he'll cover Sonic can homing attack which allows you to navigate chains of enemies or hit Spring zip lines and search and this attack is often used to put faster routes or bonus items behind higher up enemies so you have a smaller window to hit them and access those routes he can also stop handy for destroying enemies and quickly hitting the ground so you can get moving again or else hold any forward momentum you don't want you can also slide mostly useless since there's not really much to slide under modern Sonic also has a small double jump which is primarily helpful in 2D platforming it's high enough to correct minor mistakes and give a bit more leeway without being big enough to make a great difference Sonic can also of course boost by destroying enemies or collecting wisp capsules Sonic can take off at incredible speed plowing for enemies with impunity and into pits with Reckless abandon of course boosting makes sonic far harder to steer and limits how quickly you can react to things in Unleashed in Generations boosting was earned through Rings which made it far easier to keep up boosting endlessly I don't mind either way the use of wisp capsules instead in colors are now in forces should mean that you have less boost to go around and thus have to ration it out and it was rare I needed to do so so the change is negligible really its use is a bit more risky but you also have an air boost you can only trigger this once to forcibly change your direction in the air and then you need to hit the ground and jump to use it again I only really needed it in one solitary stage and I was using it to fight against the game itself a couple of elements from prior games have been lost Sonic no longer has the ability to drift and without any situations in which you'd need to drift have been lost as well Sonic has also lost wall jumping and to an extent lost the Hop The Hop was a small jump that carried your forward momentum and was only needed for small obstacles I've already mentioned that sliding under obstacles is no longer needed these are smaller scale moves but I think these changes have actually hurt the gameplay Sonic Feels slower overall and I don't think he actually is I think it's because he has less to do these two small obstacles and drifting contributed by making you pull off precise reflexive Maneuvers at speed maintaining a certain Flow by not getting hit by them or by reacting in time and at times these obstacles would come thick and fast these were at times literal Road bumps that could trip you up if you forgot they were there and while drifting was poor and Unleashed being too unresponsive and put above certain death pits Generations tightened it up considerably and rewarded good drifting with shortcuts the removal of all this leaves Sonic with an absolutely tiny pool of abilities and very little to do with them despite the re-emergence of wisps Sonic never uses anything beyond boost wisps anyway for better or worse also gone as the skill shop system from Generations which gave you a small few modified fires to the gameplay mostly boost related I'll confess I'd say the pros of boost gameplay are mostly in spectacle I think the joke about boost to win is a little unfair however blindly boosting for a stage is a good way to miss every alternative route run into walls and more drastically to your death it's really satisfying to learn a stage and to be able to chain a good run of a stage together rarely if ever needing to pause it does do well in rewarding memorization and reflexes and as far as gameplay Styles go it's the best solution that's been arrived at for capturing the speed Sonic is supposed to possess it's just that it comes at the simplification of other elements on that note there are a good few weaknesses I said it in the last video but playing boost gameplay well can feel a lot like playing a rhythm game without Rhythm prior Sonic games had a great degree of verticality you would climb the stages as much as you would move across them and that is gone here a lot of levels feel incredibly samey It's Tricky for these levels to have a great deal of individual identity since you tackle all of them the same way Unleashed into a much greater extent Generations tackled these by giving each stage a unique set piece or gameplay gimmick to set them apart forces has suffered a lot in this regard a lot of stages will feature three or more Lane roads where you Quick Step hazards rail grinding big blobs of enemy chains long stretches of road where all you do is Sprint through near harmless enemies you occasionally fall down big pits and you do 2D platforming in very simplistic boxy sections that feel like they were made in some sort of player supplied editor instead of designed by a professional hand I'm not entirely finished talking about monsonics gameplay however that will come in more General notes that I'll come back around round to after I've talked about New Classic and gun I will say now however that modern Sonic is my second favorite playstyle present new Classics gameplay then is the weakest of the bunch it's modeled after the Genesis titles in that they're both purely 2D Affairs and I think that's about it I'm uncertain how it's as bad as it is but comparing not only to the Genesis Trilogy and Mania but Generations as well New Classic has taken a beating new Classics gameplay is very simple run jump roll and spin dash to navigate stages filled with ramps inclined Springs and enemies you use changes in elevation to get the speed necessary to make great Elites and you challenge more dangerous complex platforming challenges than the other two Styles at least that should be the idea New Classic also has usable items in television screens Shield speed shoes and invincibility however I hardly saw the latter two in my time playing and even when I did they lasted a good 5 seconds each I mean they came up enough for me to figure out a joke about the invincibility music being new Classics ringtone but that's hardly a useful metric the stage design tends to follow that there's a higher route and a lower route the higher