From its opening stage, Sonic Forces displays a number of issues that are emblematic of the journey ahead: Its insistent tutorial messages interrupt your initial sprint down a winding road, the cinematic transition sequences that take you from one path the next that renders you an observer, not an active participant, and right as you're about to settle into the glee of your mad dash forward, the stage ends. In this 3D Sonic game, developer Sonic Team attempts to iterate upon the formula of games like Sonic Generations and Sonic Colors, but it falls short due to frustrating design choices and inconsistent level design. Even its most entertaining moments come with caveats.
The game's story once again sees Sonic getting involved in a battle against Dr. Eggman--this time over the fate of the world. The conniving scientist recruits the expertise of a powerful entity known as Infinite, who he uses to make short work of the blue hedgehog. Six months pass and Dr. Eggman has nearly taken over the entire planet, leaving Sonic and his friends in a tough position. To combat the threat, a ragtag group of freedom fighters consisting of Sonic, a younger version of himself, most of his supporting cast, and a new character you personally create--simply named "the Rookie"--come together.
At first, Sonic Forces' emphasis on story seems like a refreshing shift from the predominantly simple plot lines of recent games in the series. However, even though the heightened stakes provide an interesting power shift, they never culminate into anything interesting or impactful. It's only in Sonic Forces' levity where it manages to be somewhat entertaining, turning to puns or brief comedic situations to elicit a snicker, but all too infrequently.
Throughout your adventure, you'll switch back and forth between playing as either Modern Sonic, Classic Sonic, or your custom character. Both Classic and Modern Sonic play similarly to their past iterations, with some minor additions: Modern Sonic has a double-jump and Classic Sonic comes equipped with Sonic Mania's Drop Dash ability; both are welcome tools that better distinguish the two hedgehogs. But the biggest addition to the formula is your custom character, who sports special weapons called Wispons that grant unique offensive and movement abilities. For example, the Drill Wispon allows you to quickly charge through foes or ride up and down walls. All three characters play distinctly from one another, and there are fleeting thrills to be had in plowing through robots with a speed boost or using a homing attack on a series of flying creatures to quickly clear a path towards the finish line. However, the excitement of these high speed escapades are held back by clunky platforming and unwieldy movement.
Expect to repeatedly careen off the edge of a stage in your mad dash forward.
During platforming and speed sequences, you frequently plummet down bottomless pits due to how abruptly your character builds up speed before a jump or how a road's bumpers aren't made clear. While death is to be expected, the level design repeatedly miscommunicates the placement of oncoming hazards and the timing required to avoid them. Admittedly, practice means you inevitably develop the reflexes demanded of you over time, but even with experience, the game's inconsistencies mean you'll often end up stuck on a ramp mid-run or make a double-jump that simply doesn't flow the way you want. Sonic Forces' sense of control is erratic and unreliable, resulting in a wealth of unintentional deaths and bizarre collisions with environmental hazards.
Sonic Forces' level design does little to accommodate your need for speed. Although Modern Sonic and your custom character have abilities that encourage you to push forward at a blistering pace, it's often smarter to slow down. Telegraphing the right time to go fast has always been a major design issue in the series, but it's magnified here, where obstacles and platforming sequences that require slower, more methodical movements aren't as explicitly signposted as they should be. The game does a poor job of teaching you the flow of its design, instead relying on multiple frustrating and unfair deaths to educate you on the intricacies of a stage's pacing.
Set-pieces typically boil down to simplistic quick-time events that take you out of the high-speed action.
There's a pervading sense of monotony across Sonic Forces' seven unremarkable worlds. Nearly all the obstacles you encounter are rehashes of concepts and mechanics from previous games; lane-based level design, grind rails, speed boost sections, and side-scrolling platforming sequences all make a return. A set-piece sometimes breaks up the pace, but these encounters usually boil down to simplistic quick-time events that make you feel passive to the action happening on-screen rather than an active participant. Multiple routes or lanes in a stage create the illusion of branching paths, but they're so brief that they feel more like quick diversions than actual alternate pathways. It doesn't help that stages are also incredibly short, typically clocking in at two-and-a-half minutes. With cutscenes before and after each stage, you can't help but wish there was a little more ground to cover before reaching the finish line.
Your custom character's Wispons add some variety to the mechanics, but even those are limited, as there are only a couple that offer practical benefits. For instance, the Lightning Wispon allows you to zip through a line of rings, often leading you to alternate routes in a stage. Out of the seven Wispons available, you're likely to stick to using one or two, as there's rarely any incentive to experiment once you've grown accustomed to how a couple work.
In terms of performance, Sonic Forces runs smoothly at 60 frames per second on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The Switch version, however, runs at 30 frames per second and suffers from a downgrade in visuals comparatively while docked or undocked. While tolerable, the higher frame rate of the other versions gives them a significant bump over the game's performance on Switch.
