2/5 ★ – MatthewB_03's review of Sonic Forces.

Sonic Forces is that kid in class who always puts his hand up but always gets the answers wrong. You can see that their is passion and care behind this, but that doesn't make it great. I could ramble about what makes this game bad - the plot being too short, characters being completely different to their usual personalities, the levels being bland and repeating sections of stages for Modern Sonic and Avatar, Infinite's motive being unclear, etc. but instead, like my TASM2 review on Letterboxd (psst it's MatthewB_03) I want to give some praise to this game. There are noteworthy aspects that get shoved under the rug because it's cool to hate Sonic • The second cutscene. God damn. Roger Craig Smith's delivery was perfect when he got annihalited. Seeing Sonic get so overwhelmed is a rarity so it did leave an impact, as well as setting up a tone that could've worked if the game had stuck to it (but straight after its just text on a blank screen saying what's happened rather than showing us in a cutscene) • The music. It's a Sonic game so that's enough said. Seriously though, there are so many great tunes in this OST. It's not the best Sonic soundtrack for sure, but it's still great with variety and better than whatever Sonic Chronicles tried to do • The plot from about Level 20 onwards. The plot is bad, yeah. But it used the typical Sonic formula of searching for a power generator in Eggman's lab to shut it down, only for Eggman to say he had a backup and he's learned from his mistakes, and then goes FURTHER by revealing that Eggman had the real Phantom Ruby all along and Infinite had a prototype. I thought that was really cool and for once, it showed him as an intellectual and didn't let the creature control him like it did in Unleashed or Lost World. The whole idea of the Sun crashing down was cool, if a little rushed. This isn't a high praise, but I thought it deserved a mention for trying to be different. • The presentation. This game is a smooth 60fps woth gorgeous graphics. I'm excited to see later installments to the franchise if it looks as clean as this • Character creation was pretty cool. I never changed my custom character once but unlocking stuff for him felt rewarding enough • No lives. Thank GOD. Lives were part of the arcade scam to keep you spending money when you die. I'm not sure why they stayed a part of home console games for so long, but all a game over does is reset progress for the level. It's dumb and useless and I'm glad the industry is beginning to abolish lives • Duo levels. It's just kinda cool to play as two people at once and combine the abilities • Episode Shadow being free DLC was cool. The quality of the content is another question, but it's also nice that Shadow has a move or two that differ to Sonic. It helps bring individuality out in the character So yeah there's some cool stuff that I did enjoy. But the game is still boring due to a disgustingly easy difficulty, the level design sucks, it controls poorly, take note how there wasn't a single positive about Classic Sonic being in the game and that's because there isn't - he was shoehorned in to tie the game to Sonic Mania. The physics are garbage, the Wisps let you just go over the stages rather than find alternate routes, Eggman isn't funny at all; he's so serious. That's not a problem and it's great to see him as an actual threat for once, but the game tries to force comedy with Sonic's constant jokes but they aren't funny so they could at least make Eggman laughable in a scene or two There's a lot of potential of what could've been but instead we got this - a painfully meh game that's so meh, there isn't anything that sticks out except it's meh-ness. At least Sonic 06 is hilariously glitchy and dumb to keep me entertained. This was just a yawn-fest. 3.5/10