This video is sort of a prototype of what became my You Should Play series. If the sound seems off to you, that’s how the video was processed. I hadn’t gotten a proper mic at the time so I was consistently playing around with the settings in Audacity to make something presentable. I think it mostly worked in the last two videos but I’m less satisfied with it here. Thankfully this is the only video that sounds like this. It was intended to be a more conventional review compared to my long form critiques and while I still put out videos that can be seen as normal reviews like the one I put out for Pseudoregalia the focus is much more on talking about a game because it does something interesting with it’s design or is lesser known. I can’t say there won’t be more standard reviews for newer, more popular games but it’s probably going to be more rare. Sonic Frontiers itself was something of an event anyway because it was the first time I had fun with a 3D Sonic game in over a decade. If that doesn’t merit at least a passing mention then I don’t know what would.
Since this video released the game has had several rounds of free DLC released and I’m a little divided on it. If you’ve already played the game then the whole thing feels like a massive celebration of the franchise but I think the first time through may now be a weaker experience because of the how far the “play your way” attitude has been taken to the extreme with how undirected the play experience is. This is common in a lot of open world games out now. I’ve taken to calling it toy box game design. Maybe I’ll do a longer video on it. But to boil down my feelings as they stand right now it’s still a game I recommend getting.
I’m still planning the long form critique on Frontiers but it keeps bouncing back and forth between an in-depth review of just the game and a retrospective of 3D Sonic in general. For now, consider it on hiatus.