Why do we love Sonic so much? This question has been asked many times to many people over the last 30 years, and every year it becomes increasingly harder to answer. Do I love Sonic? Hell yeah. Why? Um, the colors? The whimsical characters? The TV shows? Maybe. It sure as hell isn’t because of the games, though.
I will preface this with a disclaimer that although I do love sonic games, and have played most of them, I can’t point at any specific game as honestly being excellent. Just so you know where I stand, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on Gamecube was a HUGE part of my childhood. My brother and I played hundreds of hours of that game, between the fun extra challenges that were available for EVERY STAGE (collect 100 rings, find the chao, time attack, and hard mode), the Chao Garden and its mini games, and of course the ridiculous 2 player mode (Chaos Spear! Ouch!). And the music was straight bangers, from Live and Learn all the way to the Chao Garden Lobby. But for how much I love the game, it’s not particularly good. It’s clunky, glitchy, the voice acting is hilarious and horribly dubbed (I found you! Faker!) and the “shooting” stages, roughly 1/3 of the game, feel like garbage to play. But I love it. I didn’t purchase Sonic Forces with the expectation that it’d be great. I hoped that it would be campy and funny and playable enough that I would remember why I loved Sonic so much. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.
Remember Shadow the Hedgehog, the edgier version of Sonic? Well say hello to Shadow 2, the sequel. The story begins with Sonic facing off against a new, even edgier hedgehog named Infinite. Please listen to his theme while reading this or you won’t truly understand what you’re getting into.
Sonic is taken by Dr. Eggman, and Tails suffers PTSD. We skip to 6 months later, and Eggman has taken over the entire world with the help of Infinite. This is where perhaps the only truly great part of the game comes in — the character builder.
This is something that I did not ask for, but now can’t believe I ever lived without. I created my own guy, Cowbop, an anthropomorphic something or other. The point is, he’s very fancy. I wanted a Texas oil tycoon vibe around him and I think I got it in one. Anyway, there’s a character builder with an insane amount of outfits, hats, shoes, and other gear to unlock as you play the game. The Gamer Hat sticks out as maybe the most memorable of the bunch. Your avatar will join the cast of Sonic Forces and you’ll get to high-five Knuckles, just like you always dreamed. I had a ton of fun changing up the styles and customizing by avatar throughout the game, and I think that’s the last good thing I have to say about Sonic Forces.
So why is this game so bad? I can sum it up in one sentence. It feels awful to play. The game is split between modern Sonic stages (3D similar to Colors and Generations), Classic Sonic (2D as presented in generations), and Avatar stages (3D stages like modern Sonic). The Avatar and Classic Sonic both feel like garbage to play. I can’t say much about the classic Sonic stages except that they’re uninspired, hard to navigate, require a lot more slow careful movement than actual speed, and are quite boring. The Avatar stages themselves are mostly sound, and playing with Modern Sonic doesn’t feel as bad, just kind of boring. The Avatar character does not have a homing attack, which Sonic veterans know is literally his entire thing in the 3D games. Instead he’s got a grappling hook that works sometimes, and much more slowly than a homing attack. This was intended to make the character more versatile, since you can install weapon modules that give you different abilities later on, but I’ll get to why that ruined the entire game further down.The whole thing is clunky, and nothing about the avatar’s movement is fluid or smooth… which is like the one thing you need in a Sonic game. Again, modern Sonic’s stages are passable, but mostly don’t require you to do anything. There are sections of the game where you can literally not touch the controller for 2 minutes and continue progressing through a stage.
Sonic games are often praised for their music, even when the rest of the game is actual garbage. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen with Sonic Forces. The typical thing we’ve come to love and expect from Sonic soundtracks is that upbeat rock sound with atmospheric hard vocals. The soundtrack of this game is almost entirely EDM. Now I like EDM normally, but it’s not Sonic music. There’s a lot of generic singing and beats and sounds and all the tracks blend together. Not to mention the main theme, First Bump, is not super good. It’s not bad, but it’s probably the least exciting and catchy of the main game themes. The Infinite song is its own beast.
Speaking of Infinite, fighting him felt very… dumb. It was repetitive and there were no consequences for screwing up. It took a long time to do the mini boss fights against him, and really didn’t make me feel like I had accomplished anything. The final boss fight was challenging and forced me to try 4 different weapons before finding one that actually allowed me to win. It took probably half an hour to do, but on the run where I won the final boss took maybe 5 minutes. I was… unimpressed. Winning required me picking the right weapon, not learning how the boss worked and outsmarting it. That’s just me, though, it’s conceivable that other people enjoyed the boss fights. Big snake, anyone?
