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I am reaching far across these new frontiers for this.
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Jan 20, 2023 18:27
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 13:33 |
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Frontiers' music has a few gears it shifts through and they're all really distinct, even by the already varied standards of previous games. The overworld music is very chill and low-key and leans on the orchestra, and even when it's finished adding all the layers it's still very laid back. The cyberspace themes are the opposite, all electronica and disconnected lyrical fragments and every other one loops the amen break. Sometimes an encounter in the overworld has its own theme and that's its own mood. There'll also be cutscenes and plot events, which have their own themes as appropriate. And, of course, there is one more kind of music. Anyway the reason it's so surprising to see that Frontiers is a pretty decent video game even if it's not mindblowing is that the marketing for the game was completely incompetent The first month of reveals consisted of like ten minutes total of the most tedious cuts of contextless exploration footage provided to one guy at IGN who was also given a preview build to play for like an hour but not allowed to record any of it and also not allowed to talk about it until the end of the month after which he had to answer a bunch of reader questions based on his memory alone and then release audio of that muxed over the same footage from before. Meanwhile there were demo builds at expos and people were pretty impressed but Sega banned basically any recording or capture of any of it. The result was that the buzz for the game was squarely in the toilet more or less right up to release.
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Jan 22, 2023 04:35
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Okay, so, notes. 1) The control setting choice is Very Weird. Frontiers notably gives you an astonishing amount of control over extremely fundamental aspects of how Sonic controls, like the turning circle. This seems like it should be very good, except... well, that's the kind of thing that games usually set to a constant and then design around so already you're kind of into the weeds. And the game designers acknowledge this... by using completely different values for these parameters when you're playing an action stage, throwing your personally tuned control scheme in the garbage. I do not understand why they allow so much tuning if this is how they handle the levels that put you to the test. 2) You should shift to Hard difficulty, for precisely one very arbitrary reason which I don't think anyone will explain, possibly because it'll be funnier to reveal when the game's over what the reason was. The general difficulty bump isn't much. 3) The game forgot to explain it but Light Speed Dash is now mapped to L3, and thank gently caress for that, because having it mapped to the same button as bounce was always a recipe for disaster. 4) Sonic the Comic crew represent.
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Jan 23, 2023 05:10
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Ah, 1-2. Yes, of course, the S-Rank time will be very doable. It's only the second stage. *game show eh-err sound* S-Ranking 1-2 is probably the second most demanding challenge anywhere in the game. Also the process of getting that S-Rank kinda lays bare a lot of the problems with Frontiers, or at least with the control profile they make you use in Cyber Space. It feels... extremely wrong. The all-fabled sense of speed is all wrong. All kinds of things that feel like they should flow with momentum just kinda dampen your movement for no discernable reason. The boost feels extremely anaemic, and holding it down doesn't really do much for you, but mashing it gets you a tiny bit of extra speed? Homing attacks are appropriately snappy and the bounce is welcome when you need to just get on the ground right now, but the air control generally somehow manages to feel floaty when it needs to be weighty and air boosting is an extremely weird thing to get a grip on... it's all so weird. Also, your intuition about the ground route is correct. You'll go far faster sticking to the ground than nailing all the jumps and taking what look like the shortcuts. The ground route is faster! The ground route! What is happening? The open world and Cyber Space are basically two different games. Cyber Space uses its own settings profile as mentioned, and, no, your speed/etc levels don't work there either. There's only one Cyber Space difficulty. Open world good. Cyber Space... eh? Music slaps though. I made a playlist of the Cyber Space themes. They're great for getting stuff done to.
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Jan 24, 2023 02:53
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I'm'a say what I said the first time I heard Kronos Island 4th Movement: You can't fool me. This is an Ace Attorney testimony theme.
