Games I Beat in the Year 2024: Sonic Frontiers (PS4)

Games I Beat in the Year 2024: Sonic Frontiers (PS4)

Overview:
One thing you might not know about me is that I owe much of my adult personality and interests to the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. From joining my high school track team to cosplaying as Sonic at Anime Expo 2023, Sonic’s been a big part of my life.

I’ve stuck with Sonic throughout the franchise’s highs and lows and highs and lows: from the great 2D games, the hit-or-miss 3D games, all the way to infamous games like Sonic ‘06 and Frontiers. Only game I missed was Sonic Boom, but I did beat the forgotten sequel known as Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice on the 3DS. If that doesn’t tell you how much of a Sonic fan I am, then I don’t know what will.

Even though I’ve been a life-long Sonic fan, I literally felt nothing as I played through Sonic Forces, so I didn’t know what to expect with Sonic Frontiers when the first trailer dropped. But after all was said and done, I beat Sonic Frontiers and had a fabulous time.

Side note: I got into Sonic Frontiers after all the updates were added so this retrospective will go over the game as it is most recently.

Story:
As a kid I didn’t pay much attention to the stories within Sonic games. By the time of the 3D games after Adventure 2, most of them can be boiled down to “Eggman tries ruling the world, loses control of some sort of power, then Sonic saves the day through the power of friendship and some sick as **** moves”.

Frontiers follows that formula- Eggman with his 300 IQ messes up some technology thing and gets stuck in another dimension called Cyber Space; and Sonic and friends investigate but said friends get sucked into a wormhole. So Sonic gets sick, saves his friends, saves Eggman, gets cured from his sickness, and saves the day.

If that’s the long and short of it, why did I think Frontiers had the best writing in a Sonic game?

For a children’s game, Frontiers has a pretty mature theme: “believe in yourself, even if your bonds can hold you back”. Tails, Knuckles and Amy each experience their own version of this, and the new character Sage grapples with trying to form her own beliefs outside of her father Eggman’s influence. This can resonate for those in dependent relationships or those who hold themselves back for the sake of others. The theme here is much more nuanced than previous Sonic games where they lean into “the power of friendship” themes.

As a life-long Knuckles fan, the writing here was a breath of fresh air! I’ve never liked his “dumb comic relief meat-head” characterization in the last 50 games. Here, Knuckles is back to his competent rival-like persona with some genuinely heart-felt interactions with Sonic. They reminisce about the past, try to one up each other, and there’s genuine care about one another. Speaking of character interactions, there’s also nice gameplay interactions where Sonic will see something in the world and mention a character that does not show up in the game. I never thought I’d hear about Sticks and Chip again, but it helps with uniting the games.

That said, there are a few tone clashes. The islands have a serious and mysterious atmosphere, but Sonic (despite dying from his disease) still breaks into his usual dance as the upbeat fanfare plays whenever you collect a Chaos emerald. Also there’s one door you need to unlock by playing pinball which was kind of funny, but came out of nowhere. To be fair, Sonic is more reserved here than he is in other games, moments like these can take you out of the experience.

Gameplay - Exploring and Stuff:

Frontiers is essentially a collect-a-thon in an open zone with light RPG elements. On each island you collect enough bloops to talk to people, collect gears to go jack-in to the cyber space, complete the cyber space missions to unlock the Chaos Emeralds, then collect the Chaos Emeralds to fight the island boss. Repeat this 4 and a half times - 5 if you play the post game content and you have a fully beat Sonic game.

Each island has a checklist of tasks:

• Beat up minibosses

• Talking to the homies

• Collecting… EVERYTHING

• Completing various challenges to reveal the map

• Fish, because no open world game is complete without a fishing minigame

• Cyber Space levels

• Oh, and these randomly popping in floating tracks that you have to go through to collect stuff

If you’ve seen in the first trailer - random tracks pop in out of nowhere while wandering around the map. The pop-in is rough from a technical standpoint, but I don’t have an issue with the design of floating tracks as they are just small platforming sections where you can collect bloops or items for leveling up, so it is pretty important to do a few of these. The problem I have with the pop-in and the floating tracks is that if you accidentally start a track (like step on a dash pad or hit a spring), you can actually get stuck until you complete it. The camera changes, sometimes you’re locked into moving only left or right, etc…

Speaking of leveling up, you can increase Sonic’s speed, attack, defense (how many rings you lose on hit), and ring capacity by collecting fruit and the marketable plushie creatures called Kocos which are scattered across the map. There are also these “Fat Kocos” which are hidden away in complicated platforming tracks, and they’re the only way to increase your boost gauge. Once you collect these fruit, fat Kocos, and regular Kocos you can trade them in to more distinguished-Kocos to officially increase these stats.

