Sonic Forces (Switch)

The Sonic series has had two main gameplay styles across its long history as a franchise. The original playstyle, referred to as Classic Sonic, involves Sonic running at high speeds through sidescrolling platforming levels. When Sonic Adventure was released for the Dreamcast, the new style called Modern Sonic was implemented, where Sonic would run around freely but just as fast in a 3D environment. I’ve liked and disliked games done in both styles and I think they can both coexist and continue to serve as the basis for new games, but after the well regarded Sonic Generations that had the two styles intersect, Sonic Team seemed intent on having lightning strike twice with Sonic Forces while also introducing a third style where you play as a character of your own creation. This time around however, it seems the elements didn’t mix together quite as cleanly.

 

Sonic Forces begins with Sonic’s long time nemesis Doctor Eggman defeating Sonic and conquering the entire planet thanks to his new ally Infinite, a mysterious new adversary who seems to be able to call on other foes from Sonic’s past. Sadly, you don’t fight the more interesting half of those returning antagonists and we don’t ever learn too much about Infinite either. What we do find out in the DLC “Episode Shadow” is certainly underwhelming and surprisingly basic considering how powerful and menacing he appears to be in the main story. Still, starting from an absolute point of failure did seem like a cool way to get going, the game using Sonic’s defeat as a way of setting up the character the player creates to join other long-time Sonic side characters in fighting back against this new evil empire. Customizing your character starts off rather simple, you choosing one of six somewhat similar humanoid animals as a base, each one having different special traits that are interesting but not drastic enough to make you feel you have to play as any one creature. After choosing the color and a few visual traits, your character enters the story mostly naked and a bit odd looking beside the characters who already existed in the Sonic franchise, but the game does quickly begin laying on the new outfit pieces as soon as you begin playing the actual game. Every level will reward you with new clothing and accessories for your created character upon completion, with the game catering the clothing on offer to every kind of player. If you want to make your character look as cool, cute, or goofy as possible, Sonic Forces has you covered, but it is a bit of a shame your costuming is delayed by the need to unlock the clothing. Thankfully, the game positively showers you in them to make up for this.

Training up this new hero to replace Sonic seems like the angle this game is going for… for all of four levels. Before you’ve even really begun to get a feel for the custom character’s different take on Modern Sonic’s gameplay, two Sonics insert themselves into the story again, Classic Sonic appearing for no real reason and Modern Sonic quickly popping back in to steal the spotlight. From here, things get a bit muddy. You’re still working towards taking down Eggman and Infinite, but the game can’t seem to manage its attention to well, leading to pace-breaking events to crowbar in a character it feels it might be neglecting. Unfortunately, this sloppy management means things are oddly skewed, the custom character having to fight for attention as Modern Sonic hogs the spotlight while Classic Sonic makes somewhat random and mostly pointless appearances to please fans of the old style of gameplay. The story is very weak because of this, but it never seemed like it was trying to do too much more than having a group of heroes take down the bad guys, so it ends up just being a poorly made frame for the action rather than something potentially interesting on its own.

 

The action itself mostly does about what you’d expect from a Sonic game and nothing more. Run through levels, bounce on robot baddies to break them, and collect rings to serve as your health, dropping them all if you get hit but always able to survive so long as you have at least one ring on your person and you didn’t drop into a pit. Besides some somewhat rigid controls when moving at high speeds in Modern Sonic stages or jumping during sidescrolling portions, everything works about as well as it needs to. All three characters can build up the speed the series is known for even if the levels aren’t often designed the best to help them sustain it. The main issue with the level design isn’t really the layout though so much as how abruptly most stages end. I do realize this is a game that emphasizes speed, but other Sonic games had gradually escalating designs to better ease you towards the conclusion of the stages. Stage ends in Sonic Forces feel more like suddenly slamming against a wall as the game doesn’t seem to know how to wrap things up very well. It doesn’t help that many stages are peppered with cinematic moments where the player isn’t in control of any of the action, the game just showing them pulling of an awesome move without getting them involved in it. This isn’t new to Sonic at all, but usually you’re at least expected to hold forward or press a button at the right time during these moments, and in some instances during Sonic Forces like the battle with a large snake you do get to interact lightly with the action. Just a few more button presses during these kinds of scenes would make them more interesting, especially since it looks like they were designed to have them in a few cases such as when the custom character has to avoid being hit by a train. The last major shortcoming I feel Sonic Forces has is the boss design, in that most of them aren’t very interesting and primarily involve a lot of waiting. Each boss is cordoned off in its own stage so that you can rematch them easily, but I wager some of the main levels feel so small since there’s no boss to cap it all off, instead the game mostly ending stages with a bunch of characters talking about the story. Boss techniques are also repeated, the final confrontations with the main villains just porting over mechanics from previous boss fights with some slight alterations.

