As many of you reading this may already know, sonic games have never had the best reputation since the series started to focus on 3D gameplay rather than 2D. Even when 3D games in the Sonic series come out that are decent and worth playing, it appears everyone wants to focus on the worse side of them and not the positive, which I have always found incredibly unfair. I’ve been a fan of Sonic and his 3D games ever since I was a kid playing Sonic Heroes on my Xbox. Even some of his most recent 3D games like Sonic Colours and Sonic Generations are games I believe are worth playing. Even some more controversial entries like Sonic Unleashed or Sonic Lost World are games I’ve managed to find enjoyment and fun from.

So needless to say, I was excited for Sonic Forces when it was first announced. Lots of elements of the game piqued my curiosity such as the supposedly post-apocalyptic setting, the fact you can create your own Sonic character and have them interact with characters in the story (potentially fulfilling a fantasy many young sonic fans had) and the fact Sonic Team was returning to the boost gameplay style that made Sonic Generations and Sonic Colours so fun. I had faith Sonic Team could create an enjoyable and memorable game from these elements…But unfortunately, my faith seemed to be misplaced.

I did not enjoy Sonic Forces.

In fact, it’s one of my least favourite platformers to come out in the past few years.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of things I like about this game and things I think work well. Its quality is definitely not on the low level of other 3D Sonic games such as Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 or Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric, but at it’s best Sonic Forces provides an average and mediocre experience that you’ll barely remember afterwards and at it’s worst, it will leave you frustrated and angry at the awful and absurd design choices the game is jammed with.

To give the game credit though, the story for the game is one of its more interesting aspects. (And just to let you know, I will be spoiling the story of the game so if you don’t want to read that, I’ve tagged that section with spoiler tags on the top and bottom, so you know where it is and you can skip it if you wish.)

*spoilers start here*

The basic plot of Sonic Forces involves Dr.Eggman being evil as usual and creating a brand new minion to combat Sonic and his friends that he calls ‘Infinite’. Infinite not only has the power to manipulate reality using a gem called the ‘Phantom Ruby’ he can also create replicas of foes from Sonic’s past. During their first encounter, Infinite proves to be too much for Sonic as he and the rest of the villains quickly defeat him, leaving him to be captured and for Eggman to conquer most of the world. Yeah! Eggman conquers the world in this game! 6 months pass and a resistance forms consisting of much of Sonic’s cast of characters including Knuckles, Amy and most importantly, your own character which I’ll talk about later. The resistance quickly finds where Sonic is held thanks to your own character and the rest of the story is simply just trying to stop Eggman and Infinite controlling the world and doing bad things.

Also, Classic Sonic is there.

Sorry if that seemed out-of-place and forced but you know, that’s him in a nutshell. And unfortunately, he’s not the only part of the story that feels rushed and lazy; the entire story feels like that. Sometimes certain things will just happen that aren’t given enough of an explanation, certain old characters will pop up occasionally serving no purpose for the story (I.e. Chaos, E-123 Omega and Classic Sonic himself), or the pacing will be so fast that you’ll start to think you accidentally skipped a cutscene.

But the biggest problem I have with this game’s story is how much it TELLS us rather than SHOWS us.

Sonic Forces has a much darker tone than most recent Sonic games which I am perfectly fine with, as the Sonic Adventure games managed to pull off dark stories well while remaining kid friendly. But the game doesn’t do a good enough job SHOWING those darker themes and would rather TELL us how dark everything is. We’re TOLD Eggman has taken over the world and rules with an iron fist, but we’re never SHOWN just how much of a grip he has on it. Sure, cities are in ruins and Infinite causes a lot of destruction, but other than that Eggman is a no greater threat than he usually is in the rest of the series. We’re TOLD Infinite is the most powerful enemy Sonic’s ever fought, but we’re never SHOWN how powerful he really is, and he instead just decides to gloat all the time about how much stronger he is than everyone else. We’re TOLD Tails went crazy after Sonic got captured but we’re never SHOWN that and instead the next time we see Tails he looks and acts completely normal. When you’re constantly telling the player how dark everything is but never showing them anything substantial that proves it, it makes the story seem like it’s trying too hard to be taken seriously.

If anything, I think the story is presented very well. The cutscenes are animated nicely and all the voice actors do a really good job with their characters, Liam ‘O’Brian especially does a great job as Infinite and really gives him an intimidating presence. But unfortunately, those well-done elements can’t do anything to save a story that feels rushed and undercooked.

*spoilers end here*

But while the story is mostly underwhelming and doesn’t leave any impact, that can be easily ignored. After all, you can just skip all the cutscenes if you want. The reason most people would buy a game like this would be because of it’s gameplay. So, how does that hold up?

