While it does sport some new paths intertwined throughout, it's worth pointing out that the layout definitely looks more closed and linear in direction compared to Green Hill and Studiopolis. Granted, a lot of this can be chalked up to what we've seen being based on the original layout, but I think it's still worth pointing out, in light of some fears I've read around the web about all the zones' level design being some sort of Sonic CD 2.0. Also really like the background in the interior of the plane. You can tell it has something of a 3D effect going on for the giant square holes moving overhead. That said, I'm still not a fan of the drip-feed style of information used for this game (again, just one minute of footage and some screenshots), and I do see the disappointment some have about the layout still looking very close to the original. It still looks like it will be really fun to play though, so I'm not too fussed. Maybe Act 2 will turn the zone on its head, but I do hope other remixed zones have more radical changes than what we've seen so far. EDIT: Also, probably would had been nice if they had a fade effect for when you transition in and out of the battery ship. I get the quick switch was in the original, but it kinda looks a bit dated here.
Good lord I love how beautiful Flying Battery zone is coming out. The palettes are beautiful, everything is coming out great.
This game looks amazing. I don't care if a small tile is out of place, this is the smoothest 2D official Sonic game I've ever seen. Knuckles' sprite in action looks glorious and I love that even something more linear like Flying Battery will have alternate routes.
The same way they were accomplished in Sonic 3 and Knuckles - Sonic jumps higher than Knuckles. EDIT: Would be my guess, I mean.
I am though. It's been mentioned before but I'd rather have them show as little of the game as possible. Also, if Green Hill is anything to go by I imagine that the first acts of the classic zones will be similar to the original zones with some changes, while the second acts will be completely new.
I think the issue is that they announced the game too early (and then delayed it), but they had to because there was a Sonic drought. They don't want to go the Generations "show everything" route but at the same time they have a lot of time, so how much Studiopolis can they show before it becomes stale? Can't really please everyone in that scenario.
I think an easy way to implement that would be to have blocks that can only be broken with the elemental shield jump abilities.
I wouldn't be bothered with the drip-feeding style of information so much if it wasn't just small tidbits in droughts. I'm not looking for the whole game to be spoiled, but I'm still rather miffed we still don't know even some basic details like the story or other gameplay modes almost close to a year since the game was announced. If we were getting small tidbits about the game every one-two weeks or got information blowouts in-between drought periods; I would appreciate those methods much more compared to what we're getting now. Moreover, Sonic Forces is also engaging in drip-feeding information, and from what I've seen around certain places; a fair amount of people aren't exactly fans of that approach either. Though I will recognize that a huge part of that is because Sonic Team arguably has a lot more to prove than Taxman and his team do, so complaints with Forces' marketing approach don't necessarily translate to Mania for most people. Then that's not actually making the routes exclusive to Sonic though. It's making them exclusive to the secondary shield abilities. Sure, only Sonic can use them, but unlike Tails' flight or Knuckles' added strength / climbing / gliding, they're not a native ability that Sonic has. Now if such paths required the use of, say, the drop dash, the insta-shield, or Sonic activating an exclusive state of speed effect (think the time-travelling sparks from Sonic CD), that would be a different story.
They're still Sonic-exclusive. :v: I get what you're saying, though. Sonic-exclusive paths that he can natively access would be even better.
At least with Hyper Sonic you pretty much became a god :v: I mean they didn't intend for you to glitch through walls but it was pretty fun.
They added so much to the foreground already but won't correct the details. I'm sad. Will play it until my fingers bleed anyway.
From this latest video, it looks like Mania's already received an E rating from the ESRB, though "Sonic Mania" doesn't show up on their website. I know very little about how ratings classification boards work, but this makes me think that the game must be pretty close to done in terms of content. You can't have your game rated and then add stuff to it, can you?
Okay! So, after spending like literally a billion years away from here, I've come back, I just got a Switch the other day so I could play Mania, and I just wanna say I too am super-hyped for it! I also wanna say that I'm really digging how both the new zones so far have had their own sets of new Badniks. Having a variety of new cool-looking Badniks to hit is part of what makes the classic Sonic games fun for me. I've noticed, however, that nobody at SEGA seems to have given these Badniks any names yet. Most classic Badniks get fun names like Buzz Bomber or Pointdexter or Caterkiller. I know it makes no difference if they get names or not, and it's not gonna detract from my excitement for Mania, but it's just nice to put a name to a face--even if that face is really just a robotic shell for a helpless woodland creature. =P Anyway, maybe this is a side effect from playing too much Pokémon, but I like to give video game enemies catchy/punny names. Since they don't have official names, this is what I've been calling all the new Badniks (spoilered to save space): Spoiler Microphony Shutterbug Orblit Reel Dealer Revver Bonkin' Bull Catercrawler Fal-Con + - If anyone at SEGA is reading this, yes, this was a transparent attempt at getting you to use my Badnik names so I could say "Hey, I got to name these guys!"
You can be assured that everything does indeed already have a name. Some of them were even mentioned on SEGA live streams :P
Oh, cool. Thanks for the heads up. + - Darn it. =P Now I've got some streams to go watch and see which Badniks they mention.
From what I can recall, "Shutterbug" is official and Aaron/Sergio suggested "Bumper Bull", "Bumper Bison" and "Bumpalo" in the recent "Mania for the Mania" stream. I think the new versions of old badniks have just been referred to by their old names - Roller, Orbinaut and Caterkiller.
Did anyone else see the spinning sparkles above the checkpoint? I don't think we've seen those in mania footage before. It's been a while since I saw those three bonus minigame things.
+ - To be fair, it would be a pain in the ass to do all of the frames for 60fps rotation here. On the other hand, they did it for the title screen, so... Edit: GIF was intentionally slowed down to 25%. Was just pointing out the animation of knuckles rotating was not 60fps.
