Sonic Superstars looks cool!

 Sonic is finally coming for that Mario money!

So lo and behold we finally got our Summer Game Fest with a smattering of games we already knew were out and nothing at all to shock out- wait is that Sonic? Oh yes, I'm not sure exactly why it was that I didn't expect to see Sega at this event, because afterall everyone else butted their way into the showcase even when they had their own showcases. The Playstation showcase already flew by and yet we had to wait until now to learn the release date of Spiderman 2, and the Porsche brand Xbox Series X really could have been a Tweet- but if it needed to invade my gaming showcase couldn't it have at least waited until the Microsoft showcase? Heck we even got two extended trailers for real-life tv shows! At this rate, a break for Sega to show us literally anything related to the gaming enthusiast world is a dousing of fresh water I sorely need!

But none of that is the actual reason why I didn't expect to see Sega- or rather I didn't expect to see Sega with their blue blur anytime soon- I just thought they'd be busy. It's been a long time since Sonic was a property large enough to warrant yearly releases and the recent drop of Frontiers really felt like the culmination of several years of worked up studios and burnt bridges- and it's success seems to have blossomed out as several avenues that, knowing Sega, they're going to expend significant resources chasing simultaneously. We're going to get Frontiers 2, that much is a no brainer, but given the teases within the first game and the more blatant fed hits we've had- it really does seem like for the first time ever a real-life Sonic Adventure 3 is finally on the table. (About time, us on the Gameboy got our 'SA 7' ages ago...)

Seems that Sega may have actually learned the sacred art of multitasking however, because unbeknownst to me the conglomerate have had their hands on a brand new go around at Sonic 4- that is, mixing 2d and 3d Sonic elements in a cauldron and hoping what comes out isn't toxic sludge. Sonic Superstars is going to the first all original Sonic game to hit us since Mania, and since Sega burnt their bridges with the fan-turned-developers who constructed that masterful outing wiping their hands of the franchise seemingly killing dreams of a 2D led side franchise for Sonic using that gorgeous modern pixel art style. And that is very much still the case, we're not going to see those pixels or hear those music tracks anytime soon, but we will get ourselves a whole new style of 2D with Sonic Superstars!

In the vein of one of the celebration style Mario games which thrusts that classic style of gameplay upon a sacred character with high-quality modern 3D assets, Sonic Superstars is transporting us to an earnest new age Sonic. Not the modern spikey-haired green eyed fellow, but the mute classic with his best friends Tails and Knuckles. And proving that Sega are interested in starting a trend of a franchise here, they'll also be bringing Amy Rose along for the ride, presumably borrowing her gameplay concepts born for Sonic Origins! This really is a 'gang's all here' moment, all the better to take advantage of the latest Sonic franchise advancement- 4 player co-op! That's right, Sonic the Hedgehog is a party-game franchise now ,baby!

What surprises me most about this direction is the wholehearted nature of the commitment, by this stage I truly expect Sega to do the bare minimum and visually update the classic games into this new psuedo-3d style; which is pretty much been their only draw for returning to the 2D realms up until now. Even the concerted 'new game' attempts have been in themselves derivative. Generations, Forces and even aspects of Mania (Although that last game was conceived as much to be a celebration of the franchise as much as something new) all threw in the easily recognisable classic levels and tracks and throwback themes so as to not fully alienate a fan base who would never quite be ready to move on entirely from memories of when they loved the franchise. The memories that would consistently drag them, kicking and screaming, back to childhood.

Now, I'm certain that we're going to get some of those throwbacks with Superstars- it simply isn't in the headspace of Sega to reinvent the starting zone of a Sonic game without defaulting to laconic green grass and sad little hill-like mounds. It's the heart of their creative core at this point. But that wasn't the heart of their marketing campaign and whether it's sensible to say it or not I am increadibly impressed in their restraint. Instead we saw things we've never seen from Sonic before. We saw Sonic wall running without leaving the 2D world space, we saw Sonic and his friends transforming into Inklings, for which I'm sure Nintendo would be upset if they weren't busy drafting up their lawyer team to go after 'Foamstars'. We're seeing that Superstars is trying something new, which is an indication to me that Sega are finally at the point with Sonic that they can work on expanding the franchise out a bit.

I'll be honest, up until now it's felt like Sonic has been approaching stagnancy. Time and time again Sonic has been approaching the same gameplay paradigms that the series was broaching all the way back in 1991- how do you turn platforming into something speedy. We've nailed that, cracked it, we've been around the block with all the very basics of platforming with speed- wouldn't it be nice if Sonic started doing something a bit more unique with that foundation? I mean sure, the speed alone is important- but couldn't there be something fundamentally transformative to give this franchise more of a gameplay identity? Something transferrable between 2D and 3D in that instantly recognisable and complimentary manner? And is Superstars going to be the start of that? Probably not, but it does represent a comfortability with the brand that I haven't recognised in Sega for a very long time.

Once again Sonic is maintaining his place as a ubiquitous figure in the gaming world, such to the extent that we can squint our eyes and handily forget the many years during which he was a ghost showing up for brief, heavily mocked, instances. At this rate Sega might finally be able to reinstate Sonic as their flagship franchise- heck, the blur blur is already bringing in the sales numbers- and now he's bringing in the review scores too. Personally, I'm not sold that Sonic is quite there yet, there's still some disconnects between the expectation of an 3D action game and what Sonic thinks works to fill that gap, but hey- Assassin's Creed has be rocking along in this genre for years without figuring that equation out, so why can't Sonic cruise along for a bit whilst he finds himself?

Sonic: The Revival

 Well I'd never...

I've spoken quite a bit about the steady resurgence of Sonic to our screens as the blue blur struggles to earn back some of the respect he lost after years of mediocrity and disappointment. Even after stepping right for once with the simple pleasure of Sonic Generations, our man hit perhaps his lowest point ever after Forces came out as one of the worst money-value propositions imaginable. (The game was 80% cutscene!) But since then things are turning around. Frontiers was good enough to be considered for the 'Game Awards', even if that award itself was stolen away at the last second thanks to supposed 'bots'. Sonic Mania was a return-to-roots better than anyone could have possibly imagined. And the Sonic movie franchise has been strong enough to potentially kickstart a whole animated video game cinematic universe if Nintendo have their way; all of this lays the perfect groundwork for a potential coming revival.

