Sonic the Hedgehog thread

[Jibby]

I have no idea how, but against all the odds, Sonic Frontiers has won me over. Don't get me wrong, it's not perfect and I have a whole list of things that I wish the game did better. But I'm on the third island now and something's definitely clicked. I'd even be confident calling it the best Sonic game since Adventure 2.

I really hope SEGA actually build upon what they've made here instead of just throwing away all the groundwork like they've done before. I want to see the full potential of this formula without all the wonkiness and rough edges.

 

[Rydeen]

Apparently some youtuber called Dunkey is having his fans review bomb the user metacritic score for this game because he doesn't approve of how much some fans enjoyed themselves. Does anyone know anything about this?

I don't, but I know that Dunkey is a bit of a tool with a following that probably validates him for it, so I wouldn't be surprised.

isn’t it always this way when people get upset others don’t view their precious game in the same way.

I don't really see what you mean. The Sonic Frontiers user scores are fairly high, and a bunch of sudden negative user scores would sound like a reactionary campaign at this point, to me. On the other hand, I guess I agree, since I also complain to a massive audience about how boring and overrated Mario games are, and how they don't deserve their Meta user scores. Oh wait, no I don't. I have better things to do.

Boss battles are style over substance garbage

Yeah, I guess The Finalhazard was pretty much just style over substance. It also wasn't as fun.

Levels ripped from past games should not be praised

My dude, they aren't. (Ripped from old games, that is) They are remixed, at worst. The assets and certain sections are modeled after parts of other 3D titles, but calling the Cyberspace levels "Ripped from past games," is a little like asserting that 90% of Sonic stages are just 'Ripped from Green Hill Zone,' because they have loops in them.
I don't think anyone is actually praising Cyberspace levels as if they were Chun-Nan Daytime levels of Boost-style perfection, but more for how they marry with the rest of the game.

 

[I Got Sriracha In My DNA]

Dunkey doesn’t have anyone do anything…but isn’t it always this way when people get upset others don’t view their precious game in the same way. Just blame the haters. Same thing the Saints Row reboot devs thought would be a good thing to do. Dunkey is just a funny guy and people with a more discerning taste happen to be finding this game not up to par with much more polished and well designed games like BotW.

I finished this game yesterday and I’ve got to say it’s incredibly lackluster, and I fear very much for the series if this is supposedly a “step in the right direction”. Boss battles are style over substance garbage, rails and basic platforms and 2D sections that make the original Super Mario look advanced plague the entire game while the environments themselves serve only as a backdrop, when they should actually be serving as the level and let you gain or lose momentum. Levels ripped from past games should not be praised, and the ones from SA2 are actively worse because of the botched physics. This game is bad.

I'm happy the rest of us have trash taste. 😁

 

[Frankie]

Doing very well on Steam for reviews.

 

[Reprise]

Steam users obvs don't have discerning tastes... Buncha fanboys.

 

[Rydeen]

Jokes aside, @BloodyHeartland , sorry to hear you had a rough time with Sonic Frontiers. That sucks. I know how painful it can be to force yourself into finishing a game you weren't enjoying to begin with. It rarely ends up being a good time in my experience. Hopefully if they iterate on this the next one has a little more of what you were hoping for in it.

 

[Down by Law]

Just beat the game , 67% trophy completion after 21 hours.

Few minor issues here and there but really loved it overall. The islands were all great in their own ways , the soundtrack was consistently excellent, often outstanding, and the game is just flat out fun and addictive, very difficult to put down when you're in the groove.

Negatives were the pop in, the limited themes of the cyberspace stages, the upgrade tree needing more to it. Being picky I would say I got used to skipping the short cutscenes when you open a portal or unlock the next memory scene, did we need these more than once, but that's about it really.

The 'proper' last boss will surely raise some eyebrows but I thought it was absolutely genius. Never saw it coming. Bloody hard. Fantastic music track too. Really finished the game on a high note.

Road to 100% starts tomorrow!

Well done Sonic Team. Been a very long time since I've said that

 

[Hermit]

Apparently some youtuber called Dunkey is having his fans review bomb the user metacritic score for this game because he doesn't approve of how much some fans enjoyed themselves. Does anyone know anything about this?

The most pathetic part was that he was trying to blame Sonic fans by saying they were pretending to be his fans.........why would they do that? It's quite obviously his own fans doing it, and it was because he is obviously a little bit salty that it was scoring better than games he actually likes, which is why he put all of those metacritic scores at the end of his video.

