An Indictment of Sonic Frontiers

I've been a bad boy and played this game ahead of street date.

Art by WarpFormat (Twitter)

Sonic Frontiers was a game poised to be the next ten years of Sonic. It had everything; ambitious marketing, an open world, a world-class narrative written by the "great" Ian Flynn and a combat system that would shake up the core of the series forever! They were aiming for high review scores!

What we got was none of that actually. Sonic Frontiers is a pretty fucking miserable experience, all things considered.

The game opens with Dr. Eggman, series antagonist, stumbling across an ancient-looking throne. He slaps a doohickey of some sort on it, but finds himself being sucked inside the throne itself, and he's trapped in a cyberspace construct. We have no idea why this happens. It's never explained.

We then cut to our heroes, Sonic, Tails and Amy aboard Sonic's biplane. They're investigating the mysterious Starfall Islands for reasons that aren't really clear yet, but run into some rough winds (or something? The plane just starts shaking but the intensity of the wind isn't really shown and it's a pretty clear day out) and before long, they're sucked into a cyberspace portal.

We're launched into the first Cyberspace level as Sonic who has seemingly been separated from his friends, a fucked-up looking version of Green Hill Zone which has appeared in basically every Sonic game ever since 2011 (No, really, count them. Only Lost World lacks Green Hill Zone itself even if it's own first zone is basically the same level theme.)

It is at this precise moment, the very moment you gain control, that everything falls apart. I was never a fan of the Boost-formula Sonic games for myriad reasons but with the better executed titles like Unleashed's day stages and Generations' Act 2 levels there was a particular cadence to it all that, once cracked, made for a relatively pretty spectacle with some intricate combinations of abilities in a race for the best time. Not at all emergent or Sonic-like in the traditional sense but it felt competently put together and there sure was an audience for it even if it wasn’t a super sustainable way to make video games since it necessitated enormous levels due to how fast Sonic moved.

In Frontiers, Sonic controls much like the Boost-formula games, but with bricks tied to his ankles. Every movement is laden with inertia, his basic running speed is utterly pitiful, his Boost is a glorified run button unable to destroy enemies much like Boost has been able to in the past. The Homing Attack is, bafflingly, back on the X button instead of the A button, and Boost is now mapped to RT which would be welcome in any other Boost-type Sonic game but comes off as confused here. I always likened the Boost Sonic games to driving games, but this is like the least fitting place they could’ve made this change.

Many of his boost-era abilities have been totally stripped such as the drift which allowed Sonic to negotiate wide stretches of curved track or even the humble Homing Attack Dash which places Sonic a set distance forward no matter what to aid platforming. His boost airdash, mapped to an RT press in the air, has a bizarre upward arc that makes it difficult to use as a precision tool in mid-air; all too many times I found myself careening over dashpads and platforms that I was sure I would've hit head-on in games like Generations.

Sonic is also given his Drop Dash, introduced in Sonic Mania, but unlike Sonic Mania where the Drop Dash is used to service momentum based gameplay, the Drop Dash here simply reduces Sonic's friction on surfaces. In 2D sections, it requires additional input to function on slopes properly otherwise Sonic bafflingly comes to a complete halt, which is also true of the classic 2D rolling input which does *not* turn Sonic into an active physics object, as expected. In fact, Sonic himself is completely devoid of momentum at all. He gains no speed going down hills while running, and loses no speed running up them. He can stop on a dime whenever he chooses, and this includes boosting. It makes him feel awkward and stiff rather than a quick-footed active physics object that reacts naturally to the curves and geometry of the environments. He sticks to literally every surface like shit to a blanket.

After completing the miserably short first level, we are given a rank and list of objectives. I finish all the objectives before choosing to exit Cyberspace, and I am vomited into Kronos Island, the first area of the game. A mysterious voice tells me that I am the first to make it out of Cyberspace under my own power (it wasn't that hard? What makes that hard? This is also never explained.) and that I am the "Key". I dick around for a little while and find Amy, who is trapped in a giant red ball. I need to collect a bunch of heart mcguffins called Memory Tokens to free her. It is shortly after this that we're introduced to the Kocos who are NOT Chao and are NOT Koroks from Breath of the Wild, no sir, they're totally uhhh… original. Eventually, we find that two Kocos have fallen in love, and when they reunite they uh... die? I'm honestly not sure what happened or why they died.

