Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

My uncle, who came back from another world, was finally able to play a fun Sonic game.

There is no doubt that this year's TGA Game of the year is a competition between "God of War: the Gods of Twilight" and "Elden's Ring of the French."

On one side is the pinnacle of the technological power of the modern game industry, and on the other is the integrated work of the soul of the open world. "God of War: the Gods of Twilight" and "Elden's Ring" both have outstanding media scores and players' reputation, far ahead of the other contestants.

But at a time when netizens are fretting about who to vote for, Sonic fans are shouting loudly about the game that had previously been dismissed as useless: "Sonic: the unknown Border."

The unknown Frontier is an orthodox sequel to the Sonic series after a lapse of five years, and it is also an innovation in the series's transition to an open world. Judging from the media reviews on the scoring website Metacritic alone, the PS5 version of the game, which has the most media, scored 72 points, which is exactly the same as the ridiculous prank game "simulated Goat 3" released not long ago.

In sharp contrast to the dismal media rating of this book is the surprisingly high player score. At the beginning of its release, the average user score of "unknown Border" was as high as 8.8, surpassing most of the well-received works you can imagine.

If you only focus on the player score, the two hot players in this year's competition for the game of the year have lost to the blue hedgehog, so there is more or less room for the "unknown frontier" in this year's TGA annual game list.

In fact, from the beginning of the game to the official release of the six months, about the "unknown border" questions and mockery has never stopped. Until really get started, no one thought that the wind criticism of this work in the player community would achieve such a big reversal.

When the media rating of "unknown Border" was lifted, IGN, a well-known game media, gave this work a 7-point rating. At that time, some players joked in the comment area of the video, and for Sonic fans, a score of 7 was like a score of 12.

"it's a miracle that modern Sonic got 7 points." it doesn't make sense for fans to make such a humble gesture. after all, the Sega brand IP, which once marked Malio, has not produced a satisfactory work for a long time. The last orthodox work in this series can be traced back to "Sonic: power" five years ago, but the short flow of the game and perfunctory level design are hardly ideal, and failed media scores have once again damaged Sega's confidence in Sonic.

Sonic: Carnival, another game five years ago, has a good reputation, but Carnival is essentially a work produced by fans and officially invited by the authorities, although many players scoff at the media rating, Sega obviously doesn't think so. Back in 2010, the then Sega vice president mentioned in an interview with foreign media MCV that in order to enhance the value of the Sonic brand, they would consider removing all Sonic games with lower-than-average media ratings. It is not difficult to see that Sega attaches great importance to media ratings, in their words, "in Europe and North America, the scores of external evaluation agencies are highly related to sales, so we have set relevant internal goals." And if you want to improve the media score, the most important thing is to polish the quality of the game.

The poor reputation of Sonic's restart in 2006 is often thought to be the reason Sega is obsessed with grading. "the unknown Frontier" is undoubtedly a new series of works that Sonic's team has high hopes for. The game took five years from launch to release, and the development cycle is much longer than that of previous Sonic works, and at the beginning of this publication, its producer Takashi Takashi also expressed his determination to "hope to lay the foundation for the future Sonic game" in an interview. As a transition into an open world, unknown Frontier has attracted a lot of attention since its debut, but the bold and innovative Sonic sequel overturned early in the pre-release phase.

In June this year, unknown Border released its first live demonstration video. Poor picture performance, heavily fragmented scene design, a loose and fragmented open world, and a lack of polished details all make this forward-looking announcement a disaster. Especially those tracks scattered in the air for Sonic to glide, the production team rudely crammed these facilities into the scene, regardless of the harmony of the overall atmosphere, passers-by who do not know the truth may only wonder if there is a misloaded BUG in the game.

After the official version of the game did not fix this "sense of fragmentation", a number of collective activities broke out in the Sonic fan circle in Europe and the United States, including, but not limited to, asking for an extension of the game and asking for the game to be redone. Some even began to stir up how to play the game, trying to "humiliate" and "unknown borders" in the form of fan self-made. In any case, the word-of-mouth of this work has hit rock bottom before the sale, and it is not favored by everyone at all.

However, in the face of such a mess, the Sonic team was calm, saying that they had expected negative feedback from the players and repeatedly stressed that the game would not be postponed. In an interview with the media, the Sonic team said bluntly that "players don't understand what this new way of playing is."

It turns out that players really don't understand. It wasn't until after the game was released that Sonic fans finally understood why the Sonic team had such high confidence and expectations about the unknown Border.

2 as early as the announcement stage of the game, the Sonic team repeatedly stated that the design adopted in this work is "Open Zone" rather than "Open World". Although it is only a difference in the choice of words and sentences, it can be found in the actual game experience.

If you look at the unknown Border from the perspective of other open world games, it is clear that the design of this work is not qualified. The game is divided into five chapters, players will go to different islands as the main plot advances, and each independent island is indeed a large seamless map, but there is neither a mission to guide players forward, nor a sense of exploration of the vast world, and what players can do is extremely limited-collect key props in the big map to propel the plot, and then go to the next island after defeating Guandi BOSS.