You see you might not believe it, but Sonic is actually one of those franchises where the creators are very overly careful about every single piece of their brand in how it's marketed and who it's shown to. I know, thinking back on the absolute trash the franchise has gone through over the years would make you seriously question if anyone is in charge of Quality Assurance, but I have it on decent authority that there it's not quite a murderous free-for-all up there just yet. SEGA have final word on everything for what characters are shown in promotions, (blocking out any and all characters from products the company deems controversial in any manner) every single accessory worn by every on-screen character, (Sonic need to be wearing the exact brand of shoes to match everytime) and even the wider narrative beats of their titular characters so they stay consistent in every piece of media. (Sonic is not allowed to rizz on anyone. Boss' orders.)

Which is why it's so very surprising in the year of our Satan 2023 to find a complete reversal on a lot of the stringent measures that SEGA have put in place for so long. Knowing them and how they operate, this can't be a slip up of draconian standards, meaning that SEGA are intentionally promoting all of these 'brand risks' that hadn't been touched for perhaps decades beforehand. Most notably for me at least being the acknowledgement, after all this time, that Sonic 06 was real! Of course, being one of the worst received games in the franchise SEGA wouldn't exactly want to draw attention to the title, but for a long time they suppressed nearly everything born out of the game. Only Silver the Hedgehog managed to escape the media purgatory because he was pushed hard enough during the time of it's release that his character didn't seem tied to the game exclusively; but everyone else- forgotten land.

Which is why key villain 'Mephiles' has never once been brought up again in the main story, even during the scene in Forces when Infinite recalled a procession of past Sonic badguys, including people from games that came out before and after Sonic 06. (If it's any consolation, Shadow's unique sludge monster badguys from his game have been totally AWOL as well.) The last time we saw Mephiles was as an Easter egg banner character for Sonic Runners, hardly a glowing endorsement of how seriously SEGA takes him as a character. But then, lo-and-behold, in 2023 SEGA just randomly drops a piece of promotional art featuring a chibi version of Elise ice-skating with Knuckles. You know Elise, the girl who made-out with a dead Hedgehog, breaking two taboos at once, during one of the most controversial, and eye-rolling, moments in all of Sonic 06. (Also, that's canonically Sonic's first and last kiss. Just saying.) Suddenly the past is free reign now?

Of course we also have the news of Sonic Origins Plus, which is going to be reintroducing the world to all the terrible Sonic media that time rightly forgot. With prejudice. That means all of the Tails starring video games, and the bad original series ports, flying towards your common consumer like a spinning pig-skin with a fetish for nasal cavities. I guess there was never really an order within the company to ignore these old games per se, but given their lack of attention until just this point it's pretty safe to say that SEGA wasn't really proud of any of them. Let's put it this way; the announcement of these returning titles elicited more of a confused and half-hearted cheer than Capcom would have gotten if they randomly remastered a Castlevania classic or something. Or ported all those DS Castelvania titles over.

But that's only the side story anyway. The real big news of the Sonic Origins Plus announcement would be the caving in to what must be decades of fan pressure at this point. We're getting Rosey Rascal as a playable character in Sonic, a classic iteration of Amy Rose that SEGA have most definitely refused to acknowledge recently such to the extent that people began to believe she wasn't even canon anymore. (Thanks to the time travel plot of Sonic CD being questionable in it's canonicity in general. Sure, it introduced Metal Sonic- but why has Eggman never time travelled again if he's known how to do so all this time? Kill Sonic as a cub- come on! Or just expose him to pro-deforestation propaganda to brainwash him into being 'on team'.) This Rosey appears to be fully playable, has her own fresh sprite and a slightly improved version of the insta-shield that utilises the classic Amy hammer. (Which I think would be a combination of the old Rosey concept with the 3D era Amy accessories. Exciting!)

And then there's the April fools games. Yep the one that dropped today. What could I possibly have to say about this thing? Apart from the fact it's a whole VN based on the Sonic franchise, but I guess that isn't wildly out of the realm of SEGA's release slate- they allowed Dark Brotherhood to exist afterall. You know what is though; allowing Knuckles to appear with a cowboy hat. A freakin' Cowboy hat? Do you know how insane that is? What, you don't? Okay, let me explain. This isn't the first Cowboy hat our Echidna friend has ever worn, in fact he was famously depicted wearing that hat in the first Sonic movie, the OVA anime. A heavily buried piece of classic Sonic media that featured everything you love from the Sonic franchise including preppy one-liners, a frankly horrific death for Metal Sonic who graphically melts to death inside of an active volcano, and a spunky cat girl princess because this anime is from the 90's.

SEGA have lived their lives so commonly ashamed of their heritage that it's actually quite surprising, and a little bit unnerving, to have them change course so suddenly like this. Is something happening? Are they dying? Am I dying? Someone has to be dying, because otherwise this makes no sense. I know very well how scary it can be to throw everything at the wall and have nothing stick, which means a part of me also finds sympathy with the cold iron grip that SEGA have demanded over their franchise lately. But by that same merit, it feels so nice to have that grip be released and breathe in the diversity and culture of the rich history that Sonic has lived. Embrace all the past lives SEGA, they're what makes Sonic great! Except Lara-Su. You can... you can let Ken Penders keep her... please...

Decoding the truth behind the Sonic Franchise

 Who is the true protagonist of Sonic?

Sonic Frontiers is out, some people think it's okay, but I'm unhappy. Why am I unhappy? Is it because I think the game is bad? No. Is it because I dislike the direction Frontiers is taking the franchise now that's it has been all but confirmed that Frontiers is quite literally a new frontier for the franchise? No. It's because there is a moment, in Frontiers, where Sonic Team thought it sensible to provide a single-screen call back to Tails watching a missile launch in Station Square from Sonic Adventure. Excuse me, but what? I know, that according to the very hands-off control that Sonic Team claims over this franchise, technically all Sonic games have been canon since the first except for 06 and Boom. (And Forces did retroactively make the 2d era games and Mania into an alternate universe instead of just a 'prequel' setting like it used to be.) But to outright just refer to Sonic Adventure directly in the wake of Forces, is like kicking fans in the face and telling them to deal with it, and let me explain why.

