Sonic Frontiers - Review Roundup.

[azoo]

Then just remove the Power Boost; it's not really necessary in the first place. Maybe Super Sonic can have it if he's playable in the Open Zones next time.

[Kuzu]

Power boost is the only time I actually liked running in the open world...

[azoo]

That's probably because it's easier to retain your speed and jump distance when you have it, I get it. Alternatively, just fix the momentum issues and movement elsewhere becomes just as fun, if not moreso. I can vouch for that after playing hours of those physics mods released recently. They're a bit too OP, but they certainly highlight why building inertia down slopes and transferring speed into leaps makes a difference to the game feel.

[ZinogreVolt]

Just now, Kuzu said:

Power boost is the only time I actually liked running in the open world...

I think that says more about how much Sonic's base moveset needs to be more engaging to use, rather than how fun the Power Boost was.

That aside, I think the map sizes are fine. None of them were really all that big.

[azoo]

If more of the stages were around 1/2 the size of Ares (or 3/4s the size of Kronos), that'd be fine by me. Sure, it'd be less ground to cover and less time spent on them, but I think it'd be much smarter to transfer that manpower into more Zones and tighter world design.

And even if a Zone remained empty and spread-out, add in more objectives and NPCs to that size of map and you're already making a game with much more bang for your buck than Frontiers ever gives you. 

[Kuzu]

7 minutes ago, azoo said:

That's probably because it's easier to retain your speed and jump distance when you have it, I get it. Alternatively, just fix the momentum issues and movement elsewhere becomes just as fun, if not moreso. I can vouch for that after playing hours of those physics mods released recently. They're a bit too OP, but they certainly highlight why building inertia down slopes and transferring speed into leaps makes a difference to the game feel.

That's true, I probably wouldn't mind the removal of the Power Boost if Sonic's controls were better elsewhere. 

[Razule]

As long as the electric boost becomes the default effect

[The Deleter]

Update on staff size, as I saw this while scrolling the TL

Obviously a lot of that is contracted work, (similar to BotW and MonolithSoft's role) while the core team is likely in the range of what Iizuka described, but it's worth pointing out

[Sega DogTagz]

Wouldn't it make more sense to nix one of the extra islands and pouring that dev time into what left over, then making the islands any smaller? 3/4 fully fleshed out playgrounds as opposed to 5 partially finished ones?

 

The idea of making Sonic slower as an excuse to put objectives closer together sounds like cutting off the nose to spite the face.

[The Deleter]

ANOTHER update on Sonic Team staffing

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

13 minutes ago, The Deleter said:

ANOTHER update on Sonic Team staffing

Well damn. It might actually be happening. 

[Kuzu]

1 hour ago, The Deleter said:

ANOTHER update on Sonic Team staffing

This is your chance @azoo

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Yes. And all it takes is moving to Japan.

[Jango]

2 hours ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

Yes. And all it takes is moving to Japan.

Remote work baby

[azoo]

Be right back, downloading Duolingo.

[Soniman]

He liked the characterization and some of the story (not the presentation) but not really anything else.

[Zoomzeta]

12 hours ago, The Deleter said:

Update on staff size, as I saw this while scrolling the TL

Obviously a lot of that is contracted work, (similar to BotW and MonolithSoft's role) while the core team is likely in the range of what Iizuka described, but it's worth pointing out

So how much of the the overall team make this game? How much of it is contracted? Do the ending credits not indicate this in any capacity? 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Gamingbolt dropped their review of Sonic Frontiers. Another positive one. They find the game enjoyably fun despite some jank and room for improvement.

A score of 8/10.

https://gamingbolt.com/sonic-frontiers-review-more-please

Quote

THE GOOD: Movement in the game feels like a joy; the five islands are incredibly well designed speed platforming playgrounds, that are incredibly satisfying to explore and traverse; great music; the world is beautiful and full of things to do; an incredible sense of ambition.

THE BAD: A general degree of jank and lack of polish; extremely bad pop-in, and art style that can often feel chaotic; very varying quality when it comes to all the various things the game has you do; the linear Cyber Space levels are really underwhelming.

 

[The Deleter]

8 minutes ago, Zoomzeta said:

So how much of the the overall team make this game? How much of it is contracted? Do the ending credits not indicate this in any capacity? 

They do not, largely because being contracted to work on a game does not determine how much of the game you work on. You can be a contracted 3D modeler and work the same amount of hours on the game as the internal artists would; the only difference is that you are brought on for the single project, rather than hired by the company full time for all future projects. It's very common for large scale game production.

[Zoomzeta]

16 hours ago, Polkadi~☆ said:

That Sonic Frontiers only had about 60 developers working on the game makes another thing surrounding the game funny to me.

Another SEGA open world game was being developed since 2017, before finally releasing last year. Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis is extremely disappointing, and the updates can't come soon enough to bring players back. The game is being serviced with a small team. But how can that be, a small team working on this big, anticipated online RPG? When Sonic Frontiers gameplay was finally revealed, PSO2 players pointed to that game for poaching PSO2 devs to work on the game, that NGS was no more than a tech demo for Sonic, that Sonic Frontiers was borrowing NGS assets or the other way around, whatever the hell excuses people made.

I mean, it was all very obviously and provably wrong. And with the credits of both games, shared no names on the dev team.

Both games have an underwhelming amount of manpower for the scope of their games, and both clearly weren't entirely finished yet. I mean, difference is that I like playing Frontiers, but it tells me that SEGA had two dev teams, independent of each other, unable to make an open world game, and has fans complaining about the development behind both games because they... look similar.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, something about SEGA games not having enough manpower on their dev teams to make the games that SEGA wants to sell.

