Support NeoGAF

[Ristifer]

Copied levels is definitely a valid criticism. I haven't played the games recently enough to be able to tell, but that is a bummer if true. I'm enjoying the levels a lot though, but yeah.

The levels look enjoyable enough. I don't really have any problem with them necessarily. I just think more variety would've been beneficial. They have so many other levels that haven't been lifted yet. Some from the Rush/Advance games put into 3D would've been a great idea.

 

[PSX2007]

OST is definitely not all piano. This one was great for repeatedly racing to try and get S. Reminds me of Ridge Racer.

The Ridge Racer comparison is spot on. Now you've got me listening to the R4 soundtrack on Spotify. It's so dope. I'm proud of my 12 year old self for recognizing this music was so good.

 

[SCB3]

Just bought the PS5 version today so let’s jump in and see,

From what I’ve seen so far it looks decent enough

 

[SomeGit]

Watching the Digital Foundry video and it looks fun. Switch looks and performa like hot garbage.

How does it run on deck (for those who have had hands on time with that version)?

I don't have any experience first hand, but looking online, there seems to be a lot of issues that aren't hardware related like massive stutters, flicking grass/shadow, etc. Proton doesn't seem to be handling the game well, and looking at Proton DB, seems to be the case.

And about the game, honestly I can see why someone doesn't like it, but I'm loving it, it's one of those games that pulls you in and you start exploring the world naturally even if the game is point your next location. I'm about 10 hours in, in the final island, likely to finish it today.

The biggest annoyances I have are some enemies because super repetitive to fight (more of the smaller enemies that do nothing but shield themselves) and the abundance of 2D obstacles in the 3rd island were really unnecessary, I get it in the 4th island but in the majority of the open world I don't see much reason to resort to forcing a 2D perspective.

 

[FeastYoEyes]

Played a whole lot of this during the weeknights and the second island has some enemy designs and encounters that are incredibly annoying and visually hard to track.

An enemy called a tank will have you fight on a 2D plane that is horrible to control. It's hard and not in a good way.

What's good though is fishing is still amazing, traversal is a lot of fun, combat is decent and I'm curious where the story goes.

 

[chigstoke]

Did you get the Soap shoes? So glad they brought that back!

Can’t say as I have, but I’ll certainly be on the lookout for them! I’ve spent a good 5 hours on island 1 alone, and I don’t think I’m anywhere near done with all the available content on the island yet because I’ve been enjoying just running around and exploring. Was milling around island 2 earlier today.

 

[SCB3]

An hour in and yea this is pretty cool and kinda chilled out for a Sonic game, the pop in is bad but I can overlook it really tbh, the combat is kinda unique here so far

The whole game is giving me the Daytime Sonic Unleashed feeling as well, which is a good thing

 

[SCB3]

Something I don't understand, do I have to get the Amy Memories?, thats all I've been doing for the last hour

Edit: Oh I got 2 Emeralds out of it, maybe its mandatory

 

[feynoob]

Make what you will.

 

[anthony2690]

Okay, after 19hours and 24 minutes, I've finished the game on hard.

10/10 from me, I just couldn't put the game down at all!

Especially to sit down and play non stop and pretty much forget my partner exists.

Spoiler

The final boss where the game turns into Ikaruga was incredible too!

I hope they keep this formula for future games, but improve pop in etc.

When I play more later on, I'm going to try S rank 4-6 & 4-8 as those are the only two I haven't managed to get the S rank time on yet

 

[Zephir]

Make what you will.

I'm sure the words "global playtest" will make people angry, thinking they played a beta or something, but since the original tweet was in japanese, it probably meant something else, like "reactions and feedback from players everywhere"

I expect mad comments in a couple of seconds

 

[Panajev2001a]

Okay, after 19hours and 24 minutes, I've finished the game on hard.

10/10 from me, I just couldn't put the game down at all!

Especially to sit down and play non stop and pretty much forget my partner exists.

Spoiler

The final boss where the game turns into Ikaruga was incredible too!

I hope they keep this formula for future games, but improve pop in etc.

When I play more later on, I'm going to try S rank 4-6 & 4-8 as those are the only two I haven't managed to get the S rank time on yet

Platform?

 

[anthony2690]

Platform?

