Join an epic high-speed fight to save a world decimated by Dr.
Eggman and a mysterious villain in the newest game from the team
that made Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations. Experience
fast-paced action as Modern Sonic, catapult past perilous
platforms as Classic Sonic, and use powerful new gadgets as your
very own Custom Hero Character. The Sonic Forces Bonus Edition
comes with an exclusive controller skin and awesome in-game
costumes for your custom character. The controller skin design
transports you into Sonic's universe, featuring Sonic and the
mysterious new villain, Infinite. Plus, the costumes from games
like Persona 5, Jet Set Radio, Super Monkey Ball, Nights, and
Puyo Puyo will transform your custom character to match
characters from these iconic SEGA games. Download the free
episode shadow add-on when the game launches to fight with Shadow
as a playable character!
Review: Don't listen to the critics - This game is not as bad as
some are saying. To me it is a fun game. I am enjoying it so far.
Though the story can be beaten in a few hours there's still
things to collect in the stages and there's challenges and
missions to make you go back to the levels you beaten such as an
"SOS" Mission where you can play as another player's avatar. My
only gripe is a couple of plot holes and the avatar species is
limited to only the following: dog, cat, rabbit, wolf, bear,
bird, and of course hedgehog. But there's plenty of customizable
objects for clothing and colors for the avatars body. This is at
least an average game. It's fun and probably the darkest sonic
game we have in years. I love the soundtrack as well. And
thankfully the game is not $60 but rather, $40 tho as a prime
member I got it for $34 if you want to wait for sale that's fine
I'd say that $30 was worth it $20 would be great if you wanna
wait for sale $10 would be a steal personally. It's not the
perfect sonic game but it's the worst. If I was to rate it out of
10, I would prolly give it a 7. The bonus edition includes a skin
for the controller which feels nice and looks cool to me.
Review: What happened to the Sonic Generations team? -
Graphically, this game is very pretty. The backgrounds are very
carefully designed and complement the choices of area well. The
only issue with this is that they’re integrated so well, I
sometimes found myself jumping off cliffs because I didn’t
realize what I was heading for was a background and not the level
path. Story-wise, I will avoid everything but the mildest of
spoilers, but I am extremely disappointed. This is a game about a
three-foot-tall blue hedgehog with superpowers, which is already
a goofy premise. So when you attempt a “serious” story and hype
it as such, you’ve already set yourself up for an uphill battle.
That said, serious tones have actually worked to some degree in
Sonic games before, so I tried to approach it with an open mind.
I was ready to take this game seriously and see how the war
affected our poor neon heroes. Sonic Lost World was interesting
in the fact that it was marketed as a bright game, but suddenly
began exploring several thought-provoking ideas, culminating in a
tiny glimpse of Sonic’s well-hidden emotionally vulnerable side.
I wish I could say that story followed through with the plot
ideas it presented, but it did not. I was hoping Sonic Forces
would fix this problem, but it actually committed the same crime
even worse. You’re explicitly promised an epic story with an
all-star cast of beloved villains. You’re told that Sonic has
been beaten to near-death, captured and tortured for six months
while the world fell to ruin. You’re also told that Tails has
lost all hope following this event. You’re repeatedly warned that
Eggman has a plan to squash the resistance in three days. None of
these plot points are resolved in a satisfactory way. Some of
them are never even explored at all. I will be honest in saying I
much prefer humor to drama. This game had very few moments that
had me chuckling. But it is possible to have a story that is epic
and yet doesn’t take itself too seriously. Sonic Unleashed’s
story, while certainly not an award-winner, had a good balance of
the two, and delivered on the resolution of its plot. On the
other side, you have Sonic Colors, which was an utterly bonkers
plot with all the emotional depth of a potato chip. However, it
never promised to be anything other than an extraordinarily silly
adventure, and I still loved it. My point is this: I expect to
see promises kept when they’re made. Sonic Forces promised a deep
story, and it miserably failed on that count. As far as gameplay
goes, the launch trailer proudly declares that this game was
developed by the makers of Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations; a
smart marketing move, considering how well the Modern Sonic
levels in both of those games were executed. However, while
Forces technically has the same visual style, Modern Sonic levels
are shockingly crimped into something more akin to a cool tech
demo with occasional player input. Hit the boost button, and
Modern Sonic will blast through levels at breakneck speed. You
may occasionally have to sidestep or jump, but the majority of
the early levels require little skill beyond this. A surprising
amount of quicktime events exist, where some hazard will pop out
of the environment and you have to press the A button to survive.