There’s a little cutscene where we’re taken back to the past(?) and we see two Chaos (singular, water dude from Sonic Adventure, not plural little cute guys) looking dudes hugging before they die. They never explain this either, by the way. You can collect Kocos all around the overworld and take them to a Kocos Elder to turn them into ring capacity or speed but I'll be honest and say that I got a good 20 levels of the speed upgrade in before I started feeling a difference. You can upgrade your combat strength and defense by collecting corresponding red and blue seeds.

One of the key abilities that was shown off and is of importance here is the Cyloop. The Cyloop is Sonic's main way of interacting with the world. Press Y and watch the camera shift to a birds-eye-view which allows you to trace a light trail around objects to activate them. You can do it to some enemies to break their defenses and on switches and the like. Doing a cyloop around nothing can generate rings from thin air (which act as a basic HP system but I still dont really understand how it works) but it can also drop EXP points, Attack and Defense seeds and Memory Tokens for free; there's no limit to this. This makes boss fights pretty simple since you can trace even a tiny Cyloop and get rings enough to stave off a death -- endlessly.

I should take some time to talk about the combat here too. Combat doesn't exist in cyberspace, only in the overworld. It is a rather predictable "Mash X" fare with no depth, and even when you unlock more combat skills there's never any reason to deviate from the standard combo at all; one skill later in the game even does these moves in a Mash X combo *for you!*. Some enemies will defend and then counter hit which requires a dodge (bumpers) or a parry (both bumpers held) which allows for pretty impenetrable defense. Not a single enemy can break your parry, and you can do it in mid-air too! All it does is make Sonic stay completely still, tensing himself in mid air, looking like a dope. Very funny to look at, but hardly good for a game. Once I unlocked Sonic's projectile attack, the Sonic Boom (mapped to LT), combat became a trivial chore. Just hold LT, and cyloop around enemies as required to break their video-game-weak-point defenses. This applies to EVERY opponent in the game, including bosses and the Titans.

After this, the game devolves into predictable, petty busywork. The objective of each island is to find all seven Chaos Emeralds and use them to turn into Super Sonic and defeat the Titan of each island in order to free your friends from Cyberspace Hell. They never explain the correlation between the characters being trapped and the Titans being dead either. This involves a combination of obtaining Memory Tokens (personal to each character) and Vault Keys which you obtain by doing Cyberspace level objectives, which can only be accessed by obtaining Portal Gears from Overworld bosses.

You'll quickly find your senses dulling as you boost across the empty and personality-devoid landscapes of the Starfall Islands, generically designed realistic environments with incongruent sci-fi ruins pasted haphazardly on top with completely random automated Modern Sonic setpieces strewn about the place. Eventually, you'll have scrounged enough pointless odds and ends together to get to fight the boss, where you transform into Super Sonic.

By the way the game just expects you to have watched the Knuckles short that explains how he gets trapped in Cyberspace Hell Prison. It's well animated but I dont know why this part wasnt explained... in the game. Tyson Hesse should be the art director for this entire franchise.

The Titan bosses are easily the most baffling part of the game. I'm not really sure if I'm doing the right thing or not half the time, the combat lacks any feedback here too and you're just wailing on them until they eventually fall. I don't feel like I'm good at this game, and there are no places that I can obviously improve in like in say, Sonic Adventure 2, where bosses can be killed quicker with particular techniques that can be worked out by anyone given the freeform nature of its platforming and expression.

Navigating the Open Zone is incredibly frustrating as some areas are plainly designed to only be explored "one way", as in, boosters will be in your path and actively send you backwards. Remember in Sonic CD’s Stardust Speedway level, where boosters would actually just send Sonic forward at speed regardless of direction? That was 1993. The world design is baffling in execution, relying on one-way dashpads, arbitrary roadblocks or finding the correct incongruent floating geometry to home in on to navigate across death pits, rather than something sensible like using Sonic's inherent moveset to navigate the environment in a stylish and rewarding manner like finding shortcuts in Sonic Adventure. Much of the game is designed in this frustrating "one way" manner and you'll spend most of your time in the Open Zone dashing from point of interest to point of interest, trying desperately to avoid the automated cyber-geometry setpieces at all costs because it means control is wrested from you for the next 30-40 seconds at best.

