Sonic Frontiers Thread - PS4, PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC

As a competitive Smash Ultimate player, I prefer not to think about Sonic's moveset, ignorance is bliss. Especially since my mains suffer against him.

100% agree on the bounciness aspect, there should be some weightiness to his movement and the bouncing / homing attack physics should make it genuinely fun to hop from enemy to enemy. I hate when it just feels like you're pressing the A button and teleporting to the next enemy, it feels like my movement is restricted. Particularly in the games that have super floaty-ass jumps, where you spend so much time slowly rising through the air that you forget this is a game about running... like, on the ground.

If there are grounded melee moves like Sonic Battle-esque kicks or spin attacks, I just hope they have a quick cooldown or they can be canceled into a jump or a dash, or make his follow-ups actually satisfying to land. Imagine dashing in on an enemy, initiating a Sonic Advance 3-style sliding kick that launches the enemy upwards, and then following up with an aerial spin attack. Being forced to stop and perform mashy melee attacks that have no real direction or momentum is something that has bored me to death in a lot of games, including too many Sonic games.

 

I'd have to say the opposite. I prefer games where sonic seamlessly snaps from enemy to enemy, and then you're right back into the action with a quick airdash/airboost depending on the game. Especially in games with good sound effects for it like unleashed and generations. (do they use the same sound? i forgot lol)
I just hope it's not like 06, and while I do like that game's homing attack, chewing through massive health bars for seconds on end is just a slog. Heroes and shadow suffered the same problem.
If we're getting combat, I'd prefer something similar to how the black knight works (not with a sword of course), but instead of stopping you in your tracks, it'd give you a slight speed boost. Now that would be fun.

 

Honestly, after playing a fair amount of Robo Blast 2 recently, I realized how much the game just treats enemies as asides rather than gatekeeping buggers compared to, say, Heroes through '06 loving to stop you to kill some health pool enemies. I'd rather not have an actual dedicated combo combat system, because that treads way too much into the generic platformer-with-combat territory that is almost always never done right.

But it does make me wonder how you make combat valid and how you make it interesting in a movement-focused platformer, instead of just things you run past all the time unless you're looking for score. With the Rangers leak stuff, supposedly we'll be able to circle foes and do grounded paraloop damage on them of sorts, but that wasn't a whole lot to work off of.

 

Enemies are just minor obstacles in most Sonic games, including the classics. It's just harder to avoid them in 2D. I think enemies need to be more aggressive and dangerous in 3D, and the best way for that would probably be for there to be some reason running right by them is a bad idea, or maybe level design that puts them in Sonic's way such that they are hard to avoid if you don't stop to attack them, which is what Lost World did, and I think Lost World utilized badniks most effectively of any 3D Sonic game. I think Sonic GT or something made the motobugs fast enough to pursue you or something? But that game still felt mostly empty.

 

It's an interesting difference, really. Fan games seem to try to de-emphasize enemy encounters to be more like the classics or makes them movement chains, Sonic Team either makes them boost fodder or focuses more on the fights if they're not constrained to obstacles in a very tight space.

 

On that note of Lost World, maybe some kind of chain Homing Attack to deal with enemies that might block your path (like they would genuinely stop you from just jumping over them super easily, maybe?) while still keeping your momentum off the homing attack as opposed to just floating in the air could work. That could come with it's own bevvy of issues though, but I feel like bringing back that mechanic could work pretty well (though remove the need to "charge" the homing attack - always found that stupid). I'm interested to see what the Sonic Team solution is, if any. (Might be my downfall considering their recent track record, lmfao)

 

I always felt like that was the idea behind the light speed attack from the Adventure games, but it just never really worked properly for some reason

I always thought it was pretty cool how they kind of re-invented it in Lost World. I hope they bring it back in Frontiers, I think the idea of zipping along enemies is pretty fun lol

 

IGN included footage from the Sonic Frontiers trailer in their trailer for Summer Games Fest/IGN Summer of gaming.
https://twitter.com/ign/status/1530232734488137732?s=21
Again, it’s not 100% an indication that Frontiers will be there... but I think it’s very very likely.

 

I think it's just because you have to stop and charge it as opposed to it being a natural extension of movement. It's not a fast and speedy way of taking out enemies - it's an alternative. It's not even like you can charge it for later - since the charge reduced your speed a ton. Of course, they designed it like that because aside from it being the first ever 3D Sonic game, they were also probably worried about balance and the Adventure games are designed a lot differently. I think if you want to do something like this, you might be able to do it without the windup or whatnot and have it be more fair - or just straight up work the game around that kind of concept. Bit of wishful thinking, but it'd be nice.

Maybe they make it so you can charge it while running ("Hold X down to charge your Light Speed Attack!"), so that you don't lose speed or anything? I dunno.

 

if enemies are going to be threatening, fuck it, let's give him a dodge, like the blink that the DBZ characters have. Enemies can be threatening without you needing to attack and combo them, and it ties into both the speed and mischief/showing off aspects of Sonic.