route being harder to maintain but faster to navigate meanwhile the lower root is safer albeit closer to Bottomless Pits and more Rife with obstacles occasionally these two hit a bottleneck and meet before splitting up again ah Green Hill known for its blockiness and highly angular Hills new Classic's big problem is fundamental he controls terribly it is absolutely horrendous and I cannot begin to guess why it's as bad as it is it's almost broken let's start with the most major issue his acceleration and deceleration particularly in the air is utterly unpredictable and verges on random with the older games being very big on momentum if you hit the opposite direction in mid-air you would not come to a hole instantly instead you'd begin to slow yourself and the faster you were going the harder you became to stop naturally if you were going at an incredible speed you may not even have the option of stopping at least under your own power it was easy to get used to engage if you made a jump while standing still you would not make a great distance so you got a bit of a run-up you moved slowly for more precise jumps and built up to big ones and momentum carried you this is footage of me and Mania having no trouble making repeated jumps in the opposite direction of a moving surface onto relatively thin platforms Generations is nowhere near this nice to control but I'm still having no trouble very quickly making jumps because I'm confident in my understanding of how Sonic moves forces however both starting and stopping jumps feels off like I'm being handed an entirely random amount of acceleration when I leave the ground and when I hit the brakes I may even stop dead or slow down sensibly so I've both overshot an undershot what should be very simple jumps and that leads to me over thinking jumps in future which just ends up making them harder I should not dread jumping from one stationary platform to another but I do rolling physics have also gone downhill albeit not very well in ball forms Sonic picks up speed when going downhill and slows on slopes and level ground now he feels like he's been covered in blue New Classic is liable to slow down going downhill or seemingly just lose speed at any given moment I found that the safest thing to do is New Classic when rolling was to let go of every Button as any influence on him could be disastrous he's rather prickly there are other things such as no d-pad control on PC and what's gone no matter where you're playing is the instant spin dash button which was a rather useful feature in generations and would have been handy here as well I mean the spin dash did need some toning down from Generations but to not only remove this button but have spin dashing be a wonky underpowered mess is not so good New Classic also has his drop Dash from Mania but I rarely needed it and found it awkward to trigger so I got very little to say about it overall ironically New Classic has the worst 2D platforming enforces and that's all he has finally what we're all here for the Creator character armed and ready to go they are essentially formed from modern Sonic being cut in half and given a gun a mixture of 2D and 3D gameplay with wisp powers and a greater focus on combat greater Focus doesn't mean great just greater the Avatar doesn't boost however thanks to a wrist mounted gratinol they have a homing attack and swing points along with automatic scripted swing points it's a small detail but the small delay with wire attacks and grappling does set them apart from Sonic in the whole flow Department guns attack is far slower and kills forward Pace much more readily and thanks to that wire grapple he's also nicked drifting which rarely has much in the way of gameplay you use it once three times in a row to hit higher Pathways and then it's mostly an automatic thing beyond that there isn't much to Avatar gameplay for the most part it is incredibly straightforward you run through small areas blasting robots its occasional 2D platforming is better than classic Sonic's but retains the flat simplistic challenges of modern Sonic and despite being slower and likely capable of tackling it he doesn't really have any 3D platforming just 3D corridors lined with a ton of easily destroyed enemies it has its own momentum based flooring that's saved for the star you cannot halt your movement in the air and the Avatar accelerates incredibly quickly making jumping forward at any kind of high speed more than a little bit terrifying unlike Classic Sonic however you have more than a few outs in this situation not even counting the birds double jump the Avatar's unique gameplay comes in the form of wispawns each one has a unique attack and a secondary power-up mechanic supplied by its corresponding wisp unlockable wispons have other effects such as granting rings on defeating enemies giving you a shield at the start of a level or speed boosts for various situations that last one may not always be a positive the worst of which is gaining speed when you land which is a dangerous proposition so what's funny about wispons is that all but a couple of them are ludicrously overpowered they start off pretty simple burst is a flamethrower Lightning's a whip drills a drill first is what you start the game with and it turns basically every potential enemy even including some bosses into absolute jokes and that's the bass line that's what Knuckles hands you on your initiation its secondary ability is relatively weak being a limited time of Limitless jumps that can skip entire stage segments these secondary abilities tend to Aid more in platforming lightning is perhaps the worst Defender unless you get into pulling skips with the drill but lightning skips more than half of the already short stages it's useful in at far less risk it gives the Avatar their own version of the lightspeed Dash so it also pays out better as you just ride along a wave of rings through large chunks of level as mentioned these wisp abilities are time sensitive time starts running out once you trigger the them for the first time but lightning will keep on going so