Sonic Forces (Part 3)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Still no time to lose!

Liberation

The Resistance has liberated 1/4th of the world, so it's far from over. Eggman’s ultimatum ends tomorrow. We finally have a plan: Tails has found out that the Phantom Ruby needs an immense amount of power to work, and that its remote source is on the Death Egg. Time to destroy it! Considering how often Eggman builds those moon-sized ships and has them destroyed, I guess this is a day that ends in Y.

Avy started out anxious. Scared. Now they fight giant robots.

Vector, disappointed, isn't the one this time around
who has to find the computer room.

In Stage #20, Avy creates a distraction at Guardian Rock, near Green Hills. Meanwhile, Sonic sneaks into the Chemical Plant to break Eggman’s contact with his Death Egg’s weapons, by destroying the supercomputer in the plant. This liberates the area; we finally have over 50% of the world’s population freed. With the Egg’s weapons system down, the Resistance sneaks Classic Sonic onto the giant ship to shut down its power source and destroy it, which is Stage #22.

"The OC saves the main hero from uncertain doom" - Check.
We're 75% down the list of fanfic tropes. Most of 'em have
been seen so far.

One major area under the mad doctor’s boot is the Metropolis. Since the Phantom Ruby’s power has been diminished, the heroes focus their efforts on that area. Sonic runs through the Metropolitan Highway to face Eggman. However, the doctor has two nasty surprises; one, he has a backup power supply under Metropolis, so the Ruby was not weakened. Two, the Phantom Ruby can create the Null Space, a pocket dimension where nothing exists. As Sonic is sucked in, Avy jumps in to try and rescue the hedgehog, only to fall in with him. This is the start of stage #24, but the Null Space part is almost nothing; Sonic and our avatar just double boost all the way into an exit and then run through Metropolis together to find Eggman. We don’t even spend 30 seconds in that pocket dimension. The hero come back and confront the scientist who, cornered, does a tactical retreat to his tower.

Eggman, bring your worst. We're coming, and we're angry.

Fake sun, doesn't matter. If nothing's done, the world burns.

The Resistance gives chase and arrives at Imperial Tower. An entire army of Zavoks, Metal Sonics, Shadows and Chaoses is waiting, with a single Infinite leading them. It turns into a war where the heroes fight bravely against the copies, all kicking major ass. …Well, either that or the copies are very easy to take down. "As powerful as the originals" my ass! Infinite traps everyone in the area of the Phantom Ruby’s power… and summons a virtual sun, with real fire and all, to burn the Resistance down. There is one last hope, though; The Phantom Ruby prototype Avy picked up, which only answers to them, and which can allow them to dispel the illusions made from another Ruby. Our avatar becomes the only hero who can save everyone. Fanfic-y? Yeah. Awesome? Heck yeah. However...

The Final Stages (…Incoherent Yelling)

Not pictured: The goddamn death ray.

Fuck the level known as Imperial Tower. That stage alone showed why I needed a new computer, since my frame rate issues amplified all of the flaws I'll talk about. This stage showcases all of the problems I have seen in the platforming. First, there’s  so damn much going on in the background that it gets distracting. Oh, and since the avatar is small on the screen, sometimes you can barely see them in that chaos. Oh, and they’re super-slippery, too, so when precise platforming becomes a necessity, you're screwed. The stage has very few checkpoints, and in the final stretches, to up the ante, a goddamn death ray chases Avy around! This is the Avatar’s last solo stage, so sure enough, instead of sticking to their skill set until now, we’re given a new gameplay skill, the wall jump, which you need to master in order to outrun the death ray. Oh! And the timing with the death ray is so precise that if you aren’t equipped with a Wispon that will let you bypass those wall jump sections, or speed through the stage at no risk of falling to your death, you’re fucked. And even with a Wispon like that equipped, the timing is stupid tight at the end.

Oh look! There it is! UWAAAARGH!

It’s the perfect storm of everything bad the game could have, all in one package! Fuck! You time out in a stage if you spend 50 minutes trying to beat it, and that happened to me with this one. …At least the music was good.

Time to kick that masked bastard's teeth in a final time!

Avy reaches the top of the tower and dispels the fake sun, saving everyone. Time for a counterattack! We get a stage with Sonic dashing through the enemy defenses in the Canyon, it's easy compared to Imperial Tower. Then, we have a tag team boss battle against Infinite, which is… well, not easy, but not as tough as I thought it would be; the big trouble is that you can’t miss one chance to hit him, because the road you’re on has a dead end and if you reach it, the red cubes that chase the heroes all stage catch up to them and kill them. Is it me or these late-game stages and bosses employ a whole lot of cheap tricks to increase the difficulty for no good reason? Oh, and that boss battle plays out too identical to the fight against Metal Sonic from earlier. That's disappointing.

Once defeated, Infinite vanishes, as if recalled to the doctor. Or… It’s more like there was nothing left of a real person and this body, too, was an illusion from the Phantom Ruby, which reabsorbed it. It’s unclear. Stage #28 takes Classic Sonic through Eggman’s Iron Fortress, then we have another tag team stage with Sonic and Avy mostly just dashing along a thin strip of terrain covered in enemies and hazards in order to reach the reactor at the bottom of the tower, which they promptly destroy before hurrying out.

