- [JAMES] One year ago,
Sega unleashed Sonic Forces upon the world.
Released a bit less than generation after the previous 3d Sonic game - Sonic: Lost World -
this game went back to the boost style of Sonic gameplay popular in titles such as well Sonic Generations.
And, this may have been celebrated by many if this title
had not been released in late 2017.
Earlier that same year
Sonic Mania was released, which was a game that not only returned to the classic Sega
Genesis 2d platforming style that made the series
famous, but was so well received upon release that it became the most critically acclaimed Sonic game in over two decades.
Oh, and, y'know, it became the subject of not one but two different mini-documentaries from yours truly.
Sonic Forces was not quite as warmly received as that title. While Mania had been made by a team of longtime Sonic fans,
Forces, like most Sonic titles, was developed by Sega's in-house Sonic Team.
Garnering a six point nine out of ten from IGN,
a 57% on Metacritic, and a rant about its mediocrity from SomecallmeJohnny,
it was a game that the general Sonic community excitedly labeled as...
meh.
Yet, I still played it and had a lot of fun. In fact, I had so much fun with it upon launch that
I actually made a review that I titled "Sonic Forces - Why It Is a Good Game."
But, almost over a year has past. Well actually, exactly a year has passed since that review and
admittedly some of my thoughts have changed on the game. Do I still think sonic Forces is a good game?
Well, maybe that's debatable but I still think Sonic Forces is an okay game, and that's what we're going over in today's video!
Welcome to Stuff We Play, where now
it's time for Sonic Forces round two! As many of you probably know, I picked this game up on the Nintendo Switch
day one and admittedly I also beat it day one.
It's not a very long game.
But, we'll get into. This title sought to bring a few new things to the table to differentiate it from other Sonic games.
Despite as prominent as it was displayed in the game itself and in the advertising,
the story here was pretty crap/
However, Sonic Forces also had a refined version of the boost gameplay which had become so popular in titles such as Sonic Unleashed, Colours, and
Generations, and also had the ability to play as your own deviantart Sonic OC, free Shadow the Hedgehog DLC and also,
classic Sonic, for some reason, despite Mania being
released earlier that year and that literally just being classic Sonic, but once again that's besides the point.
I felt like most of this worked pretty well initially.
But, does it still hold up? Or, if it holds up does it hold up as well as I thought it would? Let's find out!
Sonic Forces aims to offer a vain attempt at a dark, gritty war story because of course
that's what everyone wants in their cartoony blue hedgehog game. The evil. Dr. Eggman has taken over the world
so you - and by you I mean your erotic fan art fodder who I made to look a bit like Jazz Jackrabbit and later on like...
Yeah - well you join the resistance!
However, soon Sonic the Hedgehog himself gets kidnapped and a new evil named Infinite comes out of the shadows.
Shortly afterwards, apparently Sonic gets horribly tortured and, according to Knuckles, Tails starts to go crazy from grief, but you know
no actual dismay or signs of trauma are present in any interactions with them after encountering them themselves.
Seriously, apparently Sonic was being given to ol' Guantanamo Bay treatment by Eggman but you know, that didn't affect him at all!
Literally within minutes,
he was back to being his old cringy 90s-esque self.
On top of this, despite bosses such as Chaos from Sonic Adventure and Zavok from Sonic: Lost World appearing in the game's cutscenes,
you don't fight all of them. Chaos is defeated off screen, as is this Shadow the Hedgehog clone.
How lame. As far as the non-Eggman character fights go, you fight Infinite a few times,
and admittedly all but the first of these are pretty cool and interesting, and you also fight Metal Sonic, who is
actually a ton of fun despite him also being present in Sonic Mania.
The Zavok fight, however. is trash pure trash. It's slow. It's cumbersome
It's very not Sonic. You need to homing attack into him and the reticle doesn't always appear and honestly, it's just not a good time.
But thankfully, this is a one and done boss fight. In a stroke of originality for the Sonic series,
Eggman is not actually after the seven Chaos Emeralds.
Instead he's after the mysterious Phantom Ruby, which was that purple thing he used to send Sonic all over time and space in Sonic Mania.
It's pretty much just used as a plot MacGuffin here.
It's just there to make you do stuff and also to vainly link this game to Sonic Mania.
