Sonic Frontiers & Early Mods | Forging A New Frontier with A Gamer Hat

foreign [Music] of Sonic Frontiers was provided by Sega and for that I am eternally grateful thank you so much I really appreciate it however you already know I had to get the PC version too because [Music] this is gonna be a good game 2022 has been one of the most turbulent years in Sonic's history and don't worry this isn't a rough history since it's jumped to 3D styled rants no we're not we're not doing that cliche Trope quite literally just from Sonic frontier's reveal in May 2021 to the launch in November 2022 Sonic fans have felt basically every single emotion possible because every month in that time span has been a toxic Minefield from 4chan leaks of beta players stating that the game was going to be bad to the first official gameplay reveal from IGN doing the game no favors whatsoever I don't know why they signed off on that that was terrible and even Sega themselves were being weird blocking footage being recorded from events where the game was publicly shown off for the first time what was that all about dude like the length of Sonic's quills was a hot debate for a month it was insane now certainly as time went on the marketing improved dramatically the game reviewed super well and there's a DLC road map throughout 2023 with a ton of extra content and playable character characters dude like if these characters play drastically different to Sonic as they should this would be the first new gameplay style for a 3D Sonic game since uh Unleashed I guess and then we got the Monster Hunter DLC that was free like what what what the hell was that all about now you can cook food with big man I I can't tell if this turnaround was by accident or by Design but I'm here for it and that barely even scratches the surface here man that doesn't count all of the games that released since 2006. I feel like there are always these like broken promises for every single Mainline release that were like oh hey don't worry guys this is going to be the game that's going to save the franchise and then it always failed but I'm gonna be honest 20 22. this might actually be the year in the Cinematic space you know the Sonic movies are doing great Sonic 2 was a really fun watch and knowing there's a lot more coming is incredibly exciting Sonic Prime is a really cool cartoon offering yet another different take on this franchise the comics well they continue to pop off they haven't really stopped Sonic content was showing up in both Fall Guys and Roblox rounding out the trilogy with Minecraft of what the is happening in this world and the Sonic bling oh you can't forget about the Sonic bling look how shiny it is we didn't get Sonic pocket Adventure in this year's Neo Geo Pocket color selection volume two I figured that was a shoe-in but hey whatever you know really grasping at straws nothing's perfect really the only sour spot in this whole ordeal was Sonic Origins oddly enough All Things Considered it's not the worst way to play these games but as I've said before the fan made PC ports are far superior than the official product and that should really come as no surprise at this point it's just a shame that we got what we got while the fans are oftentimes the worst part about this franchise they're also the best shortly after Origins release because life is funny that way we got two complete and awesome fan games with triple trouble 16-bit and excellent reimagining of The Game Gear game with all of the flourish of a modern Genesis port and a whole lot more and Fallen star a completely new adventure with the style all its own unique Sprites level themes cutscenes both of these Adventures are super fun they're intense they got shockingly similar special stages but like they're both really fun no exaggeration these are now two of my favorite Classic Sonic games full stop fan projects and original projects combined these two are fantastic the Creations that the fans are able to come up with are just as vital to this franchise as the official Works in my eyes so of course both these games come highly recommended speaking of fan projects listen you already knew that I of all people was going to be very excited for the mod support this game was going to have and we're not even two months into this game existing and there's already a lot of great stuff to play around with it's uh it has been a whirlwind but before we get to that before we get to the madness and the insanity I do kind of want to talk about the pure Frontiers experience because like and I didn't see this coming but Sonic Frontiers may be slowly becoming the best 3D Sonic game ever that's gonna piss some people off oh and uh slight spoilers going forward you know I figure if you're watching a Frontiers video at this point you already know everything so it's kind of pointless but I want to cover my bases uh and I don't want more people yelling at me on Twitter than they already do when I first started up Sonic Frontiers I had a lot of expectations some positive some negative but I did try to go into this fully expecting it to be its own thing rather than simply building off of the previous games finally we have a drastic shift in the formula something that is hopefully not a slideshow like lost world was and something that could be a jumping off point for the future similar to what Unleashed did in 2008 and outside all the people dismissing this gameplay style shift immediately as breath of the wild about Sonic I think that's exactly what we got for what it's worth