![]() ![]() In a weird way, I kind of liken it to a Tony Hawk game. The bulk of the time spent playing Sonic Frontiers was spent running fast through the various open zones, and while it is a big departure from what Sonic fans may be used to from the series, I have to say that I’m officially fully on board for it. Still, the music and the speed made them a consistent highlight of my playtime. ![]() Hands down the best Cyber Space stage I played was one that broke the tradition of being a short, bite-sized level, and was stretched out to about 2 to 3 minutes in length and had a bunch of hidden shortcuts off the beaten path that were a ton of fun to discover.Īs varied as the level design is, though, the one disappointment about Cyber Space is that the visual theme around them, based on my six hours of playtime, always falls into one of just a few categories: Green Hill Zone, Chemical Plant Zone, Sky Temple, or the new Cyber Space highway theme, and that’s about it. Some would be very straightforward grounded boost levels focused on speed and reactions, while others would be very grind rail heavy, and still others would shift the perspective to 2D and be a little more deliberate with their platforming challenges. The more you bounce, the more force you’re able to bump the boss with, and trying to find the right angle to bounce a bunch of times before hitting the boss was a lot of fun.įrom a level design perspective, the variety on display in the many different Cyber Space levels that I played was impressive. Fortunately, there are a few exceptions, like a fight against a sumo guardian that encloses you in a cage and requires you to bounce off the fences in order to bump the boss into the electrified portion. And worse, they’re repeated multiple times throughout the island without any variation. These fights are typically grand in their spectacle, but are rarely actually fun to play. The one weak point in this whole formula are the guardian mini-boss battles, which are required in order to obtain the portal keys that unlock Cyber Space levels. In that way, Sonic Frontiers is very formulaic, but the three islands I’ve explored so far were so different that I was happy to repeat the dance each time. Here I had to repeat the hunt for the chaos emeralds again. I managed to clear the first island in my first three hours or so of playtime, and after a very cool boss battle that I can’t and wouldn’t want to spoil for you, I found myself on Ares Island, a desert themed island that housed all new enemies, mini-bosses, Cyber Space levels, and memory tokens. Each island has a story to tell, with each of Sonic’s friends being a key player in how that story unfolds. There’s a compelling mystery that serves as the heart of Sonic Frontiers’ story, and I found myself very interested in seeing how it all unfolds – and even more interested in the dynamics between Sonic and each of his friends, which really takes center stage during these cutscenes. Every time I made a delivery, I was rewarded with a cutscene between Sonic and his trapped friend that would shed a little bit of light on the mysterious Starfall Islands and the cute little native rock people known as kocos that inhabit it. ![]() Typically, these are rewards for exploration in the open world, and they’re the main reason you’ll be looking out for springs, ramps, grind rails, speed boosters, and all other manners of gadgets that send you zooming through the world.Ĭollecting and delivering these memory tokens back to your friend is one of the ways you’ll progress Sonic Frontiers’ story forward. Each of the three islands was home to one of Sonic's friends who were trapped in Cyber Space, and in order to try and free them, I needed to collect a ton of memory tokens. I’ve talked previously about how you need to collect portal keys to open up Cyber Space levels, beat Cyber Space levels to get vault keys, and use vault keys to unlock chaos emeralds, but there’s another important element to the game flow as well: memory tokens. The big thing I got to experience this time around versus my first play session was the full sense of progression through each island. ![]()
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