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Jan 26, 2023 03:18
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There are careless design decisions everywhere in Frontiers, and if the vibe wasn't so strong they might be much bigger problems. Squid shows us a bunch. The title card screwing with jumping approaches is inexcusable. Why even bother with a title card, if the title is just Squid? (the enemy names in this game are really phoned in) The fight is dynamically presented but also has long stretches where nothing really happens and you just hold down Boost until you run out of meter and then wait a few seconds and then hold it down again. Also, that dynamic camera loves to screw with the one interesting thing that happens during the chase by preventing you from seeing where upcoming bullets are. When you get close, you see that there's absolutely no telegraphing for where bullets will appear, so you're like to get hit without recourse. And when you do, it's impossible to pick up your rings.
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Jan 28, 2023 03:59
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Roger Craig Smith has definitely decided or been directed to come down an octave for Sonic and the whole cast generally seems to be going for somewhat of a softer tone than before, with less bombast and more sentiment. Even Eggman's turned down the ham a couple of notches. The cast is identical to previous outings but the vibe is night and day.
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Feb 2, 2023 03:30
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It feels a tiny bit mean to point out that the game rather incessantly dropped a parry tutorial in between each of those retries. But no. Realtalk. This is that carelessness again. There is an intended flow in which you learn a couple different combat mechanics, parry in particular, and how to string them together, of all of which Giganto is supposed to be your exam. But there just... aren't any means of accounting for what happens if players happen not to go through it, which is extremely possible. Not being able to ordinarily quit out of the boss fight is also very sloppy, like, come on, what is this, Pla- no no it's okay I caught it, I'm not going to do that thing here. The result of all this is, whoops, you've accidentally produced a misery engine again. It's the game designer's literal job to ensure that either structures or systems exist to teach players things that need to be known, and Sonic Frontiers doesn't have any, it just, usually works out okay? Usually? But not this time. All together now, children;
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Feb 4, 2023 23:12
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The mandatory combat outside of boss fights is almost nil. It's such a weird oversight.
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Feb 6, 2023 14:22
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Namtab posted:The worst design decision btw is tying 2 stats to a single collectible so that you have to do each level up manually up to 99 times per stat I often wonder about the person responsible for this system. Here I am trying like a chump to learn to temporarily empty my head of thoughts so I might briefly know peace from the hell world and this mfer is able to inhabit that state of mind by default. It must be pleasant to be so unaware of anything.
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Feb 6, 2023 14:33
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So now we can do the obligatory praise of the boss music, right? Tomoya Ohtani is like institutionally incapable of missing. It just cannot be done. Undefeatable would pass as a final boss track in any other game, but here it's just the first of a few. I absolutely love the flow of music in this game, from the laid back overworld theme, to the Titan approach which is frankly an exceptional fakeout to make you think the whole fight soundtrack is going to be discount knockoff SotC, and then they hit you with the fuckin' Kellin Quinn vocals. Absolute king poo poo. By the way, keep an eye out for lyrical coincidences between songs, there's a couple of them. The obvious one right now is the little echo of "find another way" between the second verse and the little cutscene right after the fight. But don't worry, it's not important. The Titan fights are... they're pretty decent, I guess? There's not really a whole lot to them. As has been observed, Sonic's combat systems map 1:1 onto Super Sonic's, so as long as that key fact clicks the process of fighting is pretty intuitive, and looks really loving cool, which is... exactly what you want, frankly, it's just, those combat mechanics aren't exactly top tier to start with. The whole conceit reminds me of Bayonetta entering her poo poo-got-real mode during boss fights (and also, now I think about it, literally flying), with a bunch of spectacle-boosted attacks all working similarly to the normal ones. It's just that, y'know, Bayonetta is, well, loving Bayonetta, at its most basic a perfectly tuned genre-defining action game with combat that sings, and Sonic is... well, they didn't even bother to put timing on the parry, so that tells you something about where Sonic stands. But oh well. When you're not bouncing off of them due to some bullshit, the Titan fights absolutely nail the vibe at least, and one way in which Sonic Team is very much the equal of PlatinumGames is in the music. I always said Revengeance felt like an escalation of Sonic Adventure. I'm delighted to see the circle complete. (Idly I wonder how far they dare develop the combat system. Obviously they're going to build on it somehow, but, like, you could take this thing in a million directions from this starting point. Personally I always took Sonic for more of a Witch-time dodger than a Zandatsu parrier but what do I know.) Anyway I loving hate Strider? Absolute garbage miniboss. Beyond the novelty of having to fill out the rings, it's not very interesting, a lot of his attacks are bullshit, like, the sparks seem like they should be colour-coded but they aren't, and they can hop rails and switch direction on a dime just to gently caress you, also sometimes he just fires them right on top of you so that's fun too, and it's far too easy not to be able to tell exactly which rail the lightning is targeting, and the giant pillars he's standing on pass in front of the camera so it's always loving with your eyes, and, oh, right, if you get hit, it is literally impossible to recover rings without disengaging, and there's a lot of work to have to redo if you fail. gently caress Strider. Frankly, none of the minibosses are very good, but this one sticks out. Literally. (Thinking back on the game, there is exactly one miniboss I actually like. We've not seen it yet.)
