Digital Foundry's review is out, with some helpful comparisons of how Frontiers performs on a technical level across different platforms.
This is mostly my thoughts on this, with some divergence. I really liked the Cyber Space stages, and I actually *liked* how "clunky" it was. I've wanted boost games to slow down for a while so...thank fuck for that. Conversely, I hated the plot. Or more specifically, the questions they didn't answer in the plot. Spoiler Nobody makes a big deal about seeing a whole race of Chaos people? Nobody goes "holy shit"? Bull. All the big personal character development that reads of either sequel-bait or cut content. And how we gonna fight a final boss and not know what the fuck it is? Annoying as shit. I enjoyed this game thoroughly, and I'm embarrassed for ever having doubted it.
I guess this is more spoiler talk, so I'll mark it down! Spoiler Your last point is my problem with the story, lol. There wasn't a real villain throughout. It was mostly characters working out their problems, which while I like, it kind of made the story uneventful. I kind of forgot there were supposed to be stakes in the story with how chill everyone is, really. I think even Sonic was like "Well, that was weird... Anyway-" when reacting to the CREATURES MOVING ON TO THE AFTERLIFE LIKE?? LOL While I enjoy the direction they took with Sage, I wish she was an actual threat throughout. I think you can keep the sympathetic angle while going into the extremities of how far she'll take to protect everyone. Before the game was released, I personally thought they were going to the angle of her character being part of the ancient tribes and she isn't able to move on from the death of millions. Maybe kind of like a more extreme knuckles, idunno. But yea, it really does feel like they were setting things up to (hopefully) do something more interesting in the next game.
I see some complaining about how the game's control and physics hold the player's hand way too much, but I don't know what the basis for comparison is. Does the game hold your hand on tricky jumps more than Sonic Colors (IMHO the 3D gold standard) or less? I was pretty disappointed with how dumbed down Sonic Generations was compared to Colors, even though it was still an awesome (albeit way too short) game. You won't hear me pound the table for certifiably merciless controls more like SA1, but I want to feel like I accomplished something when I grab a red star ring or nail a boss right in his stupid robot head.
Thanks to @Mana for the post! Yeah these are my genuine thoughts after playing. I'm currently on the second island and have 6 hours playtime. I would have played more but I'm a teacher. Have very little free time! For the record I will complete the game. Don't think it's fair to give a full assessment without doing so. These are my initial thoughts. I do think the game is of poor quality. But I obviously don't think that's an objective fact. I just think that's the case. There's so much automation it's insane. You just jump on a spring or on a rail and let the game do its thing. Do a homing attack every now and then. It's kind of fun in a dumb way. But it's not particularly sophisticated design. And I'd say it's worse than Colors and Forces because it's so disorientating. You backtrack in a map to get more memory tokens but then whoops...you end up going backwards or in some baffling direction you couldn't possibly forsee on rails or springs. I have pretty bad eye sight so also misinterpret boosters. Or often fall into them by accident. Then the automated sections lock your controls most the time. Just hideous. I think the automated design of the challenges really just does not work with the open world of the game. The 3D Cyberspace levels control badly and the 2D Cyberspace levels control worse than any console 2D Sonic game ever made. Borderline unplayable. I think the level design is actually okay for what they are. Very short side levels so to replay and get vault keys. But it just controls so horribly I don't want to play more than once. It's also just so stop and start. The map keeps opening whenever you complete puzzles and it is so annoying. Stop at getting blue speed every time. It's Sonic! The last thing you want is a stop and start game. So I find that really intrusive. I don't like the story and think Flynn is a very poor writer so far (going from this game). But also I haven't actually seen it all. So we'll see! It's not all bad. I think the music is wonderful. I think the combat is surprisingly okay. I thought it looked horrendous but it probably has more care put into it than the other elements. The open world exploration is fun at its core even if I think the controls aren't as good as everyone else does. And yeah I know it sounds really twatty but I really do think that everyone will look back at this game and see how obviously flawed it is. I'm a bit baffled by the fan reaction when considering how it's so obviously not a good game and in fact commits the cardinal sins of other games which people hate (Sonic Colors, Sonic Forces). But we'll see I guess!
