The "objective review" does not exist.

There's an ongoing debate about whether or not the current cycle of praise for Cyberpunk 2077 is blatant revisionism or valid. Either the game was always good or it was always sucked. The game's in a better state, no doubt. But it's still unpolished in really small ways that add up to a greater whole. There are still no gender-neutral options, and while the one trans character in here is well-written, the in-game ads are still a bit tasteless to anyone not comfortable with that line being crossed. If you want to spark a divisive conversation with your friends, talk about Cyberpunk 2077. If this review brings those same responses out of the woodwork, so be it.

I really, really like Cyberpunk 2077. About a year ago, I called it a diamond in the rough; "the best damn 7/10 I've ever played." The issue with that statement is that it's misleading. If review scores are subjective, what good is a 7/10 if the game you're giving it to is something that's earning high praise from you? Cyberpunk 2077 is a diamond in the rough, no doubt. But it's the kind of scratched-up jewel that still holds beauty to me.

Underscoring its bleak world and grim atmosphere, there's a beating heart inside Cyberpunk 2077. For a game that has most of its side-quests involve killing people, it's a game that treats the individuals at its core like people. Whereas most games of this sort would cut the fluff and get straight to the killing, there are several side-stories here that just involve... talking. Two out of my three siblings practically dropped this game because they got sick of skipping dialog, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Pyramid Song, the quest where you uncover a sentient vending machine, hell, the five minutes you spend fixing a roller coaster in Pacifica so you can ride it are among some of my favorite gaming memories from the past five years or so, and those are all small fish in comparison to the much larger questlines stuffed in here. Most of it is, at the very least, intriguing. As for the quests that involve fighting people, I actually enjoy the combat here. I love the way Double Barrels knock people on their asses, the feeling of a rip-roaring machine gun in my hands, piercing through walls with a charged shot to deliver a killing blow, and slicing and dicing my way through a crowd with a katana. I love the dynamic that hacking brings to the party and all of the unique ways you can play the game just by saving your money to chrome up. Double jumping around Night City is the sort of fun very few games capitalize on. Seriously, try turning off your mini-map so you can get to your objectives by jumping around. It's a delight that rarely gets old. I swear to god, I'm not bootlicking here. I just really can't get enough of how much fun this game is to play.

And yes, it is buggy. The police system is barely there. You can chalk that up to the hilariously absurd solution they have cooked for that in there currently. But while I've praised this for being a very fun time, its mild GTA-flavoring belies that a lot of what's adjacent in here feels like it's been included out of obligation and not desire. The police system is a great example of that, but I'd also argue that the ability to steal cars is also indicative of this. Unlike GTA, you almost always have a car in your possession that you can have spawned right next to you at any time. You can technically level your specs high enough to steal some of the most debonair cars in the city, but by that point, you've probably unlocked a few of those from sidequests. Likewise, while I'd argue that unlocking the cars of certain characters by doing quests related to them is a delicate touch, the fact that you can't customize any of the cars you own makes it so a few of the cars you unlock feel obsolete past a certain point. But the kicker is this: if you want a decent example of what this game succeeds at, it's the gigs. They can start to feel like a case of quantity over quality at a certain point. But a majority of them stress the far less linear aspects of this game to the point where they almost make this feel like it's as much of an immersive sim as it is an Open World Crime Game in the Wake of Grand Theft Auto III™. I wouldn't say it excels at being an immersive sim; owing to the linearity of its main quest and a few areas where the player's agency is reduced outside of it, going into Cyberpunk expecting Deus Ex will only yield disappointment. But it apes the basics successfully enough for me to say that the bulk of what makes this a great experience outside of the story-centric quests are those gigs. It's a bummer that that's not the exact impression many had going into this, and it's a huge stinker that that's the way they marketed this, but that's that. I hear they're patching this to include a better police system and drive-by mechanics, which is neat enough for me to maybe reconsider my stance on this when it drops. Until then, though, don't think of Cyberpunk as a Grand Theft Auto and Blade Runner crossover if you want to value your experience with it.

However long it takes for CD Projekt Red to make a sequel, I will try my hardest to be here. As long as the developers are treated right and the game isn't rushed out the door in a questionable state, and they hone in on the very obvious immersive sim inspirations more, Cyberpunk 2 could have some serious heat attached to it.

And yeah, I thought Edgerunners was cool.

Modern Warfare and Call of Duty as a whole has always been a series that meant a lot to me. The original MW2 was one of if not my very first video game experiences. My dad was big on xbox and Call of Duty so that's what I spent a lot of my time playing as a kid, yknow way back when you'd still get made fun of for being a girl that plays video games lol. I was never pro level but I got quite (inconsistently) good at multiplayer. But what really mattered most to me was the campaigns. Modern Warfare especially I have incredibly fond memories of replaying the trilogy repeatedly. Sometimes id just replay specific levels that I thought were just that cool.

