Fans beg Sega to delay Sonic Frontiers after 2 lackluster trailers

It worked the first time. Sonic the Hedgehog movie. It will help. Sonic Frontiers?

The weekend following Sonic Frontiers Its first gameplay unveiling was made the hashtag #DelaySonicFrontiersThis was trending in social media. Much like the social media backlash that followed the reveal of Sonic’s original design for the 2020 live-action film, fans are pleading en masse for Sega and Sonic Team to go back to the drawing board.

A seven-minute gameplay video is available. Sonic Frontiers (via IGN) fans registered their meh-at-best reactions, calling out an empty-feeling open world that doesn’t communicate Sonic’s speed as well as the linear levels of his 3D platforming era. A seven-minute additional combat trailer and an eerily bland puzzle were also a problem.

Polygon commenter AirPower summarized the withering consensus of most Sonic fans over the weekend: “Great to see the guy who made those Mario in Unreal Engine demos getting work.”

Soon, the appeals were made to accelerate. Some of them were pleasant:

Other people were directer and more transparent about their intentions.

And others made the case that fan pressure to reconsider the “Ugly Sonic” revealed in early 2019 not only saved that movie, it turned it into a rare critical and commercial success for a video game adaption. Sonic the Hedgehog It had the highest opening weekend of any game film and got a sequel in April. A third film is expected to be released on Paramount Plus, along with a Knuckles spinoff.

Sonic Frontiers the 30-year-old franchise’s first open-world title, was first revealed with a pre-rendered cinematic trailer during The Game Awards 2021 in December. The launch of the game will take place in the holiday quarter 2022 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. It will also be released on Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X.