Well regrettably, the gameplay holds up about as well as the story.

There are 3 unique gameplay styles that Sonic Forces focuses on.

Firstly, there’s the Modern Sonic gameplay that utilises the boost gameplay of Sonic Unleashed, Colours and Generations. Sonic has most of the moves he that he had in those games (Except the drift oddly) so anyone who’s played those games before will feel at home here. He can still homing attack enemies, stomp in mid-air to gain his footing as well as slide to avoid hazards (Though weirdly it’s never utilised effectively at all in the game), he still collects rings and dies if he gets hit without any and of course, he can still use the boost. When you have enough energy in your boost gauge gained by collecting capsules or defeating enemies, pressing and holding the Y button will allow Sonic to rocket forward at top speed and defeat any enemy he collides with. This gameplay style is hand down the most fun in the entire game. It can be very exhilarating watching Sonic speed through stages as fast as he possibly can, and his stages can be very addictive to speed-run. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect though, particularly when the stages shift to a 2D perspective. Because Sonic’s gameplay style is all about going as fast as possible, during 2D sections where methodical and slow platforming is more common, the fast, thrilling pace of a stage can grind to a halt. The controls in the 2D sections are also much worse than the 3D sections’ controls, which combined with stiff platforming sections can lead to many instances of seemingly unfair deaths that completely dissolve any fun you might have been having. Overall though, Modern Sonic’s gameplay is passable. It’s a significant step down from other games in the series for reasons that I’ll state later, but his general control and mechanics are enjoyable to play around with.

Secondly, there’s the Custom Character gameplay where you play as your own created character using gadgets and weapons to complete a stage rather than using the boost. Out of everything that was revealed about this game before it came out, the custom character was the one element that intrigued me the most. The idea of creating your own character to run around stages and interact with Sonic and his friends seemed like an interesting concept that none of the games have done before. But while the concept is very intriguing, the execution is very mixed. On one hand, the customisation of the Avatar character itself is very in-depth and has a lot of detail put into it. You can choose between many species of animal for your Avatar to be such as a Cat, Dog, Bird etc. and each species gives you a new ability that could prove very useful during a stage including the Bird giving you a double-jump and the Cat being able to hold on to more rings after being hit. You can also unlock tons of different clothing items for the avatar by completing stages and certain missions to truly make your character feel unique to you or just to make them look absolutely ridiculous (You can make the Avatar wear Crocs for crying out loud).

On the other hand, actually playing as the Custom character can be a complete chore. The Custom Character controls very similarly to Modern Sonic with stages designed in a similar way as well with both 3D and 2D sections. As stated before though, the custom hero doesn’t have the boost. Instead, they have both the grappling hook and various “wispons”. The grappling hook allows the Custom Hero to homing attack enemies just like Modern Sonic, grants them the ability to swing on certain grapple points to bypass bottomless pits and other parts of the level and lets them do elaborate quick time sequences that despite looking cool, don’t require much input from the player. There are also many “wispons” for the Custom Hero to unlock and equip that they can use during a stage to destroy enemies, which can be done in many different ways depending on what weapon you equip. In addition to that, different wispons give you different special abilities that can occasionally be activated by collecting wisp capsules, which can be used to find secret paths for a faster time or to collect more rings. So in terms of what the Custom character can do, they seem to be very varied and versatile.

However, the main problem with the Avatar’s gameplay is the control. Whether you’re going from left to right in a 2D area or running in a straight line in 3D, the Avatar always feels incredibly stiff to control which can lead to many gameplay mistakes that are the fault of the game and not you, such as running straight into enemies without being able to stop yourself in time, or jumping and not being to correct yourself leading to you falling into a pit and dying. Because of this, no matter how much variety the gameplay itself has, it makes every stage feel tiring and as if you’re constantly fighting for control of your character.

Lastly, there’s Classic Sonic. Logically, Classic Sonic should be the best gameplay style out of them all right? After all, it’s the style that started Sonic off and the one most people are familiar with. Plus, he can pretty much do everything he could do in the classic Mega Drive games; he can jump, spin dash and now he can even use the ‘drop-dash’, a move introduced in the recent Sonic Mania that was incredibly fun to use in that game. Does that mean that Classic Sonic’s gameplay is fun?

No.

