#HOLY SHIT THEY GOT MIKE POLLOCK

[welcome-to-green-hills]

Please support this small production company. They’ve done a fantastic job with characters and the story.

[cardboard-box-of-beans]

finished Frontiers about an hour ago, have some disorganized thoughts

Massive spoilers under the cut

General/gameplay stuff:

-I played the PC version. My laptop's a bit of a potato so I had to crank the graphics settings way down and still had a lot of chugging going on (and it broke a couple of the cutscenes)

-But despite having to fight hardware limitations the whole time, I enjoyed it! There's some jank (and I don't think it's just a result of hardware limitations since I've heard other people struggling with it), but on the whole, the open world was a blast to play through even with the chugging. And Cyberspace wasn't too bad actually, though I might be looking upon it more favorably since it didn't have framerate drops on my device like the open world did; if the open world wasn't having such severe framerate drops for me it probably would've blown Cyberspace out of the water. (I'll have to play this game again on better hardware sometime.)

-IKARUGA IN A SONIC GAME

-BOTTOM TEXT

-Chaos Island had some major issues gameplay-wise but I'm willing to forgive it for Ikaruga

Soundtrack:

-HOLY SHIT THE SOUNDTRACK.

-I think this is my favorite Sonic soundtrack ever.

-I will be coming back to this tag to scream about each and every song in this soundtrack over the next couple of years, mark my words.

-It all bangs. You know it all bangs. Moving on

Story:

-To be honest I wasn't huge on the actual *story,* but I really enjoyed most of the character writing, so I think it all balances out.

-The Kocos were cute. But the Ancients and the End were kinda just there, IMO?

-The Sonic corruption plot being resolved that quickly was kinda dumb. I think it's probably an even bigger anticlimax than the Null Space breakout in Forces was (though the presentation was better, so I can give it that).

-Plot beats aside, I like this Sonic portrayal overall, and Tails and Knuckles were both done SO MUCH justice. I'm so proud of my boys. (The scene where Sonic reassures Tails was the first time I've ever cried at a Sonic game, I- the funny two-tailed fox got to me, ok?)

-I liked Amy too, though I think they might have gone a little *too* subdued with her? I could probably go into some more organized thoughts about her later, but eh

-Sage is where things get a little bit *interesting,* because I really like her as a character. I think the contrasting teal-white vs. red-black color scheme thing ties in really nicely with the Ikaruga hacking minigame duality thing, I like Ryan Bartley's performance, and I mean... she's an AI in the process of self-actualization who (at least to my reading) desperately craves validation, of course I was gonna get attached. And I really like her dynamic with Sonic.

BUT I'm not sure how I feel about her dynamic with Eggman. I'm not necessarily opposed to an Eggdad kind of approach (though I recognize that some people weren't gonna be fond of the Eggdad thing no matter what, and I think they've got the right to feel that way), so I feel like for me personally, had Frontiers taken the time to really develop their dynamic I'd find it easier to swallow. But as-is, it feels too rushed to really justify the departure between how Eggman usually treats his creations and how Eggman treats Sage.

(Personally after that Chaos Island cutscene, I was halfway expecting Sonic to get Sage to join up with the gang and turn against Eggman, like with Knuckles in S3&K. It's been a while since we've seen the "bad guy of the week turns good and teams up with Sonic to defeat Eggman" trope. Maybe I'll write an AU about that someday.)

Anyway, at least she's got the potential to appear in future games courtesy of the true ending, so maybe they'll make some more changes to her dynamic with Eggman later on down the line. I dunno.

-Mike Pollock gives an excellent performance as Eggman (to the surprise of absolutely no one), but other than that... Eggman was just really out of focus in general? I think I saw someone saying that you could probably tweak the story to cut Eggman out of it entirely and not much would change, and I'm inclined to agree. Which is a shame- I was hoping he'd have more of an impact. Getting the seventh Chaos Emerald on Ouranos was nice, but felt like too little too late after he spent most of the game's cutscenes stuck in the same Cyberspace level. (His voice memos talk about seeing replicas of South Island, Westside Island, and even Angel Island in Cyberspace. Give us more locales, you cowards!)

Overall:

-It was pretty clear they ran out of budget after Chaos Island (and I know I'm not the first to say this, either).

-There was a lot of jank, and some questionable decisions in terms of both story and gameplay.

-But... I liked Sonic Frontiers! And I'm glad I get to say that, after the absolute rollercoaster that this entire marketing cycle was.

Anyway, I'm off to go listen to Undefeatable on loop for the next 24 hours. See y'all later!

[flyingpochama948]

So I guess I wanna talk about the Sonic movie now.  I kept procrastinating this. cause IDK reasons.

It was alright.  Nothing too spectacular like I was expecting giving how I’ve seen people here talking about it.  But if Sonic looked like how he initially did, I’m sure nobody would be saying this was a good movie.  In the same breath it’s not a terrible movie either.  Just average.

Some positives.  It was nice to see a vulnerable Sonic.  The kind of Sonic SEGA’s always afraid to show us without being a totally different Sonic like the kind Pre-Reboot Archie showed us.  It was a nice mix.  Finally we got a backstory on his character even though it isn’t canon but at least it’s not garbage.

Can’t help but feel Longclaw was designed with the more realistic look like Sonic was but never changed because she was not a horror to look at.  Just a realistic pretty owl who’s not offensive to look at.  Wish we got to know more about her and what her fate was.

But holy shit, Jim Carrey as Robotnik.  Perfect choice.  I got chills during those parts were he channels Mike Pollock’.  He really researched his roll.  Plus adds his own stuff like moving like a robot. And I’m really happy he gets referred to as Eggman by Sonic.

The other human cast was nice. Though my main critique comes with how Tom and Maddie acted while on top of the building right before the climax.  IDK, they seemed a bit...way too chill for what was happening...  Especially Maddie who just got dragged into this 10 minutes ago.  That’s just me.

There were parts where the animation looked awkward, I guess I had to expect goofs like that being that they had to rework an entire movie in a year.  The most notable is almost every time Tom has to hold Sonic.  It just looks awkward.  Especially when he had Sonic under the towel and he had to fight the dog yanking it off.  It did not look like Sonic was underneath it though.

Also, how did Jojo (sp?) have perfectly sized Sonic shoes?  Well I guess that’s another side effect of the style changed since the old Sonic design had felt that were more human.  Also, not sure how her mom couldn’t get out of her restraints.  It’s not like she was tied to the chair.

It really does seem like this movie is set up for a definite sequel with the ending it had.  I still smiled 10 miles wide when Tails appeared.  I feel bad for all the people that left the theater before he appeared.  Since the film is very popular, I assume the sequel will happen.  And they can have even better animation this time around.

So yeah, good film.  Nothing spectacular, but nowhere even close to the dumpster fire critics were expecting.  But yeah, I Have that nagging feeling the outcome would have been different if Sonic looked like he did before the design change.