Sonic Frontiers Review: Sonic’s Return to Form Takes an Open-World Detour

Sonic the Hedgehog has had everything from kart-racers to fighting games in Sega’s attempt to reinvent the create spin-offs of everyone’s favourite anthropomorphic gaming mascot. However, never has he ventured into the open-world genre, until now.

Sonic Frontiers takes what made Sonic the Hedgehog games great (you know, the speed and all that), and mixed it up with an interesting sandbox environment and some new gameplay tweaks in a ‘swing for the fence’ attempt that breathes new life into the franchise.

The real challenge of a game such as this, though, is how the developers are able to capture and deliver that speedy, slick gameplay of Sonic’s yesteryear adventures, while plopping him into a larger, less on-rails environment — which can tend to feel slow and laborious at times. Obviously, the traversal element is resolved, as you don’t need vehicles and gimmicks like in other games, as Sonic can just speed around, which is admittedly incredibly fun and gives gamers a real sense of speed when moving from A to B throughout the world.

Letting go of the reins and allowing players to just zip around the admittedly diverse and colourful islands (which do feature more closed-off and linear interspersed sections) is incredibly satisfying; but how exactly does the game work?

Much like other open-world 3D platformers, you’ll be going from point to point and interacting with characters, who will send you on a variety of missions: some entail retrieving items or taking on enemies with Sonic Frontier‘s snappy, familiar, and enjoyable homing attack combat mechanics, which has also finally been beefed-up with some new abilities. These include a punch-packed barrage, a projectile shooting ‘sonic boom’, and the ability to literally run rings around enemies to cause damage within them. It’s pretty great to finally see an enhanced combat arsenal — those that Sonic would showcase in the TV show or comics — come to the games.

And to its credit, while the combat is fun and keeps you on your toes, the game really does keep evolving the ‘task’ you set out to do, whether it be solving puzzles, hunting down voice memos, or even fishing (because, why not), making Sonic Frontiers feel more like a step into a bigger genre rather than a retread of old ideas.

One of the great things about Sonic games is the upbeat feeling many have from zooming through tropical or sun-soaked environments, and Sonic Frontiers does bring that childhood nostalgia and colour-popping experience to the new-age. The game looks vivid and detailed, but admittedly, some of that sheen is hurt by the sheer speed of Sonic (ironically). With Sonic moving at such a rapid rate (especially when grinding rails), the game struggles to keep up and you’ll likely see a fair bit of pop-in and texture loading into the world. It’s not a deal breaker by any means, but is a blemish on an otherwise great visual performance which holds a solid framerate throughout the action.

Sonic Frontiers may not be a Sonic game of old, but it enters itself into the world of 3D platformers, sitting alongside the likes of Super Mario Sunshine and other ambitious offbeat adventures with some new ideas and a concept that doesn’t just rest on the ‘must go fast’ formula. It takes its time to tell a new story in the Sonic universe and gives us some serious excitement for where the franchise goes from here.

Sonic Frontiers is available on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, Xbox One, PS4, Switch, and PC.