SunlitSonata
2016
Having been disillusioned by Game Freak shipping out Pokemon Scarlet and Violet with both lackluster graphics AND abysmal performance, I became more curious to check out fangames than the next title, beginning with the fangame that seemed so close to the genuine article Nintendo chucked a DMCA its way several years ago: Pokemon Uranium.
I think the existence of fan games, particularly ones on this level of scale, can be fascinating. When created out of love, they can feel like a fan’s attempt to get more of the specific product they really adore, but they also tend to represent what said fans believe the genuine article had been lacking so they can fill what they perceive as a hole the series left in their hearts themselves.
Anyone can write a fanfiction, but creating a full on GAME to contain that writing actually takes another level of skill, and yet another level beyond that to have said game design feel even slightly like an officially released product. There’s been plenty of horrendously misguided fan games over the years (such dreck as Hunt Down the Freeman and Sonic Omens spring to mind) but I think Pokemon Uranium, despite its amateurish execution in places, is an interesting case that shows how far passion can go when trying to fill a void.
It probably further helps that mainline Pokemon, for years, has been a series of very low-tech games holding the kind of longstanding legacy where game mechanic concepts are constantly being changed on a micro level despite the macro concept being a constant. Thus, Pokemon Uranium brings a Generation 4 overworld with Generation 5 battle UI and Generation 6 battle mechanics.
You know you’re getting into a fan game story very fast when just starting the game shows you the heartbreaking story of your character’s mother dying in a power plant explosion and their father, a Pokemon Ranger, became cold and distant from you. After this introduction though, things mellow out and a lot of what you would expect to be in working order falls right into place.
Most of Uranium plays as you would expect from a sprite based Pokemon game. Explore a region, battle trainers along the way by making eye contact, defeat 8 gym leaders to collect badges to challenge the League to become champion, use HMs to gradually explore the world they couldn’t before, basic stuff. But there’s an admirable level of commitment in many spots. The game has a full day/night cycle it tracks with your computer. There’s over 100 original “fakemons” in this, and while it does make the arbitrary amount of true Pokemon stick out like a sore thumb, a fair amount of the designs do veer close to the mix of cutesy charm and anime cool Ken Sugimori has really refined over the years, in particular with Pokemon like the starter trio, the many Bug type variants, Urayne as a box Legendary and especially Nucleon, which fits right in with the other Eeveelutions present. I like that Uranium decides to make Double Battles take occasional prominence after the main series has shunted them out for years; they offer a level of additional planning without the gimmickier styles tested in Generation 5. The Elite Four is structured more like the anime, where it’s arena battles between randomly pooled opponents in a tournament bracket where neither side can heal, and that was a very distinct addition. There’s a Game Corner, you can rematch numerous trainers if they call you, there’s a sidequest where if you complete it, you get free grinding spots which is extremely helpful, one of the towns has a berry trading economy in lieu of a shop which is another standout moment feature that fits, and Legen Town’s aesthetic of feeling like it takes place inside a medieval castle made it a pretty memorable town. There’s a minigame to raise IVs if you’re into that stuff, and as a game it will offer more of a challenge even in a standard run than any of the mainlines. The original music is quite impressive for a fangame. It can be very rocking at times, but it can also be quite cozy in other places, with the use of synthesizers working well to punctuate the game’s original creation in Nuclear Pokemon.
That being said, despite all these nice touches, there are other aspects that feel noticeably undercooked, or straight up unpolished to the level you’d expect if this was an actually released title. Sometimes, it’s an imperceptible feeling, like when it feels as though wild encounters happen just slightly more often than they should, or that moves with status effects activate slightly more often than they should. Other times, it’s the many lines of comically corny dialogue (which I’ll share at the end) or major inconsistencies in its presentation. Screen tearing is a constant, and it can feel like motion blur in a sprite-based game whenever your character is running or biking around the map. Even in Performance Mode I couldn’t find a way to stop it so look out for that or see if you can find a way around it. Battles also, while they try to emulate the style of Generation 5, aren’t quite there. It can feel very inconsistent on whether a Pokemon’s sprite moves when it’s in battle, as some of the sprites move while others are stuck still. Any attempts at backgrounds are shockingly poor; they try harder to be actual backgrounds than Generation 5, but they have the feeling of taking photographs of sprite art and blurring them before placing them on. As if they were halfway committing to something new but also not fully wanting to abandon the more abstract backgrounds from Gen 5.
I mentioned before that some of the Fakemon were well-designed for what they were but there’s plenty that doesn’t apply toward. Pajay just looks like budget Ho-Oh. Terlard’s battle sprite when using it just looks like two Charizard heads attached together. And the new evolutions feel jarringly at odds with the original visions. The Uranium developers couldn’t have known this at the time, but when Primeape and Dunsparce got new evolutions in Generation 9, they felt perfectly right with the vision and inspiration of the original designs. Dunseraph in Uranium feels completely disconnected from Dunsparce itself on a pure concept design level, which is something I can’t say for the new evolutions for old mons added in Generation 4.
HM moves were always just situational progression blockers, but Uranium doesn’t do as much as it could to take advantage of them. Strength and Surf work as you’d expect; there’s even a few Strength puzzles near the end of the game to have you think a bit, but Rock Smash loses any sort of relevance very quickly after breaking a progression blocker, Dive is used to pass through a single blocker in the main game and nothing else, while Fly, even beyond how late you get it, can only take you to one side of the region or another. Meaning you’ll either have to Surf a bit of distance to get to the other side or pay a bit of currency every time you want to come over. It feels like a clunky tech oversight, compared to mainline Pokemon organizing the entirety of a single region on one map.
For something with both pros and cons: Nuclear Pokemon! They essentially looked at the Shadow Pokemon from Pokemon XD and decided to turn them from tanks into glass cannons. Every Nuclear attack is super effective on every type except Nuclear and Steel, but they’re also weak to every type. It’s an interesting way of punishing you for using Dual Type mons in your team for more type coverage, as it’s likely a single Nuclear attack would do 4X the amount of damage. It’s interesting, and it does help with the game’s honestly rather questionable level curving in the second half, but it also entirely comes down to a speed advantage. If a Nuclear Pokemon goes first and has a high enough attack, it likely kills, but if it's too weak to one shot for any reason, it’ll likely die in a single turn. On your end, this limits their utility without enough grinding, but the game’s main villain, Apocalypse CURIE, has an entire team of these, and will likely hold major level advantages, and therefore speed, if you don’t extensively grind. Which brings up the story itself.
If there’s one constant among many Pokemon stories, it’s the sense of escalation; often you’re going from catching small rats and racoons to defeating entire organizations of domestic terrorists trying to tame the power of God and anime on their side. But in Pokemon Uranium it sort of feels like the heavier plot is tossed off to the side while you go about the standard Gym badge journey. It’s not like in say, Generation 4, where Team Galactic happened to be occupying buildings within and around the major towns. A lot of the key story moments boat you away from the world to power plant islands, two of which hold dungeons with some atmosphere to them, even as the second one puts you in a suit where you have to slowly walk and repels don’t work to stave away random encounters. Some of the only times the plot takes place within the core world itself involves a two-time subplot involving scheming scientists and Garlikid, a Pokemon that really shouldn’t be. The single corniest thing this game’s story does is in this subplot. They introduce a translator device that lets you hear what Pokemon are saying, since until the ending it mostly comes down to “annihilate, kill, kill, human injustice, why am I trapped in a tiny ball.” It’s not endearingly goofy like some of the NPC dialogue ends up being, it’s just cringe, flat out and reminds me why Game Freak wisely stayed away from having the pets communicate their own abuse.
