If you’ve been anxiously waiting for the latest Sonic Frontiers update… well, chances are you’ve already downloaded and started playing “Sonic’s Birthday Bash,” but for everyone else, hey, it’s out now across all platforms. A few features were highlighted in this morning’s Sonic Central presentation, but a full update list has been detailed in a news post on Steam. Here’s what you can expect when you jump in:
- The islands have been decorated for Sonic’s birthday, and Sonic has a new costume to go with it.
- You’ll also find another new costume, “Frontier Elite.”
- The Koco will now appear in different costumes across the island.
- There are now 24 new Jukebox songs hidden in the game.
- You can now play in New Game+, restarting the game with all your stats and skill tree unlocks.
- You can unlock and use Sonic’s Spin Dash.
- The Open Zone areas have new challenges.
- Island completion percent is now available on multiple screens.
- Cyber Space level results will show colored marks based on which special abilities you’ve used, including the Homing Dash, the Spin Dash, changing jump deceleration, and Cyber Space Power Boost.
- There are additional settings for…
- Rate of jumping deceleration,
- Dramatic camera angles during special attacks,
- Decelerate when stopping,
- Maintain boost when jumping,
- “BGM Change” in Cyber Space stages,
- And clearing your times in timed challenge modes (such as Cyber Space levels).
- Rhea Island’s towers have been rebalanced for Easy difficulty.
- Other bug fixes.
Though we were expecting a few of these, like the birthday events and new Koco, the inclusion of a New Game+, deceleration, and the Spin Dash are welcome additions. For those who are looking for an excuse to dip back into the game, this update’s new configurations compliment the previous update’s challenges and sets a pretty high bar for this year’s Third Update featuring new character and story content.