I eventually fell off on the series as a whole. Especially when they introduced Black Ops 4 as not even having a campaign I just gave up on caring about the franchises direction. But relatively recently I've been replaying the series and getting to ones I've skipped like World War 2 and Infinite Warfare. These are all widely varying in quality but with the exception of BO4 and Vanguard (which i've not tried the campaign) I've enjoyed them all. The real standout for me though was the Modern Warfare reboot. I was both really curious and cautious about rebooting the franchise but Modern Warfare 2019 turned out to be one of my favorite games in the series (can't beat Black Ops 2 though). So I was really pumped for this game. And while it mostly delivered on what I wanted, I can't help but feel a little disappointed overall.

The 2019 campaign can be criticized for relying on shock value and such but for me personally it really worked. One of the first missions I had to put the game down because it got me too emotional. I loved the gunplay and the story and holy fuck Clean House is the coolest mission of any fps since anything from Titanfall 2. Basically all I wanted from this game was to have more levels like that (really I want an entire game of just levels like that) and actually this game does have a lot of similar segments which left me very pleased. I didn't get my dream of Clean House raiding a massive drug cartel compound because they forced that to be an overlong AC-130 mission but I was happy with what I did get. But that's kinda all my positives about the campaign. I still really enjoyed it but it just lacked a lot of what was so compelling about 2019 for me. It really feels like they were taking a step back and aside from a few instances the game as a whole just feels like its playing it very safe. It never hit hard for me like its predecessor. The cast is really good but the main villain is completely forgettable and the more interesting one is dealt with in a very unsatisfying boss fight. The final level also felt incredibly underwhelming and the only cool thing about it was all the sequel bait for the inevitable third entry. Which I am still very excited for. Idk, I'm really conflicted here lol. On one hand its nowhere near as good as 2019 but on the other its still a really solid time as a whole.

The multiplayer is a different matter however. I don't care much for this side of the series anymore but this is just one of my probably least favorite mps ever? Cold War was fucking broken but it was at least still fun. 2019 wasnt great either but it still felt good. This just doesnt have any of that. I don't like the lightning fast TTK and the 15 or so matches i played all just mostly kept putting me in the same three boring maps from the beta. Not to mention the incredibly stupid way loadout customization is set up.

In all honesty though, the worst thing about this game is the UI. It's fucking BAD. Why the main menu has spots dedicated to the other games is beyond me. Its just so cluttered and ugly. When I came back to this game after a pretty long hiatus It took me like two minutes to find where the fuck the campaign even was. Its terrible and another reason why I hate Warzone and its consequences.

The game is also pretty buggy. I think it may of gotten better after the day one patch but there were so many times that a character model would glitch out or the scripting just completely failed. My teammates would just stand there and do nothing. Restarting the checkpoint wouldn't fix this issue either and I had to redo entire levels to get them to work properly which is the bare miminum you can ask for a game.

This has been a pretty negative review. But I do want to emphasis I still like this game. I think its a good game. Just for a franchise this big and with its predecessors being so good I expect a bit more polish. Who knows, maybe when I replay this down the line on Realism difficulty I'll like it more.

I'd give it a 4/5 in a heartbeat if it used the original MW2 soundtrack instead.
Thank's for reading <3


Nancymeter - 75/100
Trophy Completion - 33% (9/25)
Time Played - 19 hours 5 minutes
Game Completion #149 of 2022
Game Completion #3 of December

Nancymeter - 87/100

Bayonetta is both one of the most sexy/stylish games and characters ever. The cutscene near the very start in the graveyard immediately hooked me. An incredible display of joyous insanity and honestly that cutscene alone guaranteed this game would never drop below a 4/5. But because this game is awesome half the cutscenes carry on the same batshit over the top style and I feel like you have to be really uptight to not appreciate the absurdity. Anyways now that I've said every adjective I can think of I'm ready for the real review.

The two most important things about an action game is the combat and the protagonist. As I'm sure everyone knows Bayonetta is great. She exudes confidence both in and out of battles and just has a really fun full of sarcasm attitude. Even after only one game with her I'd put her in my top five gaming protags ever no question. Shes also a really good example of an empowered sexy as hell woman without it feeling demeaning (thanks in part to her character designer being a woman) and I'm super here for it. I am glad they fought to keep her glasses. And then there's the combat. Which is fun and flashy but also fucking hard man. I ain't good at games that arent shooters and this has a difficulty spike within the first 5 or so chapters that just is pretty brutal lol, especially how frail Bayo is it just didnt feel particularly balanced for me. I had no shame eventually switching to easy difficulty at around the halfway point. Unfortunately the automatic setting is a bit much. I'm not complaining that easy difficulty is easy but considering theres even a Very Easy difficulty too I just wish the gap between easy and normal wasnt so huge. That being said, this game is a lot of fun. Im just here to have a good time and being a complete and utter badass destroying everything is perfect for me. There is something to be said about it being a deeper and more rewarding experience playing it on a harder difficulty but I simply don't enjoy getting my ass kicked (In video games anyways) so at least this way I still had my fun. There is multiple unique weapons with their own combos and shit and with the shop system and the rankings you get after each combat encounter encourage multiple playthroughs which for a short game means you will get a lot out of it and thats always a good thing. The animations are really lovely too and its got a fun amount of blood. Enemy and boss designs are all unique and cool while fitting with the setting very well. My only real issue with the combat is that a lot of the bosses suck. They're just not designed well and some of them throw in pretty awful platforming and except for the one on one battles with Jeanne they just kinda suck - but they do make up for it with spectacle.

