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Sonic Frontiers - an open world Sonic?

3K View2022-11-11

One of gaming's most iconic characters is back. The world's fastest hedgehog delights us with a new adventure. While his last adventure (Sonic Origins) was just a pricey remaster of Sonic's first games, this game brings completely new content, and a lot of it. And it is good stuff. A 3D platformer, highly playable, and especially with one thing that is the trademark of the Sonic franchise: it is FAST. It is not so easy to develop a game that is lightning fast and still very playable, but this one gets it right.

Sonic, Tails and Amy get sucked into a strange, digital world. Their archenemy Dr. Robotnik may have something to do with it, as always. Sonic gets seperated from his friends - and only he can set everything right again. He has to explore the Starfall Islands, which offer a large playing field, kind of an open world although you need to collect keys to unlock new parts. This is something completely new for a Sonic game - exploring multiple large islands, fighting different enemies inclding various bosses, collecting a lot of different stuf, solving puzzles, upgrading Sonic, there is even a story to follow.

Actually this part of the game plays more like a classic 3D platformer than a Sonic game, although it is full of typical Sonic parkours with rails to slide on, hoops to jump through, springs to boost him across the world. It is quite easy to control Sonic - run around, double jump or just press RT to boost, and Sonic really speeds away when you do that. Attack with a homing attack to kill enemies and collect skill points - which can be used to learn new abilities. There are a lot of things to collect, like Seeds of Power that make you stronger or Seeds of Defense to make you sturdier. Sonic can dodge and can lock on enemies - but to be really master the game, there are far more special moves to learn. Chain combo attacks, wallrun, jump in the air, boost and attack at the right time, create Medusa rings around nasties... there are quite a bunch of abilities to unlock and moves for the player to master. Just running and jumping is not enough. Complete challenges to unlock new parts of the map. Defeat guardians - especially strong enemies - to get their Portal Gears wich you require to unlock new levels.

Additionally to all the things that you can do on the islands, there are also the signature Sonic levels. Here Sonic has to do what Sonic always does - run fast and collect golden rings. Hit an enemy or a spike and you come to an abrupt stop and all your collected rings scatter. You always have to decide if you want to reach the level exit as fast as possible, or to collect as many rings as you can. There is often more than one route to take and you have to decide - run through a speed booster or slide along a rail? Take a detour to get ab extra bunch of rings? Search for the hidden red rings? Your aim is to stay alive and reach the level end as fast as possible and with as many rings as possible. A result screen at the end shows you exactly how fast you were and how many rings, including the rare red rings, you have been able to collect. These classic Sonic levels can be accessed from the large island maps as soon as you have enough Portal Gears to unlock them.

Current technology with high screen resolutions makes it easier to race around at ultrafast speed and still see your sourroundings before you crash into it. You had to learn the level layout in the older games because it was simply impossible to react fast enough if you were running at full speed. Knowing the level layout is still essential to reach a high score in this game, but at least it is easier now because you can see larger parts of the levels. Sonic comes with two difficulty settings and perfect gamepad support. There are training sequences while loading new levels, you can train as long as you want and continue with the main game as soon as the new level is loaded. I won't say the graphics are extremely beautiful, because, well, I think this is a great game, but certainly not a gorgeous one. The story is told in cutscenes... and there are far more and longer story sequences than I have expected to see in a Sonic game.

A 3D platformer with a large world and a lot of things to explore, a real story (!), and including the typical Sonic levels to race through as fast as possible.

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