The world around Sonic is always up for debate as we're constantly struggling to understand where we even are. It's decently widely excepted that Sonic is set in the land of Mobius, but this ain't the same Mobius presented in the long running Archie comics series, nor the Sonic X cartoon. In all of those media snippets, Mobius is a largely undeveloped super continent with a few connecting island nations populated solely and exclusively by 'Mobians'; which are anthropomorphic animal people that live as humans might in cities with jobs and all that good stuff. (Eggman is the unexplainable exception that most media chooses to ignore.) Under examination, it's not the most creative or inspired Anthro universe ever created, as the creatives rarely take advantage of their character's animal traits to define who or what they are; but it's functional, it works. But the games spit all over this.

Why do I say that? Well how about because for some insane reason, the early 3D Sonic games all depicted the land of 'Mobius' (It's not always identified as Mobius in every game, but now that Frontiers has directly referenced Adventure we're just going to have to assume all 3D games occur on the same planet.) as featuring cities with humans. And I'm not talking about humans and anthros, oh no! In Sonic Adventure 1, 2 and Unleashed, Sonic and his friends are the only humanoid animal people in the entire world. For some unexplainable reason. Yet if we fast forward to Forces we can see an entire populace of furry animal people being menaced by Robotnik and Edgy Boi's pathetically mundane army. So what in the actual hell is going on here, what is the make-up of Mobius, and why can't Sonic Team just split the canons so these glaring inconsistences don't have to be addressed?

The most sensible, but quietly troubling answer, would be that Mobius is indeed a land walked by swathes of Humans and Mobians; only that these distinct races of people remain staunchly segregated to their separate corners of the world with such staunchness that intermingling between the races is an aberration. Sonic and his friends' various expeditions onto human lands must be seen as a great imposition upon the fragile balance of peace between the nations, and Sonic's struggle to prevent Eggman's grasp for power could very well be interpreted as a political mission to prevent a human elitist from conducting an orchestrated strike on either the humans or Mobians and kickstarting some global conflict between the two races. Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 are pretty much Sonic's Operation Snake Eater, and Eggman is Colonel Volgin. But that is a rather dour interpretation of the Sonic universe, so let me offer my alternative.

I propose that not only does Sonic Adventure's human filled city and Sonic Forces' Mobian occupied city take place within the same timeline; but they could very well be the same city, filled with the same citizens, at different points in time. (It's hard to determine exactly where Sonic Forces' city is set, considering that area is only ever referred to as 'The City' in game.) I propose that the various Mobians are not, in fact, anthropomorphic animals inexplicably evolved to resemble humanity, but rather general human citizens of the world that have inducted themselves into a global furry movement and locked themselves inside a permanent fursuit linked to their 'fursona'. Perhaps they've even gone so far as to brainwash themselves into believing they are the animals who's form they've adopted. Somehow this trend has overtaken every human being within the land of Mobius. Every human, except for Dr Ivo Robotnik.

Robotnik is an intellectual, you see. A robotic scientist, to boot! He believes in the very rigid conventions of man and thus saw no allure in the promise of 'spiritual awakening' or whatever the growing furry world dogma promised it's converts. He's just a lonely, and grumpy old man probably equally confused and annoyed by the brash personality of Sonic, the young upstart who delights in tormenting the aging Doctor and defying that man's rigid concept of the world and who exists within it. Sonic was likely the first furry of Mobius, you see. The first to don the fursuit and fully embrace the representative fursona, and stoke Robotnik's bitterness, swirling with his 'savior-complex' and narcissism to the point where he thinks he has to 'fix' everything, even 'fix' Sonic from his 'delusions'.  Afterall, Eggman is always trying to use his robotic expertise to invent vastly ambitious robotic machines, powered by woodland critters, to achieve all sorts of grand end schemes we never get to see play out because Sonic delights in destroying them. 

But Eggman is mad. At least, the Eggman we see by the late Sonic games is. This is a man who creates apparently metal machines that are inexplicably weak to Hedgehog quills, who insists on printing his face on every invention he's ever made, who once split the entire world down the middle... for some reason. These aren't the actions of a sensible man! I argue these are the actions of a desperate man, who has grown more and more scared as the world has changed around him. Think, by Sonic Adventure Eggman had to come to terms with the fact that there was an entire posse of furry lovers following the man around as his 'friends'. Then, before you know it, the otherwise fair and sensible citizens of Mobius start picking up on the trend, and now they're all wearing fursuits and pretending they're human-cats and badgers and whatever! By the time of Forces, Eggman might very well be the last human not inducted into the Fursona world religion that has captured the soul of the planet.

So Robotnik prints his face on his giant machines, hoping that visage of humanity stirs some latent recognition in the brainwashed, he roboticises the populace hoping to confer some of their lost humanity back into them, he surrounds himself with humanoid robot confidant, whom he rages at and despises for their lack of humanity, but retain by his personal cadre for their comfortingly nostalgic shape. And once he even tried to team up with anthro aliens, recognising that if humanity can't be saved of it's own accord only an extra-terrestrial force could knock a wake-up call into their number. But nothing ever worked. Every alliance he ever made turned on him. And maybe a few times the stress of being so alone in the world made him flip and blow the world in two. A little. But what would you do, as the last person living in a world that has changed so fundamentally that you don't recognise anyone, and can't draw anything from it. Isolated and alone, Eggman still chooses to try and reshape the world to the way it once was, even if to this day he can't quite remember if Sonic was indeed the original patient-zero Furry, or simply a figment of his own tortured psyche emblematic of his tendency to create his own constant downfalls.

Calling this franchise the 'Sonic Franchise' is a misnomer. These games are a soliloquous dirge mourning the purgatory of a man adrift in a sea of isolation, atop his raft of stubborn spite. A man who, as these games roll on, has come to, or will come to, sacrifice all that he can. His calm. Kindness, Kinship, Love. A Doctor who has given up all hope of inner peace. Who made his mind a sunless space. A scientist who shares his dreams with ghosts. A human who wakes up everyday to an equation he wrote thirty-one years ago to which there is only one conclusion; he is damned for what he does. His anger, his ego, his unwillingness to yield, his eagerness to fight, has set him on a path from which there's no escape. He yearns to be a saviour against injustice without contemplating the cost and by the time he looks down, there's no longer any ground beneath his feet. That is his sacrifice. He's condemned to use the tools of his enemies to defeat them. He burns his decency for someone else's future. He burns his life to make a sunrise that he knows he'll never see. And the ego that started his fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude. And that's what Eggman sacrifices. Everything.

Yuji Naka has been arrested

 Yeah, this is happening!

