IGN Full Sonic Frontiers 7 Minute Gameplay Video

[Shiny Gems]

14 minutes ago, JezMM said:

 

Okay on second thought I have some mild concern.

Well, this obviously wasn't the final build, plus the near final build, final build or whatever might release in late Summer, as someone else has said before. Sorry if this seems redundant, but I wanted to point out the late summer thing,

[DaBigJ]

Just now, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

I mean,  only one person seems to be really doing that here so...we pretty much already crossed that threshold.

I know. I'm just...really sick of it lol

[Eurisko]

I felt like I was watching a REALLY big hub world from Unleashed.

There was a ton of Pop-up graphics which I expect is to do with it being an early build. 
 

Hard to make a call this early. What we need is someone to give us a synopsis of what this game is all about other than its ‘Open World’. I feel as a fanbase we are tad confused and well out of the way of what we know and are used to. 

Looks pretty though 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Not sure what to think, honestly. There were a lot of little confusing things, like Sonic going from a slow climb to a wallrun (with blue energy?) or the weird grounded homing attack that make me wonder what exactly the rest of this game is going to have you do. I was really hoping to get a look at the "cyberspace levels" as I kind of figured "boost but open-world" was what the overworld was like anyway, but instead we just have this little playground. I feel like unless the original leak lied about this one very specific thing, there's still too much missing for me to really judge.

Pop-in's bad though, woof. No defense for that.

[JezMM]

30 minutes ago, MightyGems said:

Well, this obviously wasn't the final build, plus the near final build, final build or whatever might release in late Summer, as someone else has said before. Sorry if this seems redundant, but I wanted to point out the late summer thing,

Yeah I was overplaying my dramatic response for humour, and I'm well aware that the footage we see is often prepared weeks or months in advance, but it's still a worry when there are plenty of other games out there that manage to look much less "in-progress" under the same conditions/timeframes than this is.

[Shiny Gems]

Just now, JezMM said:

Yeah I was overplaying my dramatic response for humour, and I'm well aware that the footage we see is often prepared weeks or months in advance, but it's still a worry when there are plenty of other games out there that manage to look much less "in-progress" under the same conditions/timeframes than this is.

*Gives an embarrassed look* My bad.

I have to admit on the rest of what you said though, even I have my concerns as well, mostly in regards of the animations.

[Dreadknux]

Alright, I spent the last few hours doing work and doing my 'face' for the social medias, now let's get down to brass tacks. I'm still cautiously optimistic about the whole thing, after having seen it (I wasn't lying on Twitter or anything), but there are a few things that give me pause.

In terms of what can be done re: polish, it'd be great to see the open... "world"... be a little more populated. I'm putting this down to the fact that it's first gameplay and things are still in WIP condition, so I'm not too worried about stuff not getting finished off in the next couple months. Having said that, the Sonic Team have been working on this for years right, I'd have thought we'd see something a bit more definitive than what appears to be a more advanced proof of concept.

I hope the combat (which we only saw really in yesterday's video) can be tightened up a little, I liked the idea of something a bit more fully-formed than usual (although I don't want it to be close to Unleashed's Werehog mode, just light combat will do). It's challenging because doing that sort of thing has to be done in a way that won't break Sonic's flow, and I'm not sure how Sonic Team can square that circle.

As for the stuff that kinda distresses me that I know won't get sorted out (because it isn't part of this particular game's design)... I agree on the lack of physics-based platforming, and the return to Modern Sonic (re: Forces era) action gameplay. There was a lot of opportunity here to do huge geometric arenas that Sonic could roll and pinball around... I guess we'll have to put that on the back burner for the next game.

I also am not sure about the actual art design of the world around Sonic. I get that it's meant to be some mysterious new world (maybe alternate dimension? I dunno), but like... I'd have killed to see some iconic Sonic-style world design. Checkered hills, loop-de-loops, Badniks, all that good stuff. I know it's possible in a 3D space, but it destroys me that the game might not 'look' like a Sonic game. I feel like Sonic Team saw the relative failure of Sonic Lost World and thought 'well, it was the art style that was the problem'. ...... nooo it wasn't lol.

