Recent reviews by Ardwiz

Banger game! Banger OST! Banger Devs! Unbeatable price! Hours of enjoyment and torture! Please buy this and play it with your friends! It'll be funny!

This is an amazing game with amazing developers who do an amazing job at communicating with their players.
This amazing game has an awful publisher who decided to squander this sense of community by pulling it off the storefront for 177 countries (and possibly counting). Denying them the opportunity to engage with said community. Is that fair? No. It isn't fair in the slightest.
I have faith that the developers are doing everything in their power to fix this massive issue, and I hope that Sony can be made to see reason.
Until then, myself, and many other Helldivers, are going to see to it that people are aware of this problem. So that it looks bad for Sony I will be leaving a negative review.

Short but sweet, with satisfying movement. That's a complete package in my book.

My favorite part of Pizza Tower is when John P. Tower said, "Its pizza time!" and pizza'ed all over them.

Playing this game was a trip. Sonic Frontiers boldly attempts to put Sonic into an experimental open world setting, with puzzles, combat, and story to compliment it. It achieves this sort of realistic look to portray detailed environments that Sonic can seamlessly run through. For the most part, I believe it succeeds at this goal.

To first address this games problems, if you are someone that cannot tolerate a single problem in your video game and only play the most polished products known to man, it is a given that you shouldn't be playing sonic games. Sonic Frontiers is no exception to the jank that many associate with Sonic Team's modern titles, with the added potential of an open world setting, there are problems. I'm not going to detail any here, just addressing an elephant in the room is all.

In spite of that, it is crystal clear to me that this game was written and developed by people who love the Sonic franchise, and everything it has given us. It brings us dialogue that actually respects these characters, rather than using them as tired old jokes. Full disclosure, that dialogue is what kept me going. The pursuit of knowledge is this game's greatest draw, and for me personally it's greatest reward is the attainment of that knowledge. This theme of discovery is largely why in promotional material Sonic Team was very hush hush about the story, and I am very happy for it personally.

That isn't to say that this game was some terrible experience that I tolerated for the sake of story however. I genuinely found all of the rail grinding and wall climbing obstacles to be very fun and engaging throughout the game, with the idea of slowly creating a huge interconnected grind rail throughout the whole island to be an incredibly fun concept.

There was never anything I found to be mind blowing in the puzzle solving of this game, and I never really felt that it got engaging quickly enough for me to respect it. The curve of difficulty either took way too long or never had enough time to really happen. There are puzzles that set a timer and have you race against the clock to get to a set spot that the game proudly displays for you, but I always found that the timer took so long that it was more of a suggestion than anything. With every puzzle being so similarly lenient, I never really felt challenged.

The combat in Sonic Frontiers is an entirely new concept for a mainline Sonic title. With Sonic being able to chain together attacks that he learns on his journey to rack up damage. The animation and sound design for these moves felt top notch to me personally as I was playing, but obviously pales in comparison to what is found in many more matured action games. Its greatest flaw is largely due to its simplicity, with there being very little strategy when chaining attacks together. This simplicity is waylaid by having most enemies require to open up their defense first, or simply traverse an obstacle first to get to their weak point. This results in the attacks that you work to unlock largely amounting to a one to one comparison with simply homing attacking an opponent in previous Sonic games.

Overall, my verdict on Sonic Frontiers is that it is a game made with love and the potential to grow the Sonic Franchise into something stronger as a whole. It shows us that they can pull together and make something better than we've seen in ages, and that they intend to keep doing so in the future. As a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog, what better gift could I ask for?