long as your mid chain and chains tend to lead into more lightning I think the overall selection of wisps doesn't strike a great balance lightning is just so much easier for a lot of the game and the game rewards what it does far more greatly as you'll see when I talk about ranking later drill is likely better for speedrunning but that actually requires some inventiveness to put to use lightning does the work for you to a disgusting degree on top of this Lightning's whip attack has iframes alongside moving you forwards in air followed by a dead stop meaning it was incredibly useful in regular platforming as well it accidentally made me like the Avatar a lot more it accidentally fixed one of the problems I had with his momentum the other response don't compare to this while still being overpowered cube is an awkward and slow AOE hammer and its ability to create platforms out of thin air is hampered by never really needing to do that asteroid is a good homing gun capable of hitting up to five targets at once but it's incredibly middle of the road so as to be boring and it granting temporary invulnerability in a wider pickup radius is again a bit weak compared to turning the most abundant pickup into a stepping stone the only two that Stack Up are the two purposefully overpowered weapons you get near the end of the game one of them is a post-game weapon hover and void one of which allows White and the other teleportation those are the two abilities that it takes to compare the last gameplay style is tag team where Sonic and the Avatar team up combining both of their abilities into one complete play style they operate as one entity and cannot be separated so if you hit the Boost Sonic takes the lead if you fire the wisp on control shifts directly without any delay so I'll say now I can at least find fun in three quarters of these play Styles there's only one that's inherently poor there's only one new element to bring up here and it's entirely scripted double boosts they're more like cut scenes and despite that build up you can't really opt out of them if you fail at qte you get to blast down the road at great speed to an instrumental so whether or not hearing Hoobastank lyrics is a punishment is up for the individual okay I confess I like this cheesy butt Rock bite me stage design wise there isn't much to go off of it does combine modern Sonic and Avatar gameplay Styles but this style turns up for five stages with only two of them being actual levels two of them being the same boss fight which is a Chase boss and one of them being a lane switcher and then a boss fight against a tube that lasts all of a minute and a half wait that's not much shorter than the average stage length so with Sonic back on planet the resistance starts striking back against Eggman its typical Sonic stage motivation you know spearheading a military attack on a weapons Factory which is never mentioned again or saving citizens because Eggman is indiscriminately bombing populated areas so you route the robots you know by running past them at great speed and blowing up about 20 of them and doing nothing about them silver gets into a scrap with infinite and despite knocking a phantom Ruby loose he's not holding out so Sonic has to come to his rescue oh great see infinite now we're getting to know each other so what's your favorite color if you like long romantic walks on the beach what's the source of your power you can skip the first two questions if you like the source of my powers oh infinite don't be so coy the boss fight ensues and his power is cubes Sonic manages to fend off infinite so infinite has to resort to a cutscene to win and declares Sonic not worth killing while all of this is happening New Classic and tales have been chasing after Eggman figuring that if they work out the source of infinite's power they can win the day and get Classic Home in doing so they track down Eggman at Green Hill desert over there yep it's still doing that perhaps that giant Island dedicated solely to a chemical plant is having an impact the two come across infinite and Eggman destroying the last prototype Phantom Ruby the two learn the Phantom Ruby works on force of wealth and the infinite fought Sonic in the Mystic jungle eggman's unhappy that despite Sonic's post-dictory defeat infinite spare team infinite has a less than Stellar reasons [Music] it's really bloody weird when you say it out loud the two then mention a plan that will wipe out the resistance infinite departs New Classic then smacks Eggman and he being a busy bloke heads off but New Classic gives Jason a boss fight ensues he's beaten Eggman says the plan goes off in three days and departs again this time he's left alone the two head over to the Mystic jungle to track down Sonic hmm have we met before so worried are you worried too much look I'm perfectly fine it's been Generations since I've seen you oh that false joke you just Unleashed really colored my opinion of this scene Mania sales tells the resistance they have three days to stop whatever eggman's plotting so they get to work uncovering the danger and this saves 14 of the planet this is a mostly pointless bar it goes up to 99.99 once you beat the story and then goes beyond 100 and that lasts 0.1 percent never goes away oh and the map music does occasionally change with the percentage that's uh nice I suppose let's talk about the music all the menus have gone for a militaristic theme which is more than a little bit funny with how much it's reflected in gameplay it swings between incredibly somber to reflect the losses Knuckles has caused to heroic because we have infinite lives it never feels like we're running through War zones really we see them in the background occasionally and we never see the resistance in a gameplay capacity each of the three characters has a musical styling in order of how much I like them top to bottom Sonic's got a mix of rock and techno that's fast and energetic and fits his stages very well it's hardly a standout OST for this series however in its context when played in its stages it does its job very well Gunn