I do love the classic level by level progression as much as the next guy for any platformer out there but a well-playing Sonic in an open world sorry open Zone was always going to work in my opinion if it was fleshed out properly listen alright I played Sonic Utopia I played with the infinity engine I played Sonic GT all excellent Showcases of what's possible but outside of the final example these are mostly just Tech demos not full games so as long as Sega watched that one video of brawl Sonic in the Unreal Engine and decided to in fact hire that man and put him to work we were going to be eating good the two most important things that Sega had to get right were how Sonic controlled and what exactly you would be doing in this world and honestly this is one of the few times where I barely have any complaints with how Sonic feels to play his normal running speed is fine and just manageable enough to deal with some of the more precise platforming moments whenever they pop up and then with the Press of a button boom you got the Boost so you can go super fast like you want to the Boost is definitely nerfed compared to like Generations but in this more open context it does feel really good it felt like everything that you wanted to do was possible at Max Speed if you just honed your reflexes but until then you can go at whatever speed you like hell there's even multiple speed Sliders in the options menu to fine tune things however you like and that is kind of unprecedented the amount of customization here with making sure he plays like you want him to is wild and while many people out there took issues at first with the world being filled with floating platforms and rails and stuff quite frankly that was never a concern of mine in practice what we ended up getting are these large islands filled to the brim with a ton of micro challenges dude you can barely make it 10 steps before being thrust into a new rail to grind a sudden side-scrolling section and some sort of weird environmental puzzle that unlocks some more of the map that part that is definitely the most quote breath of the wild elements of the game so to speak but going along with the whole micro challenge idea I thought these served their purposes perfectly for the most part the speed Challengers I really liked that made the most sense I like the light up Square puzzles they were cool too if not you know pretty simplistic knocking the orbs into the rings that was that that was okay you have a homing attack so I guess that makes sense definitely didn't need the tetris puzzles I I never I never want to do those again point being regardless of whether I loved the thing I was doing or just thought it was okay the fact that you can get in and get out of these challenges so quickly and move on to the next one because there are so damn many of them and made for a formula where for the first time in a long time I had a standard Sonic gameplay Loop where I was flat out addicted and could not stop playing to see what the next challenge was going to be for the entire game oh come on if I get another squid jump scare I swear to God that's the other thing man there's a whole lot of combat in this game and it's like actually fun and in a song I didn't think they could pull this off but the combat in a Sonic game where you play as Sonic is actually pretty fun wow it's also fast paced you have a whole bunch of Moves In Your Arsenal of which you can get with a skill tree of all things always a big fan of that you got a lot of enemy variety across all the islands that often require all those different moves you have access to so there's some strategy there like we're not looking at the next Bayonetta or Devil May Cry here but really like what they're going for it's simple but it's fast and if we're gonna be doing Sonic games with combat this is how it should be with with some tweaks like there's one enemy encounter where it's like a bunch of spinning dogs and you gotta just sit there and Parry them for like what feels like 20 minutes not a fan still has some work to do but otherwise pretty good and man that is not even counting the boss battles because oh my God these are like the best moments in the entire franchise so supersonic Final Bosses were always such a cool part of these games so to make them just the standard bosses this time around with some of the greatest lyrical music to Grace this series like dude this is Sonic at its best you're moving fast and you're feeling like a badass the entire time these fights nail that to a t looking at all of the fights I do think the final Titan was a bit lackluster which is unfortunate because the first three are incredible but it was still great stuff all around oh man these are these are these are so good screw the bio lizard this this is this is the sh but then of course the cyberspace levels the most interesting part of the game from a pure expectation perspective back when the word going around was that the free roaming stuff wasn't going to be all that great well that's where the Unleashed style levels come in the final result well it's it's almost the exact opposite actually the free roaming stuff is really fun and the cyberspace stuff they are the weakest part of the game if we're gonna simply just compare it to the Boost style of before then yeah it's definitely not as good controls are a lot stiffer the Boost being less effective is incredibly jarring because you can like boost into enemies and then you take damage that that's weird you'll also oddly lose all momentum from