There’s plenty of time to react, and I get the feeling the
developers were more trying to show off rather than actually
provide the players with any sort of challenge. It’s not that
there aren’t some moments of actual gameplay challenge, but when
they do show up, the fact that the game wasn’t optimized for
actually *being played* tends to rear its ugly head. At any given
moment, it’s hard to tell exactly what kind of momentum Sonic
will have when he free-runs or jumps, and what should have been a
simple platforming exercise often turned into moments of
frustration for me. I’ve played hard platformers and I enjoy a
challenge. Sonic Unleashed was a challenging game and I was fine
with it. I don’t mind repeated deaths but there’s a huge
difference between legitimate challenge and failure due to poor
programming. This game has axed the drift mechanic seen in the
past few titles. This isn’t usually a problem since most of the
“difficult” curves in the game are on auto-pilot, but there was
one area where I was baffled to find that I really needed a drift
to NOT fall off a curve with no railing, and it just wasn’t
available. I died a lot in that one area, since Sonic tends to
float in the center of a 3D area, and again, I never knew what to
expect from him when I pressed buttons other than running forward
and jumping. Other tragic “boost” style casualties are the wall
jump and ability to dash along a trail of rings. These traits
have been given to the Avatar player, but in very limited
circumstances. The Avatar levels, in which you play as your own
custom fanfi-- er, character, are slower and meant for more
control. Even though I looked forward to Modern Sonic’s levels
more, I suppose the Avatar levels are less broken. They’re also
somewhat more boring. Your Avatar’s homing attacks are much
slower than Modern Sonic’s, and besides the stylized “hit A to
not die” QTEs, there’s not a whole lot to do in these levels
besides bash through hoards of enemies with whatever “Wispon” (I
only just now realized it’s a play on ‘weapon’) you choose. I
personally enjoyed the flamethrower the best because it broke up
the action the least. There are some stages where you play as
both Modern Sonic and the Avatar, and it was a good idea to mash
the high points of Sonic (boosting) with the high points of the
Avatar (incinerating baddies). Occasionally though, I was left
confused as to which character would be doing what and I hit a
few wrong buttons. That’s something I’m willing to take my own
fault with. But the issues with precision platforming, especially
in 3D sections, showed up again here. A game should allow you to
learn what kind of momentum to expect when you run forward and
jump, and I just wasn’t afforded that training playing this game.
Classic Sonic, our chubby mute hero from the past (or alternate
dimension this time around?), is the same Sonic we saw in this
year’s “Sonic Mania”. However, trying to compare Forces and Mania
is both unfair and a setup for failure. Mania was a throwback,
and a very good one. The physics and tone matched the classics
exactly, and I really felt like my ten-year-old self was
experiencing Sonic 3 & Knuckles for the first time again. I
played through Mania with a big dumb grin on my face; however, I
do want to see 3D Sonic games succeed and evolve. In Forces’
case, Classic Sonic plays like Modern Sonic, except with a spin
dash replacing the boost. And what I mean by that is the removal
of classic physics. I know Sonic fans get a bad rap for screaming
about physics and momentum all the time, and I’m not even doing
that, just stating that if you expect Classic Sonic to play like
Mania Sonic, you will be frustrated. If you treat these levels
like a standard platformer with little to no building momentum,
they’re perfectly playable, just not breathtaking. At least once
you shut off the “classic physics” switch in your head, you can
make informed platforming decisions, which again, is more than I
could say about the older (and significantly more verbose)
Sonic’s levels. I recall how adamantly Sega tried to deny that
this game was essentially Sonic Generations 2. I was baffled by
this; I loved Generations and would have gladly jumped at a
sequel (or even a level pack DLC) to that game. I beat the main
campaign of Sonic Forces in about four hours. I set down the
controller with an overwhelming sense of disappointment, and then
I started writing this review. An interesting thing happened,
though. I found the motivation to go back and attempt to find
collectibles and more thoroughly experience the game. Oddly
enough, this game is much more enjoyable on repeat playthroughs,
especially once you get used to the weird physics. I learned to
appreciate bits of obvious polish, such as the graphics and the
great loading times when you retry a level. Some of the Avatar
costumes are hilarious and I’ve spent more time than I’d like to
admit just messing with making the stupidest looking Avatar
possible. One thing is clear: the people who designed this game
seemed to have known what they wanted, and I believed they
implemented their goals successfully. However, I think they
misunderstood what the *fans* wanted. I wanted to play this game,
not have it play itself for me. I wanted a degree of real,
exhilarating challenge. Sonic Forces is not a “broken” nor
"buggy" game, and I don’t hate it. I’m just gobsmacked. They
supposedly spent four years developing this game. After the joy
of Generations, Colors, and yes, absolutely even Unleashed, I
thought they’d figured out and perfected the “boost” style of
gameplay. I don’t know how they could have stepped this far back
when they already had the formula in front of them. As it stands,
I had some nitpicks on Sonic Lost World too, and I still prefer
the boost style to the parkour experiment. But I’m inclined to
say that Lost World, unfinished as it was, may still have been
the better of Sonic’s latest two adventures.
