Stunts are always cool. They run at 100 mph, go through hoops at boost, and arc gracefully through loop-the-loop. Unfortunately, the sonic frontier takes a while to get there.

While on a two-man plane adventure to investigate the Starfall Islands, Sonic and his friends are unexpectedly sucked through a wormhole into cyberspace. While Sonic manages to run fast enough to escape back to the real world, Amy and Tails find themselves stuck not as lucky, but as holograms. Sonic must navigate the islands, unlocking portals, fighting bosses, and collecting knick-knacks to return his friends to the world from which they came. Of course, it's not that simple. For an AI called Sage has teamed up with Eggman to prevent him from unraveling the deeper mysteries surrounding the islands.

The world is divided into two parts. Cyberspace, which unfolds like a classic Sonic level and is a full-on sprint to the finish line, and open-world space, where the Starfall Islands themselves are explored. The first moment you emerge from cyberspace into the real world, you are confronted with a startlingly bleak landscape of gray rocks and flat grass. The world feels cold and empty, but as time passes, giant loops and bounce pads are added, turning the landscape into a theme park as you progress.

Honestly, if I didn't have to push through the early stages for the sake of the review, I would have thrown it out and missed it right away. However, after three hours, new rails and paths are added to the map, making the trudging much more satisfying.

Sonic himself feels slow at first. Sonic's turning radius feels large, which can be problematic when bouncing around platforms in tight corners and finding different paths on old-school sonic levels. Finding bell-like Koco creatures scattered around the world and returning them to Elder Koco will increase your speed. Once upgraded to level 7, Sonic finally begins to show his true power. There is nothing quite as exhilarating as sliding down a rail with sparks flying from your heels, then flipping onto another rail and arriving at your destination with a boost.

Sonic is also quite useful in battle. Simple attacks can be combined with more skills over time. While basic enemies can be defeated with just a few blows, the new map also features a number of "Wanda and the Colossus"-style giants. Some of them can be attacked only after the enemy's movement is interrupted, while others, like the giant Asura, require the player to run through the enemy's body to find a squishy spot of weakness. For a game that is all about running, fighting is oddly comforting. Unfortunately, however, a battle with a titan awaits at the end of each area. Titans are intimidating to look at, but fighting titans is all about defeating them with set-piece action sequences and free-form flying. The scale of the Titans is exciting, but their pacing is so disconnected from the rest of the game. The over-the-top light effects are just bewildering.

The cyberspace sections are full of bright colors and giant loops for Sonic to sprint through, providing a spectacle that the overworld lacks. They are also punishing. The camera swings around frequently to change the angle of vision and running. When you hit an enemy, you dash at great speed, but as soon as you clear the area, you come to a complete stop and have to start speeding up again from scratch. It is best to avoid it. However, Sonic's new "Scirp" ability is great fun. While running, he can draw paths around objects and enemies to inflict damage and solve puzzles.

The progression system is a currency mess. To reach any of the Titans, you must first collect the Chaos Emeralds, and to collect them you need the Gate Key, but to get it you need to collect the gear to open the portals in cyberspace. You also need many other collectibles to upgrade and advance your skills, but there are so many glittering objects that it is hard to know where to focus first. The idea is to encourage exploration, but it doesn't quite work; on the contrary, it feels like you're being pulled in ten different directions at once because the world itself is not worth exploring. Traversal is more about testing your skills and pulling off daring stunts than actually looking around. While it feels great to go around Starfall Island and ride the rails, looking for sparkly knick-knacks is not a great incentive to do so.

Unfortunately, I ran into a strange bug: if you have a controller plugged into your PC, the game can get confused, making movement impossible. Using the keyboard is fine, but it is not intuitive when trying to perform combos in combat. Also, because of the many pop-ins, it is sometimes difficult to tell if there is a route forward and can be startled until that route appears.

I had a hard time with Sonic Frontier. Bouncing around pinball-like arenas and boosting walls to reach seemingly impossible places is exciting at best, but the world in which it takes place is flat. The drama of the story is a reason to keep playing, but there are too many obstacles in the way of enjoying Sonic's pure movement to recommend Frontiers.