I mean I was hoping for 80s of course but I’m neither surprised or even disappointed, many of the critiques are sound but there still seems like there’s fun to be had here that’s all I care about.
I expected an 83, ngl :/ That said, after reading various synopsis of the reviews on Metacritic, with the common concious that the game, despite it's flaws, is an ultimately fun experience and largely a step in the right direction, I'm not really bothered by it anymore
holy shit this is a dream come true for me then, as I was unironically into that stuff as a teenager. tbh a 74 is a relief. When the initial details of this came out I was worried it could be a disaster and that is not the case. Jank is par for the course for Sonic, something I saw even in the "great" Generations, and it's something I look upon with fondness in Adventure.
Oh damn, they got you. I'll be interested to see what you think, as someone who has generally been pretty iffy about it. Also... I think this is where we start to care about review aggregates more than the content of the reviews, and that's maybe not a great idea. As MontiP said, the concensus seems to be that this is a really fun but flawed game that is taking Sonic back in a good direction. Numeric scores don't exactly tell the full story. Several notable reviewers who aren't really sold on Sonic still liked the game, which is a big win that hasn't exactly been a thing in the past. Colors and Gens sold some people on the franchise, but Forces seemed to turn more people away than anything else. This seems like a good formula for Sonic Team.
After the whole "7.8 out of 10 too much water" thing I've stopped paying attention to scores and ratings (and IGN as a whole but that's a different conversation lol). I skipped Forces because I was really jaded by it. I don't care if Frontiers were a -100/10, the footage of this game has me so hyped and I can't wait to play it tomorrow.
The game should go live on digital platforms in about 8 hours. Steam's release window is late, but I think the same issue happened with Origins, and that game ended up releasing at the proper time, so it's probably just a Steam bug. I gotta say, I don't think I've felt this much anticipation for a game in a long time. Sonic Mania came close, but we knew that game was gonna kick ass from the start. This one has a lot more mixed emotions from me, starting from the absolutely horrible June media cycle to the frankly embarrassing behavior of the Sonic fanbase, on both sides of the aisle. I'm sure I'm going to at least enjoy it, but hopefully for the future Sonic Team and SEGA take the right lessons from this game's reception.
4 hours in and all of Kronos cyberspace stages completed, I'll call it a day for today Current impressions below> Spoiler: wall o' text The good: -Control fantastically, I put all the sliders on max and it feels like dream. -Cyberspace ost slaps -Cyberspace 3D stages slap -You'll be pleased to know the tried and true formula of dicking around in a sandbox works for Sonic. The game constantly point you to your next objective, but you'll spend 30 minutes getting there because of the classic "oooh, what's that over here" syndrome. I love it, some people might not tho -The cutscenes and dialogues are soooo good! The characters are...actual characters again, I still can't believe believe it after 12 years of baldy mc nosehair -And the choreography and cinematography is great too, probably the best animations Sonic ever had for cutscenes (barring maybe Boom, funnily enough) -The fighting works. The fighting works, holy shit. For reference, I never actually liked fighting enemies in Sonic game: too slippery in Heroes, too pace breaking in Shadow, too tedious in Unleashed...and 06 is 06 lol. But here it works, for real. The animations are fast and snappy, The enemies are agressive but die quickly, and there's a lot of interesting options to chose from without devolving into the twelve billions useless and samey combos Unleashed packed. You don't need a huge skill tree to make the combat rewarding, people! -Did I mention it controls fantastically? It really bears repeating- open world aside, THIS is the standard Sonic needs to adhere to for the next 10 years. The bad: -Confession time: I never liked the Starfall Island theme, I always found it kinda boring. 4 hours in and I can safely say I hate it, thankfully I reached a point where the music changed to something a bit more engaging but this still lacks the energy I usually associate with Sonic. Sure, the cyberspace stages' ost is incredible...but you're gonna spend 40 seconds to a minute in those at best, so the ratio of moody/energetic isn't balanced at all here. Here's hoping the music pics up once you reach the next island -Good god those 2D cyberspace stages suck dick, big time. I'm incredibly thankful they segregated the 3D from 2D this time around, which means the 3D stages are all killer no filler, but the 2D stages just do. not. work. at all. The physics are straight up broken, you can roll into a ball but it just breaks most loops and slopes (holding down the down button or letting go of it doesn't seem to change anything) And Sonic is so slow in them! He're reasonably fast in the 3D stages but inexplicably slows down to a crawl in the 2D ones. The drop dash is your best bet here, it's way faster than the boost by a long shot (again, in 2D only) -No camera control in the 3D stages...why? The level design isn't a corridor anymore, there's a few times I actually wanted to turn the camera around to explore my surroundings a little bit but I just couldn't. City Escape and Gens Chemical Plant are especially crippled by this. I'm having a great time so far. This game picks up right where Unleashed left off, my beloved Sonic is back after leaving to get a pack of cigarettes 14 years ago
lol, I just remembered I have no way of playing this at 60fps even if I wanted to. Between Switch and PS4 Pro, I'm stuck in 30fps jail. It's surreal seeing people relieved and encouraged to see the scores this game is getting. I can't think of any series, including this one, where I'd be pleased to see a game that I'm excited for averaging in the low 70s. Hope you all enjoy the game, but things are telling me (unsurprisingly) to stay away. I do not have the patience for this kind of thing anymore.
People are fine with the averages in the 70s because the reviews range between "it's a good game but it has flaws (affectionately)" and "its a good game but it has flaws (derogatory)" with extreme outliers. People who thought the game would be bad are pleasantly surprised. People who thought the game would be good are undeterred. Personally, I find the "I expected it to be a 5 but now that I know its a 7, no one should accept less than an 8" the weirdest reaction, tbh.
I’m literally setting my alarm for 5 AM so I can wake up and play this for a bit tomorrow before I have to go to work, what the hell is wrong with me??? At this point I’m just hoping there aren’t any unforeseen performance issues on my laptop. See you on the other side, folks.
I woke up early ready to switch my console's region to New Zealand, and... The game comes out almost 24 hours later at 5 a.m. in my country. I'm glad the reviews are fairly average to positive (low 70s) and I'm still eager to play.
Thank you for this. I bought a Series X for 60fps and I was considering doing the NZ thing but wasn’t sure if it’d work lol. I’m just going to go pick up a physical copy in the morning then.
Still have no idea if I get the Switch version (a console I play a lot...) or the PS4 version (a console...)
Wait....im confused. I pre-ordered the PS5 physical edition on Amazon and been avoiding all things about this game, topic included, and my copy is slated for the 21st, is the digital version already out? If so, I got awhile to avoid spoilers...