homing attacks now it's it's rough comparatively however upon taking a step back and just sort of taking these as glorified special stages and their own bubble I did start to enjoy them a whole lot more especially since they all have a handful of challenges within themselves too I really enjoyed replaying these stages over and over to make sure I got all of them done and I mean come on they give you the keys that are used to unlock the chaos emeralds to get to the boss fights these basically are the special stages now a fun little distraction for the sake of progression before you move on to continue the primary gameplay experience dude even the story is good yeah I don't know man this is just a little cartoony baby Sonic game why is the story gotta be so serious lighting up I swear it's always the dumbest take like are we gonna act like Sonic Adventure 2 isn't the most fondly remembered story in this franchise where a girl dies yeah you know I think Sonic can handle pretty serious stories are we also not gonna act like a game like the Thousand Year Door is equally as fondly remembered and an equally cartoony franchise if you're gonna say the Sonic franchise doesn't deserve a serious story you sound dumb yeah bringing in the comic writer Ian Flynn to do the story was objectively the best call all of these characters are damn near perfected in this adventure Sonic is incredibly determined to help his friends risking himself in the process Knuckles goes through some existentialism with being the last Echidna Amy gets into an argument with you for helping out the Coco instead of the immediate friend group and that Dynamic is just kind of cool these are the best characters that they they've ever been and I know it's so easy to talk smack about forces but like God God man this is so much better like even the bid with Tales when he mentions being inconsistent with how he approaches danger like when he backed down from infinite despite being so much better with other issues in the past like that stuff I love when you make everything can and you reward the fan base and I know there are some people out there who don't really like the blatant fan service by just showing a screenshot of the past like Hey look it's a reference did you get it I I don't know maybe in the long run I'll feel differently but currently after all of the stuff the Sonic fans have gone through I like this a whole lot like everything with eggman's newest creation sage and and all the memos that you get from Biggs fishing sections like God I was grinning through every piece of dialogue in this game and normally I see new characters just forced into a story in these Sonic games and I'm like oh God here we go but no man Sage Sage is really cool I don't know what they're gonna do in the future but I have really high hopes and the Coco man they they are just so damn damn cute as long as they don't get overused like the Wisps did and showing up in a bunch of games where they didn't really make sense here incorporating how chaos from Adventure 1 plays into things is really interesting stuff and gives a lot of context to these guys who are just otherwise cute little guys it's a plot that takes itself seriously while not sacrificing the main attributes that made these characters so likable in the first place and you attach that philosophy to these really well animated cutscenes this was all a recipe for success and I hope that Ian Flynn stays around for a long time you see that like Sega is hiring someone to keep track of the Sonic Cannon to make sure everyone stays in line got I got I really I really hope that checks out and we somehow get Knuckles chaotix into here somehow like that that I I would just like I would just like that I'm sorry I've been doing a lot of fanboying here in general as nostalgic as I am for games like Adventure 2 and colors going forward Frontiers will 100 deserve to be in the conversation for best 3D game in this franchise especially once all the DLC is wrapped up like the final product is already really good and we're getting this much more like that's gonna be great blind praise aside though of course the game is not perfect I know I'm going crazy talking about how much I like it but it's not perfect I'm not that much of a fanboy shut up it's mostly just a lot of little annoyances that pop up from time to time you might find yourself flying off of a ledge that you didn't expect to might find a couple of enemies that are totally obnoxious like once again the flying circle of robotic wolf things you stop all momentum to get some parrying done and that's it it's not it's not a good fight most of the fights are really good about making sure you're keeping up at a fast pace but whenever the game expects you to stop that part sucks and while the majority of the gameplay altering challenges are fine like the whole bit where you're carrying the Coco and the more you carry the more these spikes just like go at Mach 12. like I like that that was kind of that was kind of cute whoever designed the laser beam rotating puzzle should go to jail I love changing up the gameplay loop as much as the next guy but some of these really feel like variety for the sake of it hurting the Coco reminding me of the stupid goats from Twilight Princess so yeah not a bright moment of this game to put it lightly but I think I can speak for everyone when I say the visuals while very impressive are certainly not the strongest in the series you have a grass level at Desert level a lava level back to a grass level I don't