Also, regarding tails... Spoiler Having to hold up after you jump to make tails fly results in him shooting up off the screen more often than not. It's actually pretty hard to fly with tails in single player this way. Considering the Peel Out cant even be used in saved games, it would have made much more sense to map up+jump to tails flying when on the ground rather than having you be in the air to use it. That way, when he takes off vertically, he doesn't shoot off the screen. Digital Foundry put up their analysis of Sonic Mania. I have to say, at this point, the term "native 4k" is absolutely meaningless -- the game is 240p natively, not 4k. What does "nativr 4k" even mean for a 2d pixel art game like this? And why does DF keep throwing it around for Mania, when it's absolutely not true??
I don't mind Tails Co-op flying implementation really, but jumping off can be kinda hard sometimes as Tails may recatch you.
One really weird bug is that Tails flies into the screen while underwater. It's bizarre. At first I thought he didn't have a swimming animation, but then I found out he actually does. So I have no idea why he flies to Sonic underwater :v: So what gives, did they forget to swap out the animations or maybe it was some kind of irritating programming nightmare to have him come into the screen swimming.
They're talking about the output resolution post-shaders. The nearest-neighbor upscaling, the CRT filters... they all run at 4k. This is as opposed to, say, running these at 1080p and then letting the console or TV scale it to 4k using its default scaling afterwards, which can lead to blur and increase the prevalence of visible rounding errors.
One thing about the Tails assist thing is that it's almost impossible to use if you've got a Fire Shield. It should really disable the shield moves while holding up.
Spoiler If I had to guess, maybe after Sonic gained the ability to go Hyper, and used it to stop Eggman in Doomsday zone, the Super Emeralds lost all of their power and just became inert, explaining why we never had Hyper Sonic in another Sonic title. Basically, the Super Emeralds power dissipated, so Hyper Sonic is no longer accessible.
Despite my gripes with the game though, I absolutely adore it. It's by far the best Sonic game since Sonic and Knuckles. I need to play it more and get more familiar with it to rank it alongside the classics, but it's excellent. And the music is amazing. I love Tee Lopes' style. He's immense. I really hope we get a 2D game with all new levels from this team in the future.
....I know. But that's still pretty dumb to call "native 4k" when the native resolution is NOT 4K. The game supports integer and non-integer scaling. Saying that is much more accurate and tells you a whole lot more than saying it's "native 4K." To drive the point home further -- Digital Foundry will make a point to note every time a game uses dynamic resolution to point out that it's NOT native 4K/1080p/whatever. Except that operates on the exact same principle - a sub-resolution native frame buffer being scaled in software to a 4k/1080p/whatever buffer before it exits the system.
Pretty sure the level select code doesn't work on PS4. Perhaps it's a different button input or combination
I know I'm probably beating a dead horse here, but the story is definitely my least favorite part of the game. We still don't really know what the macguffin is, angel island shows up for no reason (other than, let's be honest, pure fanservice) and halfway through the game just sorta gives up explaining level transitions.
I think they ran out of time with zone transitions, I wrote a post on it earlier. And the story itself is weak. It seems like nothing more than a tie in to Forces. And even that was done incredibly half-heartedly and obscurely, I think most people would play it and not know what the fuck happened at the end (even if they knew about and were looking forward to Forces). Probably because the team really weren't into it and it was requested by Sonic Team/SEGA :v: . But yeah, lots of weird shit happened. I can excuse all of it but Little Planet, that came from nowhere at the end of the game. I also think Heavy King was an incredibly underwhelming villain and he barely even turned up. I thought all the Heavies had personalities but him which made it worse. I never thought Mania had great plot potential revealed though, and admittedly, as much as I love Whitehead's work, I find his initial concept of the hardboiled heavies taking over after Eggman flees in depression absolutely godawful :v: . So I don't think the game's story would be much better without Sonic Team's involvement.
The level select is the bottom button (Cross on PS4), the left button (Square on PS4) and Start (Options on PS4) on the title screen. I've found another place to get to the level select too, at least on the Switch version. If you go into the secrets menu in No Save Mode, select the options you want, then hold the level select buttons. It will back out of the menu. If you then press the A button to confirm (while still holding down the other buttons), you'll enter the level select, and the options you selected in the secrets menu will still apply. Not sure how this would work on the other consoles where the buttom button is the confirm button.
Remember when Taxman said that there was a reason (plot-wise) that Sonic was revisiting old zones in Mania? ...Was there?
Eggman using the Time Stone and warping Sonic to various places randomly. In reality it's more of an excuse plot than the Time Eater, in that it just sort of happens.
Clean has a slight blur effect, but it's really only noticeable on the Switch's portable mode. Here's an interesting observation regarding the returning zones: Sonic 1 = 1 returning zone Sonic 2/CD = 2 returning zones Sonic 3&K = 3 returning zones Gotta wonder if that was done on purpose or not. I really hope Mania does well enough for the team to go all out with a fully original Sonic title next, though I'd be perfectly happy with a Mania 2. This has seriously been the best Sonic title I've played so far, rivaling S3&K!
If we do get a Mania 2 that has returning classic zones, I'd like some stuff from the other Genesis/GG/SMS games (I just really want to see Toxic Caves as a traditional level). I know at that point you'd be basically making new tile sets for the levels, but the tropes, enemies and gimmicks would already be in place, at least for the Act 1 stages. Plus it gives the fans something to talk about regarding what stages will be returning. One of the best parts of the lead up to Mania and Generations was the talk about what stages everyone would want. Plus taking from more obscure games would alleviate the comment of not enough new content, as not as many people have played the handheld games.
