I played a bit of Sonic Frontiers earlier this month, and I found it to be as promising as it is confounding. Sonic’s new suite of abilities adds a lot of variety to exploration and combat, and the balance between unfettered speed and platforming precision feels spot on. Sonic feels better than ever to play, but the world he inhabits leaves a lot to be desired. Instead of creating a giant playground for Sonic to run around in, Sega has created a scattered open world filled with individual points of interest that don’t feel connected to one another at all. There’s a Ubisoft sensibility to the way Sonic Frontiers’ world has been designed, which doesn’t represent the qualities that have made Sonic such an enduringly popular series. There’s still a lot of Sonic Frontiers we haven’t seen, but I already can’t help but feel like a crucial component of Sonic’s DNA is missing here.