I wouldn't call New Genesis really disappointing, especially when you compare it to other games that come and flounder with a live service model (Though that may be partially cause they made the smart decision to have it coexist with the original PSO2, so if the latter wasn't your cup of tea, you could go back to the latter, back and forth. And it's not like they haven't regularly updated the former with substantial updates since it launched, and they've been very transparent about their plans, usually managing to hit their goals, something other live-service games generally struggle with).

3 minutes ago, The Deleter said:

They do not, largely because being contracted to work on a game does not determine how much of the game you work on. You can be a contracted 3D modeler and work the same amount of hours on the game as the internal artists would; the only difference is that you are brought on for the single project, rather than hired by the company full time for all future projects. It's very common for large scale game production.

What about companies where contractors work at? Don't they get credited? And how do the number of devs (Not just programmers) stack with this game vs that of other dev teams that have worked on open world(ish) games? 

Edited November 16, 2022 by Zoomzeta

[The Deleter]

29 minutes ago, Zoomzeta said:

What about companies where contractors work at? Don't they get credited? And how do the number of devs (Not just programmers) stack with this game vs that of other dev teams that have worked on open world(ish) games? 

The only case of Frontiers' credits not listing individual credits under a company name, but still specifying that they were brought on from a specific company, are the credits where there is parentheses next to their credit containing the company they represent. There aren't very many instances of it though.

Full list of Frontiers' staff here: https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Sonic_Frontiers/Staff

[SonicLegends]

The game is really in a odd place, but yeah somehow not surprised it's essentially the modern Sonic Unleashed of mix reception aside with Sonic fans really liking it and even those that haven't played one since Adventure I'm noticing. The game at its lowest strikes me as a 7, but at its highest a 8.

[JezMM]

I'm a bit late to the party but I did want to comment on the whole Metacritic/Dunkey thing and that massive argument that spiralled a few pages back from someone saying the review bombing was putting the score "where it should be".  (The argument went on so long I did start to skim a bit so apologies if someone already argued this point.)

Not that I ever really use Metacritic for anything close to resembling gospel on a game, but I feel like more often than not, the critic score is what you look at if you want to know what the general populace is likely to think, and the user score is what you look at if you want to know what fans of the series/genre think?

Like, if you're passionate enough to go to Metacritic and write a review, you're probably a fan.  This goes both ways as well, not just users reviewing higher than critics. For example, messes like the GTA Trilogy which has a 46 by critics and a 0.6 by users.  An average player who maybe briefly played the original games once and moved on or never played them at all and just wants "a GTA" to play, will probably notice something is off but might still manage to have a sort of okay time with it and will just play it because it's killing time, sounds like a 4/10 game.  Meanwhile a fan, someone who played the original games more than once and really cares and notices all the ways they fucked it up.  To bring it back to Sonic, Sonic Colours Ultimate has a 74 critic, 56 user score.  Most players are getting pretty much the same experience as the original game, a solid little platformer.  Fans are getting a butchered version of the original, because they actually care about all the stuff that got messed up.

And to bring it back to Frontiers, critics have an okay to decent time with the game because they're just judging it as it stands for the most part.  The user score, mostly provided by fans who care enough about Sonic to buy it day 1, are going to rate it higher because they're comparing it to all the recent missteps of the series and are really coming towards it with an attitude of goodwill.  Neither score is necessarily wrong in their respective scenarios.

It's silly to use the site as gospel for a game's reception since the data used will always be flawed to some degree, only ever giving a general idea at best.  But the idea that one score is lying if the two don't match is incredibly extra silly.

[Zoomzeta]

5 hours ago, JezMM said:

I'm a bit late to the party but I did want to comment on the whole Metacritic/Dunkey thing and that massive argument that spiralled a few pages back from someone saying the review bombing was putting the score "where it should be".  (The argument went on so long I did start to skim a bit so apologies if someone already argued this point.)

Not that I ever really use Metacritic for anything close to resembling gospel on a game, but I feel like more often than not, the critic score is what you look at if you want to know what the general populace is likely to think, and the user score is what you look at if you want to know what fans of the series/genre think?

Like, if you're passionate enough to go to Metacritic and write a review, you're probably a fan.  This goes both ways as well, not just users reviewing higher than critics. For example, messes like the GTA Trilogy which has a 46 by critics and a 0.6 by users.  An average player who maybe briefly played the original games once and moved on or never played them at all and just wants "a GTA" to play, will probably notice something is off but might still manage to have a sort of okay time with it and will just play it because it's killing time, sounds like a 4/10 game.  Meanwhile a fan, someone who played the original games more than once and really cares and notices all the ways they fucked it up.  To bring it back to Sonic, Sonic Colours Ultimate has a 74 critic, 56 user score.  Most players are getting pretty much the same experience as the original game, a solid little platformer.  Fans are getting a butchered version of the original, because they actually care about all the stuff that got messed up.

And to bring it back to Frontiers, critics have an okay to decent time with the game because they're just judging it as it stands for the most part.  The user score, mostly provided by fans who care enough about Sonic to buy it day 1, are going to rate it higher because they're comparing it to all the recent missteps of the series and are really coming towards it with an attitude of goodwill.  Neither score is necessarily wrong in their respective scenarios.

It's silly to use the site as gospel for a game's reception since the data used will always be flawed to some degree, only ever giving a general idea at best.  But the idea that one score is lying if the two don't match is incredibly extra silly.

At the end of the day, everyone has different opinions about the things they like or dislike. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Can I just say that, after Dunkey, you just know Yahtzee is gonna rip this game to shreds in his Zero Punctuation.

I mean, it’s expected, but it still needs to be said.