The unthinkable has happened: Sonic has been defeated, and Doctor Eggman is conquering the planet. The only one who can put things right is your custom-made character, with some help from some old-school Sonics. The premise behind Sonic Forces

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“ If you’re coming off of Sonic Mania the physics will take some getting used to.

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“ Amazingly, the boss battles are actually quite good.

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The character creation is a huge selling point and one of Sonic Forces’ best features, and it feels great to be able to live out a childhood Sega fan dream of making your own Sonic character. You pick their species, customize their look, and dress them up in all kinds of fashion, from stylish (swanky Sega-themed gear, slick shades, and sporty shoes) to downright odd (clown wigs, shutter shades, and wrestling belts), unlocking more as you play. Seeing your creation do wild stunts alongside Sonic, doing fistbumps and taking down some rampaging robots, is a whole heap of fun.There are three types of stages in Forces, all of which have great visual design (take a moment to check out some of the crazy Eggman mechs rampaging through the backgrounds) and are set to a stellar soundtrack that combines Sonic remixes, 16-bit throwbacks (see how many common Genesis instrument samples you can hear), and cheesy late-90s pop-rock.The third type of stage has you controlling your custom character with a unique playstyle based around a special gun called a “Wispon” that harnesses different kinds of wisp energy. Lightning, for instance, gives you a supercharged electric whip and lets you zoom through strings of rings and enemies when powered up, while the drill sends you charging in a straight line to attack and lets you burrow into the ground. The Wispons you equip can greatly affect the way you go through stages, and it’s fun to go back to previous levels to find hidden secrets and earn more gear by using a new loadout to access hidden routes.All three stage types have a persistent Sonic problem: they don’t do a great job of foreshadowing danger, so when you’re moving at high speed through hazard-laden stages you’re going to find yourself taking hits or falling into pits you couldn’t possibly have reacted to. It’s nowhere near as unfair as in games like the notorious Sonic 2006, at least, but it definitely doesn’t go out of its way to avoid these unfair-feeling traps. Overall, the stages feel inconsistent: you’ll have a few fun runs with a lot of cool gimmicks like high-speed rail chases and sliding down a giant tube of water followed by one with a focus on finicky platforming and bad hazards.One thing they do have in common, though, is that all of the stages are on the shorter side (relative to most Sonic games) and there’s no limited number of lives to worry about, so a lousy death due to questionable design every so often is a lot less rage-inducing than it could be – plus, it makes the stages easier to go back and replay to try and earn loot. But the short levels have a downside: a lot of potential for interesting stage design goes unrealized because everything’s over so fast. Classic Sonic suffers the most: his presence in Forces seems like an afterthought since he appears in only a handful of levels that are over far too quickly.That lack of meaningful climactic moments part of the overall problem: throughout the story, Forces feels like it’s ramping up to become something amazing, suggesting an epic battle between Sonic’s friends and Eggman’s army. But both the story and the gameplay just wind up fizzling out towards the end of the five- or six-hour campaign. Heck, you don’t even get to fight some of Sonic’s old rivals that you see introduced early on. That feels like a real bait and switch.After you’re done with the main game you can replay levels to improve your scores and times, rescue other players’ avatars in previously beaten stages through SOS missions to earn you gear and weapons, and unlock a handful of hidden (and quite short) challenge stages, but it still feels like there’s a fair bit of wasted potential. More levels and more big, exciting boss fights would have gone a long way.