This little blue critter's franchise sure has had a rough journey. While the new Mario movie likely won't be a masterpiece, the trailers suggest an air of polish and prestige, to match a fairly solid run of games. All the while the Sonic movie might best be remembered for a botched first draft of the character ("uuum.. meow?") rushed back into post production. As someone who grew up with Sonic and not Mario, it's quite devastating to see the hedgehog undergo such an identity crisis. In fairness, the last game I completed was Sonic Heroes, but I've seen enough of the werewolf Sonic and gun-tootin' Shadow games to know things got rough early on.

Frontiers feels like Sega and Team Sonic setting out to reclaim some relevance and insist to be taken seriously once again. The game demonstrates this firstly through reinvention of past "classics" - you'll see the familiar Chemical Plant and Green Hill zones plus gameplay of Sonic 3D, Spinball and even fishing with Big the Cat.

The rest of the game borrows from elsewhere, literally any actual classic game is up for grabs: Zelda BOTW, Shadow of the Colossus (mixed with a bit of Neon Genesis Evangeleon) and even Death Stranding. Unsurprisingly, this creates a mixed atmosphere and, more often than not, clashes with the goofy-ass characters. The Sonic 'content' itself feels rather stale against its mish-mash of a backdrop: the voice acting now feels tired and without much conviction; the random platforms that render delayed into the map are repetitive and barely rewarding; the puzzle segments are just as mundane.

The main strength I reckon would be the boss battles, as the gigantic mecha demons each have specific ways of being taken down, whether its grinding along 'tail-trails' in the air or in a sort-of wrestling ring scenario. It's rather telling though when the game's other main strength is its mini levels that throwback to those 2D halcyon days.

It's a mess but undoubtedly an ambitious one. Frontiers may even be considered a step in the right direction, or at least a better one than before. But fast though the little guy can run, Sonic will still need to work to keep up with his Nintendo contemporaries.

Played in Japanese so review might be different from English translation:

Wow, now this game is FUN. It's everything I love about demon-type catching games. To be quite honest, this is the first Yokai game I've ever played and it has me sucked in! Yokai Watch 4 is a beautiful game visually, with a fun story of lost memories and switching protagonists. All the characters are a perfect example of "kimi-kawa" (a Japanese term for something both ugly and cute) and their personalities are a great match to boot. Dialogue is filled with cute snarky little jokes, and personalities I can best describe as either snarky or a bit bratty. It's always fun playing a game that has characters that are bit rude.

The gameplay is involved and super fun. I love being able to help as the human and not solely rely on my Yokai. The story is basic, but it's expected for games made for younger age groups, but still knows how to have fun with its inclusion of multiple worlds. The maps are open-world enough without feeling too overwhelming, but allowing the player enough freedom without making the game fall under the open-world genre.

I loved the silly little gacha gumball machine.
Good game, check it out if you can!

I played this game back in 2021, so apologies if my memories of this game are a bit murky. I'd like to dive into this game a bit more thoroughly, but that would require a second playthrough, the time investment of which this game does not deserve.

Sea of Solitude was the sort of game that, as someone who only has access to games on Switch and Mac for the time being, repeatedly taunted me from the corner of my eye for a couple of years before its eventual port to the Switch with this version of the game. In that time, I heard lots of good buzz surrounding it! The fuzzy impressions I got was that it was one of those narratively deep, gameplay-lite, emotionally rich experiences that indie games so love to attempt. While the phrase many might associate with this category would be "walking simulator", for this specific sub-category I tend towards "Journey-like. The sort of game that shoots for the ceiling, that you know for a fact will make you cry. So with this in mind, I followed up on the studio's socials, and patiently waited for a few years, knowing that eventually a good game would wash up at my feet.

When I finally booted it up for the first time, I was immediately met with about the harshest slap to the face an unassuming gamer like me could expect: The QUANTIC DREAM logo. I had just given $25 to David Cage and I didn't even know it. I later discovered the director is a "big fan" of his work. For a game so primarily about abuse it's a bizarre thing to read.

As someone who somewhat actively seeks out games that I think will make me cry, I can pretty quickly pick up on a particular tone where I can tell that this effect is something that the game really wants to achieve, but doesn't have too much experience or confidence in delivering it. Sea of Solitude wants to touch on quite a few heavy topics (divorce, bullying, and bad relationships to name a few!), and while these ostensibly seem to be drawn from personal experience from the game's writer, the final product, disappointingly does not hit a single one of these notes correctly when their times come.

It seems that its creators almost completely lacked the self-reflection to realize that, as it stands, the depictions of these subjects range from goofy to outright offensive. A giant lizard that represents the main character's father speaks in the most pedestrian voice imaginable about how unhappy he is with his completely adequate marriage and his shitty kids who he hates. A swarm of shadow-children chase you through a school and repeatedly call you a "sissy". I didn't cry. I laughed. The harder this game thought it was hitting me with its deepest moments, the harder I kept laughing.

Of course, it goes without saying that this is the sort of stuff that doesn't deserve to be laughed at, but Sea of Solitude's execution is so wildly mishandled it didn't really leave me with any other possibly appropriate human reaction. I felt like I was experiencing something about as nuanced as the ABC direct-to-TV film "Cyberbu//y", if not worse.

What I find especially curious is that what I played is "The Director's Cut". After the original release, the developers rewrote the game's script, and this is supposedly the improved version of what they originally shipped. Jesus Christ! I shudder to imagine how much worse it was before if this is what they did with a few years of hindsight and the opportunity to redo some of their worst mistakes...

I'll end my review with one more slap in the face just as I had at the start. Did you know that the mother in this game is directly modelled after US Vice President Kamala Harris? I am not joking. Apparently the director is a "big fan" of her work as well, though what that could possibly mean aside from heinous cop shit I can't remotely imagine. For those looking for a game that explores the themes that Sea of Solitude does, you're not going to find it on the other side of anything starts with a Quantic Dream logo. When that day comes, shoot those guys $25 instead of these clowns.