Dr. Robotnik has won. It’s not really a phrase that you’d expect in Sonic’s normally rather happy-go-lucky world, with Sonic and his pals always there to put paid to the evil genius’ most dastardly of plans. Yet what we see here is a world in which Robotnik has formed a team of evil characters, including the new villain known as Infinite, forcing Sonic to form a resistance force to try and take the world back.
Dystopia or not, the game’s lost very little of the bright and colourful world of a traditional Sonic game. Cities might be under Robotnik’s heel and being devastated by meteors crashing into buildings, but it’s still painted in the same kinds of vibrant primary colours as you’d expect, the setting sun still lending everything an orange glow.
Sonic hasn’t lost a step as he races through the city, collecting strings of rings and pulling off his familiar homing attack to bounce off enemies and jump pads one after another. As the wider cast of Sonic characters chat over the top of the action, about how they’re holding off enemy forces and Shadow has been spotted, the levels shifts from racing forward to side scrolling play, giving us a more classical slant on the modern fast-paced action.
My time with Sonic Forces was immediately followed by sampling a handful of levels in the retro-inspired Sonic Mania, and it just emphasised how different the 3D Sonic games actually are. They’re more about that fast-paced action, where the classic stylings of Sonic Mania is as much about slow paced exploration and figuring your way through a level with brief bursts of speed. Forces is much more of a rollercoaster ride with occasional slower moments.
By contrast, the rather controversial inclusion of a custom character allows for a lot more flexibility and it’s here that Sonic Team get to explore a lot more gameplay ideas, while allowing for both modern and classic Sonic to remain comparatively pure. While picking different animal types and customising their look might be the dream for a certain side of the Sonic fandom, the gameplay changing side of things is in picking their Wispons and associated abilities.
Two Wispons were available in this demo, a lightning whip and a flamethrower, both of which could happily chew through enemies if you were content to button mash, in addition to more Sonic-like jump attacks courtesy of a grappling hook. Each also gives them a special ability that is recharged with bespoke pickups as you go through a level. In this way, a character with the lightning whip can dash through strings of coins, while the one with the flamethrower can repeatedly boost jump through the sky, both allowing for different routes through the level.
Classic Sonic’s appearance in this three part demo was restricted to a boss fight with Dr. Robotnik, who quickly bemoans his appearance from another dimension, as Tails gives him a bit of sass, which is even more embarrassing when you remember that Tails sounds like a precocious six year old.
The two-phase boss fight starts off in rather classic form, as Robotnik goes from side to side with a whirring circular saw waving about on a chain. Land a few hits into his floating ship triggers the second stage, where he slots into a huge robot dragoon, unleashing mini-gun fire at you before flinging rocks and then sending huge drills. It’s a relatively tricky boss fight, before you realise that you can stand over to one side to avoid the rocks, and that you need to bounce off the metallic balls that also rain down in order to stagger and deal damage to him, potentially even letting you break the sequence. Needless to say, as it was just a boss fight, this was the level where I got an S rank.
One notable thing about Forces is that it’s a major cross platform game that’s also coming to Nintendo Switch with no cuts to content. There are, however, certain technical cutbacks, given the gulf in console power. In handheld mode, the game runs at 720p and tries to maintain 30fps, and while it looks great and often manages to play fairly smoothly, it falls short when there’s a lot of action or effects work – something that the PS4 version is also guilty of, though it aims for 60fps. How it fares in the Switch’s docked mode will be fascinating to see, though there’s no details on the resolution or frame rate they’re aiming for.
What the Switch version did allow me to see was a glimmer of how the custom character and the two forms of Sonic can interweave through the same levels. Playing a variation of the modern Sonic level that I’d started with, the custom character’s tech-driven abilities and Wispons meant that I could take a slightly different route at times, branch off into some very different areas and brought back the feeling of exploration and finding different route.
The thing that I find most fascinating about Forces as a whole is how broad its scope is. Sonic Team’s intention to take 3D Sonic back to a point where it was comparatively well regarded – well, compared to the last few attempts – could be read as taking it back to basics. That’s true in some ways, and both modern and classic Sonic typify that approach without gimmicks. Those have instead been splintered off to one side with the custom characters and the broad range of Wispons and abilities that they will have. Really, it’s an approach that should mean that there’s something for all Sonic fans in this game. The trick will be in balancing the different sides.
And if you’re really just of the opinion that Sega should give up on 3D Sonic? Well, there’s always Sonic Mania coming out in August…
