Sonic Frontiers review: maybe its time to slow down | Digital Trends

DigitalTrends: "While not outright broken like Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) or Sonic Boom, Sonic Frontiers is a heavily misguided game that muffles good ideas with questionable narrative, technical, and gameplay design decisions. Sonic Team continues to demonstrate that it's not quite sure what to do with the blue blur, taking a wild swing with a game that tries to rival open-world games rather than double down on the strengths of newer titles like Sonic Generations and Sonic Mania, or older successes like the Sonic Adventure series."

[solideagle]

I am not sure if this is a mistake to have this review at 2/10 on meta. What do you guys think? I think it doesn't warrant a 2/10 rating

[Vits]

It's a strategy that some websites use to generate clicks. The game itself has a health of 73% on OpenCritic.
But giving it a too-low or too-high score make people click on the review.

[deleted]

They admit right away that it's not outright broken, so I can't see this being a 2. Maybe a 4 or 5 if it really is just a lousy game.

I had a feeling this was going to turn out crap though. Nothing from the previews ever got me excited about it.

[Old McGroin]

"I had a feeling this was going to turn out crap though."

It has plenty of 7s and 4 our of 5s though, I wouldn't base my entire opinion on a clickbait review.

[-Foxtrot]

“It has plenty of 7s and 4 our of 5s though, I wouldn't base my entire opinion on a clickbait review”

Yeah but here’s the thing while it’s “alright” we should be wanting a GOTY contender Sonic game

I just don’t get why now fans are settling on average and not the best

Sonic deserves it and Sonic team are just chasing trends now after doing gimmicks

Here’s Sonic with a sword
Here’s Sonic with a magic ring
Here’s Sonic as a werewolf
Here’s Sonic with little alien companions
Here’s Sonic but with a custom Character creator

[Old McGroin]

@-Foxtrot

7s and 4 out of 5s are good scores. I understand what you mean, I would kill for a GotY Sonic game but at the same time, just because it's not up there with Ragnorak and Elden Ring doesn't mean it's a bad game. You can have a good game that isn't the best game of the year as well.

[-Foxtrot]

The thing is no one is comparing to God of War or Elden Ring

When you have Sonic fan games made by one person or a team which looks more promising in the early stages and captures that old school Sonic feel better than what Sonic Team are doing it's just a bad look

We've got to this point where the bar is so low for Sonic that it gets a 7 out of 10 and people are like "F*** YEAH, SONIC IS BACK".

That attitude is why Sonic Team don't try and it's worse when certain games get called/criticised for smaller things.

This game looks like an alpha build, the pop ins are atrocious, the camera is weak, the floating rails and the like are out of place, there's no variation despite the small biome changes and compared to the cyber levels the main world looks dull. Even some of the "challenges" to reveal more of the map are lazy, like I saw Skill Up showing us how one of them is just go on a hamster wheel and run...that's it.

[Old McGroin]

@ -Foxtrot

"The thing is no one is comparing to God of War or Elden Ring"

You are. You're saying you want a Sonic GotY contender, God of War and Elden Ring are GotY contenders.

What Sonic games actually have been groundbreaking since the first one? None. 7 out of 10 is a good score, nobody is shouting from the rooftops that Sonic is back, it's just a good score and I would have a lot more faith in those reviews than I would in this clickbait 2/10 review.

[-Foxtrot]

I think it reads like 5/10

However after reading the review it’s not hating for the sake of it in my opinion, seems he’s annoyed about the direction and points out the flaws it has an open world game, something that we shouldn’t be seeing in 2022 compared to other open world games. The guy basically admits straight away “hey this doesn’t mean it’s broken” so he put that out there.

Does it warrant a 2/10 no

But considering other click bait reviews I’ve seen in the past it’s not just for the sake of it, he goes into it a bit. Just the score seems excessive but I don’t think it should bring the points he’s making redundant where people should ignore them. It’s legit points.