In the process of playing "unknown Border", the players will always be accompanied by the cold slide devices in the environment and the roadside monsters who chase you and beat you with amorous feelings. What the game highlights is a sense of loneliness, a lifeless world where there are so many areas to explore but refuse to interact with players at a deeper level like a linear barrier.

But just like the "open area" advertised in the game, the game experience featured by "unknown Frontier" has taken a diametrically opposite path from the very beginning with other open world games.

It is believed that every Sonic player who steps into the big map for the first time will soon understand why the production team has turned this work into an open area. When Sonic galloped around the world, the "sense of speed" of the series, as always emphasized, was shown incisively and vividly. In previous works, how to run smoothly and run well and get a sense of speed is one of the topics that the production team throws to players, but in the unknown Border, holding the accelerator button and running all the way to the target location has become the most primitive and attractive pleasure of the game.

In order to fill the super-large maps in the game, and also to give players enough content to explore, the production team moved the traditional parkour experience of the Sonic series to this open area, constantly stimulating the players' desire to play with a large number of mini devices-- of course, these devices built out of thin air do look at the play, but as long as there are enough to make players feel "no wonder" gradually. It will change from quantitative change to qualitative change. When players climb up high, there is no marginal playable content in front of their eyes, and one or two will be set on the way to the target.

The design of the open area is essentially to split the traditional level into countless mini-devices and distribute them to every corner of the map. Considering that it is not easy to manipulate the perspective of jumping games on 3D platforms, these devices are highly automated and do not leave too much operating space for players, and may account for a larger proportion of "watching" than "playing". The open area of "unknown Border" is like a large Sonic amusement park, which encourages players to try and experience the pleasure of Sonic games in one amusement device after another by reducing the difficulty of operation and improving the perception.

On this basis, the game also prepares a big meal for players that has never appeared in the promotional film: cyberspace.

Cyberspace is an area independent of the big map, and players need to acquire key props to challenge these traditional Sonic linear levels. Sonic's team understands the truth of "copying excellent cases without innovation". Most of the tracks in cyber space are inherited from the level design of a series of well-known works. On the one hand, this old platform jump game is really difficult to innovate at the level; on the other hand, these scenes in the unknown Border are the essence of the Sonic series over the decades.

Cyberspace has a total of 30 levels, of which 19 are the hurdles of reengraving old works. "unknown Border" has done a good job in refining the advantages of the Sonic series. Many fans who have played this series can feel the return of the familiar Sonic series. However, as far as the series transformation is concerned, its responsibility must not stay in serving the fans to eat the old money, putting aside the old traditions familiar to the fans. Whether the rest of the new work can attract new players is the focus that should be paid attention to.

On the statistical website HowLongToBeat, it takes hundreds of players an average of 15 hours to get through the main line of "unknown Border".

15 hours in other games is not outstanding, but compared with the old series, a 15-hour customs clearance work suddenly appeared in the game series with almost no more than 10-hour flow, which has more or less the meaning of "big tube full".

It just supports the content of this "big tube full", which is a repeated process over and over again.

In most media reviews, the disadvantage of "too lengthy process" is mentioned. In order to adjust the player's play experience, the open area of "unknown Border" is crammed with games such as fighting, decryption, Mini Game and even essential fishing in the open world, but no matter how novel these tricks are, no matter how interesting Sonic Amusement Park is, it's hard for ordinary players to immerse themselves from beginning to end. If you ask anyone who can play next to these rails and springs all day, they are of course die-hard fans of Sonic.

"unknown Border" is a game suitable for all players, but only the senior players of the Sonic series can experience all the "refreshing points" of the game. For example, the game will mention a lot of previous works at the plot level, such as the sixes, Caos, Angel Island. The Sonic team also drew the prequel story of the game as a cartoon and released it in advance. If it wasn't for true love fans, it would have been confusing to actually enter the game.

Similarly, although this BOSS performance is a pleasant surprise, the experience of fans and passers-by is also different. Players who don't know about the previous work are just manipulating a golden hedgehog to fight BOSS in a close battle, but for fans of the series, the last time Super Sonic appeared in the Sonic biography was in Sonic: generation 11 years ago.

Unknown Frontier itself is a good game, and when Sonic fans put on the fan filter, the series of innovations became more perfect, including bold innovation in the open area and a series of authentic level designs. the shortcomings of deduction points can be ignored to some extent, after all, the quality of the Sonic game has not appeared for a long time.

It seems to be the norm in the industry that media scores are higher than players' expectations, but players' word-of-mouth is still slightly new. The publicity phase can be called a disaster, and the mediocre media scores in the early 70s have made this work practically dissuade a large number of players. Perhaps it is because of the preconceived concept that the game, which has a decent actual experience, has gained unexpected reputation. As the first step in the transformation of the series, "unknown Frontier" has gone quite well.

At least, my uncle who came back from another world can finally play a fun Sonic game.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: Okny

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