Aside from your standard combat this is a game from the 7th console generation which of course means there are a few mandatory on the rails sections. These are fun for breaking up the pace but they all go on for just a little bit longer than they're actually fun for. Another side effect of the times is the color pallet. The art style is really good but all the colors are really muted and it just makes the game kinda ugly to look at which is a really widespread and unfortunate issue with this generation that I will always bring up in a review for any game that suffers from it because I hate it. Another thing to nitpick with the visuals is definitely a sign of low budget - some cutscenes are still images with a roll of film filter over them. It fits with the vibe of the game but theres a few instances its used for rather big plot points and idk its not really great but hey what can you do. At least this leads us into our next segment.

very smol spoilers incoming

The story of Bayonetta is... well I don't really know? We've established Bayonetta is an awesome character. The supporting cast is really good. Little Cereza is adorable, Jeanne is a cool rival, Rodan is badass (i love hearing Dave Fennoy's voice) and Luka is a loveable dumbass. But the story itself was really hard to follow. I got the slight jist of it but most of it went way over my head. Fortunately it doesnt matter much but it was kinda hard to get invested when I had no idea what was going on even with all the exposition dumps. I could of course watch a video explaining it but I dont wanna get spoilers for the sequels and that won't really change the initial impression. Despite all of that the game does a great job at showing the scale of your journey through different locations of increasing intrigue and the grand finale being in fucking space is a perfect culmination for such an adventure. I had moments where stupid platforming sections or the confusing narrative made me wonder how much I really liked this game but then it pulls out some beyond my imagination cutscene or throwing in a fucking dance scene (whenever a piece of media throws in one of those it steals my heart) and I remember how much of a treat this game really is. It does fall a bit short of being a true 9/10 for me but I've heard some really great things about the sequel and I'm very excited to see how this series evolves.

I've restarted this review quite a few times over the past few days and i'm still not entirely happy with it but I think I've gotten just about all my thoughts out for this game and I'm ready to move on and see what's ahead of me. Thanks for reading <3
Next up is Escape Academy - and after that maybe Fire Emblem Three Houses. We'll see.

Trophy Completion - 38% (25/51)
Time Played - N/A
Game Completion #139 of 2022
November Completion #5

I'm not generally big into fighting games but I got to admit the hype around Street Fighter 6 got to me and if the news about the more casual friendly experience and focus on making a compelling story mode is true, i'd say its among my top ten most anticipated games for next year. Street Fighter is a very popular franchise so of course I've had opportunities to play it a little in the past but I wanted to be a bit more familiar with the series before potentially trying to get into it next year.

Street Fighter V did not really help with that at all lmao. Thankfully the next entry just looks that damn good but this game honestly didn't do a whole lot to impress. It was useful for familiarizing me with some characters but just so much of this game feels kinda generic and a bit uninspired. The story mode was okay, not being knowledgeable on the series definitely hurt my enjoyment of it but there is also a bit of convoluted anime bullshit thrown in for good measure. Most of the battles are pretty easy however there's a few that randomly spike in difficulty. You can actually skip any of the fights you want though, I'm not ashamed to say I skipped 2 or 3 of the more annoying ones. I dont have much to say about the combat itself, Im not good at remembering combos so to me its just like any other fighting game. It didn't feel sluggish so that makes it good in my book.

If one thing did stand out about this game for me, it was the characters. Despite some truly awful ones like F.A.N.G and Birdie, the flashy roster of characters kept me interested. Cammy and Guile and Chun Li and Rashid and Vega and Juri and Nash and idk, there's just a lot of very interesting characters and especially during the side stories (mini arcade mode with some story basically) I really enjoyed my time with a lot of the cast. Since fighting games usually dont put much work into their story (if they even have any) and I am not a multiplayer fan at all, the characters are usually a big selling point for me which I think makes this stand out over other games ive played, like Tekken 7, where the only memorable characters are the outlandish ones.

In the end, thats kinda all there is to say about Street Fighter V. I wish i had more to add but if you've ever played a fighting game before you've probably already experienced everything this one has to offer. I'm glad to of been introduced to some characters returning for the sequel, but this isn't gonna be one I'll look back on on its own.

Nancymeter - 64/100
Game Completion #138 of 2022
November Completion #4

“What you see is what you get: Just a guy that loves adventure!”

| | THE WORLD IS SONIC | |

Naruto-running past you in the park. The bend of a minigolf ball careening wildly between walls and slopes. A bike yanked by gravity down the neighborhood hill. Pinballs smattering between bright lights and crashing machinery. The imaginary running man sprinting beside your car on the sidewalk, leaping over the streets and pedestrians.

