Sonic Frontiers For Some Reason, This NFT Metaverse Is Ripping Off Sonic Frontiers

[GX -The Spindash-]

As someone who regularly enjoys pointing and laughing at the ever burning trash fire that is Web 3.0, I've seen many attempts at turning the blockchain into a place, either real or virtual. Not a month goes by without me revisiting Dan Olson's wild ride through Decentraland, and you can bet I savored watching Cryptoland's nonsensical IRL island implode.

However, thanks to Kotaku's reporting on the latest Web 3.0 MMO real estate scheme, we have finally found Sonic in the metaverse. And he is a bored ape.

Yes, Otherside looks like yet another bare bones, browser-based, Breath of the Wild wanna-be with bad hitching and few original ideas, but what immediately caught my attention was its transit system, which bears a striking resemblance to... well... perhaps the "FREE ROAM" video below makes it obvious.

While I (among many) am critical of Sonic Frontiers' over-reliance on grind rails, it's generally pretty effective as a system to get around the islands. The game de-prioritizes its fast travel, and having the rail system spawn as you uncover the map is a neat idea. Clearly the Otherside developers agree, since getting around its map leans on slow, Sonic-esque rail grinding challenges. You can really see the degree to which the game uses them in this... unconvincingly enthusiastic YouTuber's playthrough that the Kotaku article linked. (Explicit language)

Beyond that, there's really nothing else of note going on in Otherside. This bizarre preview just seems to let players run around the environment, take photos to fulfill some missions, have the client crash and lose all those completed missions (as occurred in the video), and maybe enter a club if you've spent an ungodly amount of money on an NFT. I look forward to seeing all the fascinating ways this project will fail to deliver on its pitch, just like every other techbro speculative metaverse vision.

Perhaps the only meaningful takeaway here is that Sonic Frontiers has gained enough cultural relevance to join the ranks of being ripped off. You can't huck a stone without hitting a game that wants to be Breath of the Wild these days, but this is the first time I've seen someone try to emulate Frontier's specific flavor of Breath of the Wild that isn't just a full-on fan game.

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[Dreadknux]

This blows my mind. It's so brazen in how soulless a ripoff it totally is. It absolutely deserves ridicule from the Sonic community, lol.

[SadVlad]

 

15 minutes ago, Dreadknux said:

This blows my mind. It's so brazen in how soulless a ripoff it totally is. It absolutely deserves ridicule from the Sonic community, lol.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery

[GX -The Spindash-]

3 hours ago, SadVlad said:

Imitation is the highest form of flattery

And theft is the baseline state of the crypto environment.

[Blue Blood]

10 hours ago, Dreadknux said:

It's so brazen in how soulless a ripoff it totally is.

I mean, to become a crypto bro you have to sell your soul for bitcoin, so this checks out really.

[Rabid-Coot]

Probably could have made a fortune doing 10k sonic recolours.

[Maple Syrup]

SONIC SOMEHOW TURNED INTO AN APE!

AHAHAHAHA

 

[castell-neath]

Are we 100% sure this is a rip off....or is it simply an early build of Frontiers by DIMPS before play testing was done? 

I mean sega did say they wanted to take the blue blur in.a new direction....lol!!! 

[Jango]

The lightining honest to God looks better than Frontiers. Also no pop in

[ChaosCTRL]

They turned NFT’s into a meta verse? And it’s ripping off Sonic? 
 

…I think I’ve had enough internet for today

[GX -The Spindash-]

3 hours ago, Jango said:

The lightining honest to God looks better than Frontiers. Also no pop in

Save for all the other ways that it's performing poorly, like the framerate, the hitching, the languid pace, and the part where the browser-based game crashed, losing the player significant progress.

When you don't care if a game runs like garbage or has anything meaningful to do in it, you can push out the draw distance a bit more.

[SadVlad]

17 hours ago, castell-neath said:

Are we 100% sure this is a rip off....or is it simply an early build of Frontiers by DIMPS before play testing was done? 

I mean sega did say they wanted to take the blue blur in.a new direction....lol!!! 

After watching this, I personally do not think this is a rip off. They definitely aren't stealing anything. The only thing that could be considered as a direct knock off would be the grind rails. Open ended games have been around way before Frontier's, and if everyone recalls, when Frontier's came out it was being scrutinized for ripping off Breath of the Wild. Not my words or opinion in the very least. 

[Dreadknux]

19 hours ago, castell-neath said:

Are we 100% sure this is a rip off....or is it simply an early build of Frontiers by DIMPS before play testing was done? 

More like CHIMPS

[Gruffin]

Ah yes, sandals. Excellent shoes to be wearing while grinding on rails.

What's perplexing about this is how little thematic sense it makes. With them being apes, shouldn't swinging vines come to mind first as a travel method?

[Wittymations]

To be fair, Frontiers is a ripoff of Breath of the Wild. The correlation is very obvious.

That being said, "ripoff" has a negative connotation. A ripoff can be good, that's when we call it an "inspiration." Frontiers, in my opinion, was good. But it was obviously trying to be Sonic's version of Breath of the Wild.

[Indigo Rush]

I'M HERE

STEALING MY IDEAS FROM FRONTIERS!!