Disconnection from the world aside though, the Apocalypse CURIE encounters are some of the game’s more memorable moments. The twist regarding them is perhaps the most obvious of all time in the history of anything, but their existence in the story with their 12-year-old edgelord dialogue leads into some climatic battles.
But I should asterisk this as another instance where decisions made regarding said encounters would in absolutely no way fly in an officially released product. The first battle with CURIE is behind a door with a timer where you have to reach them in time, or else. The game does warn you about something big being behind this door, but if you save past the door and your team isn’t prepared, the time limit actively prevents grinding, and your file is screwed. Then there’s another encounter at the very end of the game with a Level 85 Legendary to contend with, 15 levels higher than the Elite Four. Its Nuclear type would make it extra vulnerable if not for its insane level jump compared to what’s likely your party at the time giving it speed priority. Losing this battle gives you a non-standard ending without an instant Pokemon Center warp. Meaning, if you decided to save at any point passed the Elite Four entrance, and it’s impossible to win with your current team and item setup, your file is screwed, FOREVER. It’s possible in one way to do even with a lower-level team (Focus Sash + Thunder Wave= likely win) but still, I have no idea how that got through. If you can make it through, the ending itself is overall a pleasant enough way to close out, accompanied by a strong somber music track.
Pokemon Uranium is a mixed bag, some genuinely thoughtful game design inclusions and a decently amount of creativity hurt by technical inconsistencies and overly strenuous market unfriendly design at points, but it reflects the kind of passion fangame creators provide out of love and appreciation for the accomplishments of a series, even if it can be misguided. I’m curious to check out other full on fangames in the future to see if they’ve better balanced those sensibilities, but for now, I’ll leave off by sharing some of the absolutely incredible dialogue contained within this game:
“Okay, listen: How do you get 50 Pikachu on a bus? You poke’em on! Haha, geddit?”
“Mom just doesn’t understand why I hate sand. It’s coarse, and rough…and it gets everywhere!”
(yes they did just reference a prequel meme)
“I love playing video games. Pokemon’s a really fun one. Wanna play?”
“Hey n00b! Wanna see my 1337 skills? Let’s fight!”
“Lololol im a grrrrl gamer! Y aim a girl and I play video gamezzz! o3o.”
“KILL THE INTRUDER CRUSH DESTROY KILL” (from a Pokemon)
“You may know me as Cameron Caine, engineer, private contractor, and father. However, this is not the truth about who I am. My real name is Cameron Stormbringer.”
Thank Arceus! (used as a sub for Thank God because Pokemon god)
HOLY SHINX! (obvious expletive)
A sign saying “Wow, you found this place, good job.”
“I can’t believe it… you SAVED the day. I knew you could SAVE us. …Why am I shouting SAVE you ask? Well… I just think it’s a good idea to SAVE things!” (helpful but still goofy as heck)
“I’M JUST SO HAPPY TO SEE MY FAMILY AGAIN!! sniffle”
I think the existence of fan games, particularly ones on this level of scale, can be fascinating. When created out of love, they can feel like a fan’s attempt to get more of the specific product they really adore, but they also tend to represent what said fans believe the genuine article had been lacking so they can fill what they perceive as a hole the series left in their hearts themselves.
Anyone can write a fanfiction, but creating a full on GAME to contain that writing actually takes another level of skill, and yet another level beyond that to have said game design feel even slightly like an officially released product. There’s been plenty of horrendously misguided fan games over the years (such dreck as Hunt Down the Freeman and Sonic Omens spring to mind) but I think Pokemon Uranium, despite its amateurish execution in places, is an interesting case that shows how far passion can go when trying to fill a void.
It probably further helps that mainline Pokemon, for years, has been a series of very low-tech games holding the kind of longstanding legacy where game mechanic concepts are constantly being changed on a micro level despite the macro concept being a constant. Thus, Pokemon Uranium brings a Generation 4 overworld with Generation 5 battle UI and Generation 6 battle mechanics.
You know you’re getting into a fan game story very fast when just starting the game shows you the heartbreaking story of your character’s mother dying in a power plant explosion and their father, a Pokemon Ranger, became cold and distant from you. After this introduction though, things mellow out and a lot of what you would expect to be in working order falls right into place.
Most of Uranium plays as you would expect from a sprite based Pokemon game. Explore a region, battle trainers along the way by making eye contact, defeat 8 gym leaders to collect badges to challenge the League to become champion, use HMs to gradually explore the world they couldn’t before, basic stuff. But there’s an admirable level of commitment in many spots. The game has a full day/night cycle it tracks with your computer. There’s over 100 original “fakemons” in this, and while it does make the arbitrary amount of true Pokemon stick out like a sore thumb, a fair amount of the designs do veer close to the mix of cutesy charm and anime cool Ken Sugimori has really refined over the years, in particular with Pokemon like the starter trio, the many Bug type variants, Urayne as a box Legendary and especially Nucleon, which fits right in with the other Eeveelutions present. I like that Uranium decides to make Double Battles take occasional prominence after the main series has shunted them out for years; they offer a level of additional planning without the gimmickier styles tested in Generation 5. The Elite Four is structured more like the anime, where it’s arena battles between randomly pooled opponents in a tournament bracket where neither side can heal, and that was a very distinct addition. There’s a Game Corner, you can rematch numerous trainers if they call you, there’s a sidequest where if you complete it, you get free grinding spots which is extremely helpful, one of the towns has a berry trading economy in lieu of a shop which is another standout moment feature that fits, and Legen Town’s aesthetic of feeling like it takes place inside a medieval castle made it a pretty memorable town. There’s a minigame to raise IVs if you’re into that stuff, and as a game it will offer more of a challenge even in a standard run than any of the mainlines. The original music is quite impressive for a fangame. It can be very rocking at times, but it can also be quite cozy in other places, with the use of synthesizers working well to punctuate the game’s original creation in Nuclear Pokemon.
That being said, despite all these nice touches, there are other aspects that feel noticeably undercooked, or straight up unpolished to the level you’d expect if this was an actually released title. Sometimes, it’s an imperceptible feeling, like when it feels as though wild encounters happen just slightly more often than they should, or that moves with status effects activate slightly more often than they should. Other times, it’s the many lines of comically corny dialogue (which I’ll share at the end) or major inconsistencies in its presentation. Screen tearing is a constant, and it can feel like motion blur in a sprite-based game whenever your character is running or biking around the map. Even in Performance Mode I couldn’t find a way to stop it so look out for that or see if you can find a way around it. Battles also, while they try to emulate the style of Generation 5, aren’t quite there. It can feel very inconsistent on whether a Pokemon’s sprite moves when it’s in battle, as some of the sprites move while others are stuck still. Any attempts at backgrounds are shockingly poor; they try harder to be actual backgrounds than Generation 5, but they have the feeling of taking photographs of sprite art and blurring them before placing them on. As if they were halfway committing to something new but also not fully wanting to abandon the more abstract backgrounds from Gen 5.