Universe Is Sonic.

Neon colors and sharp, fashionable vectors. A nostalgic minor fourth. A ‘docx’ file with elaborate descriptions of an unknown figure’s likes, dislikes, origins and realities. 444,600 results on the world’s most popular art website. 240p anime playlist from 2009. Playground rumors, cosplay, metal remixes, YM2612 emulation, physics, debate, AMV, theatrical film, CMYK, baseball caps, webcomics, lawsuits, and designer shoes.

As a game and character, Sonic’s freedom-loving spirit and energy transcends barriers, beloved by people of all gender, ethnic, racial and neurological spectrums.

Sonic Is Universe.

| | THE CRINGE IS SONIC | |

Sonic in the modern eye is an object of ridicule and an ethereal mascot of the cringe culture boogeyman. You can’t so much as acknowledge Sonic’s existence without drawing ire and daft comparisons to princess-kissing, vertical-glitching, gun-toting embarrassment.

The Genesis originals were born out of anti-Nintendo competition - a story not worth repeating, but it’s notable for being a conversational millstone around the franchise’s entire existence. At every point in time, Sonic as a video game has strived to be its own style, but the marketing factors around it prevent the larger gaming press from seeing it outside any contrast but ‘how does this compare to Mario?’. An exhausting scenario that not only neglects the franchise’s individuality, but glosses over the figurative and literal development hell that’s plagued Sonic Team at the hands of Yuji Naka and SEGA’s business personnel.

| | SUITS RUIN EVERYTHING | |

Sonic did not have a rough transition into 3D.

It DID, however, have a violent transition into post-console SEGA.

At every turning point of history, Sonic has been unable to outrun tight deadlines and under-financing, with Sonic 1 being pitched at a point in time where Sega was aghast to the idea of spending more than 3 months time on a single video game, and 2 and 3K both rushed to meet consumer demand among growing trends. The final straw was the financial failure of the Dreamcast. With Sonic jumping multi-platform and creative leads wanting to market the series to every possible age and console demographic, the games had to cover ten times as much ground with only a fraction of the budget. SA2 was produced with only a third the staff of SA1, Heroes was infamously rushed, Shadow was born out of SEGA’s interest in pulling the mature crowd, etc etc. Sonic 06 was the killing blow, with its budget cut in half so Naka could produce a Wii spin-off, also at a time where the entire industry was struggling to adapt to shoddy 7th gen hardware and hi-fi design trends. The creative endeavors of Sonic Team never wavered, yet the environmental factors and outright stupidity of The-Powers-That-Be doomed the series.

| | THE CHILD IS SONIC | |

I was spinning my arms really fast, fists in a circle in front of me. They were spinning like feet. Sonic’s feet. Woosh.

| | NOSTALGIA AND SELF-EMBARRASSMENT | |

Sonic’s combination of unique design and unfortunate circumstances invites a loud, volatile fanbase - though ‘fan’ is maybe too charitable to a culture that is encouraged and rewarded for hostility. Youtubers, journalists, and influencers with no qualification whatsoever in game design all flocked to Sonic like vultures darting at a lion’s carcass, quick to reinterpret the series’ financial struggle as a fearmonger against progress. “Sonic can’t be 3D! Sonic’s friends are invalid! Sonic can’t compete with Mario! The classics were better!” It’s a conversation that is 100% functionally impossible to avoid in any long-term discussion of the hedgehog. A conversation loud enough for SEGA to hear and take to heart.

Since 06, Sonic games have been extremely reluctant to embrace themselves as what they’re meant to be, trying to cater not just to more audiences across the consumer board, but to malicious posers who don’t have a goddamn clue what they’re talking about - and ultimately, no interest in the games for what they truly are. The writing’s on the wall, everywhere from Colors-onward works featuring Saturday Morning writers that equally see Sonic’s adventures as one big noodle incident, to constant callbacks in unnatural 2D sections and much-aligned Green Hill revivals. There’s been tons of great moments and projects born within the cracks, but there is a universal truth that must be acknowledged: Post-06 Sega is embarrassed of Modern Sonic.

| | CULTURE PANIC: VULNERABILITY, INSECURITY AND CONFRONTATIONALISM | |

Sonic Frontiers is announced with the most bafflingly poor marketing approach in the entire industry. The ‘Sonic is bad’ cycle starts up again and journalists continue to rake in the hate clicks.

Then demos and invites to events start getting thrown to press. And all of a sudden, coverage is, positive? Reactions are optimistic and excited? Not just from Sonic fans, but from the journalist sphere as a whole?

It has a full 4-year development cycle and actual funding???

The road to Sonic Frontiers’ release triggered an insane frontload of anxiety into the internet, and bad-faith content creators were quick to profit off of it. Pre-release reactions have been nothing short of chaotic, with moments ranging from attacks at Ian Flynn, doxxing, in-fighting about the most microscopic movement design details, and so on. I couldn’t help but be exhausted by how much effort nay-sayers were putting into starting discourse when they could just move on to a game series they do like.

