What’s in a frame?

So I did something I thought that I would not do. I went out tonight and went to Best Buy and checked out some the price drops on games in the heat of the holiday mad rush.

Personally I don’t really care too much about deals as I generally plan out most of my sales as it can be frustrating buying too much and then regretting it later... I still remember the days in college where I funded my NES collection by eating nothing but sandwiches that were filled with butter and the cheap $0.10 meat packets from a value grocery store.

I have never gone back to that.

So I picked up Sonic Forces because it was $25... and I have kind of itching for a new 3D Sonic game.

It is not as nearly as bad as most reviewers make it out to seem. More specifically the Switch version is not as terrible as Digital Foundry would like you to believe. I mean seriously you watch their Youtube video and it looks like it hot trash studdering and broken.

But after actually playing it on a real Switch. It is not as nearly as bad as people make it out to be. Not only does it look alright but I was very happy with the perfomance of the game. It loaded faster than any of my Sega Dreamcast Sonic games and in in the immortal words of John Denver; “It amazes me”

This game is not perfect, and now that I totally get what the game was suppose to be It totally makes senes that Sega really sucks at marketing. If this is game about a new character they needed to show Sonic dying or something terrible in the teaser trailer as that is what would have gotten me into the story a bit more as I felt that whole Sonic Colors and generations where great they were lacking in the story department and while Forces is not a great regulation it is somewhat competent in tell an interesting narrative.

Thoug they needed to loose the whole “one month earlier” stuff and stick with a more linear story line as it works better for them to save flashbacks till mid game instead of the very beginning.

Also this is game that has some really cool things happening in it... It is just a shame that unlike the cinematics from Sonic Advenure 1 showing an entire town getting destroyed... Sonic Forces simply puts up 10 seconds of text:

And Eggman took over the world in the next month

Which for me it would have been pretty cool to see that happen as it would make the deprevity of the situation stick with me. Cause we are going into deep topics and Sonic Team kept things a bit too light so even though the levels and everything else about this game has huge set pieces... This is the one time I would have loved to have longer cut scenes.

The game itself is a blast, I am not a huge fan of the boost meta as I tripped into it with Sonic and The Secret Rings. But this game made a very valid push for it. I rather enjoyed it a lot when it worked. There were some levels that punshed you for pressing boost around corners which was not fun but I think at this point I get why everyone seems to like boost mode... Which actually has a lot more depth than the runner games on the phone.

The avatar mode was pretty fun too.

I know that Sega was going total budget with this game but they could have done something like Time Splitters 2, where they just throw everything but the kitchen sink into the game. (Seriously there is like 200+ characters in that game)

I think my largest complaint for the Avatar is that there is not enough base animals to select from. The second I started costimizing I wanted to make Mighty The Armodillo. Cause he is a very under repressented Sonic character and for the most part is a blank slate when it comes to personality so... literally would be the perfect addition. But that was not an option...

This seemed to be the weakest part of the game as you cannot unlock more animals either. Since they have to be bi-peds like Sonic don’t expect to make Big The Cat either... Which I totally get how much of a pain it would to be to make this... but with the wide cast of models that are already in the game: Charmy, Vector, and Espio we could see a lot more options for body types and other stuff.

At least there is huge room for Sega to monitize they hell out of the DLC if they even know there is a gap here.

Classic Sonic is not as nearly as bad as most people have written. Yes, Sonic Mania did it better before. But the thing is that if you think of the two games being connected... Then this is all really cool and fun without really be in competition. There were some rough edges but I actually had less cheap deaths in Classic Sonic Stages than some of the EX or normal boost stages.

The music is wonderful. They hired a whole orcastra of instruments and this is easily the best orchestral music I have heard in a game. Sure there is modern music too that is really good but I was very happy with the soundtrack and it really makes this game great on the ears. The sound design alone makes this game a lot more competent than most games on the market.

There is a double mode too. Which plays a lot like Sonic Heroes, but you only have two characters and limited amount of abilities. But half of them are the Sonic Boost ones mixed with the Avatar ones. So those levels can be really really quick if you know which sort cuts to take and have perfect timing with hits and the lightning avatar wisps.

A lot of this probably would have been hard to digest if the price was the full $40 but at $25 it really puts the game into a very nice range for me. Screw Capcom and their cheap butts for doing a less than budget Street Fighter game on the Switch and not doing a price drop yet. Sega did it so they got my money.


If the Switch is the worst that this game has to offer then I can only say that at $40 and 4K or 1080P this game is probably more than worth it in the long run. As like most 3D Sonic games there is an extensively long end game and it will be a while before you can 100% everything.

I played and beat this game in one sitting, it took 3-4 hours. When I was done I felt like I had done some existential anime binge, as the power of friendship conquered all. At least Shadow is still delightfully as edgy/metal as he use to be :)

I would say this beat the heck out of spending $30 to go watch a movie. Cause I will be coming back and spending more time.

Good to know that 3D Sonic is still Runs fast, can’t wait to see if they will pin a single concept to the next game.

LOOK WHO CAME:

Retrofraction   

Wes Tacos   44

Boxman214   33

Gajknight   30

Dinosir   13

Barry Kelly   5

JuIc3   5