Sonic Frontiers: a new step for Sonic
A dive into the project of Sonic Frontiers. Is it a game that is worth playing?
Photo by https://frontiers.sonicthehedgehog.com/#media-17
Sonic on a tower look down on an island
Sonic Frontiers is a 2022 open zone-style action game set on the Starfall islands. Frontiers was meant to be a return to Sonic after 5 years of nothing from Sonic Team in 3D Sonic games. The last 3D Sonic game released was 2017’s Sonic Forces, a mediocre mess of a game that left a bad taste in many mouths.
Sonic Team sees Sonic Frontiers as a turning point, to connect all the groups into one big fanbase instead of multiple small ones.
“Going forward, we want sonic to appeal to both groups of fans across games and other media.” said Sonic Team Creative Officer Takashi Iizuka during an IGN interview.
When IGN first showed off the game with their ‘IGN First’ segments, they showed off an old build of the game while also having someone play the game in an awfully slow, clunky way. Along with not telling the public about the early build, the bad gameplay footage left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.
But after that, reviews from the demo at Summerson changed a lot of people’s perspectives. Many were saying the game had a lot of potential, just needed some polish.
During the progress of Sonic Frontiers, Sega went on to receive “most anticipated game of the year” at the Tokyo Games Show. This was the first award sonic has ever received, and the team was ecstatic, thanking everyone for supporting the game.
With the game released, many wonder if the game lives up to the expectations that the early footage and reviews said.
So far from reviewers, the game is a fun experience. IGN giving it a seven and good rating. Metacritic has a score of 72%, which for a modern sonic game is incredibly good, showing the game is a positive step for the series, majority of the public enjoying the game a lot.
But enough about reviews, what makes Sonic Frontiers different and fun from other open world style games?
Well, as stated before Sonic Frontiers is an open zone, meaning the world has a lot of obstacles to run through with ails, dashing, running on walls, and collecting.
“Till now we have had the 2D Classic Sonic and 3D Modern Sonic but as we think about the future of games we want to deliver,” Iizuka said.
“We wanted to challenge ourselves to create a new type of 3D action game with a higher level of freedom. That was the purpose from the beginning of this project.”
Sonic Frontiers also grants the blue hedgehog a unique combat style, having a small amount of RPG elements with a skill tree and experience points. Sonic’s combat has gone from simple homing attacks to punches, kicks, and a lot of flashy moves.
Sonic gains a whole skill tree in order to defeat the robots created. He also has to level up by gaining seeds of power and defense or saving Kocos, small little stone creatures.
Sonic has new abilities as well, the cyloop. The cyloop is an ability where Sonic has a trail behind him, running around something will cause an action to happen. It may shoot something up, blow wind or summon rings, meaning it is used a lot in both combat and to solve puzzles as the game tells you anything weird looking should be cylooped.
Throughout Sonic Frontiers Sonic goes into a digital dimension called cyberspace. They are levels that are like those in the older games.
These levels tend to be shorter and have tighter movement controls compared to the open world aspect. Sonic tends to be a little more clunky but still very controllable.
Meanwhile, the open world controls are very specific. Players have access to turn speed, run speed, camera speed, top speed, and many more specific settings for how Sonic controls. This Specific control allows fun movement through the islands.
The Story of Sonic Frontiers puts Sonic and his friends on these islands due to some energy in the air. Sonic is split up from his friends and he has to roam the islands and save them. Sonic runs into Knuckles as well. Knuckles as well as Sonic, Tails and Amy all had prequel media to explain their perspective. Sonic got a two-part comic while Knuckles got a six-minute animation.
The story introduces a new character, Sage, created by Eggman to control the Starfall island’s databases and figure out how to control its power, but fails and gets trapped in cyberspace himself. This leaves Sage to try and prevent Sonic from completing his goal, but he won’t listen.
Overall, From the perspective of the people playing the game and from experience in the game, Sonic Frontiers is a very good start for Sega and Sonic Team in this open formant. While not perfect, the game offers a lot of fun to be had, a good story and a fun adventure. A very solid 7.5/10 game that is for sure a grab for sonic fans.
For non-sonic fans, it might be worth it. It really depends on the person’s taste in a game that feels like Sonic, with it being so fast paced and open, while also having a lot of obstacles. The pop in may be a killer for many though.
At the end of the day, Sonic frontiers is an incredibly good step for Sonic and hopefully Sonic Team keeps the trend going.
DJ is a junior who joined newspaper to write about E-sports and do graphic design work. A fun fact about him is that he competes at smash tournaments!
