A proper First Play thread, been a while since a game has felt like it warranted me posting one. Sonic Frontiers is Sonic Teams latest throw **** at the wall and see what sticks attempt at the franchise. The game's features are known by all so the immediate thing is what did they do with this one and did it work?
The open world is the first thing of note and I'll cut to it, it's open but not as open as you'd think. you can free roam all you want but it's void of notable landmarks and is designed so you're still effectively progressing through it in a broadly linear manner. You can't travel wherever you want, either cliff edges or mountain walls will stop you except for when a sneaky invisible wall does the job. It's littered with tasks to do, they're all incredibly simple such as defeating an enemy or solving a basic puzzle but there's a lot of them so there are no empty stretches and as you complete them the area fills up with more springs and rails. The busier it gets the more it showcases that Sonic Team have actually done a good job of marrying free movement with chaining fast moves together as well. You collect gears and keys to open levels whilst hearts help toward freeing another character. It's not Breath of the Wild in any way, it's like a massive prototype demo for what the devs hope they can do in future.
Levels riff off traditional themes so there's already been Green Hill, Chemical Plant and Speedway based ones and they play much like the ones in Generations where they're fast and easy but control feels much more limited. Bosses all have a trick to them but here the camera often flares up as an issue again as you work through each to add to your mission of collecting the Chaos Emeralds to take down a Titan - thus completing the open world.
Turns out there's five open worlds in total and based on screens it's an aesthetic difference. You're essentially completing a 2-3 hour game five times over but if I'm being honest, a lot of the experience works. It's fun enough speeding around and completing the minor challenges etc. Perhaps the biggest shame so far is the look of the game. Performance mode for 60fps is a necessity, especially as the visuals can look fairly muddy with all the speed blurring going on but really, it's that they continue to have a fixation of not fully embracing the classic Mobius style look that does the franchise a disservice. There's literally no reason that this game doesn't take place in themed Mobius zones and doing so would have not only given it a much stronger visual identity but really helped it in terms of signposting, clarity and identity. It would also mean the annoying 'glitch' effect wasn't required. Something that essentially 'Nintendos' the series as even the visual style of the themed levels isn't that great either, often looking over-busy or cluttered textured.
The game is a definite step in the right direction, assuming that is that Sonic Team doesn't hit the full reset button yet again.
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