What a bizarre game. If I could give it a 7.5/10 I would, but I ultimately enjoyed my time with it so I'm going to round up.
I should probably be clear from the start that I'm a Sonic fan, and I've been a Sonic fan since I was a kid. I think the series has had an incredibly bumpy trajectory and I really wasn't sure what to make of this game based on pre-release footage. The funny thing is that I've put 20 hours into it and I'm still not sure what to make of it.
I could write a whole laundry list of the game's notable issues: The texture pop in is atrocious. There's a lot of repetitive collecting to pad out the game time and encourage you to explore the whole open world. The cyberspace levels, while fine, are mostly just slightly-reworked versions of stages from previous Sonic games.
And yet, despite all that, I kept wanting to play more of it. And I think it really comes down to one thing - Sonic as a character is perfect for an open world setting. I never got bored of zipping and zooming around the (surprisingly big) open world maps, and enjoyed the frequent bite-sized platforming challenges. I think traversal is really the key to my enjoyment of an open world game, and Frontiers absolutely nails it.
While the actual story of the game was pretty forgettable in my opinion, I'm glad they got IDW comics writer Ian Flynn to work on this game because the character moments between Sonic and his friends are incredibly charming and have definitely been missing from the games for a long time now. I love seeing Sonic and Knuckles as friends who constantly try to one-up each other for fun, or Sonic acting as an older brother to Tails and telling him that he's never seen him as a burden.
The combat is...fine, I didn't love it but I didn't hate it. The boss fights deliver on the kind of over-the-top spectacle you want from a Super Sonic boss fight and I'm glad they didn't skimp on them.
If you're not already a Sonic fan, I doubt this game is going to make you a convert. But hey, if going really really fast in an open world sounds cool to you, I'd recommend getting this on sale. The game absolutely has issues but the core gameplay loop totally works and I'm genuinely excited to see what a sequel to Frontiers will look like.
I should probably be clear from the start that I'm a Sonic fan, and I've been a Sonic fan since I was a kid. I think the series has had an incredibly bumpy trajectory and I really wasn't sure what to make of this game based on pre-release footage. The funny thing is that I've put 20 hours into it and I'm still not sure what to make of it.
I could write a whole laundry list of the game's notable issues: The texture pop in is atrocious. There's a lot of repetitive collecting to pad out the game time and encourage you to explore the whole open world. The cyberspace levels, while fine, are mostly just slightly-reworked versions of stages from previous Sonic games.
And yet, despite all that, I kept wanting to play more of it. And I think it really comes down to one thing - Sonic as a character is perfect for an open world setting. I never got bored of zipping and zooming around the (surprisingly big) open world maps, and enjoyed the frequent bite-sized platforming challenges. I think traversal is really the key to my enjoyment of an open world game, and Frontiers absolutely nails it.
While the actual story of the game was pretty forgettable in my opinion, I'm glad they got IDW comics writer Ian Flynn to work on this game because the character moments between Sonic and his friends are incredibly charming and have definitely been missing from the games for a long time now. I love seeing Sonic and Knuckles as friends who constantly try to one-up each other for fun, or Sonic acting as an older brother to Tails and telling him that he's never seen him as a burden.
The combat is...fine, I didn't love it but I didn't hate it. The boss fights deliver on the kind of over-the-top spectacle you want from a Super Sonic boss fight and I'm glad they didn't skimp on them.
If you're not already a Sonic fan, I doubt this game is going to make you a convert. But hey, if going really really fast in an open world sounds cool to you, I'd recommend getting this on sale. The game absolutely has issues but the core gameplay loop totally works and I'm genuinely excited to see what a sequel to Frontiers will look like.
Reviewed on Jan 27, 2023