Yeah, mostly. I get where it comes from but Sleet and Dingo have a pretty overt leader & subordinate vibe that adds a unique wrinkle to things compared to most other henchmen duos that are usually on the same level. That and the fact that they much rather be free agents than henchmen.
It's been confirmed that only Sonic will be playable in Sonic Frontiers. However, all signs point to Sonic's friends actually being important to the story instead of window dressing.
Welp, guess they also just confirmed either upcoming DLC, or lackluster sales. Because either they plan to milk those other characters for every penny, or pissed off huge parts of the fandom over the lack of options.
I'm not so sure on lack of options. The combat system is looking pretty robust. Now, fans will be disappointed (Tails is my favorite character) but the game is looking more and polished the more stuff revealed other than that early IGN preview. That said, I'm just one opinion.
They can polish it all they want: not offering those other characters (or worse: requiring paid DLC to use them.) will hurt replayability in the short and long term. And at 80 bucks a pop for a new title: folks want to get their moneys worth. A little bit of disappointment is all it takes for people to re-prioritize that much money either into other games, or other expenses. It's not like there won't be a sale eventually.
I'm not so sure on lack of options. The combat system is looking pretty robust. Now, fans will be disappointed (Tails is my favorite character) but the game is looking more and polished the more stuff revealed other than that early IGN preview. That said, I'm just one opinion.
Meh, this won't affect me, as I am used to Sonic being the only character playable. My only hope is that they don't rush this like they did Sonic Origins and Sonic Forces.
But then again, Sonic Frontiers is possibly not going to sell well, especially since it's releasing the same day as God of War: Ragnarök (the long-awaited sequel to God of War PS4 that will be a big money maker for Sony's PlayStation 5).
God of War is one of the more interesting wrinkles. I've seen people talking about it and it might not be a big issue. While this Sonic game is skewing slightly older than some of the more recent ones, it may be a situation similar to the movies where the target audiences between the two titles don't really overlap. Also, isn't GoW a Playstation exclusive franchise? It's possible it'll do well on other systems. Especially Switch.
I've been saying for literally decades now that they need to focus down on getting just one character to play well, then spend dev time on others once they have a thing what works.
Whinging fandom can sit and spin, we need a game that works before we need a bucket of broken bits that don't.
Yeah, buts its a fine line: the whinging fandom is the biggest buyer and consequently the biggest promoter. If they are unimpressed from the drop, doesn't even really matter the reason, then that's a huge volume of word of mouth that goes sour.
I get where you're coming from and, believe it or not, I agree with you. We need it even more given the literal decades of poor to mediocre titles, but they can still make a perfect game that can fail if no one plays it.
Not really. Make a good game and it'll sell to long term fans and, shock and awe, new fans.
That's how Nintendo keeps themselves going, by making games that aren't so broken that only the turbo nerds can enjoy them. Sega only has the turbo nerds and keeps catering to them because it's the easiest, least risky thing they can do. They know that if they shove all the right elements out the door, the long term fans will buy it up, generate tons of engagement through their outrage at the flaws and Sonic will stay just relevant and popular enough to warrant another hacked together title.
They might lose some fans, but they'd gain so much more if they just followed Nintendo's example of making games that are fun and accessible for everyone, not just us old farts.
You only got half of that right. The hardcore fans might be massive promoters who bring a lot of passion and can spearhead incredible things but most sales come from casuals due to sheer weight of numbers. Especially since Sonic is a mainstream series instead of something obscure. Also...hardcore fans sometimes have massive blinders on.
Upcoming title Sonic Frontiers takes the speedy hedgehog to a brand new open world - but players will not be able to try it out with a free demo.
gameluster.com
I'm...debating with myself over how big of a deal this is.
On the one hand, I do think this is a red flag. A lot of times, when a big game that's releasing on all consoles doesn't get a demo, it's a sign that something's broken.
But, on the other hand, I don't think this is a portent of doom, just yet. The marketing for this game has been...odd, to say the least. Sega seems to be keeping things close to their chest with this game for some reason. It's possible they really just want to preserve the surprises this game has to offer by not revealing too much too soon.
But, on the third hand, I can't help but see similarities between Frontiers and Lost World in some ways. Lost World was designed to capitalize on Super Mario Galaxy's popularity and win over die hard Nintendo fans. And Frontiers seems to be doing the same thing, only this time with Breath of the Wild. These games are built to imitate, not innovate. And, that might end up being a problem. I don't know if Sonic Team really understands what makes open-world games interesting to players. I hate to see Frontiers end up as another underwhelming at best 6/10 game.
But, on the fourth hand, it's not like EVERY game gets a demo. I don't think the main Personas ever got demos, and those are usually great. Mind, it seems like most of the Yakuza games got demos before release. Even Sonic Forces got a demo. Is it possible that Frontiers isn't stable enough or the devs don't have enough time to create a demo? How bad is the crunch on this going to be? Still, a demo is not the be and end all of games. Even Balan Wonderworld got a demo, which was a bad idea. A demo alone isn't a sign of a game's quality.
But, on the fifth hand, they're introducing SO MANY new mechanics and ideas in this game, they really should give SOME introduction to them. And I worry that Frontiers might actually be a Metroidvania of sorts. That you get more and more powerful as you go through the game, but the first few hours might be a little grindy. Sega is not communicating this to the audience right now. If this is a game that only gets good about 10 hours in...I could see a LOT of players putting it down in the first 5 hours and assuming the rest of the game is just a boring slog like what they just played.
But, on the sixth hand, some of the new mechanics seem like they're overcomplicated and oversimplified in all the wrong places to me. Spoilers below, because some of the details have leaked from various places.