This just in; Yuji Naka has been arrested. That's right; superstar director of smash hit game, Balan's Wonderland, has been arrested because of just how ungodly terrible that game was. Such to the point where he needs to offer reparations to the people of the world that were subjected to it. Over the next few years he'll be transferred to various international prisons on a rotation basis so that he can serve time for every country in which Balan's Wonderland was sold- wait, no I'm hearing reports that wasn't the reason why Yuji got booked. (Shame, I guess that's going to be an upcoming conviction.) In that case, I can only assume he was brought down by the Sega guard dogs as he attempted to break into their offices and rescue the Sonic franchise from the hands of the genuinely confused Sonic Team that have been playing hot potato with it for the past two decades. No? Not that either? Then what in the name of the speed god Savitar, did Yuji get the cuffs for?

Insider trading? Wha... really? Is the man who created Sonic really so hard off for cash? Of course, as with most people who cheat in life, it's actually the somewhat gifted who choose to take shortcuts in order to maintain or push forward their prestige; but still! It's such a boring crime to get arrested for! If I ever got under investigation for insider trading, I would absolutely book it down to the local bank to get a more interesting 'bank robbery' charge on my rap sheet. Anything to give me that 'street cred' down in the clink. (I hear you have to attain certain levels of cred in order to wear the finest clothes... or am I thinking of Sleeping Dogs?) It's just embarrassing is what it is! It's such a blue collar crime you might as well hand in your artist's card on the way in, because you have no right calling yourself a starving artist on the way out. I know Sonic embodies 'sticking it to the man'; but still I think Yuji missed the point with the stupidest grift imaginable.

But how did this inside trade work? Simple; back in 2020 a company called Aiming were revealed to be the ones behind a new Dragon Quest project called 'Tact'. Now despite the fact that Dragon Quest is one of the most boring well-known fantasy properties to come out of Japan, this game was a crappy mobile grid based action game and thus was destined for the big bucks. So much so, that anyone who was invested in Aiming at the time would be thrilled about the sudden windfall of interest surrounding the latest developer to stumble upon the infinite money glitch of life called 'develop a terrible mobile app that leeches off a well-known brand'. And wouldn't you know it, Yuji Naka just happened to be one of those investors during that announcement! He reportedly just happened to have 10,000 shares in the company which he bought literally just before this announcement! 

Quite the foresight, Past Yuji had, to suddenly choose to invest in a company which, as far as I can tell, had never worked with a publisher before, had never made anything for a huge brand like Dragon Quest before, and hadn't released anything for three years before Dragon Quest Tact. They were relative nobodies before that surprise international game announcement. I guess Yuji just threw a dart at a board and got lucky! Well, either that or... more likely... he had a contact on the inside who tipped him off to the announcement before it went public, and Yuji really thought he could come up with a damn good reason why he found Aiming so worthy of his investment money. Maybe he just really liked the name? 'Aiming'- how modern-sleek and goal oriented! Yes- with a brand like that I imagine they just vacuum up the investment money every quarter from all angles!

Obviously I'm being excessively facetious; this is an adorably clear cut case of insider trading; assuming that the facts presented are indeed accurate, and our man is probably going to have to pay a hefty fine out of his pocket for being a naughty trader. But I can't imagine much of anything will come of this. I'm not sure how the Japanese courts treat Insider Trading, just by the merit of their societal norms I'd imagine it's harsher over there than it is here. (People there have a 'favoured enemy' bonus against corrupt businessmen) But he's something of a known name, and the second your name hits headlines it's game-over for legal ramifications. They'll never be able to keep Yuji in the brink; his weird fans will be on the case of any organisation who so much as attempts to peel a page off the book to scrunch up and throw in his general direction.

Whatsmore, I can't imagine Sonic's Freedom Fighters allowing their literal father creator to rot in prison without mounting an breakout attempt of their own. Imagine if that was one of their own locked up- oh wait, in Forces Sonic himself gets locked up for half a year without anyone coming to back him up simply because the Freedom Fighters were too busy watching the world fall to pieces whilst they stood around and felt sorry for themselves. In fact, Sonic's Friends were so useless that players had to write their own OC into the narrative in order to bring Sonic back into the story, just so those numbskulls would remember how insanely fragile and pathetically weak all of Eggman's vast forces are. As well as the game Sonic Forces, that too.

Heck, if I were a true cynic; I might even propose that Yuji Naka himself ratted out his activities to the police at this specific time so that his Icarus-like descent from grace could serve to distract some Sonic fan's attentions away from the recently released Sonic Frontiers. A game from the brand he invented published by a company he is no longer on good speaking terms with. But this is pure speculation, I'm pretty sure if Yuji really wanted to draw attention to himself he'd just paint himself blue, glue some paper spikes to his back and run down Akihabara completely nude screaming "Gotta go Fast! Gotta go Fast! Gotta go Faster, Faster, Fasta-fasta-faster!" Alas, seems the man hasn't quite reached his breaking point yet and this is just an honest to goodness money-making scheme. What a shame.

Personally, I have no love for grifters and even though I struggle to care all that much about an Insider trading case, this situation is endlessly funny to me for no other reason than who is involved. I hope the next super-star developer to get arrested just does something a little more flashy, like Randy Pitchford hijacking a plane so he could perform a magic trick to disappear all the passengers out of it before its emergency crash landing in the desert- that's the kind of panache I want to see! In many ways, I'm being harder on Yuji for being so boring with his crime. Still, at least this gives me hope that at sometime, maybe soon, perhaps the cogs of justice will turn to arrest Ken Penders for his many crimes against the world of Sonic and the core of art in general. 

Sonic Frontiers... is inevitable...

 This... is... dull looking!

Sonic Frontiers is ever lumbering after us ready to rock our unprepared arses for the crime of looking at the game frankly for the 'meh' it's shaping up as. That original reveal of gameplay has to be one of the most powerful releases of hype ever recorded in marketing, only that release was an exhale of bated breath as most level-headed people went "Wow, this looks rough as heck." Just close your eyes for a minute and try to remember that mess for me. Try to remember the floating railings, the unmatched movement and animation timing, (In a game about movement) the emptiness of the world, the lack of any visual identity... did you remember it all? I hope so because I wanted to do an update on what it is Frontiers has prepared for us now it's so close we can smell it's rot on the very near horizon. Maybe we'll see that the Internet has undersold this game and the believers are the one's who are being vindicated.