I mentioned before that some of the Fakemon were well-designed for what they were but there’s plenty that doesn’t apply toward. Pajay just looks like budget Ho-Oh. Terlard’s battle sprite when using it just looks like two Charizard heads attached together. And the new evolutions feel jarringly at odds with the original visions. The Uranium developers couldn’t have known this at the time, but when Primeape and Dunsparce got new evolutions in Generation 9, they felt perfectly right with the vision and inspiration of the original designs. Dunseraph in Uranium feels completely disconnected from Dunsparce itself on a pure concept design level, which is something I can’t say for the new evolutions for old mons added in Generation 4.
HM moves were always just situational progression blockers, but Uranium doesn’t do as much as it could to take advantage of them. Strength and Surf work as you’d expect; there’s even a few Strength puzzles near the end of the game to have you think a bit, but Rock Smash loses any sort of relevance very quickly after breaking a progression blocker, Dive is used to pass through a single blocker in the main game and nothing else, while Fly, even beyond how late you get it, can only take you to one side of the region or another. Meaning you’ll either have to Surf a bit of distance to get to the other side or pay a bit of currency every time you want to come over. It feels like a clunky tech oversight, compared to mainline Pokemon organizing the entirety of a single region on one map.
For something with both pros and cons: Nuclear Pokemon! They essentially looked at the Shadow Pokemon from Pokemon XD and decided to turn them from tanks into glass cannons. Every Nuclear attack is super effective on every type except Nuclear and Steel, but they’re also weak to every type. It’s an interesting way of punishing you for using Dual Type mons in your team for more type coverage, as it’s likely a single Nuclear attack would do 4X the amount of damage. It’s interesting, and it does help with the game’s honestly rather questionable level curving in the second half, but it also entirely comes down to a speed advantage. If a Nuclear Pokemon goes first and has a high enough attack, it likely kills, but if it's too weak to one shot for any reason, it’ll likely die in a single turn. On your end, this limits their utility without enough grinding, but the game’s main villain, Apocalypse CURIE, has an entire team of these, and will likely hold major level advantages, and therefore speed, if you don’t extensively grind. Which brings up the story itself.
If there’s one constant among many Pokemon stories, it’s the sense of escalation; often you’re going from catching small rats and racoons to defeating entire organizations of domestic terrorists trying to tame the power of God and anime on their side. But in Pokemon Uranium it sort of feels like the heavier plot is tossed off to the side while you go about the standard Gym badge journey. It’s not like in say, Generation 4, where Team Galactic happened to be occupying buildings within and around the major towns. A lot of the key story moments boat you away from the world to power plant islands, two of which hold dungeons with some atmosphere to them, even as the second one puts you in a suit where you have to slowly walk and repels don’t work to stave away random encounters. Some of the only times the plot takes place within the core world itself involves a two-time subplot involving scheming scientists and Garlikid, a Pokemon that really shouldn’t be. The single corniest thing this game’s story does is in this subplot. They introduce a translator device that lets you hear what Pokemon are saying, since until the ending it mostly comes down to “annihilate, kill, kill, human injustice, why am I trapped in a tiny ball.” It’s not endearingly goofy like some of the NPC dialogue ends up being, it’s just cringe, flat out and reminds me why Game Freak wisely stayed away from having the pets communicate their own abuse.
Disconnection from the world aside though, the Apocalypse CURIE encounters are some of the game’s more memorable moments. The twist regarding them is perhaps the most obvious of all time in the history of anything, but their existence in the story with their 12-year-old edgelord dialogue leads into some climatic battles.
But I should asterisk this as another instance where decisions made regarding said encounters would in absolutely no way fly in an officially released product. The first battle with CURIE is behind a door with a timer where you have to reach them in time, or else. The game does warn you about something big being behind this door, but if you save past the door and your team isn’t prepared, the time limit actively prevents grinding, and your file is screwed. Then there’s another encounter at the very end of the game with a Level 85 Legendary to contend with, 15 levels higher than the Elite Four. Its Nuclear type would make it extra vulnerable if not for its insane level jump compared to what’s likely your party at the time giving it speed priority. Losing this battle gives you a non-standard ending without an instant Pokemon Center warp. Meaning, if you decided to save at any point passed the Elite Four entrance, and it’s impossible to win with your current team and item setup, your file is screwed, FOREVER. It’s possible in one way to do even with a lower-level team (Focus Sash + Thunder Wave= likely win) but still, I have no idea how that got through. If you can make it through, the ending itself is overall a pleasant enough way to close out, accompanied by a strong somber music track.
Pokemon Uranium is a mixed bag, some genuinely thoughtful game design inclusions and a decently amount of creativity hurt by technical inconsistencies and overly strenuous market unfriendly design at points, but it reflects the kind of passion fangame creators provide out of love and appreciation for the accomplishments of a series, even if it can be misguided. I’m curious to check out other full on fangames in the future to see if they’ve better balanced those sensibilities, but for now, I’ll leave off by sharing some of the absolutely incredible dialogue contained within this game:
“Okay, listen: How do you get 50 Pikachu on a bus? You poke’em on! Haha, geddit?”
“Mom just doesn’t understand why I hate sand. It’s coarse, and rough…and it gets everywhere!”
(yes they did just reference a prequel meme)
“I love playing video games. Pokemon’s a really fun one. Wanna play?”
“Hey n00b! Wanna see my 1337 skills? Let’s fight!”
“Lololol im a grrrrl gamer! Y aim a girl and I play video gamezzz! o3o.”
“KILL THE INTRUDER CRUSH DESTROY KILL” (from a Pokemon)
“You may know me as Cameron Caine, engineer, private contractor, and father. However, this is not the truth about who I am. My real name is Cameron Stormbringer.”
Thank Arceus! (used as a sub for Thank God because Pokemon god)
HOLY SHINX! (obvious expletive)
A sign saying “Wow, you found this place, good job.”
“I can’t believe it… you SAVED the day. I knew you could SAVE us. …Why am I shouting SAVE you ask? Well… I just think it’s a good idea to SAVE things!” (helpful but still goofy as heck)
“I’M JUST SO HAPPY TO SEE MY FAMILY AGAIN!! sniffle”
2008
A fairly cozy RPG experience despite its seemingly dark premise, one that in its small town setting, does a lot to make the character interactions between its many basic yet distinct personalities play off each other well as a unit in a way not seen in most RPGs, where party characters are solely defined by their goals and hardly if ever personally interact outside of that for basic happenings of life. The game’s antagonist is a highlight, and works perfectly for what it’s suggesting about the state of the world at that time.
On that note, people who get incredibly angry at this game for having 2008 Japanese societal awareness and not 2022 western world societal awareness are the same people who would unironically shame fans of this game for not having enough media literacy.
On that note, people who get incredibly angry at this game for having 2008 Japanese societal awareness and not 2022 western world societal awareness are the same people who would unironically shame fans of this game for not having enough media literacy.
If you’re gonna give your game a defining gimmick to make it stand out in literally any way from the past games and that’ll help it keep sticking out when developing future games in this style, probably not a good idea to make it something that you’ll only see if intentionally grinding very specific enemies (that the GBA version doesn’t indicate) on incredibly low percentiles. It has value in proving the style is addicting enough to work on handhelds but little beyond that.
2022
Sonic, as a franchise, has three particulars about it that really stood out to me from back when it started, three core tenants that SEGA have been routinely trying to work out how to translate forward whenever a new game comes out, and despite the initial reactions to Frontiers being a stark separation from what came before, I think it’s interesting to look at what we have in the game and how Sonic Team chose to tackle these challenges in a new way.