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Feb 7, 2023 02:10
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Oh BTW congrats on doing the single and sole secret Cyloop trick and not even noticing. Welcome to the club.
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Feb 7, 2023 02:59
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Absolutely the last thing I expected to love in Frontiers is the character chatter, and yet here we are. Look at Sonic and Knuckles snarking at eachother. Pulling those stupid expressions. Flinging those backhanders around. The writers sell it completely. It doesn't even occur to me to question it. loving home run poo poo.
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Feb 9, 2023 02:42
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Shark is, like, a neat looking concept, big spectacle, but just kind of a wet fart after the novelty wears off, which is very fast. It wastes a bunch of time, its main gimmick is completely static in execution even if it is kinda cool that each one has its own little path it wants to drag you around, and like Strider it's just a gimmick phase followed by a button-mashing phase.
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Feb 12, 2023 03:21
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Sumo is pretty good. The bouncing is kinda weird as a game design conceit because it seems to want you to try and line up the really nuts ricochet quantities but mostly you just want to do a couple of one-bounce shots in succession, but it's a fun and unique and most of all intuitive idea and the fight doesn't outstay its welcome or pull any stupid bullshit and that alone bounces this mfer right into the top tier of minibosses. Tank is really bad. Straight away it's a jarring environment change and most of your controls stop doing anything, his animations are weird to read and the hitboxes are difficult to discern, it's hard to make out what your status is or even where the gently caress you are, there's no indication of what you're actually supposed to be doing up there, or, when you do it, that you're making any progress. And, of course, it just feels really loving aggravating to fail because more often than not your first thought is gonna be "what the gently caress was I supposed to do" (a good (if not foolproof) litmus test for lovely game design). Also the loading screen tip makes no sense? I mean, in retrospect, you can see what it was talking about, but there is not, to my knowledge, any way to figure out what it means unless you already know how to do the tornado phase. This is a real shame because the actual thing you're supposed to do (using the homing attack to bounce between weak spots while being carried by the tornado) looks and feels pretty ballin'? Mystifying poo poo. You'll note a ton of minibosses fall into the pattern of having a phase where they're invincible and you engage with a gimmick (almost all unique, some intuitive, some fun, most not both) and then they get stunned and you get a few seconds to do combos on them with no resistance. This is why Sonic Frontiers isn't much of an action game despite its trappings; there aren't many opportunities to really get in and overpower stuff, you never get to really bring your (honestly pretty decent) combo game to bear to get stuff done, you just play a weird minigame and then button mash for a bit. There's a miniboss (Ninja) who's there to teach you how to parry, but only one other miniboss in the entire game (to my recollection (other than Ninja retreads)) against whom parrying is of any use.
