PLOT.

Dr. Eggman has taken over 99% of the world. He has a new weapon in the form of Infinite under his command. He has assembled a team of Sonic's greatest adversaries. He has defeated Sonic the Hedgehog. The game does absolutely nothing with any of this. As far as the game is concerned it never happened. For having all those resources, this ends up being the most inconsequential Sonic story line to date. For the world being under Eggman's control for at least 6 months and Sonic presumed dead you'd think that would have a toll on characters personalities. Nope. They act exactly as they would if it was another Tuesday. The bad guy team up ends up amounting to nothing more than cameos. We dont even get boss fights with the Adventure era villains; they get swatted and beaten off screen in one hit! Which is strange because they were the 2 fans were most interested in. Oops? I think that was a jab at Adventure fans to be honest. Infinite ends being a generic, shallow anime villain. He reminds a lot of Mephiles from 06. He gets a lot of screen time so when he is defeated and he's just ...gone from the story, it feels very blah. Reminds me of what happened to the Deadly Six. I like his powers though. The most ball dropping moment is Dr. Eggman finally defeated Sonic and the dynamic between them is as if it didnt happen. This should have been the tine  to explore the relationship between Sonic and Eggman when the role is reversed. Sonic is so used to winning and gloating; what happens when  he doesnt win? Apparently nothing. He pretends he did.

PRESENTATION.

I have nothing negative to say about the presentation. Game is a beauty to look at. I think that Generations is still the best looking Sonic game in terms of being the full package. It just has more things stuff going on.

GAMEPLAY

Classic Sonic:

Dull. His level design is dull. His music themes are dull. His contribution to the story is dull. He also controls like has a 300Ibs weights attached to his legs. He does not have the mobility or the attack options as the other characters. The worst part of the game.

Modern Sonic:

Modern Sonic feels like instead of continuing to fine tune his formula they just decided to have him do the hard stuff his self. He is the most automated, A to B, of the group. Not to say that fun cant be had when playing as modern Sonic, because blasting through a level when you finally have it down is still a visual spectacle but because of a combination of level length and automation makes his levels the shortest and simplistic of the 3. His worst offense is that nothing new was done advance his level design forward at all. Nothing. Feels it went backwards. He still has a stupidly useless double jump as well. 

Avatar:

The best of the 3. He has mobility and the greatest attack options due to wisp weapons. He has the best themes and the best levels in the game. He is not as automated as Modern but not as dull classic. My biggest grip with avatar is that every level is situated around having 2 wisp power ups and if you dont bring the right weapon levels can been a pain to get through because you'll usually be stuck on bottom routes because you cant use the shortcuts. This can kind of be helped by renting another avatar so you have 2 chances to bring at least one of the right wisp weapons. It is also just very charming to build your own Sonic and see everybody else's. I seen some shit with some of these designs.

ALL characters have issues with controls, specifically with acceleration and jumping. It is all over the place. I cant tell if momentum/physics is even involved at all or is it just hard coded.

ON SHORT LEVELS

There has been complaints that Sonic Forces level are too short  but I dont think people realize its done to support the structure of the game. There are red rings scattered throughout the stages, Followed by Number Rings, and the moon rings. If you want to collect them all that is at least 3 times you have to play every stage! ( more likely 4 because getting the red rings on first run is highly unlikely) That does not count missions that have you go back and do things like S ranks, get to end under a specific time, use a specific move or kill an specific amount of enemies. Then there is the SoS missions which have you go back rescue animals locked capsules somewhere is the stages. If you are invested you are going to be playing through these levels A LOT. I dont want to look for useless trinkets across Unleashed length stages ( 14 minutes!). Do You? Levels are short but plentiful to compensate for the fact you will be playing through them a lot. When  you complete these mostly mundane task you are rewarded with gear for avatar and SEGA is gracious to give at 4 pieces of gear each time. Not totally as waste of time.

It is obvious that Sonic Forces was built around the Avatar Mechanic. Everything else came second or in the case Classic Sonic 5th or 6th. If Generations is the high point (sadly) then this game is a step back in every single way. If you remove the avatar thing then this game is a bad generations so it better lucky it has it. I'm going to get the platinum in this game but I cant see why any non Sonic fans or some one not interested in avatar dress up would even bother.

6/10