And then it hit me.

Sonic critics love Sonic, but are really, really embarrassed to admit it.

Sonic takes an extreme vulnerability to love because it's a series about being emotionally vulnerable - like Kingdom Hearts. They’re loud, sincere stories that breed affection, love, self-identity, - bullet points that attract ire, the same way a 5-year-old dismisses a Disney princess flick for ‘being girly’. And people are really harsh to admit it, because it’s easier to pass it off as ‘bad writing’ or ‘cringe’, interfacing with canon exclusively through ironic layers - but why else would they stay invested in a series for so many decades if there wasn’t something deeply personal they were getting out of it?

The cause-and-effect of this was that Sonic fans - that being, people that love the series, stories and games, unfiltered from irony - became INCREDIBLY anxious about their interest in it. It's not hard for that to happen when 90% of your community is on the spectrum and already endures abject hate for the crime of Being Different.

Objectivism became weaponized against fandom, and is the reason why we have theorycrafters debating every little detail of every single game - millions of arbitrary, asinine ‘’’’design’’’’ tests that each game has to be rotoscoped underneath. And whenever people do like something in the series that fails to meet objectivism, they have to conform to the ‘haha, it’s cringe, but i like it :)’ moniker - the only acceptable way to phrase affection to 3D Sonic today. It’s a perpetual motion machine.

For me, Frontiers discourse became too overwhelming and I did the smarter thing of distancing myself from it until I could actually play it. It was all just so much to take in, that I couldn’t even put any energy into getting excited for Frontiers announcements - because what if it didn’t meet expectations? What kind of discourse would I have to be surrounded by for the next 4 years? How many young fans who did love the game would be ridiculed and bullied by grown-ass adults over this shit, again, as the case has been for over 20 goddamn years?

| | SONIC FRONTIERS IS OUT | |

Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhholy fucking shit dude

| | THE ARCHIVE IS SONIC | |

Battle Network is really cool. The internet is bright and wild.

Loose data, like thoughts flowing in the mind.

Is it possible to explore them, and would I want to if I could…?

| | OPEN ZONES AND CYBERSPACE: DICHOTOMY OF NOISE | |

Sonic Frontiers splits gameplay between the more experimental, sandbox-y open zone islands and the traditional, focused boost stages in cyberspace. While this change means that most of Frontiers lacks proper level design (something that’s really important to Sonic being a good platformer), Sonic Team traded off by min/maxing every facet of control possible. Almost every move Sonic’s been able to pull off since Adventure 1 is here in a single, cohesive moveset, and you’re given free reign to tweak individual acceleration, turning and speed parameters in the options. This is the best Sonic has ever felt in a 3D space, period.

Open Zones are deceptively-addicting to explore, arguably doing the shtick better than some of the games it was inspired by. The worlds are a really odd bunch; barren, realistic ruins populated by inorganic clusters of stock platforms, rails and obstacles. It looks cheap at a screenshot’s glance, but suits the game tonally and facilitates world traversal by allowing you to jettison ahead to your map markers while constantly taking detours into gimmick sections for goodies at a whim. It’s not seamless, but that’s what makes it cool: You, as Sonic, are physically breaking the seams of the world to burst around wherever you want. If this isn’t some of the most metal game design of the entire series, I don’t know what could give it a run for its money.

Cyberspace is for the traditional boost gameplay, contained ala the BOTW shrines. It’s hard to hype these up because they re-use old assets and stage layouts, but it works out because they find a way to contextualize it in the story really well, and Sonic’s improved gamefeel makes these stages feel pristine. Playing these returning SA2 and Unleashed/Gen maps with the most precise-yet-forgiving movement the series has ever is sublime, and more than anything, it was the first time I played Boost-formula Sonic and felt like I was the one controlling the world instead of being confined by it. There’s so many opportunities for tech, skips, and smooth recoveries, that it makes the prior games obsolete in terms of functionality. Only thing I don’t like about them is the 2D stages, which still feel too static and uneventful for this type of moveset.

When both of these gameplay formats are put together, a near-perfect loop is created. I treated open-zone as a jungle gym to throw myself around in, wander aimlessly and be rambunctious. It’s a loud, intoxicating environment with a lot of shit trying to take your attention away, like an abstract painting. And when it all gets to be too much, cyberspace becomes this therapeutic retreat, to refocus your senses on a more concrete and goal-driven game style.

| | THE WOUND IS SONIC | |

I remember being angry over video games. I was a sore loser when he beat me at Sonic. I cared more about video games than family.

Does he still think about it?

| | NOSTALGIA: MEMORIES AND THE PAST AS A VESSEL TO THE FUTURE | |

Frontiers’ content is nostalgia-heavy, as has been the case for Sonic since 4 ep1, but it’s not as a fandom safety blanket this time: It’s thematic (It’s also to save money, but we already established Sonic is expensive and Sega penny-pinches, so, what’s the use in complaining lmao). Old franchise concepts that haven’t been touched forever get re-introduced and given proper lore, relevant to both the franchise’s long-running chronicle and the immediate plot. Sonic’s not traveling through old levels just for retro funsies; they’re actual distortions of his memories of his old adventures that the cyberspace computers are making him re-experience.