Good thing Avy can keep up with the Fastest Thing Alive!

But now, it's Eggman’s turn to play. Wielding the original Ruby (and showing greater skill than Infinite ever did with his prototype), he has powered up a massive Death Egg Robot. The final boss has three phases; one as Classic Sonic (another retread, this time of the Egg Dragoon, but with trickier terrain) and a second as the avatar (trickier but manageable)… Eggman is so angry that he's silent for the final phase; something so out-of-character that fans theorize that the Ruby had also taken control of him.

Eggman sure seems to have grown fond of making
tentacled robots lately.

Out of the mega robot emerges a smaller one that’s just as dangerous, with the Ruby in its maw; it traps Avy and both Sonics in Null Space for Phase 3. I knew the pocket dimension would return! This boss was really tough, because the proper way to harm it is to chain nine homing attacks at once, using all three characters. Not so bad with a good frame rate… which was a luxury I didn't have. Its attacks can be pretty hard to avoid. When the Death Egg Robot is down to its last HP, you have to do a successful double triple boost. Those happened in past tag team stages but it wasn’t necessary to do them right; Sonic and Avy would stumble but the boost would work anyway. No such luck here. You better figure out how that mechanic works if you want to win.

The Avatar did rise from nothing to legend.

With that boss defeated at last, Eggman is down. The Ruby warps back to its timeline. The enemy copies on the battlefield vanish, and everyone rejoices. It is farewell for Classic Sonic, who returns to his home dimension to tearful goodbyes from Tails. Sonic suggests the group starts cleaning the mess Eggman has left behind with his takeover. The Resistance, victorious, is disbanded. As for Avy, who’s gone from an anxious zero to a proud, world-saving hero, they are celebrated all around but also announce… sorta, since they barely talk… that they choose to travel the world to go where heroes are needed. More goodbyes, though Avy stops by to have a friendship moment with Sonic, before the two part ways. To new adventures!

♪♫ One more last fist bump ♪♫

Episode Shadow

When you finish the game, you unlock the ability to create more avatars. I’m tempted to design a whole team for Avy now-

The OG edgy, back in action!

Nah. That can wait. However, there is one extra I barely mentioned so far: The “Episode Shadow” DLC, three stages that serve as a prequel to the events of the game. Shadow’s stages are remixed versions of three of the main game’s stages; the biggest change is in the hazards. In them, Shadow is sent by Rouge to investigate a little enemy base with an odd level of activity. We explore the City and get reports of E-123 Omega, Shadow’s robotic friend, in danger.

I talked about kicking Infinite's teeth in, but it looks
like Shadow did it first.

This is how Shadow encounters Infinite in his Ruby-powered form. We flash back to a month earlier, where Shadow investigates Eggman's base Mystic Jungle. He easily kills the Jackal Squad that was defending the place, and at the end of the stage, he meets the squad’s leader. The “Ultimate Mercenary”, the one who would become Infinite. Shadow delivers a rough beatdown to the jackal, even mocking his opponent’s weakness and dropping a “Never show your face around me again”. Shadow would be the reason Infinite masked himself and took on the Ruby. We never get a good look at Infinite’s real face. (Good thing the comics exist, huh?)

Red squares... beware.

Back to the present day, Shadow is soon told that he’s been had; E-123 was never broken. Shadow has been tricked into a virtual version of Green Hills, with batches of red and black cubes attacking him. Shadow barely makes it out alive, coming out of the illusion just in time to hear about something happening in the city. Namely, Sonic being defeated by Infinite and four of his past enemies…

I would’ve liked this to be more than three stages, even if just two more. It helps flesh out Infinite a little more than the base game does, but it still feels like it’s not enough. Yet again – good thing the prequel comics exist, as they show why, despite the events of this DLC, E-123 Omega is broken at the start of Forces. It would’ve been nice to have that as part of the package rather than as side-stuff. Well, at least you can now play as Shadow any of the game’s stages featuring Modern Sonic solo, that’s cool.

This mini-arc could have ended on a perfect note with a
boss battle against a fake Infinite. That might've been cool.

Final thoughts: Gameplay

Phew!

This is a weird case where I was afraid my hardware issues would taint my final opinion of Sonic Forces. They did, but not as much as I thought they would. Even disregarding my issues with performance, there’s a lot here that’s flawed.

If you use them right, the avatar can be downright
broken in gameplay, with how good they can be.

Gameplay first. The good stuff: There’s nice variety here, with the ability to play as Sonic, as our avatar, as a tag team of both, or as Classic Sonic. Bonus material will even let us play as Shadow. There's a nice balance between stage types as well. The character creator has excellent depth, featuring seven playable species each with their own skill, and a myriad of customization options, from facial expression to body color to clothing, and they’ll appear as designed in both cutscenes and gameplay. The Wispons allow for a lot of play styles, though some Wispons are way better than others. The Avatar is a lot of fun to use in general. The inclusion of missions, with customization options as rewards for general missions and a score/experience boost gained by completing daily missions. We have the sweet balance between 3D and 2.5D, common in modern Sonic games. 30 stages is okay as far as game length goes, but there’s a good amount of special and extra stages to unlock, as well as SOS versions of story stages, though those give you very little margin for error.

