Sonic Frontiers releases on November 8, 2022

Well Shadow Warriors 3 didn’t do any favor for being disappointment while Xbox earned Tunic.

Its like…they always do something egregiously wrong. Like…all i need is for the open world to be interconnected colorful landscapes of the original games. It doesnt have to be revolutionary. They have the right idea, but they put it in, what appears to be, a completely uninteresting world

I don’t know about this. My friend was super excited so I was definitely curious but I’m not seeing it yet.

Just one big open map with stuff thrown in there it seems, but where are enemies? And I get that it’s WIP but holy cow at the pop in.

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They had better check those expectations, the talk online is mostly negative. Doesn’t mean the game will be bad, but man that was not a good first impression

https://gamerant.com/sega-sonic-frontiers-high-review-scores-hope/

It feels like this the world is what you would see in a tech demo or a sandbox rather than an actual game world

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Guess Sonic Generations doesn’t exist… still my favorite platformer.

There are enemies, but that wasn’t the focus of the trailer. They specifically said the trailer was focused on exploration. Considering they will be covering the game this whole month, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say they’ll showcase combat later down the line.

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Yeah, here. More gameplay focusing on combat:

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looks terrible

Give Sonic to Insomniac, its the only way it can be saved

Will review and sell well no matter how much Sonic “fans” scream about it. Seems like it’ll be fun to jet around the overworld with Sonic, will wait for more gameplay vids.

lol

Let me tell you the story of the first one I played.

It was the fall of '97. Being a huge fan of SEGA, I was a regular poster on the Dural Technical Pages, a website dedicated to SEGA’s new console. The excitement of a new SEGA console where they learned that they couldn’t be second fiddle in regards to power, was on another level for us downtrodden SEGA fans.

Anyways next spring rolled around and we got the name for the console, and some glimpses of the new Sonic game, Sonic Adventure. Visually it looks stunning and after coming off games like Mario 64 it looked like we would finally get a proper 3D Sonic title.

So throughout the summer of '98 I worked at a computer store for $5 an hour to save up for a Japanese Dreamcast that would cost me $660 Canadian dollars. I paid for it in full as a pre-order from an import website and I just had to wait.

Since Sonic Adventure was coming out a bit after the console’s launch I finally got it in early December of '98. Not only was the whole family gathered around but one of my friends who worked for the local paper was excited about first impressions of this new console that was due to arrive in another year for the North American market, and he was keen to write an article about it.

I was impressed with the size and feel of the Dreamcast. The controller seemed pretty great. I didn’t have a VMU at the time so I knew I couldn’t save my game but I didn’t care.

So I popped in my one and only game, Sonic Adventure, ready to get blown away.

It starts off with the CG cutscene that was released earlier online that showed Sonic on Earth. Something that I was hoping the game would explain to me but since it’s all in Japanese I didn’t understand anything. To this day I haven’t played the game in English so I still don’t know why they’re on Earth instead of on Mobius.

The game itself starts with the in-game cutscene of the police surrounding the Chao or whatever it’s called. It doesn’t look as polished as an MGS cutscene but it’s a platformer so I’m going to give it a pass. And then I have to fight it and right away I knew there was something wrong with the controls. Since it’s in a confined space the camera It’s completely focused on the enemy and it was completely disorienting. The controls didn’t seem to be based on any coherent physics system. So you jump and do a homing attack, which seemed like cheating.

But it was a boss fight and I was sure it didn’t reflect the platforming part of the game.

When it opens to the first level and I start running I see the camera trailing Sonic and it’s much more manageable. But it feels like I hit top speed really quickly and there isn’t much platforming. I’m just hitting boosters and going through loops with zero effort. I’m hitting a chain of bouncers and it’s just bouncing me all over the place taking me to a predetermined destination. There seems to be little gameplay here and it’s more of a roller coaster ride. The level is painfully linear and there is little exploration. One part where it looks like I can actually do some platforming is just a bunch of springs that I have to hit, no jumping involved.

Then I hit a part where I get to run on a wall, sideways, and I could tell that there is no real physics here is just a plane where Sonic can run up and down with few issues, falling if I come to a complete stop. I end the level and I’m appalled at the game at this point.

The hub World parts, particularly the one where Tails had his workshop, showed me that there was potentially in a more exploratory level design. But as I played the second level I realized that the levels will remain annoyingly linear.