Classic Sonic is, without a shadow of doubt, the worst part of this game. And the main reason for this is (once again) his control. Not only does he feel really clunky to control much like every other character in the game, he has barely any momentum or weight to any of the platforming he performs. The Classic Sonic games understood that momentum was one of the main things that made 2D Sonic so fun. It felt incredible to curl up into a ball while running down a hill, then zooming up the hill to send you flying into the air. The physics in Sonic Forces on the other hand, never allow for any moments like that. If sonic runs down a hill, his speed won’t increase any more than how it was when he was running normally, which can be annoying as sometimes the game’s level design will assume that sonic CAN gain momentum, leading to instances where sonic is running down a hill only for him to not have enough speed to make it up a ramp at the bottom.  His jumps also feel especially heavy meaning you may have trouble just trying to simply jump on enemies to kill them! His entire part of the game feels the most rushed out of everything and adding that the fact he has no relevance in the story, it feels as though SEGA just wanted him in the game for brand recognition to make the game sell better without thinking about if it would fit in the game at all.

But with the stages Classic Sonic runs through, another massive issue with the game rears its head. The level design is awful in this game no matter which character you’re playing as. If you aren’t running in straight line or going through sequences that the player has barely any input in, you’re falling to your death from awkward platforming sections or not being able avoid attacks and hazards due to the terrible controls. And even when a stage has tolerable design that could make for a fun experience, it ends before it can leave a significant impact. Most of the levels in Sonic Forces can be completed in a little over a minute, leading a majority of the competently designed stages to end up being completely forgettable.

Even the boss fights, which can be the best part of a lot of other Sonic games, feel uncommonly lacklustre here. No matter which one you’re fighting whether it be the first boss or the final boss, none of them have any scale or impactfulness that would make them memorable. Instead, most of them have repetitive attacks that can be easily dodged, require using the same move repeatedly to defeat them or at certain times take way longer than they reasonably should. One boss towards the end of game is especially notable as they are a complete copy of a previous boss fight, which shows even further that SEGA didn’t care about this game’s design and just rushed it out to meet a deadline.

The game’s presentation is also something I have very mixed feels on. On one side, the game does have a clear and crisp look to it as well as great colouring and lighting. The game runs at 60fps on the Xbox One and PS4 versions, but runs at 30fps for the Nintendo Switch and while some may be turned off from that, I believe it’s a nice compromise for being able to take the game where ever you want. The soundtrack is also (as usual) bloody great. Not only is it filled with many old songs that may make fans of the Sonic Adventure games grin with delight, it has tons of brilliant new songs that can fit the situation well. The music tracks for the Custom character’s stages in particular are outstanding, as it combines upbeat techno rave music with some of the cheesiest vocals that Sonic has had in a while. On the other side, while the presentation is serviceable, the main issue with it is the overall lack of polish and detail. Textures are much less well refined and thorough as previous games, making a lot of the environments look bland with no personality. Certain other details that are usually in every other Sonic game are also strangely absent here, including Sonic’s impatient idle animation which has been a staple of the series from the beginning! And even though the soundtrack is mostly great, the music tracks for the Classic Sonic stages are horrendous. They try to make the music sound like it’s coming from an original Mega Drive, which is a fun novelty, but it makes the songs sounds astonishingly annoying very quickly.

Lastly, I’m not a fan of what themes they chose for the stages in this game. Most of the stages are split into different specific locations that you return to again and again throughout the game, but the locations themselves are very uninspired. You’re either running through bland looking cities or forests that don’t have any specific gimmicks unique enough to make them memorable, or you’re just playing through stages that have already been used an absurdly large amount of times in other Sonic games such as Green Hill or Chemical Plant.

Overall, Sonic Forces is a mixed bag. While there are a lot of things this game does well such as the soundtrack, most of Modern Sonic’s gameplay as well as the customisation and concept of your Custom hero, the rest of it feels dreadfully muted and pressed for time. When the level design isn’t being frustrating and awkward, it’s making the level end way too fast. When the story isn’t trying to take itself too seriously, it’s skipping over important details that would’ve made the it more interesting or completely forgetting certain characters exist. When the controls aren’t being stiff, they’re flying you into a pit or an obstacle you had no intention of hitting. It is the definition of a mess.

And the fact this game has as many flaws as it does, goes to show how much SEGA and Sonic Team don’t really care about the quality of Sonic games anymore. The lack of polish, detail and any kind of effort put into the gameplay, story or presentation could show that they’re just tired with the series. If Sonic Team had more time to develop the game or if different people who were more passionate for the series developed this game instead (such as the developers for Sonic Mania), then maybe the game could’ve been better and held up with the legacy of other great Sonic games.

But as it is, Sonic Forces ironically out of all the other recent games in the series, feels the most forced.

I give Sonic Forces a 5.5 out of 10.

Written by Bill Fry

The image above does not belong to me or the blog and can be sourced from:

https://www.sonicthehedgehog.com/sonic-forces