Sonic Frontiers

Fans of the blue hedgehog have been looking forward to the latest game in the franchise, Sonic Frontiers since its announcement. The breathtaking game, revealed in 2021, promises to excite fans new and old alike. Sonic Frontiers is a powerful, open world experience that takes the best developers Sonic Team have to offer and runs with it. It is the first open world Sonic game ever to be released, but still has lots of 3d Platforming to keep old fans satisfied. Scheduled to be released on an unknown date in 2022, here’s everything we know about this spectacular game.

Stunning Graphics

The first thing players will notice about Sonic Frontiers is the stunning graphics. It’s difficult to compare these graphics to other games because they are so stand out. The backdrops are richly detailed, with sweeping fields, realistic water, and ancient ruins.

The game is simply beautiful in every possible way, to the point where Sonic’s bold character looks a little out of place. It looks as if Sonic the Hedgehog got dropped into Shadow of the Colossus, and they’re trying to make a game around it.

A game for everyone

The mixed look of old time sonic and the incredible world he’s placed in may be intentional. The game is being developed by some of the best in the game, including game director Morio Kishimoto and original writer Ian Flynn. The goal was to create a game that would appeal to both old school Sonic the Hedgehog lovers, as well as new players who are looking for innovation and creativity in the field.

Open World Experience

We know very little about the game at this time, but what we do know is encouraging. The game is set to have open world zones where players are free to explore, with some platforming involved as well. This is unique for a Sonic the Hedgehog game, which has previously never offered Open World before. The result is strongly reminiscent of Breath of the Wild, but with traditional Sonic the Hedgehog platforming still threaded in.

The open world is set on the Star Fall Islands, which you are free to explore while playing the game. The Islands even have their own unique biomes ranging from ancient ruins to flowery fields. Many of these are featured in the preview so you can get a close look at the raw beauty that awaits.

It’s impossible to say how good this game truly is without playing it first, but the game is certainly promising based on what we have seen. The game appears to have everything we need for an enjoyable experience, including a breathtaking world to explore, a fantastic character to get behind, and a story to challenge our minds.

Pros:

• Beautiful graphics
• Open world exploration
• Hours of gameplay

Cons:

• Unknown

Anyone who played a game from this franchise in the last decade would understandably approach Sonic Frontiers skeptically. The descent of the gaming world's most beloved character has been obscure and hard to watch. It's difficult to remember a game from the series that's been memorable for all the right reasons since the release of the initial trilogy. But someone has to rectify that rock-bottom reputation at some point.

Sonic Frontiers is shaking up the formula here, offering more hope than ever that we might get a decent game. Even an average offering will do at this point, showing just how poor these titles have been in the last ten years and beyond. Now, we've got a blue hedgehog with remarkable abilities in an open-world game; let's see what it can do.

Open for Business

Firing up Sonic Frontiers, and it's clear what the design objective is with the game. The old-school platforming mechanics that is overtly familiar to franchise fans will be integrated with the trending, open-world adventure gameplay. It is a noble attempt to revive a faltering franchise by shaking up the formula. But it begs whether it's fun, immersive, and worthy of player attention.

Surprisingly, that's a big fat yes. Sonic Frontiers has done the impossible in creating an enjoyable action-adventure experience for our beloved hedgehog, creating challenging gameplay, immersive environments, and a narrative that doesn't make you fall face-first into your hands. Who would have thought that the first step to reviving the series would be to deliver a game with thought, polish, and flash visuals?

Players will exploit Sonic's progressing abilities to complete over 30 open-world levels with gorgeous biomes. There are puzzles to solve, cognitive platforming challenges to overcome, and bosses to defeat, all in the name of collecting the Chaos Emeralds to keep them out of Doctor Eggman's reach. Finally, players can feel satisfied with Sonic Frontiers, which handles the right direction for the franchise.

The game isn't without folly, where controls sometimes feel stiff, and enemy variety is limited. However, since the bar is so low, Sonic Frontiers is a gem in the recent slurry of poor releases. Even players with the most extreme skepticism can appreciate that the title is far better than anything to emerge in the last decade.

A Chaos Emerald in the Rough

So is Sonic Frontiers worth your time without being a Sonic fan? Absolutely. It's not only a title that injects new life into a canon video game series but also pays homage to what can be done with refined platforming mechanics in an open-world environment. It's no Spider-Man: Remastered, but you get the idea of how decent the game is compared to what it's competing against.

Round-Up - Pros & Cons

Pros:

• A much more polished Sonic platforming game
• The open world brings a new dynamic to the mechanics
• Visually beautiful throughout

Cons:

• Stiff controls in parts of the game
• Enemy variety is lacking throughout

Personal Rating: 8/10

For years, the Sonic the Hedgehog character has been trapped in limbo. It has been a long time since a truly unique and enjoyable Sonic game was developed. The creation of 2022 release Sonic Frontiers, though, is the aim to try and chance this. Developed by Sonic Team, this game is aiming to try and add a fresh new approach to the series.

You will explore the Starfall Islands in a bid to pick up Chaos Emeralds. The game starts as you fall through a wormhole into the island, and get separated from friends Tails and Amy Rose. With the game not out yet but enough information to form a general view, what is our view of this new approach to the Sonic franchise?

Sonic in an open world? Hmmm

The first thing to note is that Sonic Frontiers is unlike other Sonic releases, such as Sonic Mania. Instead, this game is built around an open world – the first Sonic game to go down this route. Immediately, though, fans were a little worried – was this going to be a dense and enjoyable open world? Or something drab and empty looking? Sadly, so far it does look like the latter.

In a bid to cool fan uproar, though, the development team made clear that within the open world there would also be more traditional Sonic-style levels. If you had to compare this game to any Sonic title, it would be Sonic Adventure. Still, there is enough variety and difference here to really set Sonic Frontiers on its own.

Sonic Frontiers is a highly ambitious title in that it takes so many risks with the usual Sonic formula. So far, though, it does not look like it will be able to stick a landing quite the same way as Sonic Mania did. Fans of the blue hedgehog tend to like the games to stick to what they do best; this looks to be a hodgepodge of ideas from various other game styles mixed into a world where it does not combine properly.

An ambitious idea that might not land (7/10)

There is not enough information out there yet to form a truly final opinion, but so far we have to say that Sonic Frontiers does not look up to scratch. The world looks barren and cheap at times, with large swathes of nothing. Yes, we get that you are moving fast as Sonic and thus much of the background would be a blur as you zoom around. Still, that does not forgive the total lack of energy and freshness being seen within the content released so far.

Pros

• A new approach is something to be celebrated, even if it does not quite work
• The blend of open world and Sonic-style levels should at least keep things fresh

Cons

• Limited quality and a drab looking open world does not inspire much confidence
• Storyline sounds like it was built to suit the gameplay