Series X I played on

 

[Panajev2001a]

An hour in and yea this is pretty cool and kinda chilled out for a Sonic game, the pop in is bad but I can overlook it really tbh, the combat is kinda unique here so far

The whole game is giving me the Daytime Sonic Unleashed feeling as well, which is a good thing

The game’s lighting and art does a very good job of making the game feel very open with an impressive sense of scale. You feel in a giant and elaborate open space: sure pop-in is distracting, but overall the look and feel of the game sells their vision welll!

 

[Panajev2001a]

Series X I played on

Hehe, good choice . 60 FPS mode with dynamic res or 30 FPS? I was worried the 60 FPS mode dialled graphics options down a lot but it seems to be only native 4K to dynamic 1400-1800p+.

 

[PhaseJump]

Somebody should mod this fucking trash heap, so that we can at least run around as Macho Man Randy Savage, frog splashing and elbow dropping through the air attacks while making Slim Jim one-liner comments.

 

[anthony2690]

Hehe, good choice . 60 FPS mode with dynamic res or 30 FPS? I was worried the 60 FPS mode dialled graphics options down a lot but it seems to be only native 4K to dynamic 1400-1800p+.

60fps mode, oddly you have to switch to the mode, I feel it should've been the default mode, it's 1800p dynamic, 60fps is more important than the 4k imo.

 

[Fake]

Make what you will.

Imagine a sense of accomplishment paying a full price for a play test. People are losing their moral of criticize everything.

 

[Unknown?]

Can’t say as I have, but I’ll certainly be on the lookout for them! I’ve spent a good 5 hours on island 1 alone, and I don’t think I’m anywhere near done with all the available content on the island yet because I’ve been enjoying just running around and exploring. Was milling around island 2 earlier today.

Unfortunately the soap shoes were tied to signing up to their newsletter and I'm not sure they can still be obtained.

 

[bentanchorbolt]

I bought it for my son. Played it last night and watched him play this morning. It’s a lot of fun.

 

[Panajev2001a]

60fps mode, oddly you have to switch to the mode, I feel it should've been the default mode, it's 1800p dynamic, 60fps is more important than the 4k imo.

Considering the graphics settings are the same across modes and the resolution is quite similar or similar enough 30 FPS with stuttering makes little sense for a modern 3D Sonic IMHO.

 

[Zephir]

Can’t say as I have, but I’ll certainly be on the lookout for them! I’ve spent a good 5 hours on island 1 alone, and I don’t think I’m anywhere near done with all the available content on the island yet because I’ve been enjoying just running around and exploring. Was milling around island 2 earlier today.

You can get them by subscribing to the Sonic Frontiers website newsletter, you have 'till the 31th of january 2023. You should get the code in 1-2 days

 

[digoutyoursoul]

Make what you will.

£50 for a play test.

 

[names are for friends]

I criticised this game harshly earlier but after playing more I think it owns lol

The cyberspace levels aren't done very well but otherwise I'm really enjoying this. There's a lot of creativity with the enemies and bosses even if they aren't always executed perfectly, and you never feel pressured to explore every inch of the map... you just bumble through these zones and end up with everything you need. You just go through whatever little platforming bits are on the way. And this is a VERY Sega game, it feels like an original Sega experience and not like some sort of BotW knockoff.

 

[SnapShot]

GOTY

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

A 1/5? Like, c’mon. Clearly it isn’t that bad, regardless of whether or not it’s your cup of tea. Giving a game like this a score that low is just attention-seeking/ intentionally being a douche. Sorry but that’s how I see it. Well actually, not sorry at all.

 

[SCB3]

Done with the First island at about 80% or so, I may go back and 100% it, and then the loop for the 2nd island is the same with collecting the memories and then doing the Cyberspace missions to get the Emeralds again

Hmm I'm not sure if I'm into that side of it but so far I am enjoying it, it really is a good game to stick on for an hour and chill doing a few little things, much like BotW's shrines in a way

 

[Neff]

It's fun and surprisingly well-designed but whoever decided to set a Sonic game in a sombre, tuneless wasteland should be shot. Several times to make sure.

If the same game utilised the eye-popping palettes and catchy pop tunes of past Sonic games I'd be having a blast instead of just giving it an hour here and there to get my money's worth.

 

[Belthazar]

People keep complaining about Rhea not being a "real Open-Zone", but the climbing challenges there were some of my favorite platforming in the game.

It's fun and surprisingly well-designed but whoever decided to set a Sonic game in a sombre, tuneless wasteland should be shot. Several times to make sure.