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Feb 14, 2023 22:43
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If I'm not much mistaken, that first stage was Radical Highway. The parabolic grind rails are a dead giveaway. For as much as I find it iffy that they did this whole thing about reusing level geometry like this, it says good things about past Sonic level design that so much of it is instantly recognisable. You're right about the stats not affecting the Cyber Space stages. Not only that, your control configurations don't work there either. It's almost literally an entire different game. The boost is so bad! I don't know how they messed it up so badly. Usually it's not a problem but in 2-7 (aka Generations Sky Sanctuary) it's a gigantic liability because a ton of intuitive approaches to those crumbling spiral paths will just get you killed. It's just generally a failure of design when a mechanic doesn't work the way it feels like it works.
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Feb 16, 2023 01:06
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Tenebrais posted:Even the buttrock days are long in the past. Excuse me? The buttrock days are ongoing. The rock has never been buttier. It's moved on from Crush 40 but the spirit is alive and thriving.
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Feb 19, 2023 01:13
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Delphisage posted:If someone could turn all the music from Tails's levels in SA2 into a sedative, I'd never need caffeine again. ?????????????????? Did.. you mean to say "stimulant"?
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Feb 21, 2023 01:55
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Tomoya Ohtani, penning some lyrics for a game with stages lifted wholesale from past games posted:🎶 Why do I get this feeling of déjà vu?
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Feb 23, 2023 00:50
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Here's to Tea Getting Through COVID Zone. It's really weird to play through an actual entire stage like Sky Rail in Frontiers because as observed it's like three times as long as most other stages. Also, the red rings are a little incongruous because Sky Rail is way more open than most stages that have had red rings in them; it's not designed to be scoured for bullshit and it's not designed to have an obvious One Right Path where you always do all the things and it puts you on the high road where the stuff is, it's just an actual, interesting bunch of terrain (and even when there is a single path with shortcuts on it, you'll note that they didn't put any red rings there! Why not? It would have been sensible, and defused a lot of the tension elsewhere!). This is why I don't really like red rings as a Sonic conceit, I think they put too much external pressure on how you play stages, and as I think has been observed it just... kinda sucks when you're playing through a stage and the ring hunt is obviously completely taking over your thought process and you catch yourself wanting it to just be over so you can play the stage properly. I can't remember how I knew to run up those Towers in that one bit but I did, somehow. I think it might have been from watching trailers, lol. It's definitely an egregious case of completely failing to test for What If The Player Doesn't Know That. Once again, it's the carelessness.
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Feb 28, 2023 01:39
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Okay, but have you considered, you could have one more go round of the chorus of Break Through It All? WHAT GOES AROUND COMES BACK AROUND AGAIN
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Mar 14, 2023 03:47
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I bring joyous news: a patch launching this Thursday is gonna add some extra modes that aren't important but also finally let you bulk-order speed/ring levels
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Mar 21, 2023 02:59
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Yes, yes! Split it wide open! Seriously there is no way they were not thinking about MGR when designing this guy. I always said MGR's music was like an escalation from Sonic Adventure and Sonic Frontiers was basically bringing the style back around full circle so it's nice to see there's a (probable) reference in gameplay too. I really think there's actually something in this combat engine, there's possibility there, but it needs to be developed. Are they going to be able to do it for the next game? Hell if I know.
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Apr 6, 2023 00:47
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I will post one more reminder that you should flip the difficulty up to Hard for a very good reason. (Also, it barely changes much else; the game is not exactly finely balanced and becomes kind of a joke if you keep up with stats at all, and it doesn't change the action stages at all, there's just this one reason for doing it really) I'll laugh for at least two minutes if you beat the whole game without discovering fishing.