Also, Classic Sonic is here. Not the Sonic Generations
Classic Sonic, which was Sonic from the past, but Classic Sonic from Sonic Mania, which apparently is Sonic from an alternate timeline.
Yeah, it's confusing and I have no idea why he's actually here. He could be taken out of this game and nothing would be lost.
I mean that both in terms of story and gameplay.
Moving into the gameplay itself, actually, Classic Sonic just feels janky. I said it wasn't so bad
and that you could get used to it after awhile in my previous review.
Yet, now that I think about it ,the same can be said about having a burning dumpster fire filled with kimchi behind your house.
In Sonic Mania, Classic Sonic controls the best he ever has. He has the perfect amount of weight,
decent midair control, a great sense of momentum, and
also a new drop dash ability which allows you to speed off into your ball form after landing from a jump or fall.
Sonic Forces keeps the drop dash ability from Mania, but then says "screw it" to the rest of that.
Classic Sonic here is stiff and weighty and stomps much too fast. He also feels rather imprecise, though
the stage design here is built around this control.
It's off-putting, and honestly
I don't know why they didn't just bring over Classic Sonic's control style from Sonic Generations, as that felt much
much better than what we have here. With that said, modern Sonic's back in his boost formula from Generations.
He has the best control he ever has had. This is thanks due in part to the new game engine.
The Hedgehog Engine 2.0, I believe it was called?
Sonic is not as slippery as he wasn't Sonic Colours or Unleashed, and can turn corners much easier.
However, his homing attack is not as precise as it used to be.
So, be warned when exploring a few alternate paths that the levels have here. Then, we have your avatar character.
I named mine Vapelord the Abomination.
You can choose how this guy looks, what he wears, and even what projectile weapon, referred to as a "Wispon", he wields.
One thing I'd like to mention clothes-wise is that if you bought this game at launch,
you actually got some cool outfits based off of other Sega properties!
But anyways, on to the weapons or "Wispons."
The "Wispons" use one of the Wisps from Sonic Colours to give you a certain ability, like a flamethrower
or an electric whip, and then also let's you use one wisp power up during the stages.
Only one. Even if you see capsules for other ones
you can't use them unless you have the Wispon that allows you well to use them equipped. I get why they restricted this.
Sonic can't use any Wisps at all here, and by limiting your avatar to only one Wisp per Wispon,
it encourages replayability.
But at the same time, as Sonic can use any and all Wisps in Colours, this seems rather arbitrary.
As for actual control, I really enjoy how the custom character controls. While note as fast as modern Sonic,
he's just as tight and the Wispons are fun to use and to experiment with.
Also, I enjoy the stages where you play together with modern Sonic, as these two gameplay styles just meshed together really well.
However, the double boost sections you'll find in these stages will literally play themselves if you let them, and that's where we get to perhaps
the biggest issue with Sonic Forces: the level design. Now before we go into that,
let me touch on the graphics and music. Graphically speaking, this game looks great.
Even on the Switch where it's limited to 30 frames per second,
there's never any issues or major glitches and the game looks especially wonderful if you play it in 4K on the Xbox One X.
As far as modern Sonic games go, though,
the classic series inspired locales here aren't as original or unique to look at as the varied worlds of Sonic Colours or the
exotic locales of Sonic Unleashed. However, they're still quite pleasing to the eye. As for the soundtrack,
I wasn't hot on a lot of it initially.
Particularly, the vocal-heavy pieces in the past year especially have really grown on me.
My favourite track in the game is definitely Aqua Road. By the way, as for Classic Sonic's Genesis style music,
I know a lot of people don't like these and see it as nostalgia pandering, but honestly, as I said my original review,
I honestly really liked these. My favourite of these by the way this is still Ghost Town.
I still think the main game theme, Fist Bump, is pretty lame, and speaking of lame
oh yeah! Let's get back to the level design. The first level of the game here is Green Hill Zone,
appearing again for the... uh...let's see, Sonic 1, Adventure 2, the Master System game,
Generations... man, for like the thousandth time in a damn series!
Like I kind of wish we got Emerald Hill or something.
Well, if they have to do a throwback first level. Though, Green Hill soon turns out to be more of a
"Sand Hill". Yeah, Sonic says that in one of the levels. Anyways, Green Hill is fun. It's fast.
