Sonic Frontiers is a Disappointing Mess

Sonic Frontiers is slated to release soon and I want to be the best damn reviewer there is so here we go my attempt to beat all 13 Mainline Home console 3D Sonic games in seven days this was a dumb idea [Music] [Music] I'm a Sonic fan God damn it the spirit of Sonic is what matters ready for Sonic Frontiers no [Music] yeah I'm the guy that beat every 3D Sonic game in a week yeah I also 100 completed Sonic Frontiers shortly after and yeah I didn't like it very much this is the part where I'd get shot but I already did that joke in my Eldon ring video earlier this year Sonic Frontiers it sure was a video game listen I might be a jaded Sonic fan but I'm still a Sonic fan I'm tired of being upset all the time I desperately wanted to love this game and even tried to set aside the doubt that accumulated with each new trailer and gameplay video before release that first demo footage should have sealed its fate but I'm honestly impressed by the absolute 180 that Sega managed to pull with the marketing despite changing very little of the actual game later trailers carefully displaying moments that look cool made Sonic fans assume this was it this was gonna be the best Sonic game ever made I'm here to say that that is uh not the case Sonic Frontiers is neither appallingly broken enough to be the next Sonic 06 nor is it brimming with enough creativity to redefine 3D platforming it's just okay which also makes it incredibly divisive while it's clear Sonic Team finally had a lot more time to work on this one and there are some things to appreciate the final product still feels confined and a boring game often ends up being less fun than a hilariously bad one Pokemon Legends Arceus was a game that finally made some changes to a repetitive formula and people loved it I had my fair share of fun with it but it still felt lacking it didn't come close to the standards Pokemon should be reaching especially for a Home console game from what I've seen and heard online a lot of people are giving Frontiers the same pass they gave Arceus that it's a promising First Step but I don't think a multi-billion dollar Corporation deserves to walk at a leisurely pace for sixty dollars this game needed to come out the gate hauling ass I'll acknowledge that Sega finally allowed Sonic to move in a New Direction which after forces thank [ __ ] god and I get why people are enjoying it but I wouldn't go so far as to say they did an amazing job being a Sonic fan is like eating dog [ __ ] for a decade and then being fed a piece of burnt toast as a tree I don't think Frontiers is simply the product of crunch or management pressure sure some minor bugs could use cleaning up and some mini games could be expanded upon but Sonic team got a lot of their ideas in and even managed to talk Sega into giving them enough time for a real development cycle but Frontiers doesn't feel like a game that needs a couple tune-ups it feels flawed at its very core so let's talk about this brand new open Zone design that will supposedly influence the next decade of Sonic games because I think it needs some work while I usually try to avoid the dreaded gamer Act of comparing things to one another it's gonna be difficult here since Frontiers has a knack for seeing ideas in other games and trying to glue them all together throwing Sonic so far away from his usual territory that the experience ends up feeling Bland and generic also I want to discuss everything this game has to offer so there will be spoilers ahead just letting you know how much a video game holds your hand is often indicative of how much Freedom it truly has in store or how much the developers trust you to overcome challenges especially when it comes to exploration for a game repeatedly cited as having a focus on player Freedom Frontiers doesn't just hold your hand it puts you on a child leash and Yanks you by the neck if you try to color outside the lines so many great Platformers and adventure games are designed with the idea that the player has a brain and might even want to use it the smartest developers don't shy away from allowing their game to be experimented with they encourage it but to ignore the automated Paths of Sonic Frontiers and Forge your own route through platforming segments is to look the game Dead in the eyes and say [ __ ] you when it works it feels pretty cool but man does it feel like an uphill battle the camera will lock and rotate three times ruining your dash Direction the walls and Floors will send you flying trying to jump between rails instead of using Springs or Auto hopping as a Death Wish most of the platforms on chaos Island just say [ __ ] it and lock you into a shitty 2D space with invisible walls a platformer doesn't need to be super difficult so long as the player is given enough room to express their skill or be creative but while most games say hey figure out how to get from point A to point B Sonic Frontier says pick where you want to go if you so much as touch a boost pad or spring we are launching you to Brazil this sentiment carries over into the combat as every enemy is designed with an exact format and weakness throw the infinite kicks at the ball guy draw circles around the impenetrable shield guys ride the rails and Dodge bullets to kill the flying mini boss dive through the sky to kill spider do quick time events until the shark gets knocked out of the sand the fact that they gave Sonic a skill tree was promising but make no mistake this isn't some crazy Devil May Cry combo weaving or precise Souls like dodging and parrying even on hard difficulty mashing a few inputs for flashy animated combos after you pass the enemy's gimmicky challenge is all that stands between you and victory this this game I'm not afraid anymore