More Sonic, more Battlefield.
65) Sonic Lost World (Steam Deck)
This is a tough one. Technically, I was wrong in my earlier post. I now believe
this is the best 3D Sonic has ever controlled, with Sonic Generations being a very close second. Let me explain.
They have added a run button to this game. That run button, oddly enough, fixes the issue I have had with most 3D Sonic games, which is the ramp-up in speed when running. Now, instead of feeling it out like other 3D Sonic games and sometimes making mistakes due to that, you can fully control his speed for more precision movement by switching back and forth between the light jog and run, which means better and more precise jumps as well.
Sonic Generations solved this problem it's own way, by making sure it had very tight level design that flowed really well, so that you wouldn't feel out of control. And thus we enter my biggest problem with Sonic Lost World, the level design. This game takes heavy inspiration from Mario Galaxy. The floating planets/areas, the challenges presented in them, it's very clear. I'd argue even the inclusion of a run button is taken from Mario, specifically the 2D ones. The problem is that Sonic Team/Dimps did not understand the design philosophy behind Mario Galaxy. They emulated it, but don't understand it.
So what you have is a game that feels like a mess to navigate through, has no sense of actual connective tissue, and at times actively tries to throw you in the wrong direction. Due to this glaring issue, I was torn on what to rate it. I'm not saying the full game's level design is a mess, but around 50% of it is. It actually gets better in the second half as they start tightening up the paths, which is odd to me because that means they knew how bad the first half was. But it's just so fun to control and play as Sonic in this game that it raises the rating back up for me. Also, as usual, great music and moments that match that music in Sonic. Their composers consistently knock it out of the park. Some standouts:
There's humor and irony to life, and the sad but funny thing here is that Sonic Team/Dimps finally figured out the best control scheme for Sonic but put that control scheme in a game with half-disjointed, sometimes awful, level design. It controls so well though, so so well...that I have to give the rating a bonus for that.
Rating: B-
66) Battlefield 3 (Xbox Series X Backwards Compatibility)
I liked this game as a cool modern-style cinematic shooter and they cleaned it up well visually on the Series X. It has a good variety of locales, scenarios, and a fun story to follow along with, though you are jumping into the shoes of different people this time around as the story unfolds itself. However, it starts to run into a problem early on, which is visibility. I'm not sure if this is purposeful or not, but due to the amount of effects, smoke, etc. including the fact that the friendlies and enemies all sort of blend together visually with the game since it's primary tone is blue and brown, you get multiple situations where it is nearly impossible to tell where someone is or where they are shooting from until they
shoot you first, which leads to very frustrating situations.
Now this wouldn't be a big problem but it combos with the fact that the checkpointing in this game can be
brutal. You'll be fighting through multiple firefights and happen to take a random shot from the side, above, or below, or some other odd angle and you get a couple of seconds to figure out where they shot you from or you're dead. When you're dead, you go back.
Way back. This happens multiple times while you're already in a firefight with someone in front of you. And it's not like I'm playing this like Halo. I'm taking cover, using angles, leaning, etc. but what use is cover if the game decides to spawn an enemy in an area where you're suddenly open?
Due to the combination of bad visibility mixed with high potential to die and brutal checkpointing, a game that should have been an easy A ends up being brought down a few notches.
Rating: B-
67) Battlefield 4 (Xbox Series X)
The good things I said above about Battlefield 3 holds with the game and in addition they add the multiple weapon loadout boxes per mission like Bad Company 2 and a neat 'command' feature for your squadmates. However there are three things off about this game.
1) The spawn boxes are broken...or something. There were multiple times where I would clear out a room, and suddenly an enemy spawned right behind me and I'm taking fire from an area that should not have anyone in it since there's one door and I'm looking in the direction of that door. Or there were other moments where I moved too fast for the game or managed to step into the next area accidentally during a firefight and suddenly, I'm seeing enemies pop-in out of nowhere in front of me or behind me on the radar. It's odd padding.
2) Your squadmates do fake damage. There were multiple times where I'm behind cover, shooting at someone who is 5 ft in front of me who's also behind cover, and one of my buddies is next to them unloading everything into their side and the enemy doesn't flinch. Nor do they take any less bullets for me to kill them. The enemies also don't really shoot at them. Just me. The old "
Player one must die" basic level of enemy a.i. It made me realize that this is essentially a solo experience masked as a squad experience. Once I realized that, I adjusted how I played to be more aggressive.
3) The scenario writing is a bit too goofy. I specifically mean the fact that there were multiple times where your protagonists would either be next to an explosion and be under rubble, or be next to an explosion that knocks them into water, or an explosion happens which rattles the main characters and then someone in the narrative comes up from behind and knocks them out to lead to the next scene. It happened so many times that I felt like it could be made into a drinking game. Again it was a moment where it felt like the cutscene director was emulating someone, like maybe Michael Bay, but not understanding the philosophy behind Michael Bay. There are other ways to provide impact and it felt like they didn't know any other way than these three types of ways.
Other than those three issues, this game had really cool campaign scenarios and setpieces, great controls, and weapons, that felt really grand and lived up to that modern Battlefield experience.
Rating: B+
