Sonic Force : Game Review

michaelcj (64)in #gaming • 7 years ago

So what happens when you hype up a game that people thought was going to be something bigger? You get Sonic Forces, not even gonna try and make a joke.

Released date was 7th November 2017

It's your Blockchain Entertainer @michaelcj here Giving you another review!

Like many other Sonic fans, I was definitely excited for Sonic Forces: Eggman has taken over the world and you have to take it back? Count me in! But it wasn't just that, but you could also make your own custom avatar and join Sonic in the fight, more excitement from me for sure, but then I bought the game and... well, I'll get to that; but now this is my review on Sonic Forces.

Bonus Edition:

These aren't hard to come by, you buy a Bonus Edition in America and you get a nice looking Controller skin for your console; and if your bought the European version then you got some art cards, which two of them are essentially just the bloody box art, Good job!

Rating:

E10+ for Everyone 10 and up and PEGI 7 for violence.

Console Differences:

Just to be mentioned, if you're a graphics nerd, best to avoid the Switch Version, the graphics are washed out with some low poly's here and there and a 30FPS frame-rate (this will not affect the review, please keep that in mind)

Story:

Our story begins with Eggman in his lab, furious at his constant defeats to Sonic, using the Phantom Ruby he created Infinite, the ultimate being, Infinite successfully wins in a fight against Sonic, along with the help of Shadow, Zavok, Metal Sonic, and Chaos 0.
It's at this point where it's implied that Sonic is dead and Tails broke down after the news of the death, Eggman then took over literally 99.99% of the world, yeah .99!

You see the resistance all gathered in a base, and then your Avatar comes in, being one of the few survivors from the city, that was destroyed... six months ago... alright.

It's then found out after that where Knuckles gets word from a spy that Sonic is indeed alive and that he was captive aboard the Death Egg, where Eggman has been torturing him for the past 6 months... how did this not get to PEGI 12 again?

Anyway you fly to the Death Egg, but during this time, Eggman was aware of the resistance and moved his plan ahead to banish Sonic into space, but Sonic escapes and meets up with the Avatar, and you both leave with the rest in a shuttle, and that's where the back story just takes a back seat for the rest of it.
Oh sure it has it's other moments, like when Classic Sonic came in and Tails just somehow knew he was from another Dimension, but he was happy to see a Sonic alive, seriously if you took Classic Sonic out of the story, it really would not make any difference whatsoever, he's just... there.

Infinite appears here and there, but he doesn't have that much of a threat, you fight him and he spares you multiple times for no reason at all, you then find out of a Phantom Ruby prototype that the Avatar found lying on the floor, which was the main plot convenience to make sure the Avatar did the final blow to save everyone at the end!

Remember when I mentioned Shadow, Zavok, Chaos 0 and Metal Sonic? Yeah, turns out they're all fake, because the Phantom Ruby allows duplicates to be made with the same amount of power the originals had, Hell you don't even fight Shadow or Chaos, the real Shadow flies in and knocks the faker out and that's it, full stop.

The story is seriously nothing to write home about, it's too simple and bland and it just bored me so much.
I will say that the game is dark with its dialogue, characters talk of death and torture, you see some character die on screen, and there's even one moment where you're doing a prison raid mission, where it's implied that Eggman had a lot of prisoners and then he killed them all.

And if you think I'm over exaggerating, you listen to the dialogue and tell me for yourself, Torture, Death and Sonic even saying words along the line of murdering Infinite and carving into his grave... how did this remain a PEGI 7?

Gameplay:

Alright, with that out of the way, let's talk about the gameplay, with the way Sonic Forces is, you really wouldn't be blamed for calling it "Sonic Generations 2", you're really not that far off, but let's start with Modern Sonic first.