there were a few Shining Moments where the game felt genuinely exciting like when I encountered this massive boss for the first time but then the physics sent me flying backwards and clipped me through his arm or the supersonic fights which were incredible set pieces until I noticed I was barely playing the game as they repeatedly devolved into a series of cut scenes in QuickTime events simply realizing that I was running around as Sonic and could turn and jump and go anywhere would fill me with excitement the Boost formula has never really been my cup of tea but he controls better than he has in years I was having fun moments spent running free through vast forests and deserts were the start of something amazing for the split second before the game yanked me by the leash again whipped the camera around and told me to hold forward and time a few button presses Sonic controls all right but he doesn't control gray while you can can go flying off Ledges and rails with crazy speed momentum isn't exactly this game's Focus there's a certain sense of flow in the original Sonic games found through making quick decisions while staying in motion with high speeds given as a reward for skilled play it's part of what made them so endearing momentum was also implemented into the early 3D games but in Frontiers Sonic Feels incredibly stiff when engaging with his environment he instantly travels at maximum speed the moment he hits booster touches a rail his light Dash comes to a halt at the end of a line of rings and the homing attack completely stops his horizontal movement sending him straight up to let the game figure out what it's going to lock onto next as janky as the older games often were I miss having to properly change between rails in mid-air or utilize the momentum of the homing attack inside and outside of combat as an extra movement ability compared to the modern strategy of jumping and dashing past everything that'll usually slow you down also so call me crazy but I don't think I should have to tweak a bunch of value sliders and the options to make Sonic control better I usually leave that up to the developers in you know every other game I've ever played like this one little indie game I played last year called solar Ash where you play as a fast character in 3D open zones but the platforming requires actual thought and the boss fights are Speed Run challenges on the backs of giant monsters instead of mindless button mashes with a gimmick or two tossed in sorry where was I it's hard to achieve any real sense of flow in open exploration when so much control is repeatedly taken away from the player the simple challenges scattered throughout each island might have been more fun if they were a real part of the world or could be chained together but the game practically plays itself you don't have to angle yourself on Rails or aim yourself at a spring heck you don't even have to turn left or right half the time the game will rotate Sonic and the camera for for you this restrictiveness expands outward into the game's core open Zone design as there's no real sense of Discovery the environment doesn't mean anything since you aren't given the means to engage with it you don't spend most of your time naturally exploring forests and caves or climbing trees volcanoes and ancient ruins you jump on haphazardly placed Platforms in Springs floating above an empty landscape there's also no points of interest other than the ones the game marks with giant question marks and glowing spiers and you can't even easily navigate to an area without placing a waypoint because the compass doesn't have any cardinal directions on it then then why call it a compass almost every feature in Sonic Frontiers feels like a little RPG drip feed to artificially extend play time because Sega couldn't risk another game being too short after forces there are stat upgrades that increment all the way to level 99 collectible gears tokens memos these skill points seeds Clorox sorry Cocos purple coins sorry that's Mario wait no they're actually purple coins and silly challenges that reveal the map in dumb little squares instead of complete portions at once hang on this isn't inspired by breath of the wild this is inspired by open world mechanics that got obnoxious a decade ago if you manage to solve the crazy brain busting puzzles that nine times out of ten are solved by drawing a circle your reward is more rails to clutter up the map in case you thought traversing the open world as Sonic was somehow boring at its core the exploration Loop of Frontiers feels too simplistic to be engaging there's no mind-blowing discoveries intense speedrun challenges or out of the box puzzles to make the open world feel like anything more than a tech demo that gets old after an hour of running around I wrote down a lot of my major thoughts concerning Frontiers in the first few hours and I'm disappointed to say that nothing really changed after progressing through the rest of the game on the first Island you gather the chaos emeralds play two mini games watch cutscenes with Amy and fight a boss as super sonic it's not a bad intro one could even say I had a bit of fun Sonic's all confident walking up to a giant Titan and this [ __ ] just oh he's dead I'm gonna crush him into a Fun Pace watching Sonic get his [ __ ] rocked creates a nice spark of determination to take down this massive threat but while my excitement was momentarily reanimated after finally seeing supersonic again I was sad to discover that the game doesn't get harder it doesn't bend it doesn't innovate it settles into its frankensteined mixture of ideas and tells you to play the same Loop four times in a row go to the desert gather the chaos emeralds play two mini games watch cutscenes with Knuckles and go