Apologies if this has already been mentioned. Time Attack for Titanic Monarch Act 2 isn't *supposed* to end immediately after completing the lower-left path, right? Because... It does. With no warning.
I understand the coolness factor of adding old scrapped things to an anniversary game, but wearing diving goggles on a plane may be a sign of going a bit overboard with the fanservice...
So, almost a week in and we're thus far sitting pretty on Metacritic with mid-to-high 80s for all three platforms the game is out on, with PS4 at 86, Switch at 88, and Xbone at 85. I'm a little surprised the Xbone version has a slightly lower score considering the Switch version is supposedly a fair bit buggier than the other two versions.
I guess that re-adding continues to the save slots would make many people here happy. Turns out they did serve a purpose, I wonder why they were removed.
Nahhhh... I mean, at this scale they are just goggles dude, who'd miss the opportunity to throw this in
Also, considering the stage preceding Mirage Saloon, him having them on after that is kind of hilarious.
On the Japanese Sonic Mania website, PC isn't listed as a platform that the game is available on. What's the deal with this?
Have you ever jumped out of a plane? Honestly the diving goggles look more comfortable than the piece of plastic shit I used on my jump.
So now that I'm better at the Special Stages, I've been cheesing the bosses on my latest run as Super Sonic. Up until Press Garden, that is. Heavy Shinobi can still freeze Super Sonic! I think that officially makes him the coolest HBH.
I take it back on the special stages -- they're actually pretty damn fun once you get use to the controls and develop strats on getting the UFO. I don't really understand what the time stones do, and what the hell was going on at the final boss of the game when you have all emeralds. I wish there was a better transition from last level's boss and the final boss. That final boss was very annoying, and the color scheme design was super weird on that level. Being able to manually go into floating mode was pretty sick though. + - Also didn't we already blow up the Sonic CD world? I'm SO CONFUSED ON THE STORY.
My take is that the gem that Eggman picked up at the start bends time and reality, hence why everything is remixed.
Yay soft lock glitches. If you play blue spheres Mania, don't hit the purple sphere you come out of after hitting the first purple sphere. The 1st one deactivates and you just warp to no where. The screen turns white and you're just stuck.
I was bored, so I decided to think up Zone transitions for the levels that don't have them. Woo. -FB to PG: Kinda an easy one, Flying Battery begins to explode/Eggman is seen retreating to the ground below. Sonic and crew abandon ship and fall into Press Garden. They've fallen from worse heights. Might even be cute for them to land in a pIle of leaves and jump out ala Ice Cap. -SS to HC: Probably the hardest one to justify tbh, but I can picture Sonic and Co. Heading into the Eggman Shaped building, only for the good Doc to be waiting there with the Ruby and warp em out. Could even be Metallic Madness for that extra bit of continuity. Oh, and I guess they travel back to the past beforehand, I don't even know with all this time travel BS -HC to MS: The gang is shot up a geiser ala the original Hydrocity, only this time they're spat out through the hole the Egg Robos made when pulling out the Ruby, thus putting them right back to where the Tornado is. They see a small armada flying away, and run back to the Tornado to give chase. -OO to LR: This is also a tricky one, but I think Eggman doing his Ruby shinnanigans works since Little Planet is apparently right outside Angel Island now. Kinda a way of showing he's been using it for more than just messing with Sonic. -LR to MM: This is piss easy, Knuckles warped there and so can Sonic and Tails. Alternatively, since Little Planet is right above them and Eggman has been industrializing Lava Reef and Hidden Palace, you could make the teleporter more Eggman-ish or put in an elevator. Using Debug, I found out that Sonic and Tails are literally right above the Master Emerald shrine when they do their battle, so maybe have the floor crumble and they reunite with Knuckles who just finished his own fight. -MM to TM: I would imagine Metalic Madness and Titanic Monarch are linked, maybe all the Hard Boiled Heavies gather to taunt Sonic, who gives chase to the large structure in the distance that is Titalic Monarch.
Okay, for real though... Am I the only one that's having trouble with getting the Chaos Emeralds? These bonus stages are seriously doing my head in. I'm up to the 6th now, but I've lost track of how many times I had to do the 5th one over again. I'm perfecting a speedrun of the first 20 seconds of Press Garden Zone 'cause of this nonsense. I keep hearing everyone going on about how fun they are, some even saying they're the "first bonus stages that are actually fun", and I'm just sitting here being THIS close to throwing my controller whenever I hit like 3 spike traps in a row, losing me 30 rings because Mercy Invincibility is a concept that whoever designed these apparently doesn't believe in, and then once I actually do manage to reach Mach 3 before taking a dive off the side of the stage, the UFO is miles away with no hope of me ever catching up to it anymore before my ring limit is over. Heck, I can't even seem to pull off DarkSpines' exploit correctly, otherwise I'd have done it that way. I have no idea how everyone's breezing through these, and I'm honestly not even looking forward to having to do all of these with the other characters anymore, either. Maybe this is just me having a small moment of frustration that I felt like venting over, but... EURRGH.
If it helps, stages 6 and 7 are much easier than 5. Somehow. 5 took me a few tries, so maybe try this: first lap, focus on blue spheres and DO NOT take the ramps, doing the ramps in that stage just distances you from the UFO even more somehow. Grab the ring boxes as you do it as well, if you're at Mach 2 by the second lap you're good. The UFO goes the path it goes for a reason, the other ways are pretty substantially slower even though they offer more goodies. So follow in it's footsteps after Mach 1 (it's fine to go those ways on lap 1.) Grab rings when you can, but I would still ignore the ramps until Mach 3. Doing the ramps in Mach 3 showers you in rings and avoids the spike traps, so after getting rings from the ramps, ignore them again and just do everything you can to follow the UFO now that you have all the time in the world.
Dying from Knuckles' super transformation when you're doing a climbing segment over a pit is the most deflating thing ever lol. More reason for a dedicated super button. On my first playthrough I blew over ten special rings just trying to beat the fourth one (unsuccessfully). Now during my Knuckles run I handily had them all during Press Garden. Probably the biggest thing you can do in these special stages is follow the UFO's path as much as possible while trying to cut corners when possible. If you jump while not already turning on the ground, you have some midair control that is very useful for sharper turns.
Spoiler Finally managed to beat all the blue sphere levels! The one with only 4 spheres and 16 rings was actually warping my mind haha Regarding special stages, it took me a long time to get used to them. I never got past the fifth on my first playthrough but eventually I managed to get the hang of them and now I would say they are my favourite in the series. I've found that once you lose control getting back into the rhythm is incredibly tough, one slip up usually means game over for me. EDIT: also stick me in the group wishing we had a separate button for Super forms. I'm fine with Sonic, but it really bugs me with Tails and Knuckles.
Yeah, the great thing about the special stages is that they still feel enough like an extension of the "real" game (unlike Sonic 1), and you can actually GET BETTER AT THEM to make them end sooner (unlike Sonic 2!) They really do most resemble Sonic CD, but they're even better than that. Probably my favorite in the series, though I'd need to take another look at 3D Blast Saturn's to make sure.
It's not just you, I'm good at them now and still find them janky, difficult to control, and awkward, especially the perspective amd camera. The new blue spheres stages aren't "good" either, too many unintuitive stage designs for my liking. (Not that S3K didn't have those, but they didn't prevent you unlocking everything)
