GAME CLEAR No. 111 -- Sonic Frontiers

Sonic Frontiers (2022, Multiplatform)

Developer: Sonic Team
Publisher: SEGA
Clear Date: 11/14/22
Clear Platform: PS5

Hanging on the edge of tomorrow

Sonic Frontiers is one of those games I really struggle to evaluate. On the one hand, I blasted through its ~13 hour runtime over the course of about 3 days. On the other, it has some flaws! Truly no job is harder than that of the noble critic.

Anyway, I procrastinated this post long enough that the game isn’t super fresh in my mind. Something I do think I can reasonably argue, however, is that for the game to have held my attention that effortlessly for the time that it did, it must not have been awful! I saw a lot of sentiment like this Patrick Klepeck take that Sonic Frontiers “wasn’t good” but that it was still entertaining him a lot and he was spending a lot of time with it. I think it’s hard to argue that’s not “good” in at least some sense! Is Sonic Frontiers high brow? Is it art? No. But I think it’s a decent piece of entertainment software.

Having said that, it’s still obvious to me that Sonic Team has not quite nailed it just yet. The “Open Zones” (read: overworld hubs) of Sonic Frontiers are vast yet lifeless. Their art direction clashes with that of the traditional style levels (accessed via portals) and do not seem to fit the Sonic aesthetic to me. The enemies that populate them are generic. Interactions with Sonic’s allies are gated by collectibles, which is jarring and weirdly breaks up the pace of the story. These things are uninspiring.

Despite that, I found myself enjoying traversing the Open Zones even if I didn’t really feel like I was in the world of Sonic the Hedgehog. These open levels basically function as Sonic amusement parks, with countless grind rails, ramps, boost pads, and loops peppered throughout them that create little microlevels for Sonic to negotiate. After doing so, Sonic is always rewarded with one of the many trinkets that he must collect to advance the game’s story. This really works! I found it difficult to put the game down because I always had the urge to sprint to the next little bit of platforming challenge. In that way, Sonic Team is onto something, even if I wish the world looked a bit more like Green Hill Zone and a bit less like Death Stranding.

Again, because it’s been a month and a half since I played this game, my impressions aren’t as fresh as I’d like. But I will say I liked the game enough to be interested in returning for the forthcoming free DLC. That’s something!