Also, enemies are easier to pick out in the moment (if designed well, that is) so a player can react to them on instinct. Do I just jump over this one, spin dash this one, have to air dodge this one? In terms of platforming lessons, I felt that the original Crash and Spyro games on the PS1 had great visual design for what to do so you didn't have to guess or do trial-and-error:

- In Crash, enemies that would die via slide or spin attacks would have spikes on their back. Enemies that required a jump would have a visibly open back and spikes/similar on their sides.
- In Spyro, enemies that were immune to fire had a metallic texture on the bits that were immune. Enemies that couldn't be charged were physically large, while ones that could were small. The games would mix and match these characteristics so you'd get the gist of what to do, what mechanics to exploit etc.. For instance, in one of Spyro 1's first levels, you had large enemies (let's flame them) that had metallic fronts (wait, that won't work) but their backs were not metallic, which you could see when they turned around. So you'd deal with that enemy by waiting for it to turn around in the hallway it's in and then flaming it.

Sonic could totally do some similar design philosophies so you could parse this at high speeds I think.

 

And it’s not like the series hasn’t already dabbled with such ideas. Obviously Egg Hammers are already much bigger than standard enemies, the super badniks in Runners that could only be smashed with power types (bouncing other character types off of them) were clearly distinguished. Also really like the ideas being brought up regarding the move set. While I think people are right to criticise Lost World’s additions, as their execution breaks the pace of the game with the freeze frames and such, I think it absolutely had the right idea in trying to diversify Sonic’s move set to spice up enemy encounters. Also want to echo the want for a dodge mechanic ala Bayonetta, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, etc. that slows down time while still keeping things moving and having the character be faster in relative terms than the rest of the environment to maintain that sense of pace. Honestly, SGF can’t come soon enough. I’ve made no secret of my optimism for this game and I really want to see where they’re going to take it.

 

Not to try and get too off topic, but I feel like a lot of Lost World's additions were genuinely good ideas that got bogged down by some strange decisions (the freeze frames, like you said - really breaks momentum. We can have cool poses without the game freezing!!!) or the fact that Lost World was basically just one big experiment by Sonic Team where they kept throwing stuff at the wall to see what worked. I really do hope they at least revisit some ideas in the future - stuff like the more interesting combat, or even things like giving Sonic in a 3D space a run button of some kind. (It was very controversial, but I think it works okay. Maybe if you adjust it further, you can make it so that it's not as jarring of a concept). I absolutely despise Lost World but I will give it that it has a lot of sound ideas that just didn't go the right direction, but hopefully it acts as a good means for Sonic Team to be like "okay, let's try this thing out again, but like, actually make it good".

 

Lost World was the kind of game that could've been followed up on, stripping away the Mario Galaxy-isms in favor of trying to expand and improve upon it in new ways. I feel like Frontiers is probably going to be that, just without the parkour and with more open stage design for that alleged "open world", and I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing after Forces, but who knows at this point

Like I don't hate LW and Forces like some may, but they aren't very fun to play to progress, just to revisit the stages once you know what you're in for, and there's a lot of missed potential with Lost World in favor of throwing gimmick after gimmick at the wall.

 

I guess we're right on the cusp of finally seeing Frontiers gameplay. We've waited over a year to see this, longer than any other Sonic game in history, so it better be worth it.

 

If the problem is that enemies are too easy to pass without fighting already, letting Sonic dodge clean through them without having to engage with them would make it worse.

 

Enemy design and combat has honestly only gone downhill since Mean Bean Machine. If the robots aren't wildly flailing their arms around in front of a beautiful forest background with rolling blue skies while spouting several lines of dialogue, I don't want them.

 

...So anyone else realize that its' been a whole year since this game was revealed and we still know next to nothing about it?

 

Several people have been pointing this out for several months now. The wait can be trying but info seems to be coming imminently.

Side bar: you know those really convincing you dreams you have that become really disappointing when you wake up? Had one about a Frontiers trailer last night where Sonic was using a zip line over a huge lake with a gigantic buoy in the middle with Eggman’s logo on it and they teased some kind of plot significance for Shadow and the action choreography of the trailer was one big send-up to Sonic CD’s intro, complete with You Can Do Anything.

Even went for my phone to check YouTube when I woke up, so yeah, I can sympathetise with the desperation for a trailer.

 

I remember Izuka said the game was revelaed a bit too soon, lol.

 

There are two realities that co-exist here: 1) Due to Sega’s poor track record simply announcing that a new 3D Sonic game in development without showing gameplay is not enough to make us feel confident about the game. 2) We just got a Sonic the Hedgehog movie that was a record breaking success. Paramount and/or Sega correctly wanted all eyes on the movie.

Again, there is absolutely not a guarantee that Frontiers will be good. But there is a legit reason why Sega has been quite about Frontiers for the first half of this year; it’s a reason that was very successful.