[TimelessDbz]

Definitely not a 2/10. I got it and its pretty good. I strongly recommend it because its different and there is something there for every type sonic fan 2d and 3d.

[SullysCigar]

Oof. And here is the token outlier. Enjoy your attention, digitaltrends.

Here's hoping you don't find the nutter online that likes to make violent threats, as that will only succeed in generating more hits for your websi...WAITAMINUTE !?!

[FPS_D3TH]

Clickbait rating. The state of vidyagame journalism these days…

[blackblades]

Maybe they should get a blue check mark for a verification of a real journalist.

[ManMarmalade]

For $8 lmao

[VenomUK]

@FPS_D3TH These ‘outlier’ reviews gets them clicks but loses them trust.

[z2g]

much like the 6/10 god of war review, this review seems drastic based on the average of game scores coming in so far. most hover around a 7 for this game, so a 2 seems personal and lacking subjectivity. everyone is entitled to their opinion but reviewers need to keep it objective. It made no sense in the context that god of war deserved a 6 when literally every other review at the time was a 9 or a 10. same with this score of 2. maybe its not for you and you're free to score it lower, but to me a 2 is a horrible game that is unplayable - technically, creatively... all of it. i don't think thats this game. for the record i have zero interest in buying this game, i'm simply stating that the quality and trust of some reviewers in this current climate of general shitty-ness is questionable. too many people have agendas today.

[Profchaos]

It's a purposeful outliers trying to get attention by a low score to generate clicks

[PersonX]

Trash series

[gold_drake]

ooff, i mean i have played abit of the game at my mates, and its definitely not a 2 out of 10.

a 2 for ke would be unplayable. riddled with bugs, the biggest pile of trash.

frontiers is definitely not that.

[EternalTitan]

Okay its their opinion. No need for threats.
We are not the God of War fanbase.
Also COMPLETELY disagree that its a 2.
2 means game is glitchy and broken like COME ON.

[SullysCigar]

Where did anybody make threats towards this Sonic reviewer? They didn't. Stop with the drama.

[cerpintaxt44]

a 2 would be a basically unplayable game i hate shit reviews like this.

[CobraKai]

I dunno this looks fun to me

[GotGame818]

Ridiculously low score. 2/10 would be nearly unplayable! I didn't even click the article. Instead I watched IGN's 7/10 review. It had some nice things to say about the game, especially about the variety in it.

[Chocoburger]

B.S. review. I've played the game for 9 hours on Switch and I'm having fun with it.

The game world looks nice, framerate and visuals are actually decent on Switch, there is lots of pop in for foliage and floating sky junk, but it doesn't affect game playability. The game is extremely easy even on 'Hard' difficulty. That's okay with me, not every game needs to be a serious challenge, but the missions in Frontiers does feel like 'baby's first open world game'.

It's certainly a game flawed in many ways, but the fun factor shines through regardless. Based on my 9 hours, I'd give it a 6.5 to 7.5 range out of 10. I'm just glad that the game didn't release last year like it was originally intended, because that would have been a disaster.

[Plagasx]

Yikes, Digital Trends on a role these last few days.

[RetroCaptainSteve]

Are they sure they weren't playing the 2006 game on a half broken television?

[xenz]

2/10 is about what I expected from this game.

[moongrim]

just playin frontiers and no way is this a 2 of 10, some reviewers just love to hate for no reason

[MadLad]

Nice clickbait review.
The game should be both utterly terrible, as well as basically broken, for a review like that.

[Dirty_Lemons]

Sonic rarely 3D right whilst 2D tends to pull fans right back in. When will they learn to leave these 3D worlds alone.

Curious too as I can't think of one main 3D Mario game that was anything but great. Sunshine is the one people might point to but I still thought that was fantastic.

[Binarycode]

From what i've seen of the game, it seems it's a hash of many idea's. Some liked it because it was something different.