Completing challenges across the islands reveals the map. There’s a wide range of mission types such as reaching a checkpoint under a certain time, or Simon says with side stepping, or homing attack basketball, and many more. While most of the missions are easy to complete, they are pretty satisfying to hear the completion jingle. And if you’re a stickler for difficulty, you’d be pleased to know that the missions get significantly harder in the Final Horizon update.

To break up the exploring you’ll be doing, there are Cyber Space levels which offer more (mostly) traditional Sonic gameplay. They’re all based off of previous Sonic levels such as Green Hill Zone and City Escape and in these Cyber Space levels, there are 4 missions which reward you with keys used to unlock the Chaos Emeralds. The missions can range from collecting all red rings, completing within a set time, etc which promotes players to play through the level multiple times.

Collect-a-thon games are always inherently repetitive, but with Frontiers there is something relaxing about just running around and collecting things. Maybe it’s the music.

Gameplay - Combat:
Another major improvement with this game is with the combat. Sonic’s usual homing attack, stomp, and boost are expanded with new moves like a (basic) parry, ranged wind attacks, and Cycloop, which lets you draw a circle with your trail to unleash an attack. The enemy variety encourages you to use different strategies, which keeps combat from feeling stale.

The minibosses also make good use of Sonic’s moveset as each miniboss has a theme that focuses on a different moveset of Sonic’s. From rail-grinding fights with the Strider and the Fortress to the endless track chase with the Squid (straight out of Sonic Unleashed), each miniboss has its own unique flair. My favorite miniboss is the Spider where you have to Cycloop the legs, then skydive through rings while avoiding obstacles to beat the head up.

Despite some of the lows of the Sonic franchise, they’ve always had great boss battles - and Frontiers is no exception. To start off each Titan fight, you have to climb up the massive Titan Shadow of the Colossus-style and grab the last chaos emerald to transform into Super Sonic. Similarly to regular Sonic; your moveset is expanded beyond the usual “headbutting fools”. The game plan is to move around, boost in, or parry their attacks to find an opening. Once they’re open you rush in to do as much damage as you possibly can with your go to combo. Bosses have a second phase, and once their health hits 0, a QTE to finish the fight. As badass as these titan fights are, these QTEs can insta-kill you if you fail them three times. And if you die, you have to start over from the beginning which can be pretty annoying. But aside from that this is the most cinematic and fun version of Super Sonic gameplay that I have played.

Gameplay - Post Game Content and Fishing:

The Final Horizon update lets you play as Knuckles, Tails, and Amy for the first time since Sonic ‘06 - although, should even count that as playable? They each have their own movesets and skill trees - Tails can fly and throw wrenches, Amy can double jump and throw tarot cards, and Knuckles can glide and throw hands. Aside from some small balancing issues against the minibosses, playing as them is a lot of fun when it comes to puzzle solving and platforming.

Oh yeah, Big the Cat is in the game and is the reason you can fish. This doesn’t take up a big portion of the game as I actually overlooked the fishing spot on the first island. To unlock it, you need to find purple coins around the map, then enter a portal that takes you to the fishing realm. Once you’re there, you get rewarded with points for each fish you catch which can be used to buy various items; such as unlocking fast travel, lore, and items you can find in the map. Because of this shop, you can buy fruits and Kocos to get max stats pretty early in the game. You can also buy all items you need to progress throughout the game (minus the Chaos Emeralds). This makes me wonder if anybody out there completed a playthrough via the power of fishing.

The biggest enemy within the Sonic franchise has never been Eggman; it’s always been the game physics and controls. Luckily in Frontiers, they get the game to feel pretty good. Maybe it’s a me thing, but it feels like it’s not perfect: for example hitting the jump button while already in air does some sort of drop dash and I have accidentally launched myself off of platforms I didn’t mean to. Running on walls is also difficult to control - every time I’d cling onto a wall, I’d opt to slowly climb instead of running because changing your direction makes no sense to me. The physics are serviceable, but the cracks begin to show in the Final Horizon island; because of how difficult the platforming challenges are, you need to do things in very tight spaces and timing.

Conclusion:

Sonic Frontiers exceeded my expectations. Despite some control quirks, physics issues, tonal inconsistencies, and technical jank; there were times I couldn’t put the controller down for hours on end. And if you’re not a Sonic fan like me; it’s not going to cure your depression or help you find love or anything, but I can honestly say that it was a good game.

Sonic Team still has room to fine-tune the gameplay, but with Sonic games, you can never know what to expect with whatever game they craft up next; Sonic x Shadow (gross name) not included.

Man, I feel like this is the longest blog I’ve ever written. Guess I just really like Sonic games or something. Don’t worry - I will never write so much again. For a blog at least.

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