{"id":4694,"date":"2026-04-10T15:00:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T21:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=4694"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:13:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:13:34","slug":"video-game-sonic-frontiers-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/10\/video-game-sonic-frontiers-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"VIDEO GAME: Sonic Frontiers (2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SonicSonic Frontiers
<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2022
Rating: E10+
Time Played: 19.62 hours<\/p>\n

One of the big transformational shifts in video games lately has been the adaptation of longstanding franchises to make \u201copen-world\u201d versions of their IPs. While Breath of the Wild<\/em><\/a> started this transition, it has been somewhat hit-or-miss for certain franchises. Super Mario Odyssey<\/em><\/a> handled it well, but Pok\u00e9mon Violet<\/em><\/a> suffered from graphical limitations. Then there\u2019s Sonic Frontiers<\/em>, which did relatively well with making Sonic\u2019s speed feel fun, but struggled with larger issues that crop up from moving to an open-world format. At the very least, the plot and cutscenes were well-written enough to drive the story forward.<\/p>\n

Just like when games shifted from 2D platforming to 3D space, there are a lot of different things to consider that might be overlooked because it\u2019s a fundamental change to the core gameplay. Most Sonic<\/em> games, even the 3D ones, have been fairly linear in their gameplay, so moving to open world needed lots of areas to give Sonic space to move fast. Frontiers<\/em> solves this problem with lots of little \u201cmini-game\u201d areas of rail grinds, spring jumps, and speed pads that are pretty fun to play since it emulates that core Sonic<\/em> experience.<\/p>\n

Where the game suffers is in its open-world aspects. Too many times, I had to traverse all the way across a world because I hadn\u2019t unlocked the teleportation mechanic. Then, I found myself banging my head against a wall for how to get to a specific area of a world because I couldn\u2019t just \u201cgo there\u201d like I could in Breath of the Wild<\/em> or Odyssey<\/em>. I get that to maintain the linear story format I needed to unlock things in order, but that\u2019s why open-world isn\u2019t necessarily ideal for every franchise. At any rate, I had a lot of fun with this and hope the next open-world Sonic game learns from their first foray into the genre here.<\/p>\n

A good start for the first open-world Sonic game, I give Sonic Frontiers<\/em> 4.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sonic FrontiersYear: 2022Rating: E10+Time Played: 19.62 hours One of the big transformational shifts in video games lately has been the adaptation of longstanding franchises to make \u201copen-world\u201d versions of their IPs. While Breath of the Wild started this transition, it has been somewhat hit-or-miss for certain franchises. Super Mario Odyssey handled it well, but Pok\u00e9mon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1900],"tags":[3107,3850,2812,8,2570,4466,2567,906],"class_list":["post-4694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-video-game","tag-3107","tag-3d-platformer","tag-open-world","tag-review","tag-sonic","tag-sonic-frontiers","tag-sonic-the-hedgehog","tag-video-game"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4694"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4697,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4694\/revisions\/4697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}