The environments were largely, to use the word again, uninspired. All of it was totally forgettable with the sole exception of the Casino Forest, which I would love to have seen more of. Sonic veterans will know there’s always a casino stage and they’re normally pretty samey, but putting it in a forest really mixed it up and I actually paused the game to admire the scenery a few times. Hoping it comes back in the next installment, which I will for some reason still buy.
My last main thing to talk about is a specific incident I ran into that ruined the whole idea of the game (luckily it was the penultimate stage.) I will first preface with the fact that nowhere in the game are you told that certain stages can only be completed with certain weapons. I had been switching weapons almost every stage with my avatar and hadn’t run into any problems I couldn’t get around, even if it would have been easier with, say the fire gun instead of the lightning cannon. This stage has a section in it at the very end that is only doable with the drill weapon. That’s right, after spending almost half an hour trying to get past one specific part of the stage and getting stumped over and over, I finally had to look it up. In all the playthrough videos I watched, everyone said “just attach the drill.” Cool. There are 8 different weapons in this game. You can’t switch weapons mid-stage. So I had to go back and restart the stage with the drill weapon, and I blasted through that section. Cool. So it was literally impossible to beat this stage with all but one weapon, and I wasn’t told anywhere that this would be the case, nor that this kind of thing could even happen in the game. After all the time I lost on this section in vain, I was more than a little salty about the experience. But about half an hour later, the game was over. A smooth transition to my next point.
This game is 4.5 hours long, if you spend some time character creating and do a few extra missions along the way. There is some replayability built into the game but it feels so damn bad to play it you won’t want to do that. The Shadow DLC, which is also not fun and fully of RNG bullshit traps that randomly toss you off the stage, takes about 15 minutes. Thank god it’s free DLC. I paid $40 for this game, but that’s my own fault.
Sonic Forces is not a good game. It feels clunky, the levels and music are generic and uninspired, it’s full of annoying pandering, and your player character you spent 45 minutes making handles like a Razr Scooter in a swamp. Infinite is a boring villain with boring boss fights. The customizability of your avatar’s gear is fun and overloaded with outfit combinations, but the fact that certain weapons don’t allow you to complete certain stages with literally no warning from the game is inexcusable.
If you’re itching for some Sonic Forces, I highly recommend the Game Grumps playthrough of it. It’s hilarious and they don’t shit on it nearly as much as I did here. It’s one of their funnier things and they finish it completely.
I will preface this with a disclaimer that although I do love sonic games, and have played most of them, I can’t point at any specific game as honestly being excellent. Just so you know where I stand, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on Gamecube was a HUGE part of my childhood. My brother and I played hundreds of hours of that game, between the fun extra challenges that were available for EVERY STAGE (collect 100 rings, find the chao, time attack, and hard mode), the Chao Garden and its mini games, and of course the ridiculous 2 player mode (Chaos Spear! Ouch!). And the music was straight bangers, from Live and Learn all the way to the Chao Garden Lobby. But for how much I love the game, it’s not particularly good. It’s clunky, glitchy, the voice acting is hilarious and horribly dubbed (I found you! Faker!) and the “shooting” stages, roughly 1/3 of the game, feel like garbage to play. But I love it. I didn’t purchase Sonic Forces with the expectation that it’d be great. I hoped that it would be campy and funny and playable enough that I would remember why I loved Sonic so much. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.
Remember Shadow the Hedgehog, the edgier version of Sonic? Well say hello to Shadow 2, the sequel. The story begins with Sonic facing off against a new, even edgier hedgehog named Infinite. Please listen to his theme while reading this or you won’t truly understand what you’re getting into.
Sonic is taken by Dr. Eggman, and Tails suffers PTSD. We skip to 6 months later, and Eggman has taken over the entire world with the help of Infinite. This is where perhaps the only truly great part of the game comes in — the character builder.
This is something that I did not ask for, but now can’t believe I ever lived without. I created my own guy, Cowbop, an anthropomorphic something or other. The point is, he’s very fancy. I wanted a Texas oil tycoon vibe around him and I think I got it in one. Anyway, there’s a character builder with an insane amount of outfits, hats, shoes, and other gear to unlock as you play the game. The Gamer Hat sticks out as maybe the most memorable of the bunch. Your avatar will join the cast of Sonic Forces and you’ll get to high-five Knuckles, just like you always dreamed. I had a ton of fun changing up the styles and customizing by avatar throughout the game, and I think that’s the last good thing I have to say about Sonic Forces.