dislike natural environments in my Sonic game but I think if we were to go that route we do need some more cartoony flare alongside it harnessing that Unleashed energy would have made these areas a lot more memorable in my opinion and the same goes for the cyberspace stuff we got the three fairly overused themes from generations with Green Hill chemical plant and Angel Island and also randomly a really cool looking futuristic city what and it doesn't help that many of these level designs are straight up reused from a handful of other 3D Sonic games too like having a bunch of generation level designs thrown in here like verbatim is pretty jarring having some Sonic Adventure 2 stuff in here is cool fan service but I kind of want some more originality here I know it would have been tough creatively to have more original themes in these because then people would just beg for more of those which would create another headache for Sega to address but really for the next game I definitely just hope that there's more visual Variety in general and maybe do a bit more of the cartoony stuff of course the pop-in is lame too I don't find it as much of a sin as some others do honestly like I just played through Pokemon Violet and loved it so my resistance to poor performance is pretty strong but considering this game was made for top of the line Modern Hardware I really did hope for better maybe because there's a switch version that did dial things down and the fact that it works on the switch at all is a miracle but uh yeah I'm thinking next-gen exclusive for the next one also if I never see one of those starfalls ever again I I think I'd be okay yeah those oh God I can't see anything but if anything without a doubt the worst part of this game is upgrading all of your attributes at the Elder Coco dude like why why does it take why does it take so long and you can only do one at a time were they nuts almost everything else in this game they made sure to make as Speedy as possible this made me want to rip my thumbs off well thankfully the modders out there have already created a mod to speed up the process dramatically and this this is great the fans as always picking up the slack where Sega faltered and as expected the fandom has not let me down it's time to take a look at some Sonic Frontiers mods people often ask me where I get a lot of my mods from and easily game Banana is the best One-Stop shop for situations like this now why it's called game Banana I have no idea but it certainly guarantees you won't forget about it almost instantaneously after the official release like I expected it to mods were flowing out like crazy and it was a beautiful thing to see and you gotta remember it is super early on in this game's life but there are already so many ways to fine tune it to better your experience yes this is now objectively better time to play Sonic Frontiers everybody Sonic Frontiers and if we take a look at the menu we could play arcade mode or or we could we the user manual I I hate myself first and foremost shout out to the early momentum mod of course fans are out here immediately trying to better the game's physics quite frankly it's like every 3D Sonic game has a mod like this like I said before in the base game I didn't really have any issue but this mod does make two core recognizable changes that do make the open Zone traversal a lot more fun for one going up and downhill actually affects your general speed it does in the original game but it's a lot more noticeable with this mod it's a good thing we got that handy dandy speedometer right there to check you can see yeah you go up and you go slower you go down you go faster that's cool I like I like realism in my Sonic games more importantly though jumping no longer halts any momentum while you're boosting that essentially means you can maintain max speed for a lot longer and this really perfects the primary gameplay Loop because it's awesome it doesn't really affect any of these slower moment-to-moment gameplay where you're handling puzzles and whatnot but when you just blazing on by oh this is great it breaks some of the cyberspace levels like like I said it's a lot of fun looking way off into the future I'm sure this will lead to some custom level designs being injected into the cyberspace and maybe even the open zones but as it currently stands the majority of mods available this early on in the cycle are just little model swaps which are simple in concept but I mean come on here it's gamer time Sage doesn't know what's about to hit her oh oh oh oh oh no Sonic oh oh god oh no he can't hear us he has his air pods in the group effort from the offset was to get as many different existing Sonics into this game as possible like if some incredible Sonic Multiverse and amazingly enough they all look great we got Adventure one Sonic we got Adventure 2 Sonic with Adventure 2 styled Supersonic in tow oh six Style with the appropriate Run Cycle brawl Sonic if you really want to capture that Sega please hire this man Vibes link Sonic is here from The Lost World DLC movie Sonic you know that one makes sense you got the whole blue aura when you go super fast so movie Sonic fits in Minecraft Sonic this one is incredibly cursed but I love him pixel Sonic this one is also incredibly cursed and I'll be honest for this one I'm emotionally indifferent but if you're like me and you're a casual low poly Sonic lover then I had to jump in with the Sonic R Sonic because oh this looks incredible in the High Fidelity world I I would still pay a