Sonic the Hedgehog fans have endured quite the rollercoaster ride over the years. The franchise's approach to open-world gameplay has been inconsistent, resulting in a series that tries to reinvent its core gameplay with each release, up to Sonic Frontiers. Following the poor sales of 2014's Sonic Boom: The Rise of Lyric, it appeared that combining the blue blur and modern open-world gameplay would simply never work. However, last year's Sonic Frontiers proved that theory wrong, introducing traversal and combat that, though imperfect, felt like a natural evolution for the Sonic IP. With the 10-year anniversary of Sonic Boom in 2024, a remake of the title could find redemption by adapting the ideas and improvements featured in Sonic Frontiers.
The WiiU exclusive Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric is considered by many to be the series' worst release. Sonic's first foray into a truly open world, resulted in terrible combat and traversal. Classic fast-paced sections featuring loops and speed boosts were nearly unplayable, with unresponsive controls and an inconsistent camera. Unpolished textures and models could be manipulated using Sonic Boom's clunky mechanics, with players able to entirely skip nearly every locked section or level in the game. With Sonic Frontiers' improved combat, pacing, and traversal, the foundation for a solid remake of Sonic Boom already exists.
Sonic Frontiers' Open World Is The Perfect Blueprint for a Sonic Boom Remake
Sonic Frontiers features the titular hedgehog journeying across Starfall Islands in an effort to rescue his friends from the Digital Realm. The game is divided into five sections, each with a unique map and enemies to face. Sonic Boom's "open world" was restricted to a linear set of objectives, while rapidly switching between exploration, platforming, and battle stages, Sonic Frontiers gives players free rein over how to tackle the Starfall Islands.
Players can use any method they wish to explore the map and acquire each island's collectibles, which unlock digital realm stages and allow Sonic to collect Chaos Emeralds. The game features a skill tree through which new abilities are unlocked, resulting in faster and more complex methods of battle and exploration. Sonic Boom's gameplay revolved around the unique abilities of Sonic and his friends. Each character could be used for certain situations, such as gliding with Tails or burrowing with Knuckles.
In addition, each character had a whip-like device, called an Enerbeam, that allowed them to swing from or latch onto certain objects. Taking the fresh ideas of SonicFrontiers and adding Boom's unique character abilities and Enerbeam could provide a remake of Sonic Boom with the best gameplay loop yet. In addition, Sonic Frontiers' "open zone" approach fixes much of the pacing issues with Sonic Boom's rapid shifting between exploration, combat, and fast-paced platforming stages.
Sonic Frontiers' DLC Characters Could Help The Case For a Sonic Boom Remake
Though Frontiers has already delivered more than many fans could have expected, additional content was announced for the title in 2023. The Sonic Frontiers' 2023 Content Roadmap reveals that a "Playable Characters and New Story" update will arrive later this year, with the accompanying picture for Update 3 implying that Tails, Knuckles, and Amy will be part of this new story. If true, it means that the entire team from Sonic Boom will again be playable, offering fans a glimpse of how their abilities could be adapted for modern gameplay.
Given the length of time between Tails, Knuckles, and Amy's being featured in a major title, it is likely that their playstyles will require a complete reboot to fit into a modern title such as Frontiers. By adapting the core attributes of Sonic's friends for modern titles moving forward, Sonic Frontiers' Character DLC bodes well for future Sonic games or potential remakes. As Sonic Boom features all of these potential DLC characters working in tandem, a remake of the title seems especially poised to succeed if Sega can adapt them as effectively as it did Sonic. Until the release of Update 3, fans anxiously await more details about Sonic Frontiers' new story and playable characters.
Sonic Frontiers is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
