! Sega has done it; they've finally done it! It's only taken 24 years, but Sonic Team has finally made a good 3D Sonic the Hedgehog game. They've released so many over the years that they were due a good one simply by the law of averages, but Sonic Frontiers is the real deal. It's very far from perfect but the ifs and buts don't spoil the fact that it's a ton of fun and, to some degree at least, the sort of game Sega fans have been dreaming of for all these very long years. Since the end of the Mega Drive era there has been precisely one unequivocally great Sonic game: Sonic Mania. But that was both 2D, a quasi-remaster, and primarily developed by fan groups and not Sonic Team themselves. Sonic Frontiers is not quite as good as that game, but it is a lot more ambitious, being an open world game that, mostly, lets you explore in any direction at any time. From the moment the first screenshots were released everyone noticed that it seemed to bear an uncanny resemblance to Zelda: Breath Of The Wild – a game that under normal circumstances you'd expect to have precisely zero in common with Sonic the Hedgehog. In core gameplay terms it doesn't but despite Sega's recent attempts to deny it, the way the open world works, and the delivery of classic Sonic gameplay in a constant stream of bite-sized nuggets, is extremely similar… and it is marvellous. PIC 1 Sonic Frontiers is split between two very different styles of gameplay. The principal one is a series of large, open world environments, where you're trying to acquire the Chaos Emeralds which, for increasingly unlikely reasons, are snatched away from you as you enter each new world. To get them you need the keys to their vaults, which are primarily gained by playing more traditional, linear 3D Sonic levels via 'Cyber Space' portals. T){kind=link}
Sega has done the one thing most fans had given up any hope of: they’ve made not just a good 3D Sonic the Hedgehog game but a great one.
Ring the bells! Blow the trumpets (of the apocalypse)! Sega has done it; they’ve finally done it! It’s only taken 24 years, but Sonic Team has finally made a good 3D Sonic the Hedgehog game. They’ve released so many over the years that they were due a good one simply by the law of averages, but Sonic Frontiers is the real deal. It’s very far from perfect but the ifs and buts don’t spoil the fact that it’s a ton of fun and, to some degree at least, the sort of game Sega fans have been dreaming of for all these very long years.
Since the end of the Mega Drive era there has been precisely one unequivocally great Sonic game: Sonic Mania. But that was both 2D, a quasi-remaster, and primarily developed by fan groups and not Sonic Team themselves. Sonic Frontiers is not quite as good as that game, but it is a lot more ambitious, being an open world game that, mostly, lets you explore in any direction at any time.
From the moment the first screenshots were released everyone noticed that it seemed to bear an uncanny resemblance to Zelda: Breath Of The Wild – a game that under normal circumstances you’d expect to have precisely zero in common with Sonic the Hedgehog. In core gameplay terms it doesn’t but despite Sega’s recent attempts to deny it, the way the open world works, and the delivery of classic Sonic gameplay in a constant stream of bite-sized nuggets, is extremely similar… and it is marvellous.
PIC 1