has forgotten to turn off his bloody MP3 player and he has these weird semi melancholies semi-energetic EDM tracks that have incredibly on the nose lyrics about war and the situation of most stages take all the enemies [Music] [Music] [Music] in about an hour this game is rather short I'm saving the best for later because it's a spoiler I hate to put it this way but Classic Sonic has an awful faux retro soundtrack that sounds like a Genesis is either dying or farting it has no flare of its own and only occasionally did I feel the music fit the stage or the situation this is forces take on Green Hill Zone [Music] [Applause] [Music] and chemical plant [Music] I'm not going to play The Originals because you can more than likely record them these sound like the idea of what a Genesis sounds like when ironically enough the Genesis games did a decent job sounding like they weren't on a Genesis now it's time for more General gameplay flaws the big one is stage length this game has 30 stages including boss fights with most of them running around 2 minutes or less Chuck another 30 seconds on that if you're going at a leisurely pace and a handful of stages can be worked down to a minute but that does take more effort and learning the stage overall it does just mean most stages don't have room to breathe but the issues with length aren't just in time to beat this game is an obstacle tasting menu obstacles are semi-regularly introduced get used for one stage but barely anytime whatsoever and then never come up again the best this game got was a water slide that made up the majority of its level but that's an exception most other examples are used once or twice and then tossed away some examples are directional platforms platforms with very slowly rotating electricity circling it very small pinball tables sand platforms these are a few or perhaps a majority of stage specific obstacles what are these platforms for Beyond this a lot of stages are just running forwards switching lanes incredibly simplistic 2D or dropping down holes this is Discount in times when you're in a cut scene or a transitional set piece or a quick Time Event stages don't really give enough time or Focus to put their mechanics to any real use any amount of time your automated cuts down on genuine gameplay as well like in many other regards New Classic suffers the most at least the other two playstyles are for spectacle or overpowered whisp bombs or sensible physics New Classic just has slightly more involved 2D platforming with a discreet lack of interesting obstacles guess which game I'm going to compare chemical plant to Mania Generations the answer is Sonic 2 the original Sonic 2 has water Grabbers spinning platforms drop platforms moving platforms more than two types of bad Nick rolling up and downhill and you can jump at opportune points on these Hills to access higher routes and pull off some skips sometimes this is intentional sometimes you can do it with some Ingenuity New Classic in forces has about four of those and they're used in exactly the same way they were then or in a less interesting fashion the Rolling Hills don't really complement the physics and getting to higher routes with hills feels entirely scripted so it's a paired down version with lackluster physics they honestly should have just stolen more in Generations they added to the stage or remixed the obstacles here they're doing less with everything this is just one stage mind others are generally not much better or are outright worse the penultimate classic level might be my favorite classic level as it has free gimmicks conveyor belts laser walkways and gravity shifting nothing original but it uses them for a majority of its run time and actually starts combining and playing with them the final level is the hardest in the game purely for the fact it features a hallway that will kill you unless you spin dash into it which you will not know to do ahead of time speaking of difficulty between the lack of obstacles short stages and infinite lives forces is an unbelievably easy game you kinda have to play for time and make it challenging for your yourself if you want any degree of difficulty bosses are much the same they possess tiny pools of attacks which they just cycle through zavok has two homing attacks and a Stomp Eggman first recycles the wrecking ball before switching to the Dragoon giving him three attacks over two phases Metal Sonic charges and plants stationary lasers infinite plants cubes and creates doppelgangers I suppose the Cubes at least come in some unique layouts and Metal Sonic also spawns enemies but their egg horns which are purely there to give you more boost this has been a case for a lot of Sonic games however it's never had very in-depth boss fights generally in older titles if you knew their timing you could get a lot of hits in very quickly however so you could skillfully beat the boss fights quickly this game swings back and forth between leaving the bosses open for punishment and making you wait on an opening and their attacks are also simplistic and dull to watch in combat they lack the spectacle in a lot of places I will say something about length however while indeed these stages are short and indeed this game is sure if you beat each stage one and done I do always find I have more fun on repeat playthroughs in this series hunting down Collectibles getting us ranked exploring the stages and trying to perfect runs of levels modern Sonic facilitates this speedrunning best and classic sonic worst this all said forces just has such Bland stages compared to the other boost titles this game does have extra stages however not to many and challenges from Generations have also gone there isn't much in the way of bonus content there are sos's which just ask you to replay missions with one of free stipulations one of them just outright being beat the level again with this person's Avatar which won't make a huge difference in how it plays the best level in this game is more a canyon a modern Sonic level it's entirely 3D which should not be as unique as it is it's a downhill