ridiculous amount of money for a modern Sonic game with a local poly aesthetic I love this so much and if you're feeling a little frisky well we got buff Sonic too we all know somebody that would be into this and I'm glad they're having their needs met it's really cool to know that official playable Tales is coming down the pipeline but until then hey here's fan-made tales and this one can even fly it breaks the game almost immediately this is everything I could have ever hoped for having some custom animations as a part of this really opened the door for some cool possibilities too here's Jet Set Radio Sonic where he not only dons the outfit but also skates around which is just kind of sick but I'm pretty sure this animation was initially developed for shadow Frontiers you see the beautiful thing about this mod in particular isn't just the animations but the voice samples are also Shadow really making this feel like a legitimate skin in the game the Super Shadow skin at the time is it it's a little problematic but listen he's been through a lot sadly there's no Shadow with a gun mod yet probably in the works I would imagine but until then at least we we have just gone yeah you ever yeah you ever wanted to play a Sonic game where you you just a gun that can type one shot projectiles that kill anything with just one bullet just bam dawg they're dead that's that's it and then oh wait sorry and then you can become super gun oh no Maria definitely wouldn't have stood a chance against super gun let's be honest but thankfully leave it to Luigi to save the day and really set the record straight wait a minute Luigi's not a sonic character oh man this is hilarious Yo Luigi's Mansion 4 looking crazy right now oh wait I take it back Kirby in the Forgotten Lane too looking crazy right now and pictured here is the alternative reality where clinoa is actually a successful franchise God that that actually really hurt to say out loud listen all right I like Pac-Man as much of the next guy but clonoa deserves as much time in the spotlight as possible oh hey Pac-Man's here too of course what's beautiful about some of these mods is not only is Sonic changed for them other characters get altered too when you play as clonoa you have Lulu over Amy there are moves over the Coco and you can collect pellets as Pac-Man I love it the attention to detail here is great dude like you can run across the islands collecting lasagna as Garfield okay this is one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my entire life not because it's funny in its own vacuum but it's also a clever throwback to the classic Sonic Plus Garfield combo pack you see you see that was a reference dehydrated SpongeBob is a thing too I don't need it or even worse you could I just I just want the Pain to End oh hey you can also be a Fry's or a low poly cat that's cute I don't know who Maxwell the cat is but after this yeah I'm a big fan at the end of the day yes the mods aren't currently as exciting as some other games like Sonic Generations has but you gotta remember we are still early in considering that things are pretty exciting the future is very bright it's really just a whole lot of aesthetic differences so far but they easily fulfill their purposes as cute little options to toy around with in a game that feels like a big old sandbox at times like hey now you can make the first island take place in the fall adorable that's a little bit of the visual variety the game needed in the first place this really has me excited for the potential the modders will bring to the table excuse me oh oh oh oh no oh he's moving now you see this is what it looks like when you give people too much power and I don't hate it like I thought I was gonna okay okay ground's a little shaky here I don't know if we can uh if we can get this oh there we go okay we got this oh my god oh there's too much shaking going on I don't like this okay we got it okay okay okay don't look at the background don't look at the background I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna be so sick okay let's go okay I think we got oh wait oh oh okay uh never mind dude okay all right okay oh oh this is basically impossible all right Chaos Emerald here we go all right you dance and bastard you're going down all right here comes the laser part I'm familiar with this oh yeah he's still he's still dancing dude I don't I I don't know what's going on anymore this is this is the most insane thing I've ever seen in my life I don't know what this strut is but man he is uh he showed off his moves all right God whoever whoever whoever made this mod I I love you Sonic Frontiers hasn't even been out for three months three months and we already have all this to play around with dude like come on the future is so exciting whatever the modders have in store for us I cannot wait like I said before man 2022 this was the year Sonic is back in the best way possible what do you mean Sonic Prime debuted in Roblox [Music]

Channel: AntDude

Views: 341,637

Keywords: AntDude, Sonic Frontiers, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Frontiers reviews, Sonic Frontiers undefeatable, Sonic Frontiers gameplay, Sonic Prime, Sonic movie, Sonic Frontiers ost, Sonic Frontiers mods, Sonic Frontiers shadow, Sonic Frontiers gangnam style, Sonic Frontiers dancing, Sonic Frontiers among us, AntDude Sonic, AntDude Sonic ROM Hacks, AntDude Sonic Mods, AntDude Sonic fan games

Id: _VcWWOVHoQg

Length: 25min 12sec (1512 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 21 2022