Switch Adventures #4: Sonic Forces

This was...certainly a real game I played. I mean, I went into this knowing people didn't like it, and that it has a customizable avatar who is one of the playable characters in the game. After playing this, well, I do have a couple thoughts.

The story was really confusing, and I wasn't really able to follow it at times. I guess Dr. Eggman took over the world with the help of an edgelord jackal named Infinite, and they use that ruby from Sonic Mania to defeat Sonic. So, that's where the customizable avatar comes into play, as a rookie who help rescue Sonic from Eggman's clutched. Also, I guess Classic Sonic is also part of the game as well because reasons. It just felt like there were very surface level plot points, and looking at what the initial trailers promised with a darker and deeper story, well, it obviously didn't deliver.

The gameplay was also a mixed bag. You play as Modern Sonic, Classic Sonic, and your custom avatar character. Easily the worst of these characters was Classic Sonic, who played with a throwback 2D style. Basically, take the gameplay of Sonic Mania and then completely ruin it. The controls were not very responsive and the physics were very heavy, not fluid like they should have been. Modern Sonic was a little better, although his levels, when not being 2D, were basically hallway simulators. My personal favorite was actually the avatar because they played like Modern Sonic but just felt better to control, also they had a flamethrower that made homing attacks generally optional so there is that, too.

The graphics were...also a mixed bag. Sometimes they looked good, but they were mostly just passable. Like they didn't stand out to me too much. It was just mostly kind of whatever for me.

The place I have the least amount of complaints is the music. A lot of it was there to pump you up and get you ready for a high speed adventure. Again, Classic Sonic had 16-bit Genesis sounding music, but it was a little out of place with the darker and grittier tone the game attempted to have. But the main theme, Fist Bump, was a surprisingly well done song and easily the best one in the game, played whenever your avatar and Modern Sonic team up to battle tons of enemies, which is extremely satisfying.

Last thing I want to talk about is the difficulty level and length of the overall campaign. This game was easy most of the time, and very short. I completed the main story in about 5 or 6 hours, and with an attempted plotline of this scale, just seems like a disservice to the premise.

Overall, I mostly felt like I was playing this just to review it, not because I was having fun. It was very by the numbers, the story was a massively missed opportunity, and the gameplay was not very polished. Although some of the aesthetics, such as the music, were great, a good looking or sounding game doesn't make for an enjoyable experience if it isn't fun. I'd say check this game out if you have never played a game before and think Sonic is kinda cool, otherwise, you can skip this one.

Next time, we'll be playing through the first RPG in this series, and I know very little about it other than it's had a very mixed reception over the years. What will I think? Find out when I review Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mario Marathon Part 6: Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins

I have to say, Mario way back in the early days of gaming used to be so creative, and this game is no exception. I mean, just like its predecessor, it's very weird, but that's what makes it so charming and fun to play. As with the first Mario Land title, this game was released on the Game Boy, but for being a game on such a simple console, they did quite a lot with the visuals and world designs. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that this game makes the first Super Mario Land look like a tech demo by comparison. The story is the usual flavor of weird that the first game had as well. Mario's castle that he just...has for some reason, has been taken over by the evil Wario and the door to the castle can only be unlocked by going to six zones and finding the golden coins that reside in each. Yeah, this game has a weird story. The six zones are really where the game shines, in my opinion. There is the tree zone, which is a grassland type area that takes place in a giant ...
Read more

Mario Marathon Part 4: Super Mario Land

Well, this was certainly a game, or at least, a good demonstration of one. This is one of the more bizarre Mario games out there, so let's talk about why that is. Super Mario Land was the first portable mainline Mario game, released for Nintendo's black and white Game Boy. So how did Mario on the go end up doing? Well, quite weirdly as mentioned earlier. While it is a 2D platformer like the other games reviewed so far, this game definitely tried to stand out in ways no other Mario game really has done before. The story follows Mario as he tries to save the kingdom of Sarasaland and its princess, Daisy, from the evil alien Tatanga. Already a departure from the norm for sure, but even the enemies are weird. For example, Koopas now turn into bombs when you jump on them instead of just hiding in their shells so you can kick them later on. The game plays like the first Mario game, but in black and white, with more bizarre enemies like the aforementioned Bombshell Koopas, and actual ...
Read more

Mario Marathon Part 1: Super Mario Bros

I like Mario, that much is clear from the random beginning of this specific marathon, but regardless, there has been so much Mario content that has come out over the last few years that a review of all the Mario games I consider important sounds like a no-brainer. Well, after a couple weeks of thinking about this, that's exactly what I am doing, and what better place than the game that started it all? That, of course, is Super Mario Bros. Now, this game is hardly the most complex thing out there. It's a sidescrolling platformer where you play as a plumber named Mario who has to save the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom from the villainous turtle dragon thing known as Bowser. But even this simple plot was revolutionary for gaming. You see, prior to this game, video games didn't have any sort of story to them and really were just things made to rack up high scores. This was the first game to really give a more fleshed out story than "Get as much points and then, I don...
Read more