One thing I've noticed in Blue Sphere is, either due to programming differences or input lag, you can't save yourself as easily as you could in the original. Point in case being in the S&K Stage 4 (spring spheres surrounding blue spheres surrounding bumpers surrounding springs), I have to preemptively jump and turn to get back into the blue line, and more times than not I either miss the jump and bounce over to the next section of stage, or do the combo too early and get stuck in the bumpers (which you can't turn out of like you could in the original as well). Also, am I the only one to notice that the scaling effect looks a bit...janky even when compared to the original? The distanced sprites seem to kind of pop in place a bit later than in the original.
It's no big deal really that the power LED doesn't work, but it is symptomatic of a company that doesn't care about customer satisfaction. I really wish this launch went better. All they had to do was NOT actively fuck anything up! That simple! I hope the braniac at SEGA who forced this through gets fired, they're clearly not capable of making sound decisions.
I'm super interested in this credit for Sonic Mania-- Jun Senoue being the audio engineer. What does that entail exactly-- did he have any creative influence on the soundtrack?
Lovin' Sonic Mania. People are complaining about the 5th Special stage, but I'm having trouble with the 4th. :\ Oh well. Hope only game-breaking bugs are fixed, because I quite enjoy the glitches. :P Also, about the Denuvo thing: I'm gonna have to apologize in advance here as I'd hate to spitball misinformation or other forms of conjecture, but a part of me wonders the DRM hit on Mania for the PC was to make Forces look good. lol I know it isn't the case, but I always get bad vibes from major corporations. Probably due to the fact that they've lied to us before. :\
I mean I'm sure they're many conspiracy theories floating about but this is this silliest I've seen. And even then it backfired as more people are mad at Sega then they are at Mania/its development team. Why would a company undermine it's own product so it's other product looks a little better in comparison? Hell, if Sega puts their foot down and keeps the DRM in, I wouldn't be surprised if Forces has this shit tacked on as well.
The 5th stage is a bitch because of where the path splits. It's not clear that there were bumpers there and you can't jump over them on the first go around. Additionally if you screw around getting rings the first lap or two instead of going for the blues you're going to have a hell of a time catching up even at Mach 3. That's goes double when maneuvering for the split path.
Yeah, again I know it's not the case. Can't help to think it though. Kinda wish that things would be more in favor of the consumer. Like freaking physical copies for CEs instead of getting people's hopes up. Sega as a whole feels very deceptive at times. Either that, or it actually is just random incompetence.
DRM sucks and is anti-consumer, but Sega are hardly the only people to use Denuvo (hell most Japanese PC ports do, Bandai\Namco and Capcom use it a lot). It makes me sad that people are trying to refund this game en masse because we all know the higher-ups at Sega are clueless old men who will look at this and go "oh, well, I guess fans don't want more Classic Sonic games. We were right after all!"
The size of these levels is beyond absurd. I played the PS4 version but stopped about a week ago to come in for the PC version. My routes through Studiopolis 2 and Flying Battery 2 were 70-90% new to me when I went through them on the PC version. I need these levels maps soon, I think these levels honestly dwarf even S3&K in sheer size. FBZ2 took me seven minutes and I was going pretty fast the whole damn time!
I bet it has something to do with something Tee said in one of his livestreams, specifically that for the old stage themes he had to remix, Sega would send him stems. After hearing SA2 remixes with missing and changed instruments in Sonic Runners and the 2016 Olympic games, it seems that the Sega Sound Team/Wave Master archives run deep, and I bet that Jun was Tee's connection.
I've had this argument in another forum about DRM. I do feel as if done right, there might be some sort of compromise as it is important for a company to protect it's IPs, but I do feel that companies do use DRM as a matter of anti-consumer. I also feel that using Denuvo is going a bit too far. Standard Steam DRM should have been fine IMO. I guess the reason why people are wanting refunds is because there's no vocal democracy, most voting is done via wallets. It is a shame since it's a great game, but no amount of greatness is gonna help if there's bad company practices. I just have a iota of a feeling that Sega will "rectify" this by making Forces not have draconian DRM. It's as if to say "See, we're doing right!" but it also again makes me feel they'd be putting Forces in a better light because of it. Total speculation and conjecture on my part, but dang if it's not a good plan no matter how silly. :P
I'm hoping the sales on the other systems plus the reviews will tell them otherwise. Seriously. Either they're in extreme denial or they're stupid if they don't see that this is Sega Europe's fault entirely.
Out of all the conspiracy theories out there, the scariest is the one suggesting that the Sonic 1 gift on Steam was meant to make your Mania purchases be registered on the 15th, so that when Mania was released 14 days later, the time for refunds (which coincidentally is 14 days) would already be over. I don't want to believe Sega would do something this evil, but the real reason for the delay was never disclosured (it was suggested that Sega tried to pin the delay on the developers, so I assume the game didn't need "optimizations" after all), so we're still in the dark about that.
It's pretty bloody obvious at this point what the two week delay was for, and it wasn't anything to benefit the game.
Ya Jim Sterling suggested that theory. I hope that was an innocent mistake, like they tried to right the wrong but didn't anticipate this happening. That would be top tier scummy if that was true though, same with the other conspiracy theory of they knew this would happen, so they delayed the PC version for 2 weeks so the game could sell and review well in the meantime. Hopefully we get a real explanation one day. To be fair, I preordered the game via the collectors edition. I also preordered the PS4 version so I could get the themes. But in general this is why it is unwise to preorder a digital game that is in infinite supply.
Especially for the consumer. :v: Actually, that's what ticks me off the most, just the fact that Sega wasn't clear on what the delay was for doesn't paint them a good picture no matter how you slice it. As for the Jim Sterling theory, I hope that it was a mistake too, but don't think that really matters at this point. Dunno if people are finding a way to get a refund (chargeback, maybe?) but for Sega it's all damage control from here.
https://twitter.com/CFWhitehead/status/902946335434825728 Super Emerald problem solved. The Super Emeralds turned back to normal and went back to the special stages. The ones in Lava Reef are just rocks made to fill the gaps.
Rumours about the DRM began just as soon as the game got delayed. In my case I did ask for a refund the very first day the release date was changed, and purchased the Switch version instead (I was waiting for a very good game to justify the purchase of the console and after the first gameplays surfaced it was decided, it would be my very first Switch game). I did pay in advance for a digital game without any necessity, just to show my support to the project and they changed the conditions without any explanation at the last minute. And on top of that they gave me the oldest game they could find (I already own all the remakes anyway). If I waited all that time just to find all this I would be really pissed off right now.