A lot of new footage has debuted in the recent months and weeks and of it all I can say this much; I like the new designs of the robots more than then I have in recent Sonic games. Although bare in mind I'm thinking about Forces and their laughably generic enemy robots that weren't worth a iota of brain space to create. These new robots have this cool sleek-metal design that specialises in round shapes instead of sharp edges to create this very monolithic, alien vibe to them. Their grey-black colouring works wonders in catching the light of Sonic Frontier's new engine and emphasising either their size or their shape in a way which feels distinct from other Sonic enemies. The really big creatures even have a vague sense of that 'Shadow of the Colossus' scaling going on, where they sell the disparity between the player and the enemy dynamically and vividly through clever use of a automatically adjusting camera matched with the actual enemy asset itself. 

And unfortunately that remains the only indisputable praise I can throw this game's way because everything else remains fundamentally boring! The world that they've insisted on showing off repeatedly as this point, Kronos Island, is impressively barren looking with it's dull green stretch of nothingness off-set by haphazardly placed grind rails and springs literally floating in the air. Still the game looks like this team just grabbed a generic world map and tried to build their Sonic game ontop of it all without removing that generic beginning asset and replacing it with something that has an identity and soul in the later stages of development. Ah, but now we have a new area in Ares  Island which is... just a bunch of generic brown badlands with grind rails and springs stuck everywhere... it is impressive how this game squanders it's chances at establishing a visual identity, truly.

But some part of Sonic Team must have realised how bland everything felt in their open world and so sought to maintain some sort of balance between old and new, via the brand new Cyberspace sections that are essentially little challenge levels where the old 3D Sonic design philosophy can take over for a brief gameplay section. Unfortunately, when I say 'old' I mean 'new old'. Which is to say, these Cyberspace sections are literally just Sonic Forces style 'run in a straight line and jump a few times, style gameplay levels that are wrapped up in a manner of less than two minutes. Yes, we get to see worlds that look more interesting and evocative of an identity in the Cyberspace worlds, but when they're just back-drops for a lifeless sprint-n-jump; what's even the point? And why hasn't the developers learned anything from people looking at Forces level design and going "Wow, this barely constitutes as a level at all!"

I don't mean to do the 'in my day' kind of rhetoric, but Frontiers just really invites the comparison with it's very rustic approach creating an 'open world'. I heard the affirmation recently that 'open worlds' are just linear games with more space to explore, and I think of that as a gross oversimplification designed as a weak gotcha... except when we're talking about games like Sonic Frontiers. Open World games have to be designed to maintain that sense of immersion and personality both in the heat of the main narrative and the chill of the areas in-between. It has to strike a balance of identify and gameplay across a space that can be explored from any angle and from any direction because the player is not on rails. (At least not to their express knowledge. Clever open worlds know how to subtly guide the path of even the open player with their sheer design.) And to understand the problem with Sonic Team and how they got this wrong, let's look at those Cyberspace levels.

Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 were the very first 3d Sonic games and in many peoples eyes, the best of their kind. Now Sonic Adventure missions bought a few of the main mechanisms that inform modern Sonic design, such as sections designed to make you feel fast and easy kill enemies that you can launch off of; but do you know what else those missions had? They had challenges. Platforming, spike pits, bottomless drops; situations where you couldn't just blindly sprint forward else you would end up losing a life. Now the 2d Sonic games focused a lot on sections that could be sped through with sufficient enough knowledge of the map layout, but there was some peril and sections that changed up the speed of the gameplay here and there. Basic variety is the key is level design on a core level and that is something that modern Sonic has been steadily losing sight of.

Sonic Forces was the worst for it, where you could literally speed through a level without really bothering with any of the mechanics and finish every mission in sub two minutes. There was no sense of peril or variety until the boss missions, and none of them were particularly inspired either. I've only seen two Cyberspace levels so far, and I'm sure there's a great stretch of variety through them (at least visually) but of the two entire levels we've seen neither had anything to them but sprint, bounce and lock-on jump. These are linear slices of gameplay levels, there's no reason they can't be grand and challenging and last more than 1 minute thirty! And just seeing that this is the standard the team are reaching has me worrying about what Forces believes a good gameplay loop is; which isn't something I'd worry about with any other game developer in the world, but this isn't any other developer- Sonic Team have proven that they need the scrutiny!

Frontiers looks visually decent. I like the character models, I like the lighting, I like the style of Super Sonic; but artistically and practically the game has yet to impress me still. I want to like Sonic and I want to play the heck out of his games but without the special spark of purpose to his game design I can't see a future where Sonic fits in with the major modern pantheon of games. And the thing is; I know what you'd have to do to make a good 3d open-world Sonic game, I can see the gameplay loop in my head, but Sonic Team are so staunchly stuck in their ways I don't know if they're ever going to match and certainly not exceed what seems like such a simple vision. We need newer and fresher developers with newer and inspired ideas to breath life into Sonic. And if Frontiers does well enough, maybe that's what we'll get! There's something to look forward to I guess...

How to fix Sonic Frontiers

 SOS. Save Our Sonic

We've seen the highs and lows of it. Sonic Frontiers is coming before the end of the year and I don't think there's a single sane person on the planet who thinks it's ready and waiting to hit that release window. I maintain that the entire thing needs to be fundamentally reworked at a core level, but its all well and good just saying that, but what about actually discussing what needs to be reworked and establishing the standards that it has to meet? Be constructive with our criticism. Because at the end of the day I want Sonic Frontiers to be good. We all want a great Sonic game which pushes forward the franchise; so ranting and raving helps nobody. Although with that in mind it doesn't hurt to remind Sega just how unfinished this game looks so they remember how badly it needs to be delayed. Because it does and they really need to know that.

The big stand out problem which strikes down everyone's first impression is the World that this game is set in. The Frontier we're looking at here is empty, lacking in visual flair and seemingly totally lacking in intent. We can see that there are no real landmarks in the places we've seen so far, just hills and embankments with parkour objects slapped on top of them to really hammer home this sense of 'tech demo'. (My brother theorizes that this could all be a tutorial space, but that just makes it a really lazy tutorial anyway.) For some reason the team went for a realistic visual style which means muted green grass and generally plain terrain only split up by their garish additional robot designs that are also monochromatic and not fun to look at. Fixing the world is going to start by addressing these three issues.