Sprint meaning you can at most points gain serious Heights and with a little aim and some knowledge of what's ahead you can leap massive chunks of level and land really perilous jumps it's both risky yet fun to do and can save big chunks of time I mean I'd love this stage a lot more if there weren't invisible walls death triggers and guidelines everywhere trying to snap you back to the few automated walkways but that besides this is a perfect concept for a modern Sonic stage a downhill Sprint across perilous machine walkways littered with robots it's all gameplay very little Automation and it's over in 70 seconds and you know what I pushed it down to less than a minute with very few replays and you know what this stage doesn't have any unique segments to itself or any unique gimmicks besides being all gameplay there are no hazards introduced here nothing crazy inventive but it's the most fun stage all I've been saying about obstacles and gimmicks a Sonic game does not need a ton of inventive obstacles to be fun it can help but fun level designed to overcome can more than do the job it's just this game tends to lack for that as well and it has nothing to fall back on but this level is a real rush because it's just given me a nice big plane to shoot through with just enough danger the one stage outside of a New Classic Stage with a near 100 time spent in gameplay entirely 3D to boot can easily be worked down to under a minute and for all of my saying that I do like getting good times on this game that is by my own metric and I am far far from great at them so stages are short have a ton of repeat elements and anything unique that does arise goes under used and rarely gets anything interesting to do before being discarded there is one improvement over generations and that is in the scoring system Generations rewarded speed massively over everything else if you beat stage fast you'd get an A if you didn't die it would get bumped up one rank and that's how you got s ranks points and collectibles made up a tiny portion of your assessment enforces time is still important and you can still get S ranks through time it does however split score more evenly between points earned within the stage through Reigns destroyed enemies and collectibles so slower routes with more to do along the way can still earn you a good rank lastly the fewer retries needed to clear a stage the bigger a bonus you will get which will generally be needed to prop up an a rank to an S rank as there is no more life system retries are purely for score and rings are purely for points and taking hits within stages there are five red rings collecting these rewards you and adds number rings to the stages which need to be collected in descending order getting those adds moon rings which all need to be collected close together or else they disappear they're not all there at first collecting everything in a stage therefore necessitates at least three playthroughs of that stage generally more since red rings will be on separate routes and what is the reward for collecting all of these well that's close for the Avatar an occasional respawn with different stats and on occasion a tiny bonus stage and the rewards for those and basically everything else are more clothes there are also missions little extra objectives that are added along the way some of them are s ranking stages or beating them within a certain time there are also dailies but so far these have just been for changing clothes and these dailies give you a score multiplier which serves to make it easier to S rank stages points from cleared stages are also pulled into medals get free medals as a species and you unlock clothes at the end of the game you get the ability to create more than one Avatar and as such you can start grinding points in a Sonic game to unlock clothes and I suppose try out the other racial bonuses I did want to joke about this being the first time you would need to grind in a Sonic game but then I remembered the ciao Gardens existed in adventure and uh yeah I do love the missions however they are entirely unimaginative stomp in a Sonic stage use a burst with spawn or you know my favorite boost in a Sonic stage I'm taking the piss but I don't have a problem with these they are harmless but amusing in how low effort everything but the time trials are and they all lead to cloves so unless you care about making your OC fashionable you are not missing out in any way and because of the Simplicity of the missions it isn't uncommon for most of your time on the results screen to be spent getting showered in gear they didn't skimp out on this there's no supersonic super Avatar but you will get clothes you know what that is a little bit disappointing as well eggman's got the Phantom Ruby but no one ever mentions the emeralds you figured they might be handy but oh oh look we've got soap shoes still it doesn't matter how well Sonic runs through War zones looting the tailors Shadow is causing a ruckus in the city so Sonic heads off to confront him and well he's a bit of a pansy to be honest with you another shadow just disappeared that was a fake fake how who then reveals what the Phantom Ruby does for at least the beginnings of it the Phantom Ruby creates virtual reality projections infinite can create replicas of people and objects and in unlimited number then Knuckles announces operation big way seeing an eggman's Metropolis headquarters is on demand it's time for an all-out attack I thought of this strategy in about a minute and a half and it should take about as long to carry out let's go time for operation unfortunately infinite's on the scene and Eggman has him activate the Phantom Ruby it doesn't go well for the resistance what you're seeing is it real no use course has been washed contact with the rest I'm thinking Knuckles is in charge because he's dumb enough not to be put down by the losses he's caused so the Phantom Ruby controlled by infinite causes a whole Army to retreat in fear with presumably an empty number of losses the Phantom Ruby does have a limit that is very well you can probably