BUT. I do like the idea of Sonic Team finally doing a multi-directional world with Sonic, it's long overdue. And while the Forces-era action gameplay mix is a little stale, I do like that they did bring back the entire kitchen sink with it (wall running, sidestepping, boost, homing attack). It's nice and familiar in that sense. The new looping ability (I will never ever call it 'Spin Cycle', that is dumb and it makes me think of washing machines) seems pretty nifty too, if the action is pretty easy to use.

And you know, the story might be good. Hopefully it means Sonic ends up running into a few CASTs from Phantasy Star Online 2 innit.

[Shiny Gems]

2 minutes ago, Dreadknux said:

Alright, I spent the last few hours doing work and doing my 'face' for the social medias, now let's get down to brass tacks. I'm still cautiously optimistic about the whole thing, after having seen it (I wasn't lying on Twitter or anything), but there are a few things that give me pause.

In terms of what can be done re: polish, it'd be great to see the open... "world"... be a little more populated. I'm putting this down to the fact that it's first gameplay and things are still in WIP condition, so I'm not too worried about stuff not getting finished off in the next couple months. Having said that, the Sonic Team have been working on this for years right, I'd have thought we'd see something a bit more definitive than what appears to be a more advanced proof of concept.

I hope the combat (which we only saw really in yesterday's video) can be tightened up a little, I liked the idea of something a bit more fully-formed than usual (although I don't want it to be close to Unleashed's Werehog mode, just light combat will do). It's challenging because doing that sort of thing has to be done in a way that won't break Sonic's flow, and I'm not sure how Sonic Team can square that circle.

As for the stuff that kinda distresses me that I know won't get sorted out (because it isn't part of this particular game's design)... I agree on the lack of physics-based platforming, and the return to Modern Sonic (re: Forces era) action gameplay. There was a lot of opportunity here to do huge geometric arenas that Sonic could roll and pinball around... I guess we'll have to put that on the back burner for the next game.

I also am not sure about the actual art design of the world around Sonic. I get that it's meant to be some mysterious new world (maybe alternate dimension? I dunno), but like... I'd have killed to see some iconic Sonic-style world design. Checkered hills, loop-de-loops, Badniks, all that good stuff. I know it's possible in a 3D space, but it destroys me that the game might not 'look' like a Sonic game. I feel like Sonic Team saw the relative failure of Sonic Lost World and thought 'well, it was the art style that was the problem'. ...... nooo it wasn't lol.

I will have to admit; as excited as I am for this game, I am kind of bummed out that there is no rolling here in this game.

[Zadent]

I’m trying to figure out. There’s 2 spots in the footage that *looks* like he’s rolling? It doesn’t look like he jumps for a quick homing attack, but it’s also only toward springs. Grounded homing attack? Both times I saw the spin was with the tower at the beginning, and then in the river, it looked like he dashed straight to the spring. I’m confused on that.

[Diogenes]

3 minutes ago, Zadent said:

I’m trying to figure out. There’s 2 spots in the footage that *looks* like he’s rolling? It doesn’t look like he jumps for a quick homing attack, but it’s also only toward springs. Grounded homing attack?

Most likely, yes. Makes sense, given the focus on combat, that they wouldn't require you to jump to initiate your main attack.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

8 minutes ago, Dreadknux said:

I also am not sure about the actual art design of the world around Sonic. I get that it's meant to be some mysterious new world (maybe alternate dimension? I dunno), but like... I'd have killed to see some iconic Sonic-style world design. Checkered hills, loop-de-loops, Badniks, all that good stuff. I know it's possible in a 3D space, but it destroys me that the game might not 'look' like a Sonic game. I feel like Sonic Team saw the relative failure of Sonic Lost World and thought 'well, it was the art style that was the problem'. ...... nooo it wasn't lol.

Eh, I have to disagree there, a little. Not that it's the biggest of Lost World's problems - it ain't, but me personally, I've grown to dislike the visual style of the series for a decent chunk of time. I hated how Lost World and Forces went for this weird, cubical style, that went for pretty generic locales (Snow world, Sky World, Lava world, etc). You had like the one or two occasionally interesting levels in LW, like the Casino, or the Desert world, but it was largely the same, and that difference shows when it comes to Forces' original locations, and the revamped locations (Although even GHZ got hit a fair bit by the weird cube like design of the levels).

Mania was the obvious exception amongst them, since it was a different team, returning to the Mega Drive era's unique designs, like Studiopolis and Press Garden.