Firstly, the world needs to be redesigned with a purpose and intent behind design that can influence all the rest of the development. If, for example, they wanted to make a place for Sonic to show off his speed they could have wide flat racing spaces with environmental frills in order to wow the eye and keep it busy, such as active grass deformation, puddles of explosively reactive water physics and galleries of exciting surrounding hills and mountains. Exploration themed world design would demand varied and distinct areas to break up the world and encourage the wandering eye, maybe with obstacles erected in the way of obvious sight lines so players have to travel and move to come to grasps with what they've got in front of them to explore. The visual style may be set but the team could take a bit more creative licence with the colour palettes they're working with to at least give the grass hills that classic neon deep green from the original Sonic games, just to introduce some recognisable visual flairs. They could also go the extra step to incorporate some of that geometric patchy grass texture that Sonic has rocked up until now.  

The animations that Frontiers is rocking has been another huge point of contention for the fact that they look to be lacking in many of the finer points that really differentiate an indie product from a triple A offering. For one, Sonic has no variation animation related to the speed at which he is moving when he's not running. That is to say, although he can walk slower depending on how the player pushes their movement stick, his walking animation is static, so Sonic can end up animating his walk pattern in a speed faster than he is actually moving creating an illusion similar to moon walking. Plus some of his transition animations, from jumping to running and attacking to manoeuvring, seem jittery and lack fluidity. (Although that's just extra polish anyway. I wouldn't throw away a game just because it's transitory animations aren't perfect.)

Then we have the combat which is a tale of both hope and trepidation. Sonic has languished in this hell of 'lock on and dash' gameplay for so long that the Sonic Team didn't even bother to program enemy attack patterns in Forces. This is not the case for Frontiers and enemies do indeed attack, albeit not in any aggressive patterns. I'm not asking for Souls-level of attack and reaction gameplay here, but these robots look to be largely static for extended periods of time before uttering a single attack and then going dormant for several seconds. It's not very intimidating. The boss fight at least looked cool, what with the impressive scale of the robot and the seemingly couple of avenues to beating him which I appreciated. I also like how scaling him became more difficult each time you broke one of his conduit-things, and to which that design philosophy made its way into the trash mobs a little more. Give them some dynamism so that they're fun to fight, make them more aggressive and perhaps throw in a little more colour to their otherwise monotone designs.

But what we fight is only as important as the tools we have to fight it, and I'm giddy to say that Frontiers has a combat system, even if it's incredibly rudimentary. The tracing and feedback speed move is okay, if a little slow; but it's just a shame that Sonic Team don't appear to be doing anything with the actual momentum of Sonic to be used in combat. Can we not roll up into a ball and crash into enemies anymore, or are they just neglecting to show that? Plus, are there going to be any enemies that actually match the blue blur's speed or is this going to a case of slow, plodding enemies that we tear apart like silly putty akin to Sonic Adventure enemies? And I have to mention that vortex tornado move which for some reason spins Sonic around upside down, that looks silly, and the special lock-on chain-dash move which appears to teleport Sonic several yards back from his target before executing, which is a really jarring way to set up an attack. (Or at least I think the move does that. Either it teleports you or the editor for the combat trailer really wanted to make it look like it does with several jump cuts every time that move activated.)

And behind it all we have to work on the purpose of the game and it's world. Why are we making this open world Sonic game a reality and how can the team put their efforts toward achieving that purpose? Do we want to put players in the shoes of playing Sonic in his daily life? Probably not given the far-cry-from-normalcy setting of the game. Do we want to put players in a position of wonder in a mysterious world with Sonic's repertoire at their disposal to explore at their own pace? That feels closer to the mark. In that case effort should be invested in feeding the desire of discovery and mystery. Far off landmarks that have a functional challenge to them, whether that be a scaling platforming challenge or a puzzle, inspire that call to adventure. (Which means that the pop-in really needs to be worked on.) And creating a sense of functional believability to the layout of the world gives the player the impression that there is intention and purpose to this world that can be discovered. Which is why we take half pipes and platforms and attach them to facilities and world landmarks, so that these navigation tools exist outside the sole context of "Sonic can jump on this in order to get somewhere." That last trick is the anvil around Frontier's world design holding it back, and once that design philosophy is totally banished we can start to look upon this gameplay as an indicator of an actual finished product.

I've heard some claim that the Frontiers footage is an alpha build and everyone is wrong to judge their opinions on the game from the footage, but I challenge that for two reasons. One, yes it's an old build of the game but the thing launches before 2023, this game needs an identity to be visible in it's world and presentation more than a handful of months out, and two, this is the footage that Sega themselves put out to showcase the viability of this game. They slapped this tech demo for the public in the hopes that this would sell the dream of their game, in the knowledge that this would likely be the first and last chunk of gameplay footage put out before launch. Sega thinks this is a strong foot forward, they need to be told explicitly why that is not the case and the more ideas to fixing this game up that we give them, the better the chance that Frontiers can be delayed and reworked into the rough gem we know it can be. Let's do our best to save Sonic.

Sonic's Open Zone

 No way; I can't believe this!

There is a seismic change flying towards Sonic the Hedgehog's video game world that threatens to rejuvenate the often-derided 3D gameplay of the Sonic series from the past. What started as a fun little gimmick in Sonic Adventure, where these funnily designed stages were put together by a team clearly still figuring out how to make a 3D version of their platformer series work, had depreciated into the Sonic Forces model of level design, where every map is a straight dash across a field of clueless identical robot enemies who don't even approach you and it's genuinely rare for a single level to last longer than two minutes. There was a progress of give or take over the years, as some new features improved the gameplay of 3D Sonic outings and others became a crutch for developers to exploit until not a morsel of player agency remained, (Looking at you 'boost button') but overall the graph of 'quality over the years' has trended downwards, and now it's up to Sonic Frontier to either change all that or become the final plunge off the path to sink all credibility in Sonic Team as competent game makers. (And after Forces I think we're all teetering on that inevitability.)

And it's not even a question right now of whether or not Sonic Team are going to try and challenge themselves to change the fundamentals; they need to do at least that in order to fit the Sonic character within their new vision of the 'Open Zone'. A innocuous phrase that many have taken to believing means that Sonic's next game is going to be entirely open world, but which I personally think is a pretty term to disguise that what we're really getting is probably several unconnected hub-world areas with activities in them; like a slightly grander version of Super Mario 64. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, I think most people would welcome the chance to explore different environments before the lazy deep green hills gets a bit stale and boring, especially given how for the moment that world seems almost entirely featureless aside from the mysterious robotic creatures that Sonic is battling. 