It's full of Eggman's robots...that don't even attack you?
Wow, these things are useless as hell, but that's okay because the level is still super fast and over in a minute.
Well, I mean the first zone of any Sonic game is super short, but what if we skip a few levels to the Death Egg and...
Oh.
Even when we get in the late game, most of these levels can be beat within
two minutes or less.
This means the stage length here is the perfect length for playing in short bursts on the Nintendo Switch in handheld mode.
But, in docked mode or on any other modern console,
these lengths, well,
they leave a bit to be desired to say the least. A lot of these stages such as Casino Forest here have some really neat,
original ideas, but I wish more was done with them and that they were all fleshed out a bit more. It's overall kind of disappointing.
No matter what character you're playing as, your stage will likely be super short.
It's a shame since these characters all control so well -
well, except Classic Sonic. It makes you really want more.
The level design, technically speaking, is solid. Most of these levels end right when you feel like you're getting into them.
Some of these also have some neat gimmicks, such as Aqua Road,
but also a lot of these also require minimal player input.
There was a meme when the game first came out about how "Sonic Forces literally plays itself."
While that is perhaps a bit hyperbolic,
there are many parts of this game where, if you wanted to, much like I did in a live stream awhile back,
you could put the controller down, go downstairs, grab a Coke
from the fridge, and have the game still playing when you get back.
Some of these stages have mid-level cutscenes that, despite looking cool and having neat set pieces, just break the flow.
Now as some of you know, outside of YouTube, I'm a writer.
One of the most important things they tell you in writing, both in fiction and nonfiction, is to "show don't tell."
I think I finally found a video game equivalent of this:
Video games are experiences, thus I would prefer if these stages were designed with a philosophy of "play don't watch."
Well, with that said, none of stage design here is bad per se. Oh, except for stage 28, which is an auto-scrolling stage
where you play as Classic Sonic, and much as I noted in Bridge Zone in my Sonic 1 Master System review,
auto scrolling levels in Sonic are the definition of "heinous." But the rest of the levels, while full of some fun sections, and
I mean some really really fun sections in some of these, are on the whole nothing special.
Sonic Forces does a lot right, and while it was originally released after Mania,
I noted that it was still worth getting back then because it was the only physical release Sonic game on the Switch.
I thought the controller skins that came with it and the free DLC were some cool extras as well.
Yet, despite getting some new extras such as the Super Sonic DLC since then,
Sonic Forces has not had the added support from Sega that I was wishing it would. Furthermore, in July 2018
we got Sonic Mania Plus, which was an updated version of Sonic Mania that had additional playable characters, a
whole new mode and, well, more.
Every physical edition of Mania Plus also came with an art book and
a reversible case cover. And did I mention that it costs $10 USD less new than Forces does new?
Mania Plus, with its new editions, is a game that I feel last longer than Forces. While Forces, including its DLC,
has over thirty different stages,
these levels are shorter than Mania. While Forces has three gameplay styles, technically four, but Shadow is just a Sonic clone,
the play styles in Mania Plus are all very distinct and the levels have way more paths and room to explore there.
Most of all, I feel like Forces has a lot of points where it forces you to go fast,
but mania realizes that even though Sonic is the fastest thing alive,
the goal of a Sonic game is not raw speed but rather
level designs that through learning them will allow you to keep momentum and create a sense of flow that in turn will create the illusion of speed.
This overall creates just a more satisfying gameplay experience.
Sonic Forces is not a bad game. Yet, Sonic Forces is also not a great game.
I feel that in my previous review
I may have went a bit far by saying it's a "good" game, but it's certainly an alright game.
There's a lot of fun to be had in Sonic Forces, but as far as Sonic experiences go you're probably better off playing Sonic
Colours, Generations, and of course Sonic Mania.
But I know not all of you will probably agree with me on this point. Do you love Sonic Forces?
Do you hate Sonic Forces? Do you think it's meh, like most of the Sonic community did?
Let me know in the comments below, and while you're at it also react to this video if you feel so inclined.
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please share out this video,
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So, I had a lot of fun doing this review. Thank you very much watching. Stay classy
and I hopefully I'll see you...
next time!
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