1. An adaptation of SEGA’s arcade score-based philosophy brought to a home console experience.
2. A response to the trends of its time period (originally inversely to Mario)
3. A means to harness what was possible with technology to be a showcase for a style of play few others have dared to replicate.
For the first point, although Sonic started as a franchise on home consoles, minus a few arcade games here and there, the first games still had a score to keep track of with ways to balance earning more by the end of levels, limited lives and continues. The highscore stuck around for years, with Sonic Adventure 2 making it a gameplay objective to earn a highscore for the mastery ranks of every level. But it’s been because of this arcade style philosophy that most modern Sonic games end up with short, elaborate zones holding levels designed to be beaten in only a few minutes but designed to be replayed over and over.
Sonic Frontiers answers this by peppering its open zones to have bite-sized challenges at around every corner. There’s very little downtime in Sonic Frontiers, which I think helps keep the pace up. Almost everywhere you look there’s a rail or a spring or a dash panel, with islands 2 and 3 in particular having a lot more height structures and being fairly large in size. Despite pop in, seeing larger, vast structures in the distance does inspire wanting to find out what’s at the top of the challenge, and there’s sometimes a bit of level fun along the way. The game has a lot of quick engagements with several rewards at the end of them, and the open zones being a flow to get from setpiece to setpiece I think is a solid gameplay loop, provided the terrain supported the potential with player expression, but more on that issue later.
Cyberspace is also there as an answer to the high score replayability of past titles, and I think conceptually they’re solid. They’re spread far enough around the world that finding one actually feels like a bit of a surprise, short enough to feel like a quick change of pace and you’ll not need to play many of them just to progress. But, to get the elephant out of the room, the only momentum these have is managing to boost off of the halfpipes and there’s only four themes to go around. It would’ve been SICK to have Eggmanland as a fifth theme, surely, they have Unleashed assets hanging around somewhere to reuse, but alas. The 2D ones I got something out of, mainly due to the bounce to air boost combo giving you some additional height and fixing the insanely speedy acceleration from Forces, but 3D feels very wrong; air control is directionally locked when trying to make platforming which leads to a lot of slippery turning and falling off the sides. I really wish they would’ve kept the Open Zone controls in these; THOSE I think felt pretty comfortable after some tinkering and it’s the main disconnect from what’s otherwise being an incredibly cohesive full experience. This concept is sound, but I hope gets an overhaul for a supposed sequel.
When it comes to being in touch with current trends, it’s far from a secret Sonic’s existence was born of attitudes from the early 90s, but continuing that down the line, Sonic Adventure 1 was constructed as an elaborate tech demo for the Dreamcast complete with an entire campaign to show off its capability for fishing. Sonic Adventure 2, and specifically the creation of Shadow the Hedgehog, feel almost prophetic for what would be viewed as “cool” during the 2000s, the kind of nu-metal emocore cool bouncing off the more spunky ATTITUDE Sonic himself was created under. Sonic 06 was trying to adapt too many things in its rushed development, the increased focus on real time worlds, physics systems, hubs full of NPC sidequests and the grandiose storytelling not overly dissimilar to the Final Fantasy X’s of the world. Since then, we’ve had Sonics focused on dual world gameplay, God of War combat, motion control sword swinging, Mario Galaxy level tubes and custom characters.
Sonic Frontiers’s hat to throw in this ring is player freedom. Past 3D Sonics have often had the issue of containing multiple different gameplay styles or arbitrary conditions players HAD to power through in order to get through to important content across the game. Sonic Unleashed was a particularly egregious example of this with its medal collecting blocking progression and often necessitating backtracking through levels. Frontiers in comparison is refreshingly loose in progressing across the world. Multiple small missions exist in Frontiers to bridge story gaps, but they’re quick and aren’t terribly taxing so players should get back into it fairly fast. That players can use a fishing minigame to help bypass walls of whichever kind of progression they don’t want to deal with the most I find to be pretty funny, when considering how the fishing minigame back in Sonic Adventure is viewed as a primary case of out of place content being outright required to finish the main story of the game. That “repeated content” in an open world game is presented mainly through quick bits of speed and platforming and light map opening puzzles instead of overly elaborate sidequests which I think, again, largely keeps the pace of the game up. Everything you can see (aside from plot progression doors) is something to be toyed with immediately, even if I wish there were more creative ways to finish sequences beyond air boosting to reach character tokens early.
There’s also a skill tree combat system, and it’s a mixed bag. The many moves can look cool and have satisfying sound design but combat itself is very simplistic, to where mini bosses need to have their own gimmick to spice things up. I like MOST of these (the Shark goes on for too long) for giving certain enemy encounters a distinct feel. It’s a combat system that’s very drive-by, in a way not unlike the classics, prioritizing efficiency and style and not effective use of button combos. You see an enemy, do the thing to make them vulnerable, get a thing and then keep running. I still prefer this to locking you in rooms within levels like a lot of the 2000s Sonic’s liked to do, yet it’s hardly deep. But I do appreciate how for the first time ever in a modern Sonic, said combat moveset is actually transferred through during the Super Sonic battles. Those go insanely hard; you have to babysit the camera to keep track of your onscreen position, but they’re the incredibly satisfying and raw energy Sonic’s been losing since the turn to more lighthearted games. The metal music tracks for these are prime workout music in what even without them is Sonic’s most varied soundtrack since 2008.
What surprised me while playing was how this freedom aspect actually ties into the plot of the game, and more specifically, the character of Sage. She’s an AI created by Eggman that routinely attempts to halt Sonic’s progress using the world’s technology, while at the same time questioning what his unfettered morals are to her black and white understanding. This parallels with Sonic’s, and in turn the player’s tenacity to go about the open zones accomplishing objectives, helping your friends recover their memories, and standing up to the giant bosses and mini-bosses. It’s through the player’s sense of progression through the world and Sonic’s interactions with his friends (for the first time in over a decade feeling genuine and not like an excuse for comedy skits) that Sage begins to question her purpose and whether Sonic’s intentions are pure despite also wanting to please her master, his longtime enemy. An actual CHARACTER ARC conveyed through the player’s gameplay in the open worlds, and I find that neat. The rest of the plot was light but pretty pleasant to experience due to Ian Flynn’s character dialogue and….some of the animations. The canned NPC animations are very stilted, but the actual hand animated cutscenes are headed back in a more actioney camera direction with expresses as much as can out of these models, with even some concept art used for flashbacks expanding the lore. The Sonic gameplay Vs Sonic lore video only got more wider after this game.
Beyond the story, there’s also what Frontiers is trying to accomplish on a tech level. As much as blast processing and lock-on technology could be seen as marketing buzzwords today, SEGA adopting them represents trying to push Sonic, and by extension themselves, as being on top of what technology can be. In 2D, the best Sonic level design still had to have branching and a sense of speed blasting through the levels, but it could be said to have been easier to craft it all considering the games were sprite based and only so much needed to be on a screen at once. Going into 3D made it harder to manage creating an innumerable amount of unique assets the player would speed by in seconds, from multiple angles and setpieces, rather than only following the sandbox trend other platformers found more comfortable. There’s few things truly like what a 3D Sonic game is capable of, but it’s a difficult beast to manage and polish.