supersonic go to the volcano gather the chaos emeralds play two mini games watch cutscenes with Tails and go supersonic one very welcome Interruption to climb some Towers then head to a second version of the first island gather the chaos emeralds play two mini games watch cutscenes with sage and go supersonic it almost frustrates me to say that my favorite parts of Frontiers were the traditional cyberspace levels because I wanted to be wowed by its new ideas funnily enough the most fun I had in the entire game was during the first hour in level 1-2 2 where the S rank Speed Run timer is way tighter than any future level forcing me to spend a good 30 minutes learning the movement and labbing little skips and routes to make it in time couple that with some insanely catchy electronic jams and despite fighting stiff controls and a rigid camera system cyberspace is where some of Sonic's Spirit shines brightest but even Sonic's brightest stars start looking a little funky when you stare at them for too long a good chunk of the level layouts are replicas of old stages this one is unleashed's tutorial stage this one is metal Harbor and this one is City Escape complete with the run down the side of the wall the strange unconscious feeling that comes from recognizing them isn't all bad but I'm just too tired of sega's over-reliance on Nostalgia to appreciate the idea and why did the levels have to be Green Hill chemical plant and Sky Sanctuary again I get that they have some kind of story relevance I'll even concede that they they look better than any of the islands by a long shot but hey guess what most of the previous 3D Sonic game was filled with referencing old games is only cool if you give them the time to recover and breathe instead of repeatedly throwing them at the consumer until they're flattened into a husk of the iconic titles they used to be Martin bets on level um I love Green Hill Zone I love Green Hills no it has to be the fifth Green Hill Zone of this area it has to be Charlotte the aspect of Frontiers that baffles me the most even more than the gameplay is the art direction to the game's credit the cyberspace levels look fantastic however dropping Sonic into a Sega hire this man Unreal Engine ass world with the blandest sans-serif UI imaginable doesn't exactly do them any favors I hate sounding pretentious about Graphics because I'll play a game that looks like dog [ __ ] if it's fun but gorgeous visuals and creative world designs have always been a staple of the Sonic franchise from beaches to space stations to Interstellar theme parks but in Frontiers uh blah blah the five Starfall islands are Forest Desert Mountain Forest and Forest Sonic does not fit within this dreary world or it's overly realistic lighting and how the switch even loads this game up without screaming in pain is beyond me even in the moments where I forgot I was playing a Sonic game and thought the Overworld looked somewhat Pleasant it wasn't long before hundreds of ugly rails and obstacles popped in throughout the sky like the Line Rider levels I made when I was eight every map is cluttered with objects with no concern for what the Horizon might look like with all those gray scribbly lines everywhere oh geez did I just put up footage of solar Ash again a game where the world has a strong sense of cohesion and the rails feel like a natural part of the environment silently contributing to the story as the fractured remnants of train tracks and buildings and the main character looks like she's at home among several beautifully designed Landscapes my mistake Sonic not feeling like he belongs in this cut and paste world is indicative of a larger problem which is that Sonic doesn't feel like he belongs in most of what the game has to offer the open Zone objectives are an awkwardly inspired cluster of menial challenges they've got Tetris blocks directional floor puzzles the bullet hacking Mini-Game from near automata pressing sidestep touching a ball parrying bullets which doesn't even have to be timed you just hold it down very few of these are engaging objectives regardless of the fact that they already contain little to no platforming this one is just a hamster wheel kind of like a metaphor for the whole game when it comes to the story it's the same sense of disconnection I'm all for a change of pace hell I've been practically begging for a reset since Sonic colors but Frontiers comes off as too somber too foreign taking a more serious approach to storytelling isn't a bad thing but dark and Melancholy doesn't automatically make a story good especially when it concerns a bunch of colorful oversized talking animals the atmosphere is Bleak jarringly so considering the entirety of Sonic's past despite Sonic's friends having been kidnapped before and their usual confidence in the face of danger adding a light-hearted tone to more complex storylines everyone just feels kind of sad after hearing that Ian Flynn the writer for the Sonic comics was being brought on the story was actually the one part of Frontiers I was feeling optimistic about but then I read that Sega provided him with quote the story backstory plot beats and usable characters and just told him to make them speak so what I want to know is who really decided that the final boss should be a purple moon named the end not to say a purple moon named the end is out of place in a Sonic game but I kinda wish the end was an active participant in the story rather than just the disembodied voice of corruption that starts talking [ __ ] at the very end you know on one hand playing ikaruga is really cool but on the other hand what the [ __ ] most cutscenes involve two characters standing around while slowly explaining every piece of lore to the people in the back who were too busy