If the same game utilised the eye-popping palettes and catchy pop tunes of past Sonic games I'd be having a blast instead of just giving it an hour here and there to get my money's worth.

I'll kinda have to disagree, the game is pretty long and you spend a lot of time in those islands... If they were eye-popping and played fast paced music the whole experience would've become very grating very fast. A more stylized look would've been nice, but they are right in making everything more muted and chill

 

[Kenshin775]

The Steam User score keeps going up the first time I checked it went from 91% to 94% and now it stands at 95%

There is pop-in, slight camera issues and cyberspace doesn't control as well as the open world but you know what this game is so god damn fun.

 

[Fake]

The Steam User score keeps going up the first time I checked it went from 91% to 94% and now it stands at 95%

There is pop-in, slight camera issues and cyberspace doesn't control as well as the open world but you know what this game is so god damn fun.

There are some Steam users calling the Steam Review inaccurate because the lack of polish the game got at launch, not to mention there are some kind of retalation about the 2/10 Digital Trend score.

Metacritic User Score got 97 at launch, before Metacritic start to remove some 10/10 spams from there and became 87. Folks usually got mad about some reviewers.

Last but not least, fun is subjective. I find Days Gone a really fun game, but never gave him a 10/10, just a 7/10 but for the fair reasons like the lack of polish, bugs and perfomance issues.

 

[bender]

PS5 version is $39.00 at Wally World.

Robot or human?

 

[SkylineRKR]

I love this game. Its not perfect but its very soothing because of the music. They finally found a way to slow Sonic down without slowing him down if that makes sense. You can do the same fast stuff as always, but you're not constantly pushed to do so. Its fun to explore and tower climbing etc goes with wall runs, rail grinding and typical Sonic mechanics so it feels like mini stages.

Cyberspace levels are pretty cool and the music is fucking godlike. But the S rank time is kind of uneven. 1-1 is legit hard and took me numerous retries. 1-2 is even impossible for me. 1-3 I took all goals in one try. I heard 1-2 is the hardest in the game.

But this game probably has my OST of the year. god damn.

 

[Zephir]

It took 30 hours, but I finished it and got the platinum as well!

There's definitely a lot to say but to keep it short yeah, this was a great game and there's NO WAY they aren't planning a sequel with all the stuff they just put in!
I hope Sonic Team can get some real feedback to build from here and improve this formula, because they finally found something they should carry on.

I guess there's only one thing left to say...

Spoiler: Ending spoiler

THE END COMES FOR YOU ALL!

 

[March Climber]

Imagine a sense of accomplishment paying a full price for a play test. People are losing their moral of criticize everything.

£50 for a play test.

I'm sure the words "global playtest" will make people angry, thinking they played a beta or something, but since the original tweet was in japanese, it probably meant something else, like "reactions and feedback from players everywhere"

I expect mad comments in a couple of seconds

 

[IbizaPocholo]

Explore a new frontier of gaming.

 

[Shubh_C63]

oh no

 

[Grechy34]

Sonic gets this weird they're all bad vibes but there's so many decent Sonic games. Maybe no 9s or 10s but Colors, Generations, Adventure 1 and 2 are all solid 7-8s I reckon. Fun games. Not everything has to be a masterpiece to be fun.

 

[chigstoke]

You can get them by subscribing to the Sonic Frontiers website newsletter, you have 'till the 31th of january 2023. You should get the code in 1-2 days

Cheers, signed up!

 

[Zephir]

Cheers, signed up!

Also, remember that you had to enable those in the extra menu from the title screen, you can't change them in-game (which is something I hope they'll do if they add more cosmetic stuff)

 

[Fake]

lmao

 

[Valedix]

Holy fuck this video made me laugh so much

 

[SkylineRKR]

Sonic gets this weird they're all bad vibes but there's so many decent Sonic games. Maybe no 9s or 10s but Colors, Generations, Adventure 1 and 2 are all solid 7-8s I reckon. Fun games. Not everything has to be a masterpiece to be fun.

Yeah I even enjoyed Unleashed. Its graphics were jaw dropping, even on Series in 720p it still looks good because of the 60fps. On PC its even more insane.

Unleashed felt like a big budget platform game. And while the werehog was undeniably shit, it did add for some variation inbetween. It should've been 30% or something, and shorter stages. But even in those levels it was apparent that the layout was rather good, just marred by shitty camera angles and clipping. Some fighting was kind of fun (doing wrestle moves etc), but again just too much of it.