And that's the hook: Ian Flynn’s prose benches heavily on memories, as ethereal feelings and concepts to directly interface with. The central antagonistic force is the ancient technology of Starfall islands, imprisoning Sonic and co. between their physical and spiritual selves. Sonic escapes its effects at first, but has to absorb its negative after-effects to free Amy, Tails and Knuckles. Coming from other games, you’d expect to save them at the end of the world, have a ‘thank you’ moment and move on; instead, you save them at the start of the world, and they accompany you throughout,. It’s a good setup for giving these characters screentime and development that they haven't seen in decades, but it’s also to depict the trauma and subsequent healing they experience. Everyone remains hurt from the cyberspace exposure after being rescued, and Sonic plays the role of a mediator to their struggles. He’s a bit dismissive to them at first - wanting to rush ahead, ‘gotta go fast’, ‘outrun my demons’ and stuff, - but he’s quick to empathize with their pain. He doesn’t try to ‘solve’ their problems or wrestle into their mind, but reaches out as a shoulder to cry on: Asking how they feel, making them feel strong for bearing through it, and sharing sentimental memories as they go. And the way he interfaces with the cast beautifully illustrates the differences in relationships he has with everyone: Being tender and mentor-like to Amy and Tails, but having a more dude-bro and silently-acknowledged heart-to-heart with Knuckles (he also flirts the shit out of him).

| | ARTIFICIAL HEART: GOSSAMER BETWEEN THE COGS | |

Data-centric technology has fundamentally changed all facets of humanity, our self-expression, and our forms of communication. We embrace some parts of it, and reject others, all based on differences in fundamental and ethical values.

AI is contentious: A hyperbolic name assigned to the programming concept of automation through observation and repetition of pre-configured or adaptable parameters. We come to understand it through the lens of a fake being that cherry-picks choices for you, and that’s Silicon Valley’s most vainly-spoken application of the concept - but, AI really just means ‘we programmed a non-human thing to make choices based on data we feed it’. Your YouTube recommendations are AI. Your Tinder matches are AI. The shitty SNK boss that stole your laundromat quarters is AI.

We all know and experience a ‘gross’ brand of AI, especially in the Musk-dominated dystopia. Self-driving cars that have and continue to kill living human beings, by design. Advanced militarization of robotic dogs and walkers, that have and will continue to kill and terrorize in the name of capital. Basement-dwelling gremlins that twist and distort humanist works of art into algorithm-blended, eye-straining canvas smears. Social media platforms that actively reward dissention and misinformation. The literary world of artists is all-aware of this, and it’s not even remotely a new concept: From as early as the 1930’s and beyond, the wondrous-yet-horrifying automaton is the tropal prefigurement of action and sci-fi.

And Sonic loves this shit.

Sonic’s most common adversaries are Eggman’s and others’ robotic creations, and a recurring trope in their stories is the tried-and-true ‘robot becoming human in spirit’ jam session. They’re also some of Ian Flynn’s favorite characters to write - in turn, his best. The ever-iconic Metal Sonic’s core identity is a facsimile of another, and his perpetual identity crisis feeds his rage across both the games and comics. Gamma is the fandom favorite, with his tear-inducing story of silent sacrifice and redemption in the original Adventure. Omega’s militarian specs and transparent honesty make for a character that’s perpetually direct to friends and foes alike, violently deadpan in his own vocab-broken way. These characters shine high not just as individuals, but for their ability to foil the flawed, creatural cast of heroes.

Sage - Frontiers’ new token OC, - is one of the best because she’s the most gently-overdriven version of the unfeeling automation, while taking on the most distinctly-human appearance and mannerisms of a Sonic series robot to date. The ultimate planeswalker between data and spirit; a character whose snark and bitterness is always hard to discern as a product of AI or personality. She’s number-obsessed, living solely on the wings of objectivism, while having to deal with Sonic’s mind-on-my-sleeve, impulsive bullshit. She’s so impossibly strong of a character at all of the story’s best moments, and I’m desperate for her to get inducted into the mainline cast going forward. I’d love to gush so much more about her and the overall plot, but these beats are better fresh and unspoiled.

| | THE VECTOR IS SONIC | |

Drawn spiky hair is beautiful. It blows in the wind like a warm flame.

Somehow the wind never blows the flame out.

| | CHRONOLOGICAL CHOIRS | |

Music is the undeniable strongest and most consistent part of the Sonic experience. Across jazz fusion, house, disco, butt rock, metal, EDM and trance, Sonic takes the people's sounds and twists them in a way wholly unique to video games as a medium.