For years I have seen Sonic fans get mocked constantly with people saying "Sonic fans hate everything" but I always suspected it was the detractors that were keeping this "Sonic is bad" thing alive, and the reaction to this game is proving that. Sonic fans can't win, they get mocked for saying they dislike a game and then mocked again for liking a game.

There are people desperate to keep this "Sonic's bad" thing going, but it's so tired at this point.

 

[Seaman]

The most pathetic part was that he was trying to blame Sonic fans by saying they were pretending to be his fans.........why would they do that? It's quite obviously his own fans doing it, and it was because he is obviously a little bit salty that it was scoring better than games he actually likes, which is why he put all of those metacritic scores at the end of his video.

For years I have seen Sonic fans get mocked constantly with people saying "Sonic fans hate everything" but I always suspected it was the detractors that were keeping this "Sonic is bad" thing alive, and the reaction to this game is proving that. Sonic fans can't win, they get mocked for saying they dislike a game and then mocked again for liking a game.

There are people desperate to keep this "Sonic's bad" thing going, but it's so tired at this point.

I believe Nintendo is pulling the strings behind the curtains.

 

[Telekill]

I've decided to go with the Switch version of this for my kiddo. It seems the performance issues such as pop-in is in all versions of the game so that's not a deciding factor. He's only six and far more comfortable putting games into the Switch than the PS5. So it makes sense for him to get the Switch version.

I appreciate everyone's feedback on this. It's really helped.

 

[Suzaku]

The most pathetic part was that he was trying to blame Sonic fans by saying they were pretending to be his fans.........why would they do that? It's quite obviously his own fans doing it, and it was because he is obviously a little bit salty that it was scoring better than games he actually likes, which is why he put all of those metacritic scores at the end of his video.

For years I have seen Sonic fans get mocked constantly with people saying "Sonic fans hate everything" but I always suspected it was the detractors that were keeping this "Sonic is bad" thing alive, and the reaction to this game is proving that. Sonic fans can't win, they get mocked for saying they dislike a game and then mocked again for liking a game.

There are people desperate to keep this "Sonic's bad" thing going, but it's so tired at this point.

Pathetic indeed that youtuber dunkey thing.
Being an old Sonic fans myself, I can say that back in the days, when Sonic fans were mostly Sega fans, things were pretty cool in our community.
When Nintendo fans especially started to join (after discovering sonic on gamecube), it became a kindergarden mess.
After that, some low quality games and the internet did the the rest of the damage.

And now we have the "Sonic was never good" crowd made by salty "journalist", silly youtubers and haters who wants Sonic to fails everytime.

It's not that different from what happened to Shenmue 3...

 

[Lan Di-sama]

I am enjoying Frontiers much more than I thought I would. Very addictive game play, similar to Mario Odyssey or Breath of the Wild that you can easily wander into the next task or challenge making it hard to put down. I think the revamped game play does to the Sonic series what those two games did for the Mario and Zelda series. Granted, those games came out 5 years ago and still managed to do it better. There's a bit of rough edges in Sonic and was definitely overwhelmed at first by what exactly I was collecting and what all the icons on the map meant, etc. The cyberspace speed levels are super fun and on par with the Sonic/Shadow levels in Adventure in design (albeit shorter). Kinda wish they took another year to just polish everything up instead of falling a little short in some aspects.

 

[danielmann861]

I picked it up today for PS5 thanks to Black Friday sales (got it for $59 AUD). Been playing all afternoon. It's actually surprising me a LOT. The open world stuff is genuinely kind of fun to me. I'm just enjoying traversing as Sonic looking for rails to grind and puzzles to solve. The traversal in the open world has been far more fun than not.

The action stages? Still have my issues with those. Namely the somewhat floaty controls that have always plagued 3D Sonic. But I'm actually enjoying this a hell of a lot more than not. It's a pretty decent 3D Sonic game all things considered. And a solid collect-a-thon by the looks of it.

 

[danielmann861]

Man, this game really is fun! I just made it to the third island and I'm still having a great time with it. There is something just really fun about zipping through the open world areas as you open more and more of each island and it all starts to connect. It's just fun to grind those rails and traverse the islands opening it all up.

Even the action stages aren't that bad. They're a tad too easy maybe. I have been getting S-Ranks with remarkable ease in this game, but I'm still having fun with it all around.

