Sonic Forces: A surprising gem of a game

I have to admit I have never been a fan of any of the Sonic games. No, not even the first three ones. (I once got to actually try them on an actual Sega Genesis. I was not hooked in the least. Sorry, but that's just how it is.)

The Sonic franchise kept dormant for a while, but eventually new more modern games were made. The general consensus has always been that these new installments have been between mediocre and absolutely horrendous, with only maybe one or two exceptions (and even those have generally not got much praise).

A couple of years ago a new game was released: Sonic Forces. I actually saw a few reaction and "let's play" videos (although I mostly just skimmed through them), and it didn't look all that interesting to me. Perhaps the character creation was slightly interesting, but otherwise it looked like a relatively boring repetitive game.

Some time ago I had a lack of something to play on the Nintendo Switch, and a friend lent me his copy of Sonic Forces. I wasn't particularly excited about it, but decided to try it anyway, because I had nothing better to play while traveling. I was expecting (and I even expressed this to him) to perhaps play the game for half an hour, maybe an hour at most, and get bored of it.

So I started playing it... and playing it... and playing it. I played it at home in docked mode... and kept playing it. And I continued to play it the next day.

To my own surprise, I found myself playing it to the end. It's not an extraordinarily long game (less than 10 hours for a first-time playthrough), but even more to my surprise I wouldn't have actually minded if it had been a bit longer.

It was actually a pretty fun game to play. It's not the best game in existence, but believe me, I have played much, much worse games than this. It was surprisingly addictive, enticing and fun. My experience was surprisingly positive.

I'm fully of the opinion that this is an underappreciated gem. It's not a masterpiece, but it doesn't have to be. It was fun and entertaining, and may I even say cute, and that's all that matters. It might not be for everybody, but it just hit the right buttons for me, at least. I liked it.