Part of the open-world routine, then, involves running around and taking on these missions to build the map and reveal the other features to be found.Įventually, players end up with a huge world map filled with icons – the best way to describe it is to imagine a typical Ubisoft open-world game, but played on fast-forward and therefore less tedious. The sheer number of these missions means there’s some repetition over the course of the game, but most are over so quickly that it’s nice to just breeze around the world ticking them off.Īs you complete each mission, it’ll reveal a small part of the map, and create part of a rail network (as in grinding rails, not the London Underground or anything). This could be something tiny – like parrying some missiles or playing jump rope with a laser beam – or something more involved, such as hitting a distant switch before a timer runs out, or solving puzzles with floor tiles, Tetris blocks or the like. Near each of these question marks is some sort of small task, of which there are a wide variety. Each island starts with a completely hidden map, and as you explore you’ll find loads of small ‘missions’ represented by question mark icons floating in the world itself. The game’s main meat is its five open-world islands, four of which are large expanses filled with things to do. It’s a narrative that starts off quite slowly at first but eventually becomes one of the most engaging in the series, but more on that later. The story in Frontiers starts deliberately vague, and in respect of that, we’ll opt not to shed further light on it, other than to say it involves a strange ‘cyber world’ which ultimately gives fans of the series some backstory on what happened in Sonic’s world a long time ago.
With Sonic Frontiers, Sega has come to almost exactly the same solution, and the results are just as satisfyingly refreshing.
Pokémon’s solution was to go properly open-world, giving the player true freedom to explore its environments, with quality of life improvements made to ensure everything ticked along at a nifty pace. Both series had nestled a little too comfortably into a predictable formula, and despite new gimmicks and generational upgrades it had been too long since either had enjoyed any truly revolutionary gameplay revamps. Much like Pokémon, parts of the Sonic fanbase have been crying out for fundamental changes to the series for some time now. That ended up being the first big pleasant surprise of this year, and Frontiers is one of the last.
It may be tempting to compare Sonic Frontiers to Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but the latest Sega platformer actually has more in common with a different Nintendo exclusive.Īs a neat bookend to 2022, Frontiers reminds us a lot more of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which was released back in January.
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