For all these issues with Sonic Forces, these are more areas the game could have obviously done better and require tweaking rather than full-on redesigns. These things stick out a bit when you’re running as any of the three characters, but otherwise the gameplay provides about what you’d expect from a speed-focused platformer. Classic Sonic’s levels are shown from the side and often work in tight platforming and callbacks to old games, although both Modern Sonic and the custom character will often intrude on this gameplay style during their stages and cause a bit of control confusion due to having different skills than Classic Sonic. Modern Sonic’s stages involve a lot of blasting down long stretches, using your Boost to speed up or bowl through enemies and jumping at the right time to bop across baddies with your homing attack. The custom character’s controls are mostly an evolution of Modern Sonic’s but they’ve been given a grappling hook to swing around with and a weapon that can dispatch enemies better than the two Sonics can. Having a flamethrower spraying in front of you, obliterating enemies while you’re running at high speeds, is very satisfying, although the game probably should have put in some limiter so that it’s a bit more tactical instead of a limitless solution to every fight. The game has trouble keeping the levels important to the story and sort of loses momentum as it shifts playstyles too often, but that doesn’t really effect the level quality at all. The stages themselves are short but about what you’d hope them to be during that timeframe. Besides a level where you’re going down a waterslide and it’s much too easy to fly out, the levels feel good albeit unexceptional. Many of these levels could fit in to the Sonic games they’re aping, they just wouldn’t match the quality of those games that had stronger focuses on their core designs. Most level designs feel more mechanically designed than creatively concocted, meaning you get levels that work well but lack imagination.

 

There is some optional content in the game, the short stages suddenly making a bit more sense as you might be asked to return to them to complete missions to unlock more clothes or for special SOS missions that mostly just involve playing the stage over once again. Your performance in the game’s levels is also rated on a letter scale, and while I’m not too keen on this aspect of many modern Sonic games as it can undermine the thrill of beating a level, Sonic Forces is lenient enough that you don’t feel sour seeing your letter after beating a stage, but some will require return visits to get that top S rating. Red rings are also scattered around as optional collectibles and the game has a few extra and secret stages for you to play, but the stages are somehow shorter than the main game’s levels and mostly just lightly explore a single gimmick before ending more abruptly than the main stages. These things add a bit more to a pretty short game, but they’re not likely to have you stick around too long because of how simple they all are.

THE VERDICT: Sonic Forces captures the basic thrill of the Sonic series but none of that extra spice that would endear this game to anyone but a preexisting fan. The main issues with the game all seem to be a symptom of the game spreading its attention too thin, refusing to commit to any one style for too long and not developing the mechanics enough for any of the three on offer. With a weak story that doesn’t deliver on its promises, Sonic Forces has to impress with its gameplay alone, but it instead turns in a performance that has the basics required to keep you moving but none of the extra oomph to compel you to really sink your teeth into it.

 

And so, I give Sonic Forces for the Nintendo Switch…

An OKAY rating. Sonic Forces tried to do too much with too little. Rather than keeping a strong focus on the custom character’s play, the game weakly justifies Classic Sonic’s presence to appeal to old fans, teases you with villains and characters from other Sonic games who do nothing, and ends up sabotaging the core of the experience that seems like it was meant to be about just the custom character and Modern Sonic teaming up to take down the Eggman empire. It can’t commit itself to one idea out of fear of doing it poorly, meaning the game doesn’t get to explore its good parts as much as it should, instead ending them quickly or doing them automatically for fear the player might mess them up. Sonic Forces isn’t a very fulfilling experience because of how obvious it is they could do much better. Trimming the level types down to provide more interesting challenges instead of simply adding more challenges would be a good start. If the game had focused more strongly on one type of play it could have at least succeeded there instead of putting in a serviceable showing across a few styles, and I believe Classic Sonic would be the best one to cut. Besides having next to no reason for being there plot-wise and being sloppily brought up whenever it’s time for his stages, Modern Sonic and the custom character both have pretty much the same control style but different skills, meaning that trimming Classic Sonic’s content can lead to more focus on the true meat of the game.

 

Sonic Forces isn’t that bad of a game, but it has both too much going on and not enough. Rather than trying to focus on doing one thing well, Sonic Forces forces itself to try and appeal to every type of Sonic fan. Sadly, this meant Sonic Forces sanded down its good aspects to fit in more types of content rather than more quality content. Still, rather than being a bad game, Sonic Forces is mostly just a game where the room for improvement is too obvious to ignore.