I do wonder whether part of that is the tone shift, towards a direction people who didn't like those games actually like, making them far more forgiving of it.
I think that is 100%. People more forgiving of it for its story and tone and more forgiving of the automation because of the game being entirely 3D. I can understand to be fair.
That's just human nature. The more you like something the more willing you are to look past its flaws. Sonic Mania, my favorite video game ever at the moment, has a ton of flaws - overreliance on nostalgia being the most obvious. But I don't care as much just because I have so much fun playing the game. It's the same deal with Frontiers. It has tons of undeniable flaws and lots of technical issues, but for me it's easy to ignore those just because I have lots of fun playing it.
There was this guy on ResetEra who was like "objectively this game is in the low 70s but I like edgy Sonic so I like this" :P Only thing I'm really qualified to comment on are the voice acting and script (since I've only watched my buddies play it). I think they're decent for a kids game. My main issue is that it seems like a concept that's too big for Sonic, so most of the dialogue ends up as exposition to make sense of things (the Maekawa games had similar problems), and there's not enough moments to really let the characters breathe. I think this is why Sonic works best with simpler narratives. You could even incorporate the idea of Sage into a simpler narrative and have things still work, I think she's gonna leave the most memorable impact on fans as opposed to another Chaos Emerald infodump :P The Pontac and Graff games had a lot of banter during the actual levels, which wasn't a bad idea. But Frontiers' lonelier atmosphere doesn't allow that, so the above problems are compounded.
Wasn't stated in an interview that there was some complications at defining the plot properly for the open-world setting? The thing 3D fans might've come to enjoy may've also detracted a bit other elements of the game, like the plot. I guess there was only so much they could do with an open-world without ruining the overall story.
Maybe we should stop thinking in terms of "People will realize this is a bad game actually" and accept that everyone has different tastes, lol. I'm sorry, but I find this attitude to be so tiring. It just makes me feel like I'm an idiot for liking this game because apparently, I don't know what good game design is according to people who made up their own rules on the subject. Every single person I talk to, who likes the game, is quite aware of the game having issues that they should've improved on before release. But like what Jubb said, I'm willing to overlook the issues because I had fun with the game overall. Yes, I acknowledge that there are issues, but it doesn't detract too much from my enjoyment. I am critical, but I like the game and would like to see them improve upon it for future entries to make something, in my opinion, very good. My opinion of "I think this game is good" is as valid as someone saying "I think this game is bad". I don't think it's weird at all. Pardon if I'm like, reading too much into this but that's how these posts come off to me. I also apologize if this came off as more aggressive than I liked it to be. It has been something that I wanted to bring up earlier, but I was afraid of people thinking I'm crazy or being a blind fanboy about it, lol. I do like reading about why people like or don't like something since it does help make me think critically and think of counterpoints to why I feel the opposite. It's just hard for me to get on someone's side when I feel they're talking down to the other perspective/treating them like they're dumb. It's kind of how I felt about Badnik Mechanic's (I forgot your username on Retro, sorry!) video when he previewed the game at EGX. His points are stuff that I don't even remotely disagree with at all, but how he presents these points come off as spiteful and angry to me. I understand because there is some blind fanboyism that will just plain deny the truth, but I also don't think stuff like that helps either. Idunno if that made any sense. I just figured it's important to share instead of just holding it in my head, lol.
Unrelated to the current discussion, but how does the game decide whether or not you'll have steering control when Drop-dashing? Sometimes I'll use it and have full steering control as one would expect, but other times I'll use it and be locked into only moving forward! It feels completely random, I could deal with it if I knew what triggered it, but it's just confusing...