At seemingly random, some of the incongruent cyber-geometry forces you into a 2D perspective. The trigger points for the perspective change isn’t clear at all and you can’t manually escape out of them, you just have to ride out the setpiece, and you never know which one is going to lock you into 2D Prison Hell, which is a death knell for navigation in an Open World. At least Super Mario Odyssey clearly signposts where the game shifts perspective and does it in a neat little 8-bit rendered style with a satisfying control scheme, this just comes off as lame.

The antagonist this time is a little digital girl called "Sage”, she's not really very interesting other than the fact director Morio Kishimoto saw Rei III in Neon Genesis Evangelion and thought it'd make for a fun symbol as an antagonistic character (in fact this game is full of tasteless Evangelion shot recreations, stop reminding me of things I’d rather be watching/playing please). She controls ancient constructs that inhabit the Starfall Islands a the behest of her apparent creator, Dr. Eggman, who spends most of the game trapped in Cyberspace, totally unable to interact with Sonic at all which gives our hero frighteningly few characters to bounce off.

The character interactions are utterly flaccid and mostly rely on references to older games, and once you leave a particular character's designated island you never see them again. The English voice direction for this series has never been great, but everyone sounds like they're in their 30's here. I love Roger Craig Smith, I love him in everything he's in *except* Sonic, because I really don't understand why applying a 30 year old Dad voice to a Hedgehog supposedly in his teens seemed like a good idea to the voice direction department at Sonic Team. I know these actors are capable of great things, their material and direction sucks.

I mentioned Ian Flynn earlier. You might be interested to know that when he got his start on Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog series some fifteen-odd years ago now it was because he kept pestering them with scripts, and not because the scripts themselves were any good. He was better relative to past writers such as Ken Penders, but his inexperience at professional writing outside the purview of Sonic is extremely apparent here. Fans clamored for his inclusion here, but I know for a fact Sonic fans don't read comics because I've never once seen a diehard Pre-Reboot Archie Sonic fan read Dan Slott's Spider-Man comics. Ever. As you can imagine, he coasted on Sonic credits until he finally made his break here replacing the much maligned Ken Pontac and Warren Graff of Happy Tree Friends fame as the writer for this game, and for the first time, was an American writing a Sonic game scenario -- not just the English dialogue.

I regret to inform you, though, that Sonic Frontiers has no identifiable themes, much like most of Ian Flynn's work which boils down to simple A>B>C narrative occurrences in flavourless settings (Check the IDW Sonic comics, it's the same there too). Character interactions are defined by references to older games, as mentioned earlier, making it utterly impenetrable to newcomers. Character relationships are poorly established (You'd never know Amy was infatuated with Sonic just by playing this game) and many offhand lines reference completely obscure parts of characters such as Amy's tarot reading -- something that was almost entirely forgotten by Sega for nearly 30 years until it became convenient to scour fanmade wikis of their own franchises for "deep cuts" to please the veterans of the series who remember better days, but it just comes off as crude pandering rather than an organic inclusion; something to point and yell at on Twitter than a real aspect of an organic character.

There's really not much to talk about other than things already mentioned. The Cyberspace levels are mostly reused level layouts from better games. The music is forgettable. The vocal tracks make me want to rip my eardrums out, what happened to Crush 40? The absolute drone-strike level revelations to wider series lore come off as clumsy and poorly thought out. I won't spoil them, except for one thing.

The final boss is just a riff on Ikaruga. Not a Sonic boss, a vertical shooter.

Wish I was making that up.

I think back to Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), and I can imagine a version of that game that is at least one of the mediocre Sonic games like Sonic Heroes or Sonic 3D Blast, where all the systems sort-of work together and the narrative makes a slight lick more sense and it was more stringently bugtested. I can imagine a world where that game was better, because it presents some good ideas and concepts left under-developed. I cannot do the same for Sonic Frontiers, there is nothing to this game. It’s not even the skeleton of a game, it’s dust bunnies swept into a pan.

What you do with this information is up to you, but just know that I had a miserable time with this game and I have absolutely no fucking clue how it took five years to make given how long it takes for Ubisoft to churn out Assassin’s Creed games at a much higher quality in a shorter timeframe; similar game format too!