Frontiers is very subdued by comparison - arpeggiated melodies that are felt passively and not heard, ambient overworld music that soothes never announces its presence, and cyberspace techno that drives action but never speaks over it. I couldn’t name many individual songs that match the hybrid beauty of past games, but it works great in-context and is a great change of pace. Listening to an overt melody on repeat over the course of hour-long traversal sessions is a recipe for disaster, and they found a good way to keep the musical spirit alive without having it grate.

Of course, all the angst and energy was built up and released for the titan boss themes, and GOD DAMN they go H A R D. Pent-up, cannon-fired emotions are a nonstop driver of Sonic’s penultimate tracks, but nothing can compare to the unbridled screamers Frontiers fires out in its few-but-fantastic moments.

| | ! ! ENJOY YOUR FUTURE; IT’S GONNA BE GREAT ! ! | |

Frontiers had me singing along with the larger fandom ‘Sonic is back’ - but that’s not new, is it? We heard it after Colors, riding on the short-term pessimism of ‘it doesn’t have cringe!’. We heard it after Generations, only for its follow-ups to start from square one with terrible Mario knock-off design and horribly milquetoast cartoon tie-in games. We heard it after Mania, only for Forces to be ‘just okay’ as an unfinished budget title.

Why does saying ‘Sonic is back’ feel so different now?

Because Frontiers is a victory for the future: It’s a Sonic experience that loves its past but embraces newcoming things, celebrates its beautiful cast’s growing character arcs, and experiments in ways that drive ambition rather than insecurity. Like us, it accepts itself as beautiful while understanding the need to break out of its shell. It’s a wonderful, heart-soothing, chaotic piece of work through-and-through. Without a doubt, it’s going to be a permanent sentimental star in many new Sonic fans’ hearts, the same way the Adventure games grew up with me and my generation.

“I now understand why I am here. I made a promise and I’m here to keep it. Today, I put my past behind me.”

What a lot of people either fail to realise or refuse to believe is that the best Sonic games are the flawed ones. The games that try to innovate with bold ideas unbecoming of a Sonic game, or any game. We've had 'perfect' Sonic games before like Sonic Mania or Sonic Generations and those games are great but they can't hold a candle to the way-too-serious tone of Sonic Adventure 2, the quaint but pointless Adventure Fields of Sonic Adventure, the audacity to make half the game a slow beat-em-up in Sonic Unleashed. People love Sonic for its ambition, not its accomplishments. People love games for their imperfections the same way they love people despite their flaws. Sonic Team has, for decades now, dared to do things that are new, bold, and weird. Sonic Frontiers is a continuation of that vision, and to reduce it to petty statements of "open world 🤓 sega hire this man 🤓 serious plot in cartoon rat game 🤓 the controls 🤓 but he's slow" is a pitch-perfect demonstration of how Sonic is doomed to fail. Look at your favourite games and try earnestly telling yourself they're flawless.

Credit to smaench for planting this seed in my brain, actual review when I'm done playing it and can let my thoughts digest rather than spewing unfiltered drivel onto your webzone.

Sonic Frontiers is kind of a miracle. I hesitate to call it good but it's oddly compelling. It's a mishmash of competing ideas and new concepts bolted onto existing gameplay elements, and yet somehow it works. It borrows heavily from other games, often shamelessly, but never strays too far away from what makes Sonic tick. It's got that familiar Sonic Team jank but is also the most polished game they've probably ever made.

In short...yeah, it's alright.

I'll chalk that up to a win for a developer that's truly struggled to find an identity for this franchise going back over 15 years now. I don't know if Frontiers will be that going forward, but there was at least an attempt here to right past wrongs and fully commit to this change in direction until it was truly ready to be released. They weren't lying when they said they would take their time to ensure better quality. There's a lot I'll take issue with as this review goes on but I'll take no umbrage with their execution of what they were going for here.

So what was Sonic Team going for here? Well, an "open zone" game as they'd call it, which is really saying it's a series of segmented open-world areas for you to run around in. And truthfully, they nailed this part of the game in a way I was not expecting. They've created a huge playground for Sonic to have fun in, filled with obstacles, platforming, and puzzles that smartly funnel you from one area to the next as you explore the islands. I wish it was all a little more natural looking and built into the geography instead of appearing like random game elements plopped down all over a Windows XP landscape, but they do absolutely achieve their job of keeping you busy and always giving you something rewarding for interacting with them. It's so basic but it's also why I easily vibe with these types of games. One can't help but wonder how much higher they could have reached with this concept if they were willing to move off established conventions and opt for a more momentum-based system for players to experiment with, but I digress.

Unfortunately, now and then you'll need to pop into Cyber Space to grab a particular collectible and it's here where the experience gets dragged down a notch. The Cyber Space levels are entirely in the style of past Sonic games like Unleashed or Forces and it's very clear Sonic Team didn't have enough confidence in their new vision so they threw these levels in for some misguided sense of variety. Worst of all, these stages reuse both visual designs AND stage designs from past games, cut into smaller chunks, so if you've already played them this will just feel like a bore. I won't mince words: this is incredibly lazy and if they couldn't be bothered to design entirely new levels for this part of the game it should have never been included. I never looked forward to having to grind these levels for the necessary vault keys and quite frankly it's a good showcase for how dated that style of Sonic gameplay has become.

