That's the thing, I thought it was pretty ass without major tweaks and the patch. It's what soured my first impression.
As much as I love how customizable the controls are in Frontiers, I think it's a net negative for the game. Going forward I'd prefer if there weren't so many options. Having a single control scheme (two at most) makes it easier to design a cohesive experience, and also makes the experience universal so you generally won't see as many differing opinions. More options means more things that can potentially go wrong. It's also incredibly intimidating seeing so many sliders and options and barely noticing a difference in the control lol.
I think sliders should stay and be available, but more clearly defined presets should be what the customization is built on. "Action" and "High Speed" modes are a step in the right direction.
I'm still not sure what exactly the "bounce height" setting actually does. But yeah, I totally agree. There are so many options for Frontiers and the open zones have be to designed in such a way to accommodate all of it. Controlling Sonic is significantly more enjoyable with jump deceleration reduced to 20 - 40%, but the game is actually designed for 100% deceleration. They can't design areas where you're expected to have a tight turning circle in 3D if that turning circle can actually be made to be significantly looser etc etc. If only gets more confusing when the game makes almost all of those sliders do nothing in cyberspace, which accounts for a pretty significant proportion of the main gameplay loop. Future games would do well to limit all of those sliders into 2 or 3 predetermined settings; High Speed (advanced), Balanced (default) and Action (beginner). In fact, I don't think that Frontiers even lets you default back to the preset High Speed and Action styles that it asks you about on starting a new file.
It affects the height and momentum of when Sonic launches off of slopes, ramps, the little rocks in the ground; namely, anything that puts Sonic in a trick state. If it's low, he'll get no air time, if it's high, he'll fly. It's a bad name for a pretty significant setting. It does not! I tried that out myself.
As far as music, i quite like the soundtrack and what it went for, but its certainly not my favorite. It is up there, though. The island tracks are servicable. I think some of the movements, especially on chaos island, are actually pretty great, ouranos island also has a really nice theme, but nothing exceptional. However, they fit the mood of the game well and with how short most of the platforming sequences are on the islands, I think they made the right choice. Cyberspace on the other hand, I love full stop. While I do wish more themes were more memorable and fitting for the individual levels, I think with how much the 4 themes are reused, using more varied tracks throughout makes for a better soundtrack. There are some real highlights in there, and despite some other folks not finding them memorable, i find myself humming quite a few of them, especially when im out jogging. The big thing for me though is that I find them very easy, for the most part, to listen to outside of the game. They dont fit the individual stages as well as older games did, but in exchange, i think they work better as all purpose techno/edm/party music that you can just listen to. I also love the boss themes for how over the top they are, but I dont have a ton to say about them. They are just very exciting.
Hard agree. Give us a Sonic that is fun to control and has all the right qualities out-of-the-box, and include a slower "Action" preset for people who prefer it. Sliders are fine if people choose to mess with them, but the default preset should be the best option, or at least good enough that everybody and their mother isn't going into the settings to change them. Obviously some of the sliders were added in post or part of the DLC, but I think Frontiers 2 should also decide if it wants jump deceleration or boost deceleration by default. Something like whether or not the player decelerates in the air is fundamental to the design of stages and challenges, and it shows when people using certain control presets do better or worse on certain challenges, or certain cyberspace stages become so much easier with specific control options that you need to add an asterisk on their result screen.
I have no idea what kind of brain worms would allow you to "debate" over S4E2's soundtrack but not acknowledge that Lost World's OST is fucking stellar.
I genuily think Sonic Lost World is peak (no, I don't think it's "generic"). Easily on my top 5 Sonic OST.
Not sure if it was like this before but if you die enough times in the Hard final boss, it'll increase your stock.
I think Forces’ soundtrack was pretty good, and Lost World’s was decent. 4 Episode 1 and 2 are the only “big” Sonic games whose songs I don’t actively listen to. Every other game (excluding some 8-bit titles and Boom) has at least one track I’ll turn on every now and again.
I don't mind Sonic 4's tracks in the context of just playing the games, but Sky Fortress 2 is the only song from them I've ever gone out of my way to listen to outside of the games, and I think just about every criticism levied at them is valid and agreeable. Forces I'm mixed on. A lot of Sonic's stage themes are pretty good, but the ones that aren't fall pretty hard, and the fact that they all use roughly the same instruments makes it hard to take any of them in isolation. Most of the avatar stage themes are pretty good, but the lyrics repeating gets tiring when playing something like Aqua Road or Security Hall (which have easily-missable red rings). The classic Sonic themes are fine. Nothing amazing, but I don't think it'd be fair to make the same criticisms about them as 4, they're just not as blaring or constructed with as annoying instruments.
I agree, I’ve enjoyed the musical experience of this game. Also, you have a pretty good ability when it comes to writing!
I’ve played Ep 2 very few times so I’ll have to go listen to them to make a real judgment. It came out when I was not really into gaming so I only fully played it one or two times on PC like 7 years ago. I may just buy it on Xbox so I have it more readily accessible. It feels wrong to own Ep 1 on there but not the actually decent sequel. With all the improvements to the gameplay, I imagine the songs must be better. Turning back to Frontiers, I really hope we don’t stick with adjustable controls in the future. Beyond the fact that the games should just be designed around a single control scheme, as someone who enjoys time-attacking Sonic (I wouldn’t call myself a speed-runner as I don’t really do the community aspect), having that many variables get annoying when optimizing runs. There are certain routes and tricks that get super finicky to pull off in Cyberspace now with the deceleration options. More work needs to go into Sonic’s controls. I love the game, but I love it in spite of how it controls. So many aspects of the movement is great, but some are endlessly frustrating.
Idk I’m having a great time dicking around with the spin dash and other things in cyberspace. You can pull off some crazy tricks now. Now it doesn’t feel like a slog, and I’m all for it. Start porting levels to cyberspace now people. Especially once the other three get added to the game.