The Super Sonic boss fights are fucking awesome to boot! My only complaint is I wish they were a tad more challenging. It does feel like the Parry mechanic was a bit of an afterthought. It's less a parry and more a deflecting block since you don't have to time it.

On the one hand, I kind of wish it had a little more challenge but at the same time I do kind of enjoy that it's not overly taxing either.

The combat system is surprisingly fun in this game but again, feels like it needed just a little more polish.

I love the SOTC style boss fights in this game as a whole. But I'm just a sucker for SOTC in general so of course they're right up my alley.

I can live with the pop-in issues. I mean, in some ways, they're giving me SEGA Saturn flashbacks. The game has a really great sense of speed and fluidity to it but it's clear the engine can't keep up rendering it all. Maybe they'll improve it in the sequel. Still, the pop in isn't bothering me.

Yeah, this game is truly surprising me as to how much fun it is to play. This is a pretty damn good Sonic Team game in its own right. Yeah, it has potential to be better with more polish but they did a pretty fantastic job with this game and I've been having an absolute blast with it! It feels like a good blend between the freedom of control in the Sonic Adventure titles and the Boost games

@Spaghetti That said, can't help going back to it. Best comparison I've seen is weirdly to the Tony Hawk games, where there's like a hypnotic, rhythmic quality to playing that you just don't get by watching it.

It's funny you mention this. I've been getting a very Jet Set Radio feeling from it personally. Which kind of makes sense for Sonic.

 

[Nigel]

Not to detract from Frontiers talk (I agree with your read, for the record, @danielmann861 ), but a quick question:

Did anyone buy Sonic Colors Ultimate (I'm eyeing PS4), and, if so, did much of the major wobbliness get patched out?

As it's cheaper now, I'm willing to give it a try. (I would buy only dear Shenmue games at full price these days)

 

[Suzaku]

Not to detract from Frontiers talk (I agree with your read, for the record, @danielmann861 ), but a quick question:

Did anyone buy Sonic Colors Ultimate (I'm eyeing PS4), and, if so, did much of the major wobbliness get patched out?

As it's cheaper now, I'm willing to give it a try. (I would buy only dear Shenmue games at full price these days)

I'm interested too, after Frontiers I was thinking about Colors Ultimate, but I heard they did the same mess of Shenmue HD.
I know they addressed some issues (and many remains even after patches), but I'm more interested to know how the base disc version 1.00 really is.
if without the patches it's a coaster, then I give up buying it even at low price.

 

[Suzaku]

I'm near the ending of the game on the fifth island.
I'm impressed with the work they done, they really saved Sonic with this game.
It's really fun, the new open zone formula is solid and works pretty well and can be even expanded in sequels.
I agree the SOTC bosses (not just with Super Sonic) are really good, and while the game is too easy, there are many gameplay ideas (the way to defeat enemies and bosses, the cyloop etc.).

Even the cyberspace level are very nice, especially the later 3D ones.

 

[SliverOfSand]

Not to detract from Frontiers talk (I agree with your read, for the record, @danielmann861 ), but a quick question:

Did anyone buy Sonic Colors Ultimate (I'm eyeing PS4), and, if so, did much of the major wobbliness get patched out?

As it's cheaper now, I'm willing to give it a try. (I would buy only dear Shenmue games at full price these days)

I bought Colours Ultimate a few months back when it was on sale for PS4. The only issues I have noticed had to do with the lighting looking a bit off compared to original release. I did not play through the whole thing yet, just until planet wisp, so not sure if there are issues later in the game. I found that it plays fine, although I have found that playing through on PS4 feels slightly more difficult than when I played it on the Wii. Not really sure why though. But again, apart from the lighting I don‘t remember noticing any obvious problems.

 

[Suzaku]

I bought Colours Ultimate a few months back when it was on sale for PS4. The only issues I have noticed had to do with the lighting looking a bit off compared to original release. I did not play through the whole thing yet, just until planet wisp, so not sure if there are issues later in the game. I found that it plays fine, although I have found that playing through on PS4 feels slightly more difficult than when I played it on the Wii. Not really sure why though. But again, apart from the lighting I don‘t remember noticing any obvious problems.

do you play with the latest patch installed or base disc?

 

[SliverOfSand]

do you play with the latest patch installed or base disc?

Not completely sure on that, I did get a physical copy and it says that the version installed on my PS4 is 1.09.