One other aspect of Frontiers' gameplay that also deserves criticism is its upgrade system. I don't mind having to unlock new moves for combat but there's no reason why a game like this requires a system that forces me to increase Sonic's attack, defense, or speed (or the number of rings for that matter, an entirely useless upgrade). It's like they looked at other modern games and said "We need to do this too" without really considering why those systems can often be a detriment to those games as well. If you have to make your character move and feel worse to justify later upgrades and "fix" the problem you created, that's bad game design in my book. And yes, this problem does get mitigated about halfway through the game when you've done enough of the upgrades to where it stops mattering, but that doesn't erase the problems I had with it in the early game, and the best example I can give is the encounter with the Squid enemy on the first island.

The Squid requires you to run along a path until you're in range to attack it, at which point it'll switch to a combat field to allow further damage. The problem is that early in the game, your speed is slow, so it can take minutes for you to catch up before you're in attack range, and that's not even counting the section where it's entirely automated and you simply can't catch it during this time. Once you do achieve this, you find your attack is so low that you simply cannot do enough damage to dispose of it in a timely fashion, forcing you to repeat the chase section. You'll probably have to do this three or four times before the Squid finally goes down. It's unnecessarily tedious and frustrating when all I really want to do is be tested on how well I've mastered the combat. It's a small point in a larger game but this sort of thing is a pet peeve of mine and I think it illustrates the larger point of how unnecessary these systems are. They merely exist to give you the illusion of progression but it's not really required as the sense of progression you get from working through the islands is where the game's real satisfaction comes from.

Moving back to another of the game's strong points, let's discuss the story and characters because at long last Sonic Team has woken up and realized that Pontac and Graff were hacks who were strangling the series with their take on its tone and characterization, and have brought in Ian Flynn to rectify the problem. And boy does he, as not only do the main cast of characters finally get some nuance to them but the story itself is allowed to actually connect back to older games. This gives the Starfall Islands of Sonic Frontiers some immediate credibility as a setting in this universe and helps to bridge the series back to a time when you could get invested in a Sonic game's story because the characters were allowed to grow with it. What a novel concept.

There's so much to like here. I was genuinely worried that the side characters would exist as objects for Sonic to rescue and not have much interaction outside of that, but even in their transient state, they're still able to influence events and have meaningful conversations with Sonic, who himself has returned to a genuinely likable character and not spouting the most obnoxious one-liners imaginable every five seconds. Hell, the entire sidestory with Tails felt like Flynn deliberately calling out how shitty the past 10 years of characterization have been for Sonic's fox friend. It was incredibly refreshing to see the series acknowledge its faults and commit to doing better. If there's one gripe in this department, it's that most of Eggman's motivations were put inside audio logs that you need to do the fishing minigame to acquire. Given Eggman's relationship with the new character of Sage is incredibly vital to the proceedings, I wish this stuff would have been more front and center, but hey, at least the fishing was fun.

I touched a little bit on the game's visuals but I'd like to expand a bit more because I do think how this game looks is a bit on the disappointing side. Not so much in terms of fidelity or framerate; Sonic Team did a surprisingly good job here and overall Frontiers ran extremely well on my PS5, at least in performance mode. This is more to do with the game's visual identity, or perhaps the lack thereof. Despite having five islands, Frontiers only has three level themes: grass and forest, desert, and volcano. Island 4 and 5 looks practically identical to the first one, and the same style of ruins persist across the entire game. From a narrative standpoint, this makes sense; it was one ancient civilization across the whole island chain, but it does give the feeling of sameness and there's an overall lack of variety to the locales here. The realistically rendered worlds also contrast greatly with the cartoonish characters who inhabit them, and I would have much preferred the game to go in a more stylized direction consistent with past Sonic games. This isn't a major point; just a preference of mine.

Much like the visuals, the music can also be a little jarring and inconsistent at times, but this is more toward the good end of that spectrum. You'll go from the quiet and laid-back tracks that inhabit the open world (some of which feel very reminiscent of Sonic 2006), while enemy encounters, cyberspace levels, and boss battles will hit you with more mechanical-inspired themes and vocal tracks that are more akin to the Adventure era. There's a lot of variety here, and it's pretty much all good. One of the safest bets you can make is that a Sonic game will have good music and you will not be shocked to find that Frontiers continues that trend.

If you're a hardcore Sonic fan you'll find a lot to like in this game, but if you're someone who was hoping Sonic Team would be able to elevate this franchise to greater heights, you're not going to find it here. Frontiers pulls the franchise back to the level of "acceptable" and for some that may be enough, but for me, I'm still yearning for something that can give me the highs of Sonic Adventure 2 again. There are moments of Sonic Frontiers that invoke the spirit and energy of that time (especially those boss battles), but there are also moments where you realize this is a game in 2022 and it can encapsulate the worst elements of that. The result is an experience that, again...is fine. Just fine.

Perhaps I should be happy with that.