I'm going to preface all of this, just to say that I might be completely wrong about everything I'm about to say. I've only seen a few spoiler posts on Reddit and the like, so I might be misunderstanding or misremembering things.
So, it sounds like there's five islands. That's good. It's more than just the Grass and Desert islands.
The problem I see so far is that it seems like you're doing the same thing in all these areas. The enemies all look similar, the activities all look pretty similar. And it's good to have consistency with designs, but these robots seem...almost too "sleek" for Sonic? The robots just don't seem to have a lot of personality to me. They're all generically "cool" enough, but...none of them really stand out. I just worry that things will get a little too repetitive.
Now, let me try to explain some of the systems at play, as I understand them.
You have Attack and Defense increasing fruits. That's...good. But, other than the Special Attacks, that seems like the ONLY form of character customization you get. I haven't seen any "weapons" or different kind of "shoes" or anything. It feels a little shallow for a open-world game.
As you go around the island, you can find Memory Tokens. These Tokens can unlock the prisons that Sonic's allies are in, and once they're freed, you get a new attack.
Then there's the bosses. After you beat a boss on the island, you get a Portal Gear. These Gears can unlock the Cyberspace areas. Beating enough of the Cyberspace Areas can get you Vault Keys. You can also get Vault Keys from just exploring the island. You need Vault Keys in order unlock the island's Chaos Emerald Shrine and then get the ability to travel to another island.
Do you notice a problem with this? All these new items are...pretty straight forward. You just exchange one item to get a different item. It doesn't seem like there's multiple uses for these items, or any sort of crafting system in place. It's a little more micro-transaction-ish than open world-like. And the pre-order bonuses just GIVE you a lot of these items, just so you can speed up the gameplay. That points to a problem to me.
Part of the fun of open world games is usually the crafting. Being able to combine items in different useful ways. The items you get through gameplay are usually versatile and have multiple uses, depending on the crafting system.
That doesn't seem to be a factor with all these items. You COULD have just had the player get the Chaos Emeralds by beating a boss, instead of giving them a item to go through another series of levels to get a different item and then have them travel to a different area to finally unlock the goalpost. The gameplay loop seems pretty padded out, to me. They could have streamlined things, but I think Sega wanted a lot of items in the game because...open world games have a lot of items. But, they don't seem to be making the items themselves that interesting.
Maybe the biggest thing is...there's such a thing as good repetition and BAD repetition. Doing the same thing over and over can sometimes feel good...or sometimes it can get old really fast. We'll just have to see if all of this adds up to good or bad repetition.
Like I said, maybe I'm wrong about all of this. And we might not have the full picture yet. But..it's just not looking like a well designed open world, to me. I hope I'm wrong, though.
But, the same things that might make it a "bad" open world game...MIGHT make it a okay Metroidvania? The gameplay still seems padded to me, but at least the character progression reminds me more of a standard Metroidvania, with incremental increases in abilities rather than a Open World with a vast array of options in gear and abilities.
But, on the seventh hand....I'm overthinking this. I know I'm overthinking this. It's just a demo, or lack thereof.
but at least the character progression reminds me more of a standard Metroidvania, with incremental increases in abilities rather than a Open World with a vast array of options in gear and abilities.
You might be on to something. It was mentioned that they were calling it "Open Zone" instead of open world since they wanted to focus on action instead of RPG elements. It's wholly possible that "Metrovania but outdoors" is the actual goal but there's no actual language for that.
On the one hand, I do think this is a red flag. A lot of times, when a big game that's releasing on all consoles doesn't get a demo, it's a sign that something's broken.
But, on the seventh hand....I'm overthinking this. I know I'm overthinking this. It's just a demo, or lack thereof.
Eeh, I've found that damn few big games get a demo these days, and not that many more smaller ones. It makes me sad the demo is going extinct, I've bought so many games based on a demo, and at worst it's a nice distraction for a few minutes.
I'd say they're death is one of the side-effects of modern connectivity. A Demo isn't 'here's a slice of the final game.' its a snapshot of whatever the current build of the game is, at that point in time. Incomplete, and likely not very polished. Sure you get some people that would expect that, but you get others that will bitch about it and use that as 'proof' the game will suck and that information can spread like wildfire. I remember one game company, nearly a decade ago so I don't recall which one, citing this as why they were gonna stop doing demos becuase it was giving people the wrong idea of what the final game would be like.
Given the number of games these days that rely on day 1 patches and overhauls these days, a lot of retail releases are just a snapshot of the current build. I mean, the main reason is money; a demo costs money to make, and with profile tracking and the like, companies have a pretty good idea how many demo players are converted into buyers, and it's not enough to cover the costs.
I dunno, "preview demos" like the kind you'd see at conventions being made available to the general public seems to have become a lot more common since COVID killed the convention scene. But that's mostly for indie games. Unsurprising, since indie games are more desperate for attention they don't have to pay TV-commercial prices for and also less shy about letting people see them in an unfinished state (e.g. early access).
Finished Sonic Underground. The thing I found the most fascinating was the worldbuilding. Pity that the writers attempted took the "don't finish things out to gamble on getting a season two" approach. There were definite attempts to set things up for later. Though there were times I got the feeling that parts of the show were refitted from something else. Sonia got a whole lot episodes directly tying into her prior life compared to her brothers.
While I've already commented on liking Sleet & Dingo, the surprising character standout was Bartleby. An intriguing shade a grey among otherwise black & white characters. I liked that he had his own sense of morals even when doing Robotnik's bidding.
Finished Sonic Underground. The thing I found the most fascinating was the worldbuilding. Pity that the writers attempted took the "don't finish things out to gamble on getting a season two" approach.
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