guess that despite being able to pop things out in Endless number it needs to be charged it also works on Willpower still gun guns through the city once again on his own and he comes face to face with a gloating infinite ants to crush I wonder if this world can offer me a real challenge and as if to answer the world sends me a trembling child cows in fear fear of how quickly he could kick this guy's ass but Sonic's words remind Gunn to just get on with it he don't he died don't let your fear own you got him I told you there is a reason gun gets only two boss fights where he isn't being held back by Sonic infinite realizing he's a little [ __ ] decides to take the nuclear option of spawning a handful of turrets and gun shuts it down with his own Phantom Ruby so infinite realizing that he's basically screwed makes an excuse for why he's allowed to leave let them contemplate the inevitable until I end this once and for all gun being frustrated by this heads off with Sonic to go and beat up Metal Sonic by chasing him down a highway and dodging slow things shadow and rouge meanwhile find a database in chemical plant they hack it and discover that the Phantom Ruby works by messing with other people's brains so the virtual reality projections are a massive shared hallucination yet these projections are so realistic they can do actual harm even somehow knocking people through the air with real physical Force Eggman then worked this Phantom Ruby into Infinite and somehow there are a bunch of prototypes lying around not to mention one that Gunn got his hands on but infinite still had powers when it was knocked off or did he have more than one or am I missing something I guess he was there to break it but then why was it lying there uh anyway Eggman has made a weapon that operates on imagination and willpower the possibilities are infinite oh so on the one hand I will concede this works as an excuse for bringing back four previous villains on the other infinite you Dullard do you have no imagination Eggman has handed you anything powers and you came up with geometric shapes and several things that already exist the Phantom Ruby is an awful childish idea of a super weapon but this game gave it to infinite to demonstrate that he is the laziest shoddiest and most witless villain going you know who I feel bad for in all this that's chaos infinite has potentially Limitless water Gods at his command and he manifests him as a puddle the plot then moves to destroying the Phantom Ruby's power supply which we learn is the Death Egg so by running through it quite quickly while gun distracts and Sonic goes to the database that shadow was formerly at it explodes Eggman seeing this says it's time to retreat to Metropolis which upsets infinite you mean to say hinting at a future Schism between the two which never comes to light so a second assault is launched on Metropolis with Sonic making a beeline for Eggman at central tower this game suffers a number of things as you've no doubt seen one thing this game is not very good at whatsoever is letting people leave scenes I mean they do successfully leave they don't bump the walls or something it's the reasoning Sonic blazes through the city to confront Eggman and some new things are made up on the spot Eggman reveals that Phantom Ruby has invented null space null space something that the Phantom Ruby cooked up a closed off space where absolutely nothing exists Eggman flies off as Sonic gets sucked up gun jumps in to try and save him but also falls victim to null's face [Music] but we destroyed the Phantom Ruby's power source Eggman then flies back not to say that by calling it null's face he's patented black holes but to point out he built another power source beneath metropolis and that's why the Phantom Ruby still works perfectly fine this is the cutscene to Open Stage 24 null space titled null space Sonic and gun do a double boost and Escape null space in 17 seconds and it is not mentioned again Beyond providing an unimportant location for the final boss null space has a full three minute long musical track and Sonic shoots out of its saying what's up everyone I missed this place while a remix of fist bump the butt Rock main theme players like this is a long-awaited heroic return I do appreciate the idea that a stage about nothingness was dropped in this game of all places they couldn't get nothing to work right or come up with enough nothing ideas anyway two minutes after banishing his arch nemesis Eggman comes face to face with Sonic again the two bicker about friendship for some reason it can't be it's impossible to get out of the Phantom movies no space now maybe by myself but I had a Little Help From My friend something you wouldn't understand since you don't have any friends this changes nothing Dr Eggman will still have the last line an Eggman leaves Sonic doesn't even give Chase so I ask what did all of this achieve well no time to think about that there's only an hour until wake man's plan goes down before we get to the end game however I want to do a couple of things first off I want to play a short highlight reel of dialogue this game will be remembered for and a few more that I want it to be remembered for tossed in as well torturing him for months torturing Sonic just to pass the time oh that's low even for Eggman none of this is good Vector that's why it's called War 80 of our forces have been wiped out and we've lost contact with the rest you got your orders rookie we only have one more day before eggman's plan is executed so let's Hustle I'm fine I will teach you fear then pain and then well at least the fear and pain will end I really do love that Knuckles is the only one to bring up Sonic's torture I think he's making it up thinking it will push the troops not to get captured somehow you know make him fight for the death The Mid Mission dialogue in this game is not very good I think there is one level that does it exceptionally well however and that is the egg gate it's the stage where Sonic is escaping from eggman's prison and I think it's a nice little character moment of