Sonic Superstars was one of the games I was interested in last year but decided to give a miss after seeing some of the more critical (read: negative) reviews. It also just released in a year of big releases and even within a few days of the release of Super Mario Bros. Wonder. As I’ve detailed, there were a lot of great games that monopolised the limited time and money I put aside for gaming last year and so this one was not a priority. Nonetheless, I knew that much like with Sonic Frontiers and earlier with games like Sonic Forces, that I would get to this one eventually. And eventually I did when I found it for less than half the retail price a few weeks ago.
The short of it is that I found most of what the negative reviews had said about it to be spot on and normally this would be the end of the matter. What has prompted this post is that I played the Switch version and I noticed that some of what was written online was inaccurate with regards to the performance of that version of the game. And so unlike with my review of Sonic Frontiers, all the screenshots I have included in this post are captured from my Nintendo Switch.
This review from Nintendo Life is the main review that drew me to comment; with the follow passage being the main point of contention:
In terms of the overall presentation and performance on the Switch, we must admit to feeling a tad anxious at how much focus Sega had been putting on the PS5 version before the game’s launch. Thankfully, however, our fears have been proved unfounded, as Sonic Superstars both looks and runs wonderfully on Nintendo’s platform (possibly boosted by its day-one patch).
Sure, as expected, the resolution isn’t as sharp as on other platforms, and the lighting effects aren’t quite as flashy in some instances, but crucially, Superstars knows what Sonic games should look like, and it nails the overall aesthetic and art style. Sega recently stated its intention to “move beyond” the series’ pixel art visuals, which certainly didn’t sit well with us at first, but if Superstars proves to be a foundation from which to build, then we can expect some truly stunning Sonics in the future.
The bolded section is flat out wrong. When I first started the game on my Switch, it took so long to start that I thought there was something wrong with the game card. I closed the game and restarted it and the game did eventually start but it was very slow. Once it started, the load times were much shorter but still very long and there are even frequent stutters during loading screen transitions. The Switch may be dated hardware but it has still seen much more demanding games released going all the way back to 2017. Sonic Superstars is hardly some technical marvel that only the latest Xbox and PlayStation consoles could handle and claiming it “looks and runs wonderfully” on Switch is simply not true.
I wondered whether maybe I hadn’t updated my game before beginning but I was pretty sure I had and it is usually automatically done anyway. I went back and checked and I did indeed have the latest version. So maybe there is something wrong with my Switch? Could be but there isn’t unless the problem is only present when playing Sonic Superstars. I ran through a couple of other possibilities. Perhaps the writer actually played the PlayStation 5 version and presented this for the review? Or perhaps they were slightly less dishonest and based their description of Switch performance on the freely available demo? Or at a long-shot, perhaps they really do believe the game runs wonderfully?
The truth is that Sonic Superstars on Switch looks and runs horribly — especially given that it is a 2D platformer that the Switch should have little problem running even with everything happening on screen. I suspect this game was just poorly optimised and the developer Arzest focused more on getting it right on other platforms. This was certainly the case with the Sonic Colors remaster; a game that originally released on the already dated Wii hardware back in 2010 and still looked terrible on the much more capable Switch. You don’t want to take my word for it as you could check out this Digital Foundry video which shows the game looks poor even without comparing it to other platforms.
In the following paragraph the review also states:
Performance-wise, you’re looking at a rock-solid 60fps throughout with barely any noticeable dips.
This isn’t unreasonable when describing the first few zones in the game but it becomes untrue very soon after. There are pretty significant and noticeable dips in the later zones of the game. The final boss of the game in particular has a number of moments when the game stutters. Given how janky the boss fights can be, this stutter can have an impact on the already frustrating sequences. So this statement is absolutely false and objectively so. It also leads credence to my speculation that the person reviewing the game only tested the demo on Switch and played the remainder of the game on another console for review. I am not the only one that has experience the long load times, slowdown and stuttering either and have found a number of comments making the same complaints around the web.
A review from the long-running Australian Nintendo website Vooks is a little closer to the truth though they make no comment about the horrendous load times:
For the most part, Superstars looks nice and runs well on the Switch. The framerate is generally smooth throughout without turning the visuals into a smudgy mess. All that said, later boss fights tended to get choppy, and compared to the rest of the game, it is noticeably rough. Overall, it looks and runs better than expected if you can overlook the odd slowdown at specific moments.
That it runs “better than expected” is a low bar and this isn’t a comparable situation to Sonic Frontiers which was a genuinely more demanding game. There is no reason why a side-scrolling platformer should run this badly on Switch at all. As best I can tell, the developers just got it running to an “acceptable” standard and perhaps finish it via patch later. Whether that was because of publisher demands or another reason, I can’t say I know. The only thing I know for sure is the Switch should have no trouble running a game like this.
As for the game in general, most of the criticism of the game focuses on the boss fights and I certainly had the same opinion of them. They are overly drawn out and become particularly frustrating in the latter part of the game. Early Sonic games generally had very easy boss fights with only really the final boss of the game presenting any serious challenge. This is a flaw that could be addressed but Sonic Superstars only artificially prolongs what are otherwise very typical bosses for the series. Though I didn’t complete anything beyond the main story mode, I understand the last two bosses featured in the two extra modes are even worse and I have no desire to experience this directly.
This is something of a shame because the zones are otherwise very well designed. Arzest at the very least, does know how to design levels in a Sonic game. I enjoyed most of the zones in the game and though they had similarities with early games, these were all original in their way. There were even a number of clever gimmicks that changed up the gameplay too. Almost all are detailed, colourful and contain a number of different paths to explore or simply speed through. There were very few instances where the player is unwittingly hurled into a bottomless pits which was much more common in the Gameboy Advance, DS and the rather terrible Sonic the Hedgehog 4.
Were it not for the horrible performance on Switch, it would only be the mixed quality of the soundtrack and the aforementioned boss fights that held the game back from greatness. Unfortunately these are both big issues when it comes to a Sonic the Hedgehog game. The series is well-known for its music and the boss fights deplete a lot of fun from the otherwise entertaining zones.
I had the thought while preparing to write this that each new Sonic game is wish made on a monkey’s paw. For those unfamiliar, this just means a wish that is granted but always with a horrible consequence. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) could be then understood as a wish for the series to go back to its roots. The wish came true but was only true of the title and the game itself was infamously horrible. Sonic Superstars could be seen as making a wish for a sequel to Sonic Mania with all new zones but in making the wish, we failed to specify that we wanted the same developers involved and so ended up with this. An Internet search quickly established I was not the first to come up with this idea.
So Sonic Superstars isn’t awful but it could have easily have been much better. I would still recommend it to the curious but definitely not on Nintendo Switch. While this may seem to contradict some of what I said about Sonic Frontiers, I am more critical of the poor performance of this game because it is considerably less demanding by design. Ultimately, both games are disappointing even without these performance issues because of a number of bad design decisions that can only be described as baffling.