SEGA and its Sonic formula
As we say, while each Mario game is an event, in the case of Sonic, the fact that there are no SEGA consoles does not help the competition to feed as in the early 90s, when Mega Drive tried to end Super Nintendo, o Master System with NES and Game Gear with Game Boy. That twisted fang seems to have been lost and the two mascots are even posing together for the sake of world sport. Or don’t those sound familiar to you? Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games?
The point is that sonic frontiers It seems destined to want to be the moment in the SEGA franchise that allows it to make the leap in quality, and for that nothing better than conceiving a huge open world which, whether we like it or not, is going to influence the way in which we will have to enjoy with Sonic: the races will be able to make their way in practically any direction that we want, which is an important novelty.
That place has a name: the Open Zone, and it will undoubtedly be the great differentiator compared to any other title you have seen in the franchise. No? See how it will be.
Sonic Frontiers Open Zone
It has been neither more nor less than Morio Kishimoto, director of the game, who has explained all these changes: “the Open Zone takes center stage in the game of sonic frontiers, and game levels exist as elements within this area. from rails of grind right down to platforming, looping, etc., Open Zone is packed with that action we love so much in Sonic games.”
The idea of such an open world organization of sonic frontiers It was born at the same time as the great Mario, Kirby and even some Donkey Kong games, which organized their phases around a general map that illustrates each world we visit. Of course, unlike those, in this case, as in Bowser’s Fury Switch, we can come and go wherever we want and access mini-phases that open up different challenges depending on the area we visit.
Now, there is an element that no other game has and that is the speed of the protagonist, which it almost forces there to be circuits within the Open Zone that we can go through. And there will be. According to Kishimoto, “in the Open Zone the game really speeds up and can take players in any direction without the constraints of a more limited stage or stage.” Without a doubt, it is here where we find the great change within sonic frontiers.
As if that were not enough, Morio Koshimiro wanted to point out even more what we can find in this new installment of the saga: «in previous Sonic titles, we had to make the phases gradually more difficult to achieve an amount of game time that we liked to the players. It’s only natural that level-based platformer titles get more difficult as you progress. However, for Sonic games the problem has always been that higher difficulty can interfere with the feeling of speed of the game. In sonic frontiers, Open Zone already offers a lot of content, so there was no longer a need to increase the difficulty to improve play time. From start to finish, we were able to maintain a sense of speed with level design ideal for a Sonic game.”
But the player will not only experience racing with Sonic Frontiers. From SEGA they announce one more content. “Some of the riddles are riddles, while others test your control techniques or play out as a minigame” that most of the time will be optional and we will not have the obligation to complete them if we do not want to. “That said,” Koshimiro added, “we have included ways for players to engage with the puzzles, so please look forward to them.”
With all these changes to the Sonic formula, don’t tell us you don’t feel like playing it. Hey?