So why is this game so bad? I can sum it up in one sentence. It feels awful to play. The game is split between modern Sonic stages (3D similar to Colors and Generations), Classic Sonic (2D as presented in generations), and Avatar stages (3D stages like modern Sonic). The Avatar and Classic Sonic both feel like garbage to play. I can’t say much about the classic Sonic stages except that they’re uninspired, hard to navigate, require a lot more slow careful movement than actual speed, and are quite boring. The Avatar stages themselves are mostly sound, and playing with Modern Sonic doesn’t feel as bad, just kind of boring. The Avatar character does not have a homing attack, which Sonic veterans know is literally his entire thing in the 3D games. Instead he’s got a grappling hook that works sometimes, and much more slowly than a homing attack. This was intended to make the character more versatile, since you can install weapon modules that give you different abilities later on, but I’ll get to why that ruined the entire game further down.The whole thing is clunky, and nothing about the avatar’s movement is fluid or smooth… which is like the one thing you need in a Sonic game. Again, modern Sonic’s stages are passable, but mostly don’t require you to do anything. There are sections of the game where you can literally not touch the controller for 2 minutes and continue progressing through a stage.
Sonic games are often praised for their music, even when the rest of the game is actual garbage. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen with Sonic Forces. The typical thing we’ve come to love and expect from Sonic soundtracks is that upbeat rock sound with atmospheric hard vocals. The soundtrack of this game is almost entirely EDM. Now I like EDM normally, but it’s not Sonic music. There’s a lot of generic singing and beats and sounds and all the tracks blend together. Not to mention the main theme, First Bump, is not super good. It’s not bad, but it’s probably the least exciting and catchy of the main game themes. The Infinite song is its own beast.
Speaking of Infinite, fighting him felt very… dumb. It was repetitive and there were no consequences for screwing up. It took a long time to do the mini boss fights against him, and really didn’t make me feel like I had accomplished anything. The final boss fight was challenging and forced me to try 4 different weapons before finding one that actually allowed me to win. It took probably half an hour to do, but on the run where I won the final boss took maybe 5 minutes. I was… unimpressed. Winning required me picking the right weapon, not learning how the boss worked and outsmarting it. That’s just me, though, it’s conceivable that other people enjoyed the boss fights. Big snake, anyone?
The environments were largely, to use the word again, uninspired. All of it was totally forgettable with the sole exception of the Casino Forest, which I would love to have seen more of. Sonic veterans will know there’s always a casino stage and they’re normally pretty samey, but putting it in a forest really mixed it up and I actually paused the game to admire the scenery a few times. Hoping it comes back in the next installment, which I will for some reason still buy.
My last main thing to talk about is a specific incident I ran into that ruined the whole idea of the game (luckily it was the penultimate stage.) I will first preface with the fact that nowhere in the game are you told that certain stages can only be completed with certain weapons. I had been switching weapons almost every stage with my avatar and hadn’t run into any problems I couldn’t get around, even if it would have been easier with, say the fire gun instead of the lightning cannon. This stage has a section in it at the very end that is only doable with the drill weapon. That’s right, after spending almost half an hour trying to get past one specific part of the stage and getting stumped over and over, I finally had to look it up. In all the playthrough videos I watched, everyone said “just attach the drill.” Cool. There are 8 different weapons in this game. You can’t switch weapons mid-stage. So I had to go back and restart the stage with the drill weapon, and I blasted through that section. Cool. So it was literally impossible to beat this stage with all but one weapon, and I wasn’t told anywhere that this would be the case, nor that this kind of thing could even happen in the game. After all the time I lost on this section in vain, I was more than a little salty about the experience. But about half an hour later, the game was over. A smooth transition to my next point.
This game is 4.5 hours long, if you spend some time character creating and do a few extra missions along the way. There is some replayability built into the game but it feels so damn bad to play it you won’t want to do that. The Shadow DLC, which is also not fun and fully of RNG bullshit traps that randomly toss you off the stage, takes about 15 minutes. Thank god it’s free DLC. I paid $40 for this game, but that’s my own fault.
Sonic Forces is not a good game. It feels clunky, the levels and music are generic and uninspired, it’s full of annoying pandering, and your player character you spent 45 minutes making handles like a Razr Scooter in a swamp. Infinite is a boring villain with boring boss fights. The customizability of your avatar’s gear is fun and overloaded with outfit combinations, but the fact that certain weapons don’t allow you to complete certain stages with literally no warning from the game is inexcusable.
If you’re itching for some Sonic Forces, I highly recommend the Game Grumps playthrough of it. It’s hilarious and they don’t shit on it nearly as much as I did here. It’s one of their funnier things and they finish it completely.