Oh, and I should probably go forward by saying that 'Yes'; I've seen that recent gameplay footage we've been given and have successfully mined it for every bit of content that I can. And just like I hoped, I am really liking what I'm seeing for the barebones of Sonic's gameplay and even the enemies he's having shoved in his face. (At the very least) For instance, the enemy design with this metallic sheen ontop of an impressive scale that hints at the sort of 'mouse versus mountain' perspectives of Shadow of the Colossus, makes me excited. (I don't make a 'perspectives' comparison like that lightly, either.) And though the sliver rounded finish does give me vague PTSD to the utterly boring and uniform soldiers of Infinite's army in Forces, we can already see how this squad are capable of actually attacking the player; which is a significant step-up in my book. Also, I'm curious and excited that we have not seen the telltale design feature of a two spectacles sitting on a moustache in their contruction, which means these might not be Eggman's units in a Sonic game for the first time in... I think ever. I'm pretty sure every robot ever made in the Sonic franchise has been an Eggman creation up until now. God, it would be nice to have another villain to interact with. (Oh, a villain that isn't just Eggman's latest buddy who turns on him in the last act. That storyline is a tiny bit played out.)

Which isn't to say that I'm loving everything I saw in this tease. I mean we've seen that the dash boost is returning again to which I can only groan dejectedly. I understand the reasoning. My problem with the dash boost in the past is that it's always been this button to automatically inject speed into Sonic often-time making him invincible and propelling him through the stage with little effort. It's a button that completely forgoes the build of momentum which is literally the entire gameplay loop of Sonic games! If I don't need to play cleverly, chain up enemies, keep moving and hit the right slopes in order to build up my momentum, and instead I just need to hit a boost button with a bar that refills everytime I boost into rings, meaning it's not too difficult to boost for half a level unmolested; then why does the team need to bother with making intelligent game design with natural opportunities and challenges to navigate through? Answer, they don't and that's how we ended up getting Sonic Forces.

I do like the fact that for the first time ever in Sonic, it appears as though our Hedgehog is smashing into enemies with more than just his thick skull. Indeed, Sonic appears to actually throw kicks and punches when he's in clashing range which adds just that tiny bit more dynamism to the animation repertoire. Also, we've seen a sort of 'tracing' system where Sonic draws a shape around an enemy and they get caught in a feedback vortex which damages them. These are actual combat mechanics that aren't just 'lock on and double press' like usual! You don't understand, this is a revolution in game design for Sonic Team. Actually having gameplay tied around the enemies they place in their levels has been a art lost to them since the 90's; I can only imagine the level of personal and emotional growth the team had to embark on in order to rediscover the fact that player likes fighting the enemies in their levels. Maybe that's why they dropped the ball on the world so much.

When the full gameplay demo launched I think everyone sort of felt a bit of the mysterious excitement deflate when they realised 'Oh; this looks like a tech demo'. I'm not saying that the visuals don't look pretty, of course they do. Just that the world has absolutely no coherent design philosophy to it whatsoever. To compare this to Breath of the Wild is an insult. This literally looks like generic rolling hills 3D printed out of Death Stranding or something with minimalist parkour structures place haphazardly all over the place. Floating platforms here, non-sensical grind rails there, maybe we'll screw around and shove a Ubisoft-style tower to climb over there, I don't know! Do you think the team agonized over sight lines when placing mountains and obstacles? Arranging obscuring elements that challenge the player's curiosity and keeps them wondering what was behind the next corner? Or did they just load up a default space in Unreal Engine and slap together a competent Sonic Actor to run around in it?

It's such a shame because this game looks like the 'great blue hope' of the franchise, rewriting everything we thought we knew about Sonic's 3D outing; only for the whole 'world' part of the open world to be a clear after thought. I don't like to say this, but it honestly feels like Sonic Team are a small group of Indie developers who don't quite understand the basics of game design and have yet to finalize their own fundamentals, and thus are left throwing darts at a wall to see what sticks. I know what it's like to be there, I'm still very much in that position with most of my own endeavours. But I don't charge money for people to gawk at my silly unprofessional fumblings. And thought it seems almost excessively mean to chalk up this whole package as 'unprofessional' just because of how lazy the world is- I mean, the world is one of the most fundamental building blocks of this sort of game. If they can't even properly convey a purpose or intent to how they've built that world, it's hard to support the rest of the game.

Sonic Frontier is an opportunity to change the course of Sonic, and a lot of the elements I'm seeing are on the right track to do just that; but for what we've been presented with right now it's clear that the game isn't there yet. In fact, I think this game not only isn't ready to hit the launch date later this year, but it isn't even in the polishing stage; we need a reworking of huge chunks of this game. Maybe Team Sonic need another team to come in and give them a hand because I'm worried that they don't even see the problem, given that they put together this gameplay reel to show us how proud they were of their work so far. I know I'm always moaning about how the Sonic community retroactively demonises everything, but it's an exaggeration to a genuine quality deficiency in a lot of Sonic properties; we can't have this new face of Sonic start as another clear cut example of this deficiency, we just can't. So for the good of everyone, Sega and Team Sonic; delay your game. Make sure it's good first!

Sonic and Music

 Oh yeah, this is happening!

Of the prime ingredients that make up the meal we know today as Sonic; attitude, fur, speed- I'd say that the one attribute which has been incontestable even in the darkest ages of the franchise, is the quality of the music. From the days on the Genesis even over onto modern day entries depending on what type of music you like, Sonic has never failed to at least make an effort with each game's soundtrack. At least, far more effort than it's contemporaries. I mean seriously, take a look at some of the big games from around the same time as the classic Sonic trilogy, the early 90's and compare the competition. Mega Man 2 clocks in just behind that timestamp, but it rocked two unforgettable tracks, but not an entire library of classics like Sonic has. Super Castlevania totally revitalised the series not just with gameplay but in it's soundscape too, but was its musical success as consistent as Sonic's? Not across the years as much. Truly, Sonic stands as much as vehicle for video game music as it does for gameplay.

Sonic games music is an inexorable part of it's identity now, with fans forming judgements on the taste of people with particular favourites (If you're ever speaking to a Sonic fan and find yourself in a pinch with no personal favourite, just say 'Chemical Plant Zone'; it's a solid, if cliché, baseline.) But what makes them so good? They're great tracks, that's what! They're textured, they're distinct, funky at times, rocking at others, they serve as the soul behind each and every level and stage, serving to highlight the thematic motifs within the level whilst simultaneously just being great enough tracks to exist divorced from the game too. Sonic is never a series that leaves it's music to fill the background, there's no 'incidental' tracks in this franchise. As much as Sonic, Tails or Knuckles, the backing tracks are beloved main stays of the series rooster.