I do agree that I want to see new and more locales for Frontiers, and I really do want to see more Sonic elements in there too, but I certainly don't want to go back to LW and Forces' uninspired as hell level ideas, and weird cube design for Sonic's world. If nothing else, I'm at least gonna wait til we get to see more areas of the world, but I do have to agree in part that LW and Forces' artstyle really did not help matters much at all. I don't want it going fully realistic, like we have here, but I also don't want to go back to the uninspired cartoony stuff we had in LW either. 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Stuff like this has me asking questions:

How does this work? It looks like something Sonic would wallrun up, but there's a big gap in between. So how do you jump from one part to the next without flying off?

[Diogenes]

3 minutes ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

How does this work? It looks like something Sonic would wallrun up, but there's a big gap in between. So how do you jump from one part to the next without flying off?

Maybe running up the first part gives you enough air to reach the next part. The first wallrun up the tower gives him a pretty decent burst of speed once he latches on. Looks like it might redirect an air boost upwards.

[PickleBrows]

11 minutes ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

How does this work? It looks like something Sonic would wallrun up, but there's a big gap in between. So how do you jump from one part to the next without flying off?

We saw that Sonic can latch onto walls to climb up them.

I think you might jump and latch onto the first tile and it'll then rise up to form a connected runway for you to run up to the platform.

[Indigo Rush]

You probably have to solve some Zelda puzzle to fill it in

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Just now, Indigo Rush said:

You probably have to solve some Zelda puzzle to fill it in

Maybe? Doesn't really look like there's anything else over there.

2 minutes ago, PickleBrows said:

We saw that Sonic can latch onto walls to climb up them.

I think you might jump and latch onto the first tile and it'll then rise up to form a connected runway for you to run up to the platform.

That seems...I guess more likely, but it would be weird for a wall that looks nigh-identical to the others to have that unique behavior.
I don't think it's the wall climb's momentum, either way. Not only do the ones we see earlier not give him nearly enough height, it uses a different animation that I'm sure is probably the equivalent of Lost World's ledge-grab, and you can't really fling yourself upward with that. Maybe if you can boost while climbing? I dunno.

[Dreadknux]

16 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Eh, I have to disagree there, a little. Not that it's the biggest of Lost World's problems - it ain't, but me personally, I've grown to dislike the visual style of the series for a decent chunk of time. I hated how Lost World and Forces went for this weird, cubical style, that went for pretty generic locales (Snow world, Sky World, Lava world, etc). You had like the one or two occasionally interesting levels in LW, like the Casino, or the Desert world, but it was largely the same, and that difference shows when it comes to Forces' original locations, and the revamped locations (Although even GHZ got hit a fair bit by the weird cube like design of the levels).

Mania was the obvious exception amongst them, since it was a different team, returning to the Mega Drive era's unique designs, like Studiopolis and Press Garden.

I do agree that I want to see new and more locales for Frontiers, and I really do want to see more Sonic elements in there too, but I certainly don't want to go back to LW and Forces' uninspired as hell level ideas, and weird cube design for Sonic's world. If nothing else, I'm at least gonna wait til we get to see more areas of the world, but I do have to agree in part that LW and Forces' artstyle really did not help matters much at all. I don't want it going fully realistic, like we have here, but I also don't want to go back to the uninspired cartoony stuff we had in LW either. 

I get you… I originally wanted to say “it hurts that besides Generations and Colours the last game that really had that iconic Sonic arty vibe was Heroes and that was nearly 20 years ago!”

But then I remembered Lost World existed and I wanted to just cover my bases in case anyone went “well actually Lost World was colourful too”. I mean, yeah it was but I can’t remember a damn thing about it.

Anyway you know my point. Art approach/style isn’t the problem (I wouldn’t put Lost World and Forces in the same bracket though, I’m talking strictly in terms of tone here).

[Scar]

Looks okay.

Running around looks fun, but I need to get my hands on it to figure out how much of it is automated.

The only thing that gives me hope is that Sonic running over some rough terrain looks a bit janky, which is good because it means it isn't scripted. He can run on walls without doing the dumb button-prompt bullshit in Lost World. The jogging speed looks fast and fluid and you have a pseudo-boost to go really fast to cover large stretches of terrain more quickly. That's all fine. Where's the rolling? Even if rolling doesn't exist, is it possible to run up a steep incline and time a jump to get some nice air-time? Like is it actually based on physics?