Generations, I beat it on PS3 and thought it was okay but frustrating. But on Series at 60fps with no input lag it wasn't frustrating at all. Good game.

SA2 was a game I expected to hate when it hit PS3 since it would be outdated etc. But then I was addicted to it and even 100% it all over again since Dreamcast.

There are some absolute stinkers like 06, Boom and Shadow. And I haven't played the Wii games. But there are absolutely some fun 3D Sonic games.

 

[Nvzman]

A worst version of Unleashes boost and stage design, race tracks, mostly nostalgia driven to distract from some odd stage design, extra content isn't much, last boss bad, collision issues, overall pretty short if you know what you're doing.

Colors went worse in all these areas and added wisps.

The fact this games scored dropped from 80 to 72 within a couple days makes me believe that the Mania syndrome only lasted until released with Frontiers. After Mania it had been so long since a good well-received Sonic game that people ignored issues with Mania, the fact it was a reused asset nostalgia pull that didn't compete with the originals at all, though still serviceable. It maintained an 80 score (which no 3D sonic game outside one has gotten) based on that early excitement, but people stated complaining about it more later on and now it's not seeing much discussion or replay, people are going back to the original 3D games, or the early Adventure games or Unleahsed/generations.

With Frontiers, the hype seems to have died at launch, so the score has dropped in such a short time instead of Frontiers locking in at 80 and then people changing their minds on it later. With another 20 reviews or so to go, it's possible this hits the 60's given it's already at 72, that means reviews have been on a down trend after the first 24 hours.

Holy shit you could not have any worse of a take about Mania. Mania easily has some of the best level design in the entire franchise, it's better than Sonic 1 & 2 for sure in that aspect. Nobody had a honeymoon period with that game, it's still regarded as a great game and the only complaint the game ever got since it's launch was the fact that it's mostly old stages. But the level design is so different and original it's easy to forgive for that.
I swear GAF legit has some of the dumbest takes I've ever seen on Sonic games, another user here saying the Frontiers cyberspace levels being worse than the Forces ones is LOL-worthy. Forces was dull as fuck all around and the level design in Frontiers at least has non-linearity even if there's heavy asset reuse.

Nobody is praising Frontiers because it's a Sonic game, if anything it sounds like the users here are bashing the game because it's a Sonic game lmfao. The game is very fun and does actually accomplish it's vision in an enjoyable way, it's just that the game is jank as hell. And tbh jank isn't always a bad thing, the game could have used more polish but it's very enjoyable so far, if you go outside of this website you'll find that to be the consensus. I'm having more fun with it than 90% of AAA shit nowadays, and ultimately fun matters more than anything else with a game.

Yeah but 60% of Unleashed is a bad video game.. Im still upset they ruined a potentially great game.

Werehog was only really crap on Wii/PS2. Imo on 360/PS3 the Werehog hate is kind of silly, it's a perfectly ok, borderline fun style God of War rip-off that got pretty unfairly shat on because you didn't go fast in it. If you take that aside and just play it for what it is, and not what it wasn't, it's fine. It's significantly better than the absolutely dogshit emerald hunting stages and Tails's mech stages in SA2.

Also, side note, Frontiers is currently sitting at 95% Overwhelmingly Positive out of nearly 6,000 reviews on Steam, so the notion that critic scores matter at all with games like these still remains doubtful.
An 8/10 is perfect for Frontiers imo. It's good, borderline great, but not perfect.

 

[Whitecrow]

A worst version of Unleashes boost and stage design, race tracks, mostly nostalgia driven to distract from some odd stage design, extra content isn't much, last boss bad, collision issues, overall pretty short if you know what you're doing.

Colors went worse in all these areas and added wisps.

The fact this games scored dropped from 80 to 72 within a couple days makes me believe that the Mania syndrome only lasted until released with Frontiers. After Mania it had been so long since a good well-received Sonic game that people ignored issues with Mania, the fact it was a reused asset nostalgia pull that didn't compete with the originals at all, though still serviceable. It maintained an 80 score (which no 3D sonic game outside one has gotten) based on that early excitement, but people stated complaining about it more later on and now it's not seeing much discussion or replay, people are going back to the original 3D games, or the early Adventure games or Unleahsed/generations.

With Frontiers, the hype seems to have died at launch, so the score has dropped in such a short time instead of Frontiers locking in at 80 and then people changing their minds on it later. With another 20 reviews or so to go, it's possible this hits the 60's given it's already at 72, that means reviews have been on a down trend after the first 24 hours.