Sonic Frontiers finally takes the step of making sandboxes the core tenant of the game while also retaining the sense of speed. While the first island is fairly small, the second island is incredibly spread in terms of content and all the nooks and crannies within the canyon of the biome while the third island is a vast set of separated landmasses. If there’s one major pro I can give the open zones in Sonic Frontiers, it’s that, with the right capabilities, you really do FEEL fast while exploring in a way that no other open world type game has even tried to accomplish. Using the Drop Dash to slide down the many slopes, power boosting to cross large portions of the map in seconds, and jumping rails at the right angle to hurdle forward through the air like a slingshot.
That being said, there are two issues with this approach. The first is pop-in, which can be incredibly apparent even on the next gen consoles where the game does genuinely have moments of looking quite stunning otherwise, with the day/night cycle. It can be a pretty jarring immersion breaker that makes it harder to gauge where to land on sometimes, even if such is thankfully less apparent during the 2D segments and cyberspace. Seeing it had me wonder if this is more an engine limitation or an actual programming issue?
The second issue is more annoying because of the potential for fun movement in the world: inconsistent reactions to the terrain. Inconsistency is something that could be said to have been associated with Sonic games for years, and as much as Frontiers earnestly tries to have the most fluid 3D Sonic experience out of all of them (never had any bugs while playing aside from briefly flinging off a structure one time) it’s hard to tell, in the game’s current form, what terrain will let Sonic fly through the air and the player subsequently trick their way across platforms, and to what terrain Sonic will cling to and fall like a rock. It can be fun when it happens, but it’s rarely of your intention. I hope this is something they’re better able to delineate in a followup.
I’m glad Sonic Frontiers earnestly looked at these core elements of Sonic to make something I think has done a lot to understand what me and many other Sonic fans personally adore about the brand despite all its ups and downs, but the future continues to be uncertain. I want them to go further, stabilize the control, make terrain more consistently reactive to your movement, have more vibrantly Sonic aesthetic open areas as the new indulgent playgrounds and if Cyberspace is still going to exist have more variety or consistent 3D handling with the worlds. But I also don’t want them to drop the format they’ve created, more serious yet still cheeky tone, Ian Flynn’s understanding of the characters and the more animesque plotting/spectacle.
But this is Sonic Team, or more specifically, SEGA glaring at them near constant. You never know when they’ll live and learn.
(ps. Someone at Sonic Team really liked Ikaruga)
1. An adaptation of SEGA’s arcade score-based philosophy brought to a home console experience.
2. A response to the trends of its time period (originally inversely to Mario)
3. A means to harness what was possible with technology to be a showcase for a style of play few others have dared to replicate.
For the first point, although Sonic started as a franchise on home consoles, minus a few arcade games here and there, the first games still had a score to keep track of with ways to balance earning more by the end of levels, limited lives and continues. The highscore stuck around for years, with Sonic Adventure 2 making it a gameplay objective to earn a highscore for the mastery ranks of every level. But it’s been because of this arcade style philosophy that most modern Sonic games end up with short, elaborate zones holding levels designed to be beaten in only a few minutes but designed to be replayed over and over.
Sonic Frontiers answers this by peppering its open zones to have bite-sized challenges at around every corner. There’s very little downtime in Sonic Frontiers, which I think helps keep the pace up. Almost everywhere you look there’s a rail or a spring or a dash panel, with islands 2 and 3 in particular having a lot more height structures and being fairly large in size. Despite pop in, seeing larger, vast structures in the distance does inspire wanting to find out what’s at the top of the challenge, and there’s sometimes a bit of level fun along the way. The game has a lot of quick engagements with several rewards at the end of them, and the open zones being a flow to get from setpiece to setpiece I think is a solid gameplay loop, provided the terrain supported the potential with player expression, but more on that issue later.
Cyberspace is also there as an answer to the high score replayability of past titles, and I think conceptually they’re solid. They’re spread far enough around the world that finding one actually feels like a bit of a surprise, short enough to feel like a quick change of pace and you’ll not need to play many of them just to progress. But, to get the elephant out of the room, the only momentum these have is managing to boost off of the halfpipes and there’s only four themes to go around. It would’ve been SICK to have Eggmanland as a fifth theme, surely, they have Unleashed assets hanging around somewhere to reuse, but alas. The 2D ones I got something out of, mainly due to the bounce to air boost combo giving you some additional height and fixing the insanely speedy acceleration from Forces, but 3D feels very wrong; air control is directionally locked when trying to make platforming which leads to a lot of slippery turning and falling off the sides. I really wish they would’ve kept the Open Zone controls in these; THOSE I think felt pretty comfortable after some tinkering and it’s the main disconnect from what’s otherwise being an incredibly cohesive full experience. This concept is sound, but I hope gets an overhaul for a supposed sequel.
When it comes to being in touch with current trends, it’s far from a secret Sonic’s existence was born of attitudes from the early 90s, but continuing that down the line, Sonic Adventure 1 was constructed as an elaborate tech demo for the Dreamcast complete with an entire campaign to show off its capability for fishing. Sonic Adventure 2, and specifically the creation of Shadow the Hedgehog, feel almost prophetic for what would be viewed as “cool” during the 2000s, the kind of nu-metal emocore cool bouncing off the more spunky ATTITUDE Sonic himself was created under. Sonic 06 was trying to adapt too many things in its rushed development, the increased focus on real time worlds, physics systems, hubs full of NPC sidequests and the grandiose storytelling not overly dissimilar to the Final Fantasy X’s of the world. Since then, we’ve had Sonics focused on dual world gameplay, God of War combat, motion control sword swinging, Mario Galaxy level tubes and custom characters.
Sonic Frontiers’s hat to throw in this ring is player freedom. Past 3D Sonics have often had the issue of containing multiple different gameplay styles or arbitrary conditions players HAD to power through in order to get through to important content across the game. Sonic Unleashed was a particularly egregious example of this with its medal collecting blocking progression and often necessitating backtracking through levels. Frontiers in comparison is refreshingly loose in progressing across the world. Multiple small missions exist in Frontiers to bridge story gaps, but they’re quick and aren’t terribly taxing so players should get back into it fairly fast. That players can use a fishing minigame to help bypass walls of whichever kind of progression they don’t want to deal with the most I find to be pretty funny, when considering how the fishing minigame back in Sonic Adventure is viewed as a primary case of out of place content being outright required to finish the main story of the game. That “repeated content” in an open world game is presented mainly through quick bits of speed and platforming and light map opening puzzles instead of overly elaborate sidequests which I think, again, largely keeps the pace of the game up. Everything you can see (aside from plot progression doors) is something to be toyed with immediately, even if I wish there were more creative ways to finish sequences beyond air boosting to reach character tokens early.
There’s also a skill tree combat system, and it’s a mixed bag. The many moves can look cool and have satisfying sound design but combat itself is very simplistic, to where mini bosses need to have their own gimmick to spice things up. I like MOST of these (the Shark goes on for too long) for giving certain enemy encounters a distinct feel. It’s a combat system that’s very drive-by, in a way not unlike the classics, prioritizing efficiency and style and not effective use of button combos. You see an enemy, do the thing to make them vulnerable, get a thing and then keep running. I still prefer this to locking you in rooms within levels like a lot of the 2000s Sonic’s liked to do, yet it’s hardly deep. But I do appreciate how for the first time ever in a modern Sonic, said combat moveset is actually transferred through during the Super Sonic battles. Those go insanely hard; you have to babysit the camera to keep track of your onscreen position, but they’re the incredibly satisfying and raw energy Sonic’s been losing since the turn to more lighthearted games. The metal music tracks for these are prime workout music in what even without them is Sonic’s most varied soundtrack since 2008.
