Sonic frontiers forces model upgrade#

While you can see some objects from long distances away, others blink into existence abruptly at surprisingly close distances. As far as I can tell, it hovered around 60 fps while I was playing in Performance Mode. Also, on PlayStation 5, the game ran well. Running, grinding and springing around feels fast and fun, but you also feel like you’re in control. The open-world format is a great fit for the franchise.

The most important thing to know about Sonic Frontiers, really, is that it mostly feels good to play. The music is lovely, often aping The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s tranquil mood, but it also has some more upbeat, exciting tunes for those special levels and boss fights. Sonic’s expanded combat abilities make fighting more interesting than simply jumping at enemies while avoiding the mind-numbing, repetitive action from Sonic Unleashed. Whatever I did, the game had some kind of meaningful payoff for me.

Sonic frontiers forces model upgrade#

That may sound like a lot of items to collect - and this doesn’t even include the knickknacks that help you upgrade Sonic’s attributes like attack power and defense - but I enjoyed just how many rewards Frontiers threw at me. Get seven Chaos Emeralds, and then you can fight the zone’s boss. I’m not the biggest fan of these “boost”-style Sonic stages, but these levels are short (and bug free) enough that they entertain more than they frustrate.Ĭompleting challenges inside these levels gives you keys, which you use to unlock Chaos Emeralds. These play more like the kind of 3D Sonic stages you’d find in something like Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations or Sonic Forces. You’ll also find gears that you need to unlock gateways to special levels. These include tokens that help you save your friends (who, for reasons I neither need nor want to go into, are stuck in some kind of digital dimension). Essentially, at each area you’re looking for various items. Speaking of progression, Sonic Frontiers has that figured out pretty well.

Platforms and obstacles may float somewhat randomly in the air, but they do a great job of connecting the world. More often than not, this helped me get the items I needed for progression. It was more fun to just run around and see what I stumbled across. You have a map, but a lot of the time I didn’t bother using it. At any point, you can run a few seconds to some challenge, obstacle course, enemy encounter or hidden item. You have some expansive landscapes to run through, and the world has plenty of diversions. Moving Sonic into large, open areas makes gameplay less frustrating. He’s too quick to control with much precision, making platforming feel slippery and imprecise. In corridor-like linear stages, Sonic’s speed can often feel like a deterrent. This might sound like a strange fit, as both Sonic’s 2D and 3D releases before this point feature linear levels, but this new format works. Sonic Frontiers is an open world game (sorry, Sega, I can’t bring myself to call it “open zone”).

With Sonic Frontiers, Sega may have finally found a winning formula for a 3D Sonic adventure. But for every decent to good 3D outing like Sonic Generations, you have mediocre to terrible efforts like Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Forces. Some titles like the Sonic Adventure games have a lot of charm, even if they have aged into feeling more like B-movie camp than the triple-A releases they once were. Those are both 3D platformers - the format where Sonic has struggled the most. Titles like Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) and Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric are some of the worst widely released games of all times. But the Blue Blur’s lows often stick out more than his highs. Poor Sonic is often the butt of jokes, even after starring in two hit films and a stellar retro revival with 2017’s Sonic Mania. At the event, we will also announce 25 top game startups as the 2024 Game Changers. We're thrilled to announce the return of GamesBeat Next, hosted in San Francisco this October, where we will explore the theme of 'Playing the Edge.' Apply to speak here and learn more about sponsorship opportunities here.