looking at their phones to pay attention ideas that are clearly presented through environmental storytelling and brief flashbacks are over explained to death and I cannot count how many moments consisted of This Little Child going ooh Sonic my simulations say you're gonna die and Sonic goes what the [ __ ] [ __ ] does that mean and she goes I'm not telling you it's hopeless and pieces the [ __ ] out each island is dedicated to building a side character but they still don't get to do anything idling around as helpless Holograms while Sonic does all the fighting I'm glad that Sega finally decided to revert the cast into actual characters but a majority of the dialogue just feels forced and tonally inconsistent Sonic change what do you mean like like a tire or the tornado's engine oil no Frontiers is also hell-bent on referencing the past embedding every previous Sonic game into a jumbled New Canon Universe this poses more questions than it ever answers and creates a bizarre character Arc for Tales who spends most of his time wondering if Sonic sees him as a burden turning the terrible writing in recent games into a new lack of self-confidence instead of starting fresh and while Easter eggs like the fish hits jingle in Big's Mini-Game and the many references in eggman's memos are neat main story conversations feel awkward as characters repeatedly name drop past events bosses and locations that would have little meaning to any newcomers that was on par with Dark Gaia easy or saved me from the deadly sixes trap it's almost up there with the eclipse Cannon like on the egg carrier you stopped the ark overcame Neil metal I wonder if cream and sticks are free Sonic Boom is Canon overall very little happens in the actual story of Frontiers as most of its time is spent retelling the history of an ancient race that used to inhabit the Starfall Islands as if this game is simply the prequel for a new marvel-esque Sonic Universe wait what do you mean there were two after credit scenes last but certainly not least I want to touch on the music it makes sense that Frontiers isn't playing 200 BPM butt Rock when you're drawing circles around a tree but I can't say a moodier orchestral score always feels like the right choice either the open world tracks are beautiful as independent listens but there's a bit of a disconnect between somber orchestral movements and a blue Hedgehog bouncing around a big playground the traditional jams are absolutely there in cyberspace and boss fights and they're incredible as always but the mysterious Overworld tracks should be taking center stage and I wish the game experimented with more Dynamics instead of Simply cutting between battle themes and Overworld Loops the vocal theme teams go absolutely insane though every time I listen to them I question whether or not the game was actually as bad as I think it is vandalize was a one okay rock song about an intense breakup that was vaguely recontextualized into being about Sonic's Adventure but the lyrics are honestly a solid representation of what it feels like to be a Sonic fan covered in scars but roses are coming through the cracks come and leave your mark vandalize my heart [ __ ] the pain away my bed is in Ruins hold on oh yeah this is the explicit version like because no I don't want to [ __ ] Sonic Sonic Frontiers may be taking some steps but sometimes I can't even tell if it's moving in the right direction it's an awkward stumble haphazardly inspired by other games that have long since crossed the Finish Line some people say Sonic will never work in 3D but that's [ __ ] I've played so many games in every genre imaginable and trust me the weirdest [ __ ] can work so even though Sega finally decided to delay a game instead of marking another anniversary With Disaster Frontiers still didn't get to reach the heights it deserved it's been stated in interviews that the game's producer Takashi izuka spent a lot of time fighting against management to really change things up but this new installation feels so uninteresting that I don't think it could have been finished with more time a few less glitches and wall Clips wouldn't change a fundamentally grindy and repetitive approach to 3D plan platforming I didn't want to end this video on a purely negative note but it also feels a bit disingenuous to end on a purely positive one even now I continue to write and rewrite these final thoughts as if my optimism alone will somehow put the long lost pieces back together but the reality of the situation is a bit more depressing the little six-year-old in me felt something here I can tell that the artistic Spirit of Sonic is still alive from silly fishing mini games and dancing animations to crazy ass metal Core Music and a bullet hell Shoot Em Up Against the moon yet at the same time Frontiers get so much wrong and hangs on to so many bad design choices from the past that it hardly even feels like we're back at square one after over 15 years of repeated failures moving Sonic from the dumpster to a slightly bigger dumpster seems to have been more than enough for many fans but it's gonna take a lot more than an underwhelming Tech demo to get a passionate Sonic is back out of me while it does feel like sega's finally letting Sonic shoot for the stars again I just don't know if I have enough Faith left to believe he'll ever actually get there [Music] laughs [Music]

Channel: yakkocmn

Views: 478,769

Keywords: sonic frontiers, i beat every 3d sonic game in a week, 3d sonic, yakkocmn, yakkocmn sonic, sonic forces, sonic mania, sonic adventure, sonic adventure 2, sonic frontiers review, review, 3d sonic games, sonic, sonic frontiers gameplay, sonic frontiers ost

Id: mNRp7CC3Iac

Length: 24min 43sec (1483 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 21 2022