having Sonic decide how he's going to escape and coming up with his plan as the level goes on I feel it's really nice and in character and actually adds a little bit to the level I don't really play Sonic games to hear the dying screams of furry animals however if you do want an edginess tour to force out of this game you're going to be the left wanting the horrors of War are there it's just that Sonic is shouting about friendship and believing in yourself far louder the Avatar's character Arc of believing in himself and conquering your fears well it's hilarious he's a kid who's been forced into war and the object of his fear is the strongest bloody creature on the planet rather than global conflict look I am aware this is a kids series and I admit I have fun overthinking this stuff but I also want to give myself a pass because Sonic Adventure 2 exists and for all of its flaws it handled a far darker tone a lot better than this one did but let's forget about story for a moment a mate of mine brought something up it's an interesting point and fun to put into words so I think it's fair that I steal it from him Sonic's gameplay is not really conducive to a war setting that's probably not a surprise to many of you running very fast from point A to point B is what you want in a Sonic game and before you think I'm really complaining about this I am glad it did not try to have more complex objectives than that but it does make a lot of stages feel very odd in this story because every problem is solved by changing location most of the time when it does come to a stage dealing with the war it excuses it as us being a spearhead or a distraction occasionally we're tracking down a database or going to meet someone but how this actually helps the situation is sometimes up in arms this is followed by a big dumb Wars scene which reveals that the resistance has the collective power to teleport as large unit formations teleport with every camera cut infinite mildly embarrassed watching this mess arrives and puts the battle to a hole I trust you're all ready for Oblivion and when all looks lost Omega heroically arrives to fire a couple of piddly little lasers and then does nothing anyway the plan is unveiled wow infinite you're looked up for whatever reason gun is Miles Away on a cliff Tales I guess was allowed to leave as he comes flying over realizing that Gunn has a phantom Ruby he tells him to use it to try and stop the Sun I guess it works based on Range because cut a gun running at the Sun when I mentioned the best the best track was being saved well here it is [Music] it's so fitting you know it's a shame Eggman is a bit of a bastard in this game he's usually the most fun character anyway gun shuts down the Sun and his Ruby shatters thankfully it's never needed again and then gun and Sonic Team up to take down infinite for good infinite being fresh out of ideas just does what metal Sonic did plus cubes what would you like your effort to have to read how about realize why not here dozes the masked clown might as well make it for the person who needs one right you heard it here first vote Sonic is going to kill infinite also for some reason infinite starts going on about how friends are useless Sonic calling infinite sad and lonely all the way your mask can't hide how sad and lonely you are that Phantom Ruby virtual reality of yours is the real illusion yes yes it is too oh and he made himself slightly bigger like he did to metal sorry my thoughts were all over the place because this is a [ __ ] mess y don't look up don't look up don't look up it's fine infinite's far too stupid to realize he could just summon another son here goes partner when we join forces the sky's the limit and with infinite defeated Sonic's painful speech about friendship finishes him off and he has to fly to the top of a tower to recharge I think I guess by now you should know who Infinite was why he is the way he is well he was a mercenary Eggman hired whose Shadow beat up once that's it worthless don't show your pathetic face around me ever again I'm not I'm not weak I am not awake Eggman announces his plan has gone into overtime and I suppose forces let you assume that he flew away afterwards everyone starts looking for the central Tower's entrance and then Sonic and gun charge up the tower to blow it up I don't know what to make of that comment the sudden sympathy for infinite especially since none of the characters know that infinite was just a power-hungry little [ __ ] how much of this can be blamed on Shadow just wanting to show off gun and Sonic then blow up the power reactor which I guess was also infinite's birthplace and I'm unsure about this as well but infinite might be dead everyone's waiting for us [Music] [Music] [Music] Sonic decides it's time to celebrate with the power down eggman's Army should be disappearing but eggman's got one last trick up his sleeve a Death Egg Robot powered by a phantom Ruby not powering powered and his army is back in greater numbers we're not quite done yet your plan will end like all your plans too with you sitting in a pile of busted robot Parts wondering how you failed so badly and team Gunn heads off for the final boss fight [Music] foreign that is insane either way New Classic has it for easy you jump a laser and then you play squash with a rock he doesn't even get a full health bar the fight literally Falls to gun for stage two where you blow away missiles and then attack his fist not much to say it's rather simplistic I will note that giving the boss an attack which wipes out a massive chunk of stage that has the same wind-up as the attack you use to deal damage is a smidgen unfair but you know let's move past that foreign [Music] and the third phase goes to modern Sonic in null space leading gun and New Classic down a laser spamming finale putting any cynicism or irony aside I do like the presentation of the final boss a lot the music how it's damaged by having each character land a homing attack it's a triumphant ending and I really wish the rest of the game and even the first two stages of this boss fight