Dont understimate people who dont ask for much.

Collision and control issues are a thing. Immersion-breaking pop-in is also a thing. An incredibly repetitive gameplay loop of grinding-springing-run-hop-attack for 20 hours? A thing. Bad graphics? A thing. Even bad homing-attack rebound time (on enemies) is a thing.

Ok it's possible to have fun, but for gods sake the game is objectively a mess.

 

[MagnesD3]

Holy shit you could not have any worse of a take about Mania. Mania easily has some of the best level design in the entire franchise, it's better than Sonic 1 & 2 for sure in that aspect. Nobody had a honeymoon period with that game, it's still regarded as a great game and the only complaint the game ever got since it's launch was the fact that it's mostly old stages. But the level design is so different and original it's easy to forgive for that.
I swear GAF legit has some of the dumbest takes I've ever seen on Sonic games, another user here saying the Frontiers cyberspace levels being worse than the Forces ones is LOL-worthy. Forces was dull as fuck all around and the level design in Frontiers at least has non-linearity even if there's heavy asset reuse.

Nobody is praising Frontiers because it's a Sonic game, if anything it sounds like the users here are bashing the game because it's a Sonic game lmfao. The game is very fun and does actually accomplish it's vision in an enjoyable way, it's just that the game is jank as hell. And tbh jank isn't always a bad thing, the game could have used more polish but it's very enjoyable so far, if you go outside of this website you'll find that to be the consensus. I'm having more fun with it than 90% of AAA shit nowadays, and ultimately fun matters more than anything else with a game.


Werehog was only really crap on Wii/PS2. Imo on 360/PS3 the Werehog hate is kind of silly, it's a perfectly ok, borderline fun style God of War rip-off that got pretty unfairly shat on because you didn't go fast in it. If you take that aside and just play it for what it is, and not what it wasn't, it's fine. It's significantly better than the absolutely dogshit emerald hunting stages and Tails's mech stages in SA2.

Also, side note, Frontiers is currently sitting at 95% Overwhelmingly Positive out of nearly 6,000 reviews on Steam, so the notion that critic scores matter at all with games like these still remains doubtful.
An 8/10 is perfect for Frontiers imo. It's good, borderline great, but not perfect.

I played it on 360 an hated it, it was such a slog, and the levels were long too, I could feel the awful lazy padding there wasnt a good thing in them, and there was alot more werehog than the speed sections so I sadly can't recommend that game because it's too unbalanced in quality.

 

[touchfuzzy]

This is a good bad game. Every time I play it I'm like "damn this is janky / bad" and then I end up playing it for an hour and having a pretty good time. They nailed some of the mechanics and feel. A good good game can come from this eventually.

 

[SkylineRKR]

Something I don't understand, do I have to get the Amy Memories?, thats all I've been doing for the last hour

Edit: Oh I got 2 Emeralds out of it, maybe its mandatory

Seems so. The main quest directs you mainly towards Amy Memories and Chaos emeralds. If you exhausted them all the tombstones open up.

I think it went so smooth for me since I wanted to S rank all cyberspace levels anyway. 1-2 aside, I S ranked them all. So I naturally had enough keys. And I did all of the minibosses etc. I didn't have to grind yet. Perhaps you will once requirements increase or you stop doing all side stuff.

 

[Eddie-Griffin]

Dont understimate people who dont ask for much.

Collision and control issues are a thing. Immersion-breaking pop-in is also a thing. An incredibly repetitive gameplay loop of grinding-springing-run-hop-attack for 20 hours? A thing. Bad graphics? A thing. Even bad homing-attack rebound time (on enemies) is a thing.

Ok it's possible to have fun, but for gods sake the game is objectively a mess.

The people who are still in the brainwashed hype mode will probably start turning on the game in another week or two due to it's problems on all versions. Though some fans are apparently fixing the PC version.

ST's director backpedaling all his whining and trying to act nice and calling the game an open beta isn't going to sit well either.

 

[Whitecrow]

The people who are still in the brainwashed hype mode will probably start turning on the game in another week or two due to it's problems on all versions. Though some fans are apparently fixing the PC version.

ST's director backpedaling all his whining and trying to act nice and calling the game an open beta isn't going to sit well either.

Honestly, I only need cyberspace controls not be that bad to rethink about getting the game. I think that is my biggest gripe.

With some luck modders are on it : D