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Apr 8, 2023 01:33
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I don't know if there have been a lot of levels from Unleashed but the very first level in Frontiers was Windmill Isle Act 1, like, the very very first tutorial stage. Weirdly I seem to have completely blanked Caterpillar from my memory. I don't remember it at all. I do not like those high-up between-rail spheres and I still don't understand what input does the thing that apparently correctly gets them. But what I do like, a lot, is that they designed a boss around Get Blue Spheres, even down to having the yellow spheres to use as jump points. Sad that they didn't have the yellow spheres catapult you like they should, but points for trying I guess. The story scene here is weird. I mean I love that Eggman has once again awakened an ancient evil beyond his understanding or capacity in an attempt to, uh, do whatever the gently caress he thought he was doing here. I'm not sure how I feel about this whole thing where Sage is simultaneously the only one who seemed to have any idea what was happening in Cyber Space while also not only bothering to clue anyone in even following her oddly ham-fisted realisation that Sonic is actually good but also not bothering to tell Eggman, it kinda feels like the writers forgot about trying to bridge those two elements. But what I really don't like is that Sonic's cyber corruption never once amounts to a single thing except being commented on exactly once per island and then leading to this single scene in which it is immediately resolved by ???????????? and never mentioned again. Writers really just saying whatever they feel like here, I guess. What even just happened on Rhea Island, anyway? What even is Cyber Space? We apparently just broke everyone out of it by defeating the Titans and deactivating the towers so how come it's still any kind of story presence? Why did Bad Thing instruct us to "break the barriers between dimensions" and then with that done say it was going to break those barriers (again?) itself? In conclusion this game kind of has a BioWare (2010s) quality about it where the big details are kind of all nonsense but the whole production is carried on strength of character writing, which even in this stupid nonsense scene is still somehow perfectly on point for all six characters involved.
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Apr 12, 2023 01:24
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Yes... ha ha ha... yes! As you've realised, fishing lets you completely skip any part of the game you decide isn't worth the bother. It's a little more restrained at the start, but with each island the token rewards multiply and on the final island it's just drowning you in currency. Congratulations on completely busting the game. My favourite detail about fishing is that they use this incredibly blunt and unsophisticated screen space reflection technique for the water there but given the Cyber Space context it actually seems fitting. Also many of the Egg Memos are great. There's at least one point where Sage directly brings up Space Colony Ark to Eggman (I think it's early on when she's trying to convince him to team up with Sonic).
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Apr 12, 2023 23:36
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Natural 20 posted:Isn't that genuinely impossible on some stages because the Red Rings are on mutually exclusive routes? As far as I know this is not true on any stage; they all have 5-ring paths.
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Apr 21, 2023 12:30
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 13:33 |
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Man, they fumbled about every part of this except Sage. Absolutely the last thing I expected out of a Sonic plot was to feel anything at all for Eggman, but no, they set it up and Mike Pollock knocked it out of the park in one six word line. The silent scene right before the credits was a nice touch too. Generally all the character arcs are great. Somebody has plans for this series, and has gone to a lot of effort to set the table for something. BTW it's been confirmed that Ian Flynn is also writing the story for the DLC arc, whatever that is. Anyway. Everything else is completely off. Supreme sucks? There's nothing really interesting or noteworthy about it, which is a shame because its design is p baller and it looks badass waving that gun around and nothing really comes out of it save for some underwhelming bullet sequences. They use the game's unbelievably hard-going theme music for the fight but in the single biggest fuckup anywhere in the game they use a two-phase edit that doesn't have any lyrics at all in the first phase and opens the second with an instrumental that's longer than the fight will take most of the time. All this for a track where the loving chorus literally opens from a pin-drop rest, which they could have segued into with the barest minimum effort anywhere else for one of the finest drops anywhere in video games... like come on, man!. I'm Here is a fantastic track gone completely to waste. The final boss fight is MIA. Sorry, I tried to nudge you into flipping onto Hard difficulty, which is the only way to actually fight it. But no, like most of the player base, it was missed. It's an extremely weird flex by the game, but also, in a sense, I can kinda totally see why they did it, because the whole thing, while a lovely and powerful setpiece, is also esoteric and really difficult and kinda starts to get on your nerves after a while, but goddamnit the solution to this problem is to design a final boss fight that's good instead of trying to sweep it under the hard mode rug. There are like five more lore references in that fight! It deserved better! Also, if you do the fight, then in the second part of the credits the completely non-sequitur track Vandalise is replaced with a much more appropriate (and original) one that's way more Sonic.
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Apr 26, 2023 23:42
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