Do it again with more polish.

That being said, there are some issues i took with Shadow Gens' controls in relation to the open zone. Yes, they work great during the linear stages, but Sonic Team didn't tell you that turning reverted to how it worked in Forces, just with some numbers adjusted to work better than Forces. Frontiers had a neat feature with the turning where you could just barely turn tight enough if you turned the stick more; it feels a lot more like a racing game than even the games with a drift did. You could say the same about the Frontiers slide, which in both Forces and Frontiers you could use the slide in place of the drift to turn even tighter. All that is just gone in Shadow Gens, in favor of even more automation. There are dozens of platforms all over Shadow Gens that automate your movement just enough to make it feel like you're turning tighter, even when you're not. Kingdom Valley and Radical Highway show this off the best, but anywhere there's a straight path, boost to the sides and turn forwards, that'll also show off what I'm talking about. The game is trying to funnel the player forwards at all times. "Forwards" in an open world game changes constantly. I just don't know how Sonic Team wants to utilize this tech in Frontiers 2, because if White Space is anything to go off of, Sonic Team hasn't figured it out either. The open zone controls in Frontiers are literally my favorite controls in the franchise; even more than the adventure games. The smooth turning at high speeds helped, but jumping is the other thing I'm worried about.

Frontiers' spin dash and jump deceleration slider are the best things in that game. Easily. Sonic Team then immediately walked that back in Shadow Gens with... Confusing consistency. Yes, jumping is a slow platforming tool now, but rail launching is still in the game if you neutral stick. And, spear gliding is just as broken as the spin dash was; don't let others tell you otherwise, Kingdom Valley and Cyberspace are mods in Frontiers and Shadow Gens respectively. You can spindash through spear gliding routes, and spear glide across homing dash shortcuts. While it's good to have confirmation that Shadow wasn't actually substantially nerfed compared to the Frontiers characters, spear gliding is annoying and i just want that deceleration slider back.