What surprised me while playing was how this freedom aspect actually ties into the plot of the game, and more specifically, the character of Sage. She’s an AI created by Eggman that routinely attempts to halt Sonic’s progress using the world’s technology, while at the same time questioning what his unfettered morals are to her black and white understanding. This parallels with Sonic’s, and in turn the player’s tenacity to go about the open zones accomplishing objectives, helping your friends recover their memories, and standing up to the giant bosses and mini-bosses. It’s through the player’s sense of progression through the world and Sonic’s interactions with his friends (for the first time in over a decade feeling genuine and not like an excuse for comedy skits) that Sage begins to question her purpose and whether Sonic’s intentions are pure despite also wanting to please her master, his longtime enemy. An actual CHARACTER ARC conveyed through the player’s gameplay in the open worlds, and I find that neat. The rest of the plot was light but pretty pleasant to experience due to Ian Flynn’s character dialogue and….some of the animations. The canned NPC animations are very stilted, but the actual hand animated cutscenes are headed back in a more actioney camera direction with expresses as much as can out of these models, with even some concept art used for flashbacks expanding the lore. The Sonic gameplay Vs Sonic lore video only got more wider after this game.
Beyond the story, there’s also what Frontiers is trying to accomplish on a tech level. As much as blast processing and lock-on technology could be seen as marketing buzzwords today, SEGA adopting them represents trying to push Sonic, and by extension themselves, as being on top of what technology can be. In 2D, the best Sonic level design still had to have branching and a sense of speed blasting through the levels, but it could be said to have been easier to craft it all considering the games were sprite based and only so much needed to be on a screen at once. Going into 3D made it harder to manage creating an innumerable amount of unique assets the player would speed by in seconds, from multiple angles and setpieces, rather than only following the sandbox trend other platformers found more comfortable. There’s few things truly like what a 3D Sonic game is capable of, but it’s a difficult beast to manage and polish.
Sonic Frontiers finally takes the step of making sandboxes the core tenant of the game while also retaining the sense of speed. While the first island is fairly small, the second island is incredibly spread in terms of content and all the nooks and crannies within the canyon of the biome while the third island is a vast set of separated landmasses. If there’s one major pro I can give the open zones in Sonic Frontiers, it’s that, with the right capabilities, you really do FEEL fast while exploring in a way that no other open world type game has even tried to accomplish. Using the Drop Dash to slide down the many slopes, power boosting to cross large portions of the map in seconds, and jumping rails at the right angle to hurdle forward through the air like a slingshot.
That being said, there are two issues with this approach. The first is pop-in, which can be incredibly apparent even on the next gen consoles where the game does genuinely have moments of looking quite stunning otherwise, with the day/night cycle. It can be a pretty jarring immersion breaker that makes it harder to gauge where to land on sometimes, even if such is thankfully less apparent during the 2D segments and cyberspace. Seeing it had me wonder if this is more an engine limitation or an actual programming issue?
The second issue is more annoying because of the potential for fun movement in the world: inconsistent reactions to the terrain. Inconsistency is something that could be said to have been associated with Sonic games for years, and as much as Frontiers earnestly tries to have the most fluid 3D Sonic experience out of all of them (never had any bugs while playing aside from briefly flinging off a structure one time) it’s hard to tell, in the game’s current form, what terrain will let Sonic fly through the air and the player subsequently trick their way across platforms, and to what terrain Sonic will cling to and fall like a rock. It can be fun when it happens, but it’s rarely of your intention. I hope this is something they’re better able to delineate in a followup.
I’m glad Sonic Frontiers earnestly looked at these core elements of Sonic to make something I think has done a lot to understand what me and many other Sonic fans personally adore about the brand despite all its ups and downs, but the future continues to be uncertain. I want them to go further, stabilize the control, make terrain more consistently reactive to your movement, have more vibrantly Sonic aesthetic open areas as the new indulgent playgrounds and if Cyberspace is still going to exist have more variety or consistent 3D handling with the worlds. But I also don’t want them to drop the format they’ve created, more serious yet still cheeky tone, Ian Flynn’s understanding of the characters and the more animesque plotting/spectacle.
But this is Sonic Team, or more specifically, SEGA glaring at them near constant. You never know when they’ll live and learn.
(ps. Someone at Sonic Team really liked Ikaruga)
This series is basically Total Drama for hardcore weebs but no one will admit it.
2008
To anyone who hasn't played Sonic Unleashed yet, or those turned off by its performance:
There is now a definitive version of the game on the Xbox Series X/S, which runs at a locked 60 FPS all the time while incorporating Auto HDR to really make the visuals pop. If you want the best way to play Sonic Unleashed, this is it.
This is worth noting since the game barely being able to hold a framerate most of the time (especially on PS3) is probably the second most pervasive issue with the game. It's one of the games of its generation that's held out the most visually thanks to its strong vibrant art direction tuned to cartooney designs, but the framerate was an unfortunate sacrifice, something that the development team realized when dialing back the lighting for future games in favor of better performance.
You now have the most challenging yet exhilarating-to-master 3D Sonic gameplay feeling as impressive as it looks. The Night stages are still underpar by action game standards, with an easily locked camera and lack of drop shadow unintentionally making platforming more tense, but the wide variety of combos available are smoother feeling without the framerate crying in agony when too many enemies are on screen.
The plot itself is nothing special, but alongside Adventure 1 it hits a well-balanced tone for the Sonic series, neither desperate to be serious like the post Heroes games nor as lackadaisical as the post-Colors era. Oh, and the soundtrack has some of the most distinct feeling pieces from each other thanks to the world trip theme.
Even now though, Medal collecting is still the worst part of the game, and a massive pain even when being able to miss half of them as they're in Day levels not at all built for Sonic to explore. Yet the game is a testament to something as simple as performance tweaks can make a game that much better over a decade after its release.
There is now a definitive version of the game on the Xbox Series X/S, which runs at a locked 60 FPS all the time while incorporating Auto HDR to really make the visuals pop. If you want the best way to play Sonic Unleashed, this is it.
This is worth noting since the game barely being able to hold a framerate most of the time (especially on PS3) is probably the second most pervasive issue with the game. It's one of the games of its generation that's held out the most visually thanks to its strong vibrant art direction tuned to cartooney designs, but the framerate was an unfortunate sacrifice, something that the development team realized when dialing back the lighting for future games in favor of better performance.
You now have the most challenging yet exhilarating-to-master 3D Sonic gameplay feeling as impressive as it looks. The Night stages are still underpar by action game standards, with an easily locked camera and lack of drop shadow unintentionally making platforming more tense, but the wide variety of combos available are smoother feeling without the framerate crying in agony when too many enemies are on screen.
The plot itself is nothing special, but alongside Adventure 1 it hits a well-balanced tone for the Sonic series, neither desperate to be serious like the post Heroes games nor as lackadaisical as the post-Colors era. Oh, and the soundtrack has some of the most distinct feeling pieces from each other thanks to the world trip theme.
Even now though, Medal collecting is still the worst part of the game, and a massive pain even when being able to miss half of them as they're in Day levels not at all built for Sonic to explore. Yet the game is a testament to something as simple as performance tweaks can make a game that much better over a decade after its release.
2001
Supernatural,
But Awesome
But Awesome
This game and 999 I think perfectly balance out each other's flaws.
999 has the starker intentional atmosphere, but this one feels noticeably more uncanny.
