A series staple since Sonic the Hedgehog 2 over twenty-five years ago right up to the recent Sonic Mania, either earning the seven Chaos Emeralds or clearing the game’s story often yielded the highly coveted reward of Super transformation. From there, simply collect fifty rings mid-stage, transform, and blast off with ring-fueled invincibility and faster speeds.
While oddly absent from the game’s initial release over a month ago, Sonic Forces is finally bringing in this long loved franchise staple at long last as free downloadable content… unfortunately, with a catch that is already drawing community backlash.
Like previous DLC releases, the Super Sonic DLC is available for free, but in this case, only for a limited time. January 23, 2018 is the cutoff date for free downloads, after which late adopters will have to cough up an extra $1.99 / €1.99 / £1.69.
The controversial change is already drawing criticism online, with fans pointing out not only how Super forms were readily available in previous instalments without an extra charge, but also how hackers have already datamined Super Sonic in the PC version of Sonic Forces—which received additional ire for its inclusion of Denuvo DRM—since the launch day patch.
Web-savvy players were already aware of both Classic and Modern Super Sonic’s existence in Forces for several weeks, and the mountains of footage already on YouTube surely don’t make these hard to find.
In addition, when choosing Super Sonic as a separate character, the Super transformation is triggered automatically—rather than at the player’s volition—with 50 Rings or more collected when earthbound.
The Super Sonic DLC is already making rounds in Australia and Europe, and will likely crashland in North America later today.
In the meantime, you can also read our TSS Review for Sonic Forces right here.
Source: NintendoEverything
This is absolutely stupid. Super Sonic has been fully functional since the Day 1 patch as PC players have shown, so it literally might as well be on-disk DLC. And what happened to all this games DLC being free?
Being free is something I assume SEGA West pushed heavily for for PR reasons and this being free for a limited time is a compromise as SOJ/Sonic Team just see a meal ticket and don’t care about further harming the image of Sonic. SEGA West has to have seen Mania as a massive slam dunk while Forces was something they had to do their best to mitigate and simply be forgotten by the mainstream, if Super Sonic was paid DLC on release it would have caused a shitstorm.
$2 may not sound like much, but this is content owners of the game *already have*. The only reason for charging a fee is to make money.
Yet another example of how those who bend the rules even a little get a better deal than those who remain legitimate.
“The only reason for charging a fee is to make money.”
No $#!t Sherlock.
Christ it’s Street Fighter X Tekken all over again.
Somehow, I think this may be dumber than that SF X TK.
Ono was charging players access to ADDITIONAL PLAYABLE CHARACTERS that where already on disk. Yes, it was on-disk DLC, but the tradeoff was more fighters to choose from.
Kishimoto is charging players access to a BONUS TRANSFORMATION (An involuntary one at that) that has no significance toward the gameplay or the story. SEGA is charging $2 for an ON-DISK UNLOCKABLE EXTRA!
I dunno bout you, but I would take Capcom’s DLC bullshit over SEGA’s anyday.
This is officially one of the dumbest things they’ve ever done…
Switch version here.
I can’t play Stage 8 with Shadow anymore since I installed that dumb Super Sonic DLC. He just doesn’t appear now in the tiny select window. Did you notice the same glitch ?
Stage 8? Luminous Forest? You couldn’t play as him there at all on the Xbox One and PS4 from what I saw.
Probably because it has a cinematic in it. All story important/cinematic stages only have Sonic enabled because they couldn’t be bothered to animate a cutscene with Shadow. Even if you’re Super Sonic, it just goes back to regular Sonic.
Whoo finally. Super Sonic on classic levels is really good!!
Meh, still better than coughing up $13+ for an amiibo.
An amiibo is at least collectible, and has resale value. Purely aesthetic DLC, no matter how cheap, is worthless as soon as you purchase it.
Sega… why are you legit PULLING A CAPCOM HERE!? Seriously! If there is ONE THING that I at least know you are better at doing, it’s NOT pulling on Disc/In Game DLC…. come’on!!!
Oh no, no storyline included!!…
OH yeah, this is classic SEGA all over! Couldn’t fix the game first, no, they add in stale memes and then make us pay for stuff we got for free in the previous games. Only a few weeks AFTER Battlefront II, as well.
This…I’m sorry, but Forces is just sort of trash, isn’t it? One of the worst games of the year for how hard it dropped the ball.
What did you expect with this game and 06 sharing a director?
Shun Nakamura directed ’06. Morio Kishimoto directed Forces. Even if Nakamura was a producer, I’m not sure how accurate it is to consider him a catch all blame sponge. The pay-after-a-month DLC was most likely a bizness decision made by bizness people. Wearing suits.
This game at it’s fundamental core is a series of bizzare mistakes made by people who should know better but don’t care.
Should just be a free update instead of forcing players to buy it if they miss the chance.
Feels to me their trying to make up for its poor sales.
The DLC still isn’t available on Steam here, in the Netherlands (Europe). I guess I have to wait untill SEGA charges money for an already broken game with no content or any replay value.
I want DLC for Sonic MANIA! So I can pay those developers even more! Sonic Forces, it’s nothing more than a 5 dollar value…. : (
I feel like gamers are starting to feel too entitled to DLC.
Sonic Forces is selling for $10 less than launch price at gamestop. $2 DLC that has nothing to do with story is fine.
So what so do many Q4 games during the holidays. $2 DLC for a feature built into previous games is scummy don’t let your fanaticism blind you to this.
Gamers feel entitled to Sonic Forces DLC because the game already sold for a good $30 more than it’s worth.
That’s cool and all, but wake me when Episode Knuckles or Tails become a thing.
Downloaded Super Sonic out of pure, morbid curiosity, to see if it makes the game more playable.
I played as Super Sonic for about three minutes. Turned it off. That’s about as much enjoyment as you’ll get out of it, so….charging for it is kinda shameful. If I paid even $1 for this feature, I’d feel ripped off.
As well, It doesn’t magically make the game “good” or even tolerable. It should have just been there from the start as a reward for, I dunno, collecting chaos emeralds? …or at least beating both hours of game-play this product offered….if you didn’t shut the damn thing off after one.
The short end of it is that the game still sucks.
Oh, and you can’t “turn on” Super Sonic during a level. Once you collect 50 rings, it turns you Super Sonic automatically, no matter where you are. Not like it matters, since by the time you collect 50 rings, there will be about 50 seconds left in the level anyway.
it pains me to see all these people okay with the idea of paying for fucking Super Sonic.
Honestly I wish I could pin your comment.
Sonic Forces feels like a mobile game released on home consoles. Map design and layout, level design and length, general game design, the customisation aspect, even this exact approach to adding things like Super Sonic.Everything about it feels like a mobile title.
All this complaining over $1.99
This tragic game only gets more tragic.
My guess is that SEGA’s trying to recoup for their eventual losses for when the rules of Net Neutrality dying will affect SEGA as well!
This is outrageous. Forcing us to pay for something that should have been in the game to begin with is unacceptable.