had supported it and it ends with a triple boost which lacks Hoover stem eggman's Army dissipates and the war is at an end the Phantom Ruby destroyed New Classic departs Sonic then makes a very hard to listen to speech about fixing the world all right guys it's time we cleaned up the mess that Eggman left this world in and I'm not talking about those Illusions he dreamed up for us we need to fix the real world we all live in but those Illusions were causing actual damage you know the robot army besides oh well everyone buys it after the credits everyone's hanging out at resistance HQ talking about what needs to be done next the game forgets that gun can't actually talk so Knuckles has to do all the lifting in this scene guns leaving to go on adventures and help people on his own so everyone has a round telling gun how cool he is and how far he's come then Tails has to ruin it by making an even worse speech than Sonic and our resistance has come to a conclusion but we'll be friends forever Tails you're saying this to the people who left you outside in a war zone you pillock then again this may be why outside Sonic has realized that actually sticking around and fixing things sounds like work so he's leaving as well and with that we close Sonic forces the resistance no longer needed disbands see you later buddy foreign [Music] I just ragged on forces a lot and it deserves it it's an incredibly flawed very short paired down game that tries to do a lot once without actually having enough substance for any one of the things it tries the Boost gameplay is more shallow than prior entries New Classic borders aren't broken and his stages are incredibly lifeless and the Avatar feels like modern Sonic scraps made overpowered he has a little identity of his own and doesn't pick up the slack in 2D or 3D instead just flying over both the stages for all three are not only short they're loaded with cut scenes and severely lacking an individual Identity or obstacles I don't think Sonic is incapable of a war setting he's quite a flexible character but I don't think it went dark enough in this case and I say that with some love of cheesiness and some genuine want for them to go for it if they're going to attempt dark again I want them to go the whole hog I don't want them to go halfway and then try and toss in a message about friendship to distract plus the Phantom Ruby is just an awful superpower with no clear limitations Beyond needing a power source and some willpower and then just tossing in more power sources as the last one is destroyed it's like this was a first draft written in one go without stopping all the major beats of a plot are hit but lack a lot of build up or connective tissue to flesh them out and make them work I mean that would explain why characters come and go so much why they can just teleport from place to place and why the Phantom Ruby seems to gain and lose power seemingly at whim plus the Phantom Ruby's nebulous amounts of power and what it can actually do just serve to make infinite look like a gigantic [ __ ] which you don't often want with a villain I am prepared for people to say I'm thinking too hard about a Sonic game but that's because people are really lazy when it comes to critiquing this series just because it does have a bad rep I'm just giving this game the same treatment I would give any other I have had hours of fun with games in this series and I want to see them do well I will confess to nostalgia in this series but I will confess that in this game I've had moments where I was really happy with it that null space scene flying back out into the city while bump life it's Earnest cheesiness was delightful and I had a feeling I hadn't had since Adventure it got that genuine feeling of spectacle and high-flying fun and Adventure I enjoyed it with childish play even if this stage was mostly a rail Fest and wasn't actually that good this game has moments that I like that Cut Above the Rest it has a handful of stages that show a glint of promise and a spark of life but they are the minority I think overall this game does hit a bad spot it isn't bad enough to be remembered like an o6 or a shadow though some will claim it does because of the Character Creator and the war setting but it's also not good enough that people will see it as some see colors or Generations as the series returning to form most of my complaints about the stage design are actually appropriate for the whole game mostly flat way too short and any Sparks of creativity or life don't last long enough so it turns out that in the end the possibilities were finite thanks for watching a special thank you to my patreon supporters your names will be read out momentarily but first I want to announce that I opened a patreon Discord open to anyone who pledges for those in the five dollar bracket please send me after four questions in there and we can have a lot more back and forth It's a relaxed place and hopefully it will stay nice and laid back no matter how many join in I am hopeful to have more communication and patreon was not cutting it in that regard so with all that said a thank you to my patrons Eric Nace DBZ king119 lankwoods sigurd Damascus almond ready Austin Wagman all F4 games Samson Arthur D Gonzalez Martin Johnny Z corrupted cages John leonis son of Cinder Xeno Nick Morrow Jonathan Gutierrez Wright elowin the tried Piper bran Jonathan Hume Tom Hughes Jack Saint Rafe and Andreas Huber and lastly a thank you to everyone who's watching

Channel: Tehsnakerer

Views: 326,266

Keywords: Sonic Forces, Sonic Forces analysis, Sonic Forces Essay, Sonic Forces Review, Sonic the Hedgehog, modern sonic, Classic Sonic, sonic forces gameplay, sonic the hedgehog review, Sonic the Hedgehog essay, Sonic the Hedgehog analysis, TehSnakerer, Sonic Forces PC, Steam, Sonic Forces Speedrun, Sega, Forces Review, Playing Sonic Forces, Sonic Forces PC review, Sonic mania review, forces review, forces analysis, modern sonic gameplay, Sonic Forces Critique

Id: 8W1oApC43Pw

Length: 61min 33sec (3693 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 30 2017