This game has 999 beat on puzzle complexity but feels like you're trudging through it far slower.
The individual characters are stronger here but 999's cast is better as an ensemble.
The alternate endings aren't as scary but are far wilder and contribute better to expanding out the plot.
Everything in VLR is much better signposted when trying to get the true end but it blue balls you way more in the process of trying to wrap your head around it.
The dub here is better fit with the dialogue as it was planned further from the start rather than being inserted after two other games. The castings stand out a lot starker for their characters
To sum up, The Nonary Collection is a cool compilation and both games are worth playing. Just not one after another, you'll get fatigued for sure.
999 has the starker intentional atmosphere, but this one feels noticeably more uncanny.
This game has 999 beat on puzzle complexity but feels like you're trudging through it far slower.
The individual characters are stronger here but 999's cast is better as an ensemble.
The alternate endings aren't as scary but are far wilder and contribute better to expanding out the plot.
Everything in VLR is much better signposted when trying to get the true end but it blue balls you way more in the process of trying to wrap your head around it.
The dub here is better fit with the dialogue as it was planned further from the start rather than being inserted after two other games. The castings stand out a lot starker for their characters
To sum up, The Nonary Collection is a cool compilation and both games are worth playing. Just not one after another, you'll get fatigued for sure.
2016
For all of the presentational deficiencies, bad writing/voice acting, boring music, poor exclamation of its mechanics, and incredibly cheap difficulty spikes, the game might’ve been salvaged if the core mechanics felt good to play, but they really really don’t. Feels like they regressed all the way back to Mega Man 1 design wise. Thankfully this game’s colossal dumpster fire resulting in bringing actual Mega Man back from the grave, but even beyond the mismanaged Kickstarter it really shouldn’t feel like innumerable steps back were taken from ANY Mega Man
2003
There are a lot of things I could say about this game. The story is nonexistent, the camera constantly gets caught on things other than your character with inconsistent motion, the powerups are simultaneously clunky and incredibly underutilized and the voice acting sucks, but it's got some nice creativity in places; I like the giant's house level, there's a good amount of effort into filling each room with some new fun puzzle, and there's a couple satisfying platforming gauntlets with a good amount of challenge.
Really, it's the final boss that's the kick in the teeth. While a lot of the platforming elements are difficult, but manageable with enough grasp on the controls, every aspect that makes this final boss hard feels like fake difficulty. I genuinely would've given this game a 4 or 5 if the final boss wasn't so shit.
It's a multi-phase fight, with no checkpoints in between phases. Phase 1 is a mook storm where the method to succeed is spamming one attack over and over for three minutes, hopefully not sustaining any more damage. The mooks blend into the floor so it can be hard to see them as you're trying to spam this one attack. Then the boss turns into a giant spider. An absurdly fast giant spider that can jump all over the place and engage in inconsistent patterns. The spider can even animation cancel if you fudge a tiny hitbox window to reset its pattern. Even when hitting the spider, it does a massive lunge attack where the dodge for it was incredibly inconsistent. You have a maximum of three hits, and dying here sends you back to the mook spawning phase to go through all of that again just to try another shot at the spider form. It genuinely feels like he wasn't playtested because of how overclocked his animations seem.
That this alone made my opinion go from mehness to shittiness really goes to show the impact of a final boss, and how major a factor it can be in final determination of quality.
Really, it's the final boss that's the kick in the teeth. While a lot of the platforming elements are difficult, but manageable with enough grasp on the controls, every aspect that makes this final boss hard feels like fake difficulty. I genuinely would've given this game a 4 or 5 if the final boss wasn't so shit.
It's a multi-phase fight, with no checkpoints in between phases. Phase 1 is a mook storm where the method to succeed is spamming one attack over and over for three minutes, hopefully not sustaining any more damage. The mooks blend into the floor so it can be hard to see them as you're trying to spam this one attack. Then the boss turns into a giant spider. An absurdly fast giant spider that can jump all over the place and engage in inconsistent patterns. The spider can even animation cancel if you fudge a tiny hitbox window to reset its pattern. Even when hitting the spider, it does a massive lunge attack where the dodge for it was incredibly inconsistent. You have a maximum of three hits, and dying here sends you back to the mook spawning phase to go through all of that again just to try another shot at the spider form. It genuinely feels like he wasn't playtested because of how overclocked his animations seem.
That this alone made my opinion go from mehness to shittiness really goes to show the impact of a final boss, and how major a factor it can be in final determination of quality.
1992
A fairly underrated arcade game brought to the Game Boy. Even its brief cutscene interludes are pretty nicely rendered. Its difficulty is a bit too punishing, forcing you to repeat entire stages if you die at any point during them, but the stages themselves, despite their lack of real "theme" or memorable bosses, have a nice curve to them and don't go on for too long.
The key thing that sets this game apart for when it came out was its core possession mechanic.
Over a year before Kirby's Adventure, and 25 years before Super Mario Odyssey, this game has you play as a spirit with the power to possess enemies occupying the levels. You have two bars: a health bar and an energy bar. Both bars deplete to some extent as you take damage, but moreso the health bar, and when you lose all your health, you have a couple seconds to possess another enemy before your energy goes down. And there's quite a number of enemy characters to chose from. From gangsters, to fire breathing coyotes, to robots, to ninjas spinning nunchucks, shirtless floating men, what appear to be cat wizards and even warrior women, you get a lot to work with. Each enemy has different weapon range, movement speed, health and jumping physics, all fairly advanced modifications for its time. Inevitably you'll find which enemy best suits your playstyle and go to that, but it leads to a bit of risk/reward when you're low on health based on if you're close enough to an enemy in one place.
This isn't a game that'll blow your mind, but for what it is, it's a solid template for an enjoyable game concept.
The key thing that sets this game apart for when it came out was its core possession mechanic.
Over a year before Kirby's Adventure, and 25 years before Super Mario Odyssey, this game has you play as a spirit with the power to possess enemies occupying the levels. You have two bars: a health bar and an energy bar. Both bars deplete to some extent as you take damage, but moreso the health bar, and when you lose all your health, you have a couple seconds to possess another enemy before your energy goes down. And there's quite a number of enemy characters to chose from. From gangsters, to fire breathing coyotes, to robots, to ninjas spinning nunchucks, shirtless floating men, what appear to be cat wizards and even warrior women, you get a lot to work with. Each enemy has different weapon range, movement speed, health and jumping physics, all fairly advanced modifications for its time. Inevitably you'll find which enemy best suits your playstyle and go to that, but it leads to a bit of risk/reward when you're low on health based on if you're close enough to an enemy in one place.
This isn't a game that'll blow your mind, but for what it is, it's a solid template for an enjoyable game concept.
1995
God, Knuckles' Chaotix is such a frustrating game to think about because for every part of it that it gets right, there's at least one other thing it gets wrong, and some of those elements weigh against it even more than similarly middling Sonic titles like Heroes or Lost World.
To start with the good, the sprites in this game are fantastic. For all of the characters introduced, the animation gives them incredibly distinct character. Tons of expression, Vector in particular looks great. Knuckles and the four Chaotix members each have some sort of unique quirk to set them apart, and although Charmy breaks the game more than it already is, there's still some thought behind picking teammates. It's got a great amount of color behind it, dazzling more than what was possible on the Genesis, and some of the soundtrack is pretty solid too, particularly Labyrinth and Door to Summer.