The thing is that I do understand where you are coming from. I understand that it sounds really twatty. Opinions on games are subjective. I look like a jerk just coming in and saying that people should know better and are only saying these things because they are being too charitable since it appeals to their tastes so much. Just, hear me out. I find it really weird that people have clowned on Colors and Forces for years now while Frontiers commits exactly the same cardinal sins in regards to automation and level design. And in virtually exactly the same way. This is not some small point either, it's a fundamental aspect of the way the game plays. The moment to moment gameplay is almost identical to Colors and Forces. It's in an Open World context with more freedom of movement on a core level, I get that. But the Open World challenges, the core of the game which is what you spend most of your time doing and is the primary objective, is exactly the same tiresome automated and shallow challenges people have been lambasting. But for some reason I see barely anyone engage with that fundamental critical flaw. Again, this isn't some minor issue. And in my opinion (outlined in previous posts) I actually think the game's automation is more intrusive and annoying than even Colors and Forces. So I really do think that people are currently giving this game a hell of a lot of goodwill simply because it has a lot of 3D and is going for a more serious and dark story.
Mods are starting to appear for Frontiers and the most notable ones have been for physics. There's a mod by BeatzYT3 that gives Sonic proper momentum, and also fixes the cyberspace stage physics to match. (sorry about the weird crop for the recording, the Windows "Game Bar" thing is weird about screen sizes.) For the record I think it's pretty OP and could use some tweaks to be a bit less unruly and super-fast, BUT. I've had a lot more fun controlling Sonic with this than in the base game. And on that note, it kind of justifies the big open zones when you can actually play with the environment on this scale. There's so much more active decision making you can do; from picking the best slope or angle to maximize speed with a Drop Dash, making graceful leaps across chasms the base game made you too heavy and slow to cross, and trying to jump from one platforming challenge seamlessly to the next if your ability to maneuver yourself is good enough.
I'm not someone who disparages a style, the cardinal sins, the broad perspective or anything like that. I like Classic. I like Adventure, and even ideas and stage design for 06 which is why I want Project 06, I like Boost. About the only style that I really hard no'd on was Lost World, and that ties into the fact that any dislikes I had for a Sonic game were on its own merits than "the sins of the style". I hated Lost World because it just wasn't very fun for me. I hated Forces in a progression run, but once I got to settle with the stages to do more unlocks and bonus objectives, I got some (limited) enjoyment out of it. I get flaws with Mania but have a blast with it and end up playing half of the game just to test one mod change. I may not revisit the Adventure games often, but when I do, you won't see me for the evening unless I hate Treasure Hunting in 2 just that much. And so forth. So it's not that I enjoy Frontiers because of some weird "it does all the same problems these other games did but there's a couple different things so now he's just accepting crap!" I'm taking it by its own merits as a game and examining them, comparing or contrasting improvements and downgrades, and other various quirks and ideas in the consideration process. It's not a simple thing for me. And I'm already doing a second playthrough with Japanese voices and the physics tweaks mod, so clearly something's working.
This is a post from a few hours ago. It doesn't seem to have registered. It shouldn't feel like we're herding children here, but it seems some of us really can't resist personal attacks toward others. I'll be handing out warnings and varying temporary thread bans going forward, so please be courteous. Save me some clicks and treat others with respect. As ever, it's more than fine to disagree with others. We're all landing at different places with this game. But don't make it personal. Back to Sonic talk, respectfully. Please.
This is exactly why those elements were even more intrusive in those games, though. Forces, at its core, is effectively only the weird automated gameplay, and colors relies on a lot of slower moment to moment platforming. I didn't dislike those games for having it, I dislike those games for having basically nothing else to them. The open zones are much more vast in their scope, gives you more to do, and frankly, i find most of the little platforming challenges in the open world to be much more engaging, especially the 3d ones which when used right can be used to jump from one challenge to another seamlessly.