Oh, and the music? Sonic games are frequently praised for their music and this one is no exception, having no shortage of memorable tracks (Fist Bump, Infinite’s theme, even the tracks heard in some stages, like Fighting Onward or Fading World). So much good music. I could see myself doing a playlist of those.

Oh, and Classic is heavy and feels slow... which is weird
to say of a Sonic.

This would have been tough even without the death ray.

The not so good: The massive amount of moving detail in all stages, which does make for amazing visuals, but is a resouree pain at best, a distraction at worst. The constant chatter from other characters while you’re going through a level can add on to the distraction. Classic Sonic’s stages go with his homing attack-free playstyle and it can easily trip a player up, not to mention his stages aren’t particularly creative, pulling from overdone 2D Sonic tropes. Quick-time events, while present, are usually lenient enough to not be a bother. The worst one is the button mash for the double boost, which you can play the entire game without mastering, until the very end where you do have to pull it off perfectly to finish off the final boss. “Episode Shadow” is much-welcome, but too short. Some of the last boss battles are retreads of previous ones. Cheap tricks like a time limit don’t help, either. Infinite’s abilities are good in cutscenes, but he doesn’t use them in enough within gameplay – I wished the game had more trippy stages like the one in Metropolis.

Oh, and I will never forgive the utter pain in the ass that was Imperial Tower. Super smart idea there to give you a new skill at the very end of the story, and then put you through a course where you have to master that skill right away if you want to win… Augh! Although, with all that said, my hardware issues aside (causing me no end of headaches when precision and quick reflexes were needed), most stages and the overall difficulty of the game veered towards easy.

Final thoughts: Story

The story of Sonic Forces is a pain in the neck. Clearly there was an intention to present a huge story to celebrate the franchise’s 25th anniversary, but the end result is messy at best. As I said in Part 1, this is the ultimate fanservice Sonic game, not unexpected from an anniversary release; multiple villains appear (even if most are fakeries), there’s a character creator, and we even have Classic Sonic joining the party.

Talk about being thrown into the action.

The good: The avatar’s character arc is nothing we haven’t seen before, but I felt it was done well. I have nothing against what may seem cliché, as long as the execution is excellent. I’ve kinda grown attached to Avy, seeing them going from a scared kid to facing down and defeating their bully, and then being pivotal in saving the world alongside the true heroes of the franchise. (I’m sure I wrote that fanfic before.) They'll even show emotion, which helps makes them feel like complete characters and not just player stand-ins. It’s also cool to see the world be liberated little by little through our efforts. Villains-wise, Eggman is at his most dangerous here, playing a near-perfect chess match. He has backup plans to the common tactics the heroes use against him, and stays on top for a long while, even having an out in case his new weapon turns on him. His two mistakes? Keeping Sonic alive just to gloat about his victory… and hiring Infinite.

I really wished more stages had Ruby-induced trips like this
one. It's among the most memorable levels here!

Leaving Avy alive after beating him? Not smart, but sure.
Letting Sonic and Avy alive, after being beaten by them, on
two separate occasions? Infinite, you goddamn moron.

The bad: Oh God, the bad. The longer you study how this story could have happened the less sense it makes. It’s frustrating. Much of this is exemplified by Infinite, built up as the new ultimate threat, only for him to boil down to a sadistic jerk who accumulates poor decisions, costing the villains their victory. Doesn’t help that it feels like there are big chunks of the plot missing to explain how we got here; not just in Infinite’s backstory, but what happened in the six months of Eggman’s conquest. By all accounts, the heroes had all of the odds on their side even without Sonic; just Knuckles, Silver and Shadow could turn the tide all by themselves.

Classic is... eh. I get his inclusion, anniversary and all, and he
does help out the plot in the end, but he still feels superfluous.

The story has dark implications of Sonic tortured for half a year and Tails falling into despair, but the story doesn’t follow up on either. Localization is to blame for this; while the original Japanese does cite the torture part, it instead says that Tails has “gone missing”, which fits what we're shown better than the English version. As a result, the tone is horribly inconsistent. Topping this off is the mandatory inclusion of characters for an anniversary celebration. The four villains who have no business appearing alongside each other (even if it's an intended reaction to say they are a poor fit, that we only fight two of them properly is a letdown), and Classic Sonic' addition, while understandable, feels forced. (Heh. Sonic Forced.)

A good number of missed opportunities, as well.

So disappointed the game omits so much, leaving stuff out to be revealed solely in supplementary material. Doesn’t help that it features a lot of characters and elements from the franchise’s history, so if this is your introduction to the series, you’ll be lost. Good thing the avatar’s storyline helps elevate the overall plot, or we wouldn’t have something very good here. It goes from “bleh” to “just okay”, in my opinion. The good stuff is good, but damn if the bad stuff isn’t incredibly noticeable. The whole package could have been so much better. So yeah – if, after all I’ve discussed, you still want to check out Sonic Forces, by all means, go for it.

Next week: Something less edgy.