Special stages are back to the Sonic 1 method of access, and despite depth perception issues, they're the most interesting part of the game, collecting small spheres over tube layouts and being able to lap if you miss the required amount. There's different pathways to this with associated risk/reward, not seen in a special stage until Mania 22 years later.
The tether mechanic is interesting, in theory. When running whilst pressing the hold button at just the right time, it can give you a great burst of exciting speed. One partner being above and one being below while holding the button and letting go can also lead to exciting whiplash as you zip through the sky.
Leading into the negatives though, the tether can occasionally be untenable, hard to get working in the right position, or not being able to properly build up speed to reach the top of a steep hill. In levels where you need to get vertical and there's no wall to climb, calling this a pain is an understatement. And as if to accommodate the tether, level design is horrifically bland; barely any obstacles, enemies thrown in seemingly at random, and lots of vertical leading to slow climbs.
Most of the levels have obsolete gimmicks and shitty boss fights at the end of their 5 ACTS, but the one level that does have a gimmick, Amazing Arena, is the actual pits. Failing to reach one specific object, which can occasionally be sealed by points of no return, means that a level clear is invalid. GREAT. At least the collecting stuff in games like Heroes was in 3D!
Final boss is OK I guess. A bit basic, but has some scope to it.
Knuckles' Chaotix is debatably "the first bad Sonic game" and its existence alongside the failed 32X sent something of a bad omen in the years to come. It's got a lot of strengths undermined by the level designs they exist for.
To start with the good, the sprites in this game are fantastic. For all of the characters introduced, the animation gives them incredibly distinct character. Tons of expression, Vector in particular looks great. Knuckles and the four Chaotix members each have some sort of unique quirk to set them apart, and although Charmy breaks the game more than it already is, there's still some thought behind picking teammates. It's got a great amount of color behind it, dazzling more than what was possible on the Genesis, and some of the soundtrack is pretty solid too, particularly Labyrinth and Door to Summer.
Special stages are back to the Sonic 1 method of access, and despite depth perception issues, they're the most interesting part of the game, collecting small spheres over tube layouts and being able to lap if you miss the required amount. There's different pathways to this with associated risk/reward, not seen in a special stage until Mania 22 years later.
The tether mechanic is interesting, in theory. When running whilst pressing the hold button at just the right time, it can give you a great burst of exciting speed. One partner being above and one being below while holding the button and letting go can also lead to exciting whiplash as you zip through the sky.
Leading into the negatives though, the tether can occasionally be untenable, hard to get working in the right position, or not being able to properly build up speed to reach the top of a steep hill. In levels where you need to get vertical and there's no wall to climb, calling this a pain is an understatement. And as if to accommodate the tether, level design is horrifically bland; barely any obstacles, enemies thrown in seemingly at random, and lots of vertical leading to slow climbs.
Most of the levels have obsolete gimmicks and shitty boss fights at the end of their 5 ACTS, but the one level that does have a gimmick, Amazing Arena, is the actual pits. Failing to reach one specific object, which can occasionally be sealed by points of no return, means that a level clear is invalid. GREAT. At least the collecting stuff in games like Heroes was in 3D!
Final boss is OK I guess. A bit basic, but has some scope to it.
Knuckles' Chaotix is debatably "the first bad Sonic game" and its existence alongside the failed 32X sent something of a bad omen in the years to come. It's got a lot of strengths undermined by the level designs they exist for.
2005
I'm sort of at a crossroads when it comes to this game. On the one hand, the initial confusion regarding the controls, the incredibly bizarre gameplay feel, the insane puzzle of plot, obvious lock and key approach to gameplay puzzles, and the shitty boss fights do drag the game down to a degree and make it difficult to recommend to those not willing to tame it.
But on the other hand, I've rarely seen a game that felt more specified on a craft level. Killer7 is a weird, weird game, yet all its mechanics and plot beats work toward its intent. Each of your 7 characters have a distinct feel in terms of their gameplay and the proper use for them, while the forgiving death system and brief spurts of anime cutscenes add to the style in their own way. You're constantly left surprised by killer7, sometimes confused and sometimes in awe, but I was compelled to keep going in it all throughout for how well its style coats it in exploring what a game can be capable of in piecing together this information. The final (real) chapter of gameplay in particular has such a tone to it, helped along by great tone setting music and truly sublime sound design.
It's a game I admire more than love, but nonetheless find it a remarkable craft that every piece could arrange itself in such a way.
But on the other hand, I've rarely seen a game that felt more specified on a craft level. Killer7 is a weird, weird game, yet all its mechanics and plot beats work toward its intent. Each of your 7 characters have a distinct feel in terms of their gameplay and the proper use for them, while the forgiving death system and brief spurts of anime cutscenes add to the style in their own way. You're constantly left surprised by killer7, sometimes confused and sometimes in awe, but I was compelled to keep going in it all throughout for how well its style coats it in exploring what a game can be capable of in piecing together this information. The final (real) chapter of gameplay in particular has such a tone to it, helped along by great tone setting music and truly sublime sound design.
It's a game I admire more than love, but nonetheless find it a remarkable craft that every piece could arrange itself in such a way.
Impressively and gallingly bad almost immediately. I bought this for $3 and still felt like it wasn't worth it. It got mixed reviews so I wasn't expecting the world but I was expecting better than abject misery.
Shiness feels like "jack of all trades, master of none." What would happen if you got 3 different artistic styles and game design documents together? There's a mix between animesque furry characters, western inspired fury characters, anime people and realistic people. The art design isn't very cohesive at all, despite the comic book cutscenes looking impressive.
As an RPG, the material gathering isn't fun and the (non-mappable) menus are more confusing than anything else. You can't fast travel anywhere. Plot wise, I can barely buy why the leads are friends, the world is generic and the music is instantly forgettable.
As a fighting game, the animations lack any sort of weight or impact, with many battles dragging on for overly long against damage sponge enemies. The camera, even with the option to autolock, very frequently gets caught on grass or terrain rather than stick to the enemies.
As a platform adventure game, it's incredibly clunky, with only a single heavy jump and incredibly slow movement despite having a dash.
It aimed for Indivisible but came out Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric.
Shiness feels like "jack of all trades, master of none." What would happen if you got 3 different artistic styles and game design documents together? There's a mix between animesque furry characters, western inspired fury characters, anime people and realistic people. The art design isn't very cohesive at all, despite the comic book cutscenes looking impressive.
As an RPG, the material gathering isn't fun and the (non-mappable) menus are more confusing than anything else. You can't fast travel anywhere. Plot wise, I can barely buy why the leads are friends, the world is generic and the music is instantly forgettable.
As a fighting game, the animations lack any sort of weight or impact, with many battles dragging on for overly long against damage sponge enemies. The camera, even with the option to autolock, very frequently gets caught on grass or terrain rather than stick to the enemies.
As a platform adventure game, it's incredibly clunky, with only a single heavy jump and incredibly slow movement despite having a dash.
It aimed for Indivisible but came out Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric.
Return of the Jedi for sandbox games starring talking animals. It's a game full of selective improvements, like the more maneuverable hub worlds, despite the lack of stuff to find in them and absurdly high coin counts. There's slightly better boss fights, and more characters to break up the gameplay, some of which are interesting shake ups and others feel like wasted development with little use. The pirate ship stage in particular is a massive annoyance. In line with RotJ, the final stretch is amazing, an excellent culmination of the entire series up to that point; if only the series ended here...