Modern Sonic:

Now, with Modern Sonic, he controls exactly like he did before, B to Jump and Double-jump, Y to Boost, A to slide and Stomp, and L and R to Quick-Step.
Boosting is exactly like it was in Sonic Colours, and by that, I mean you have White Wisps to free from capsules in order to boost, that didn't really bother me that much, so I'm not exactly losing sleep as the boost works just fine and how it did in the previous games.
The main problem I have with Modern Sonic, is the fact that he's doing 2D along with 3D levels, while some might like that, and that's fine, my problem is that we have Classic Sonic in this for those 2D moments, so why is Modern Sonic going through them as well? This is the same problem I had with Generations, the amount of 2D just overpowers the whole 3D platform nature.

Classic Sonic:

Classic Sonic is the same in Forces as he is in Generations, all except his overpowered Spindash, in fact that's no longer a button, you have to manually hold down and rev-up, not a complaint, but he took a page out of Mania's book and can now do the Drop Dash, which works exactly like it did in Mania, so that's nifty for the Mania fans.
A problem I have is how wonky it is to roll down hills, so much so that sometimes Sonic builds up Momentum, and sometimes he doesn't, and if you're a Sonic fan, you would know that rolling down hills is pretty much a great way to build up speed.
Another problem is Classic Sonic's weight, he feels too heavy sometimes, especially when controlling your jumps, and you may call me nitpicking, I have had some unfair deaths due to the control or lack thereof.

Avatar:

With the Avatar you're able to create one of the six animals: Dog, Wolf, Hedgehog, Cat, Bird and Bear, all of them have their own minimal yet unique abilities, but throughout the campaign you can only have one avatar, so make that one count for the story, you can pick the fur/feather colour, eye colour and skin colour, you don't have any clothes to pick from the start (The female has a body suit on at all times though, keep in mind), but you unlock clothes as you go through the game.

The cutscenes are also real time, so any changes you make, their appear in the cutscenes, which in all honesty is rather cool, I like the effort put into it.
Also with the avatar are the Wispons, essentially the way for the avatar to be unique in that regard, these are wisp weapons that allow the avatar to shoot the robots with, such as a lightning whip, flamethrower, a bloody black hole! You can also free wisps from capsule to get more out of the weapons..

Outside of that, the avatar is a slower Sonic without the boost, he can homing attack with a wire add-on and that's about it.

Tag-team:

This isn't anything to write home about, it's basically just Modern Sonic and the OC teaming up, you can do the Double Boost, but that's about it.

Levels:

There's a lack of creativity with these, 3 stages have returned, Green Hill, Chemical Plant and Metropolis, with the new city stage and the fortress stage, and a jungle level.
I'm not saying that bringing back stages is a bad thing, but I think all of us are sick and tired of Green Hill Zone!
The other zones are nothing to write home about, nothing worth remembering in any case, there's 33 levels for 8 Zones, so you can imagine the lack of creativity here, in any case they work, but if we saw more levels (Or if they had more level designers) then we could see a more expanded place, especially considering that places like Seaside Hill are indeed in the game.

Likes:

The music for Modern Sonic and the Avatar are really good, and the boss fight tracks are brilliant, my favourite has to be either Sunset Heights or Metal Sonic's boss theme, I can't love 'em enough! The game looks great for a Switch title and some stages are nice with the exploration side to it.

Dislikes:

The game is too short, Modern Sonic levels play by themselves almost all the damn time and at one point I beat an OC level without looking at the screen, the levels are too automated sometimes and the levels can be beaten under 2 minutes, sometimes even under a minute.
Classic Sonic's music I absolutely hate, I get they try to have a retro feel, but it's done poorly at the end of it all, but ironically his stages are considered the better ones for the mix of length and challenge.

Overall:

Overall for the game being £40... wait for a price drop, get it secondhand, because seriously, it's not worth it right now, with the fact that I liked the music and some of the gameplay, and the nice distraction of the Avatar, I'll give this game a 7/10.

Did you like Forces? What OC did you make? please, post your Avatars below, I'd really like to see them!

It's your Blockchain Entertainer, signing off, see you in the next one!

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