I don't really care if the actual game itself is a bit mediocre, because empty or button mashy. It'll probably have some entertainment value. However, I'm more interested in if the movement/gameplay engine has the potential to be refined into an open, but more traditional platformer Sonic game.

The fundamentals are key. Is Sonic fun to control?

[StaticMania]

2 minutes ago, Scar said:

He can run on walls without doing the dumb button-prompt bullshit in Lost World.

You mean the run button?

That wasn't a prompt, it was automatic.

Just speaking visually, there's no difference here.

[Scar]

Just now, StaticMania said:

You mean the run button?

That wasn't a prompt, it was automatic.

Just speaking visually, there's no difference here.

I meant the "parkour". 

The difference between the run button in LW and here, is that base Sonic is actually still fast, "boost" is just a lot faster. LW was different shades of slow imo.

[TSS Classic Comment Bot]

Posted By: James

Who chose this footage? Like a major element of your game is the combat, and you don't show it. A major element of your game are these unleashed-esque cyberspace levels, and you don't show it. A major element of your game is the minimalist story with a focus on the new female character, and you don't show it. Of course people are saying it looks like a tech demo, all you did was traverse the environment. I hope Sonic gets more movement abilities and they just dont want to spoil us on late game, but this was poor footage choice.

[Spooky Mulder]

If they're gonna rip off BOTW, maybe they'll rip off Mario Odyssey too and we'll get Green Hill Zone as a post game island.

[Scar]

3 hours ago, azoo said:

Gameplay it doesn't look that bad. Controls seem a little clunky and Forces/LW-esque but there's proper acceleration in Sonic's movement. Doing tricks, big leaps with jump dashes, and the slower run speed + nerfed boost seems pretty nice.

HORRIBLE optimization though. Holy fucking shit, the game is running like trash. Stuff spawning just yards ahead of you, LOD models loading in just feet from you, the framerate constantly dipping. If this is on PS5/SeriesX then the performance is enough to laugh out of the room. Wow. lmao

The visuals are definitely very unoptimised.

It looks strangely better and worse than Unleashed. Worse in that it doesn't have the vibrant pop and style that Unleashed had, and seems to still have muddy textures. Better in that its crisp and isn't framerate isn't Microsoft PowerPoint. In many ways the crispness kinda reveals just how muddy the textures are.

I honestly think the biggest mistake is putting this game on the switch. Because if it was on the PS5 and Xbox Series only, it would at least have benefited from fast texture streaming and shit, but oh well.

Hopefully the iron out the visual crap by release

 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

2 minutes ago, Scar said:

I honestly think the biggest mistake is putting this game on the switch. Because if it was on the PS5 and Xbox Series only, it would at least have benefited from fast texture streaming and shit, but oh well.

Hopefully the iron out the visual crap by release

It's not an immediate death rattle, by any means - there's been a few games that had some decent performance on older consoles, but properly took advantage of what they can do on the next-gen hardware - the question remains if they'll actually do so or not.

Hard to say because stuff like pop-in, texture streaming and the like, I can somewhat buy as stuff that still needs to get polished up before release. If we get closer to November and we're still seeing that shit, then I'd say there's fair reason to be very concerned at that point. There's zero reason why pop-in should be present on PS5/Series X.

[VO.SUPER]

I understand where all the negativity is coming from, even if I like what I'm seeing. The world could do with more life in places, and extra polish. But well, nothing to do but wait for more. I'm gonna hold out hope that there is more promising material to come.

  

9 minutes ago, Scar said:

The visuals are definitely very unoptimised.

It looks strangely better and worse than Unleashed. Worse in that it doesn't have the vibrant pop and style that Unleashed had, and seems to still have muddy textures. Better in that its crisp and isn't framerate isn't Microsoft PowerPoint. In many ways the crispness kinda reveals just how muddy the textures are.

I honestly think the biggest mistake is putting this game on the switch. Because if it was on the PS5 and Xbox Series only, it would at least have benefited from fast texture streaming and shit, but oh well.

Hopefully the iron out the visual crap by release

 

I mea, the mistake is only on our end. SEGA aren't gonna give up the Nintendo audience. And it's not practical these days to just make an entirely new game on the side for Switch like in the Unleashed days where the difference was HD vs SD, and shelling it out to another dev. And that still took extra resources to do because they had to be on the same page as the main devs.