Let’s get right to it, shall we? If you were to list the qualities of Sonic The Hedgehog, and what makes his best games so legendary, you’d likely regale us with how fast the game is to play. After all, Sonic was meant to be the antithesis to Mario, and Mario games are fun, but they also go at a steady pace. Sonic was meant to blaze a trail through levels and earn the moniker of “the fastest thing alive”. But in recent Sonic titles, including certain trailers for Sonic Frontiers, many fans haven’t been feeling that speed at all, and it has ticked them off.
They feel they know what makes a good Sonic game, but according to the head of Sonic Team himself, Takashi Iizuka, he feels differently on the matter:
“It’s very clear to me that just going fast does not make it fun. You could be, you know, just running in a straight line superduper fast, but it’s going to be kind of boring, you’re not going to feel like you’re going fast. And it’s really through the design of the course, and the things that you’re having to do, where you feel that speed and where you feel that fun. So regardless, if it’s a 2D game, or 3D linear zone, it’s that sensation, that feeling when you play with Sonic, that the team is really focused on.”
While that is an understandable statement to an extent, you can also understand why many gamers aren’t going to be ok with that statement overall due to the past failures of games like Sonic Boom, Sonic Frontiers, and more. They’ve had the time to “make the design match the speed of Sonic” but they haven’t done it.
Will Sonic Frontiers be the thing that changes it all? We’ll find out in November.