It'd be fair to write Sonic Forces off as another weak entry in the series. It's numerous shortcomings make for an uneven, often frustrating gameplay experience. However, knowledge of its various flaws can make for a smoother second run through. In replaying for S-ranks it's possible to use your accumulated knowledge of a stage's hazards and its most illogical pitfalls, the growing pains of overcoming these obstacles slightly lessened. It was rewarding and enjoyable to go back to older stages to take the most efficient routes, knowing precisely when to increase Sonic's speed to earn faster times. That said, acquiring S-ranks and completing challenges isn't entirely difficult, which makes the endeavor of replaying stages short lived, especially considering how brief stages can be. And speed running or not, Sonic Forces' ill-designed stages and poor handling are still major obstacles that detract from your time spent playing.
For years the Sonic series has come up short in its 3D games. It wasn't until Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations that the series was able to grasp a semblance of quality that could change the perception of the series as a whole for the better. Sonic Forces ultimately fails to advance the mechanics of previously successful 3D Sonic games, or present them in their best light. A mediocre platformer at best, Sonic Forces manages to do nothing more than reinforce long held stereotypes against Sega's beloved blue blur.
There was a time when the thought of playing a game like 2016's Doom on Nintendo Switch seemed too good to be true. Yet here we are, playing Doom on Switch. While it's impressive to see it running on a portable system at all, Nintendo's convertible console obviously can't stand up to the performance of other consoles or PCs. Doom has endured a few compromises during its transition to a more modest platform, and depending on your tolerance for blurry visuals and fiddly controls, these cut corners may be a deal breaker no matter how fascinating the experience is at first blush.
Doom's campaign is all here, accompanied by multiplayer and the leaderboard-centric arcade mode--the only thing missing is SnapMap. Just like before, you push through hordes of demons with bullets and gut-wrenching melee takedowns while a heavy metal soundtrack encourages you to go faster and hit harder. As enemies scale, your weaponry follows, offering a gratifying escalation of excitement befitting Doom's reputation.
This is not to say that Doom's campaign was perfect to begin with, and the same issues it had in the past persist on Switch. There's a fair amount of repetition to deal with, some of which diminishes what should be a monumental milestone: landing on the ground in Hell. You wind up going to and fro multiple times, and despite the feverish action that carries you along the way, there is an amount of deja vu to contend with that saps your enthusiasm, if ever so slightly.
Ultimately, Doom's fast-paced combat makes the occasionally repetitive journey worth taking, and the addition of arcade mode allows you to focus on action alone if you have little interest in the game's so-so narrative or mission structure. The mode was introduced on other platforms in a post-release update and is designed for people who want to either practice their speedrunning skills or rank on internet leaderboards. Multipliers and other score-boosting elements have been introduced to encourage different tactics, and in some cases, to create an unlikely path around a map for optimal scores and efficiency.
Every stage of the campaign is unlocked in arcade mode from the start, and you're allowed to pick and choose from the weapons that would normally be available to you, in addition to every rune perk (regardless of mission), when choosing your loadout. The freedom to hop back and forth throughout the game is a boon as a returning player, though it's constructed in such a way that you might want to dip your toes in the campaign from the start to get your bearings if you haven't played Doom since 2016. Unless you're able to find the rare extra lives amidst all the chaos, one death is all it takes for your run to end in arcade mode.
One of the unfortunate realities of playing such a demanding game with Switch Joycons is that you're bound by the limitations of small analog sticks. Doom offers sensitivity and camera smoothing adjustments that do help to a degree, but compared to playing on the full-sized Pro Controller, Joycons feel notably less reliable. And despite the options menu hinting at motion controls when docked, they don't apply to aiming--you just waggle the right joycon to melee enemies, which isn't as responsive or effective as simply pressing in the right analog stick.
Switch's screen can also prove problematic when facing a room of sprinting demons. It may just be too small to provide the encompassing experience the game's toughest challenges demand. It's also strange to see the UI as it is, with a font size so small that you'll be hard-pressed to quickly read menus when playing undocked. None of this is to say that Doom is unplayable or unenjoyable on the go, it's just the least optimal way to play.
No matter how you approach playing Doom on Switch, you will undoubtedly have to contend with blurry visuals. Bethesda has promised the game will run at 720p regardless of whether your Switch is docked or not. In practice, even if Doom is outputting a 720p signal, It frequently shifts into lower gear, presenting not only low-res textures and models, but an overall muddied image that indicates dynamic resolution switching and stretching. There are rare moments when Doom appears sharp and clear, but you regularly see drastic swings in quality.
There's nothing else like it on a portable system, but be prepared to face a handful of compromises, especially if you're used to playing on other platforms.
This is most apparent during multiplayer matches where large groups of players on screen cause the resolution to plummet. And expect FPS dips in maps that contain a lot of geometry and lighting effects. Even so, it's easy to jump into a few matches and get some enjoyment out of Doom's multiplayer. It maintains the game's emphasis on speed and firepower, and presentation issues aside, performs just as well as you'd hope when it comes to matchmaking and match stability. With plenty of modes and unlockables to tinker with, there's a lot to keep you busy if you need a break from the campaign.
If you can stand to look at a lesser version of Doom's once captivating world, you'll find that the game plays well enough on Switch so long as you've got a TV in front of you and a Pro Controller in hand. There's nothing else like it on a portable system, but be prepared to face a handful of compromises, especially if you're used to playing on other platforms. It's an impressive port that begs you to consider gameplay over graphics, and it succeeds more often than not.
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