It was the second level that solidified to be that the gameplay was incredibly poor. There is a section near the end where you run down a wall, and I inadvertently pushed the wrong direction halfway and Sonic immediately turned and started running up the wall. People now make a big issue about momentum and all of that stuff but back then examples like this made it clear that the game lacked coherence.

Back in the 16-bit days where you had the Sonic versus Mario arguments one of the biggest arguments against Sonic was that it was simply a “hold right to win” platformer. And here you had a game where you basically pressed up to go forward and you’d basically finish the level. Like the 2D games the levels got a bit more complex as you progressed but the controls themselves were not as tight as they needed to be for a platformer.

Sonic Adventure 2 had better level design that accommodated the controls but it was still nothing compared to Mario 64. The Dreamcast’s best 3D platformer turned out to be a Rayman game.

Pretty soon after I got Marvel versus Capcom, SEGA Rally 2, House of the Dead 2 with the lightgun…so my Japanese Dreamcast got a lot of play time before the launch of the American one (which I won because a Dreamcast fan site had a game design contest).

But I’ll never forget the feeling of disappointment when I played Sonic Adventure for the first time. My siblings even felt it with me when they watched me play after I unboxed the console.

Such a beautiful looking and sounding game that wasn’t much of a game.

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for its time the adventure games on DC weren’t bad. But everything post that has been either horrible or bang average.

Its not that they can’t make a good 3D sonic game. ITs that 3D sonic games don’t work. He’s too fast and the shitty camera and gameplay are too unpolished and mediocre to make a decent game of it. They can’t figure out what type of game they want.

In order to make a good 3D sonic they need a damn good camera system and mobility that is fun to engage with and complement his speed. You can’t do a Mario style platformer. It doesn’t work.

I rember hiring a dreamcast with sonic and crazy taxi from the video store before i could save up enough to buy one. Same thing with Sonic, hated it! Crazy Taxi however i played the shit out off for the whole weekend.

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Someone other than Sonic Team needs to get there hands on Sonic. Big Red Button had a wonderful idea and real chance for Sonic to realize it’s full Potential until Sonic Team and Sega royally screwed them with forced changes and a reduced schedule.

Don’t believe me, just watch this and you will understand

I was on the Dreamcast Technical Pages too :slight_smile: before most of us moved to GamersRepublic forum after EDGE was going nuts to the SEGA XBox fans What that got to do with modern 3D Sonic games, I don’t know.

I get that Sonic 06 and Shadow (even though it was a spin-off) were crap, but I actually thought and will say that Sonic Colors, Unleashed (the daytime sections) and Forces were pretty good games and that Sonic Gen was really amazing. So for ‘people’ say all Sonic 3D games are rubbish is unfair

I’ll well used to the Sonic cycle now mind, like with a any COD game its gets hate

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I just wanted to demonstrate that my anticipation for 3D Sonic games was immense. It was the one thing that I wanted. And I put all my hopes into SA.

Also I don’t think I classify them as rubbish but rather “poor”. Feel free to disagree with that but I think one thing we can all agree is that Sonic has not hit his true potential in 3D. I would call various 2D Sonic games “must plays” for 2D platformer fan. We can’t say the same for any of the 3D titles.

I think at this point it’s boiling down to a philosophy issue and Sonic Team, and a ton of fan games (every year I check out S.A.G.E), is going down a route where they see the answer is a solution is based on the Sonic Adventure style gameplay when I think it needs to be completely different.

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Honestly, fuck Sonic Origins. Stop porting the 2D games and remaster the Adventure games. God’s sake.

This looks like it has a lot more to show us, but why they decided to show us this gameplay… It is baffling. Truly! It feels so slow - even when it kight not be - because, like driving on a motorway at 70mph, it doesn’t feel that fast because the road is wide and the bends are long. Going 40mph in a residential area feels faster, and that’s the problem with this - the level doesn’t feel like it has been designed to make it feel fast, which is a mistake!

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I dont mind anyone posting whst they feel over a game they have bought . Sadly some lkve to bash sny Somic 3D never nind they nevrt bought or played the game

I found Colors, Gen and to a point Sonic Unleashed more enjoyable than Sonic Adv and really looking forward to the new Sonic

There IS more to show. They’ll be covering the game the entire month. Anyway, I think the IGN guy was just playing it slow for some reason, which is not the right way to show off the game.

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