Which isn't to say that the music has been stagnant throughout the years either. Sonic 1 ingrained it's iconic zone themes into every player's hearts (Especially with the irreplaceable Green Hill Zone) and Sonic 2 bought busier and richer tracks that proved to be just as iconic. (And yet somehow my favourite from that game is still the relatively simple major boss theme) But for me personally, it was Sonic 3 where this series hit it's zenith. And how could it not with a suite of tracks, half of which are said to have been composed by the Michael Jackson. (Although whether or not that is truthful is the stuff of myth and legend.) Even so the funk-carnival beat of 'Carnival Night zone' is guaranteed to get your feet tapping. Then you've got the hop and sliding keyboard of 'Hydrocity' and 'Marble Garden'. But the top of the top, the king of kings, my favourite Sonic song bar none- the final boss theme; 'Big Arms'. That is everything a final boss track needs to me. 

It starts ominous, chilling, slow and quickly ramps up into an excitable and relentless march with that layered synthetic instrument richness which makes Classic Sonic sound so memorable. But even more than that, what makes it a stretch beyond so many others; is that just before the track loops the composer remembered that a perfect boss theme needs to tell the story of the protagonist as well as the villain. We get a rousing stanza all of the Blue menace's own that slowly builds until it's cut short and cold by a single errant note that hangs for a half second of total quiet, and then the march crashes in once again! God, I could literally gush on and on about how good 'Big Arms' is for absolutely hours, truly some of the greatest video game music work ever, even to this day.

Of course as Sonic changed in the 3D era so too did the music which accompanied him, and those with a passing knowledge of the Sonic franchise would probably be more familiar with these tracks. 2000's soaked spring-break garage-band sounding songs that coloured this more 'skateboard' era of what a cool, non-conformist, hip kid like Sonic is meant to be. It has it's charms, although for me most of that leaks out from nostalgia and irony. Do I like 'Escape the City' from Sonic Adventure 2 as a track? Of course. But would it have been something I'd listened to regardless of it's connotations to Sonic? Not even nearly. But of course this is the time when personal taste becomes more important, as is going to happen when Sonic music stopped being it's unique brand and started becoming more identifiable by the genre it was placed in. Some fans are made, others are made dubious; it's the evolution.

Quality has waxed and waned over the years but the overall calibre of Sonic soundtracks makes it so that the truly bad Sonic tracks are the standouts. And I can refer to them in designations of tiers. From the 'this just isn't really my style of music' for a lot of the Sonic vocal tracks (Apart from 'Sonic BOOM' from Sonic CD of course) to 'okay this is outright cringeworthy'; a tag I'd happily slap on the chest of a track like 'Infinite's Theme' from the latest 3D Sonic outing; Sonic Forces. (Sample of the actual lyrics "I am the toughest of terrors, I am the darkest of days"- "I am a dangerous weapon, I am the sharpest of blades, I'll cut you down in a second, 'cause I was born in this pain, it only hurts if you let it, so if you think you take me, then you should go and forget it." Reminder, this is an anthropomorphic Jackal in a mask expositing all this edge.) And if we look really closely, we can find the abjectly terrible Sonic tracks.

Music from games that most people haven't even heard of before, like 'Tails' Skypatrol', a standalone title where the suite of music can best be described as obnoxious arcade machine ditty, but for every single track. Not very appealing. And a rung even lower than that lies a game that I've mentioned repeatedly in passing on this blog for it's simply legendary status as terrible Sonic spin-off music. If you haven't heard it, seriously; look up the 2 player theme for 'Sonic Eraser'- it's a college of sounds and noises that defies the designation of 'music', so garishly awful that it almost swings back around into masterpiece territory. Until last week that would have been the music track I would happily label the worst that Sonic has to offer. But since then I've been enlightened with a track from a game that might not be as objectively terrible musically, but which is so much worse because of one simple thing: it's a homage to an earlier Sonic masterpiece.

During the dark ages of quality control in the Sonic licence, Bioware (yes, that Bioware) got their hands on the IP in order to make a Sonic RPG called 'Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood'. Having never seen anyone talk about it, I just assumed it to be another one of the companies lost gems next to 'Jade Empire' and went about my way before learning of it's negative perception by the Sonic community. Apparently they really hated the thing. Why? Mario RPG games have such a cult following, so it couldn't just be genre mismatch, could it? No, it's the music. The terrible, badly-ripped, MIDI suite which is based around various older Sonic tracks cherry picked across the franchise, although a lot of the tracks are bad 'remixes' from Sonic 3D Blast for some reason. But the crowing turd on this mud pie? The music of the final zone in the game and the capital of this eponymous Dark Brotherhood? It's a track called 'Nocturne' which is a butchering- of 'Big Arms.'

Yes, my favourite Sonic track of all time dissected and chucked in the garbage in a MIDI monstrosity that strips the layering, the progression, the texture- the SOUL of the song- in a butchering in breach of the Geneva convention. The rumour has it that the game original featured an orchestral suite which Sega turned down a week before release leading to a mad scramble to replace the music with these crappy synthetic rips; but even that is a weak excuse. I've turned my entire library of music into MIDI files before and it sometimes comes out a bit distorted, but that's because I'm turning actual percussion based tracks into a synthetic format; Sonic music starts on synthetic instruments- how did they screw it up during the port? Unless there was some morbid desire to remix totally remotely without any human input, that explanation holds no real water!

For the most part, Sonic Music is a standout and sometimes standalone bright spot of the franchise that persists through generation of games and fans. There's something transcendent about a musical spirit that can be captured again when developers so choose, as was proven through Sonic Mania, and no matter how bad the Sonic games get there's always at least one banger in the soundtrack which worms under even the most grim skin. Unless we're talking about 'The Dark Brotherhood' I guess, which deserves annihilation from orbit for its crimes. (Okay, the opening theme and battle themes are okay, I guess. But to do that to 'Big Arms'... look how they massacred my boy...) So now you know the only standard Sonic Frontiers needs to meet in order to justify its existence. Forget being a good game, screw establishing a coherent world space; just slap in one head banger and for the love of god don't sample 'Big Arms' unless you know what you're doing. That's all I ask, Sega.