One peeve I still have is that I've realized just how awful Sonic's mid-air turning is in this game and I hope they fix this in a future update. Turning mid-jump is really cumbersome, which makes tight 3D platforming a nightmare. Modern 3D platformers like Mario Odyssey and Crash 4 have re-worked jumping let you turn around 360° mid-jump so I'd hate for Sonic to be left behind. (it's especially annoying because Adventure 2 had really good jump turning and practically invented this, but they've regressed here)
Well I'll be. Thanks! That was one of my biggest peeves, though I imagine it doesn't apply to Cyberspace where it hurt the most since the option doesn't mention it.
I do wish Sonic Team had a good workflow to update terrain meshes in the Hedgehog Engine, as all the extra platform challenges are just objects floating in the sky. Been a problem since Unleashed. These are very difficult, a crazy juxtaposition to the "quickstep 15 times" map puzzles. Including some of the cyberspace s-rank difficulties, it doesn't feel like the challenge throughout the game is curved well, just huge random spikes. That said, being extra content means it can get away with it to a degree. The rewards feel a bit too low for the effort, like Green Hill in SA2 for all A ranks. I want a Spin Dash, but this is a huge ask to get all S-Ranks in action challenges.
Playing New Game+ and made it to Ares. A cute detail is that when there’s a Starfall, Chili Dogs rain from the sky!
I played with the Spin Dash in Frontiers for about an hour. Here's the rundown on how it works, in case a lot of you haven't got the chance yet: So, in short. We have a Spin Dash that is functionally a faster, attack-based boost, and for some reason has mechanically nothing in common with the base game's Drop Dash. We now have a second Drop Dash and a second roll state that also have nothing to do with the base Drop Dash, either. And yet both roll states, both Drop Dashes, the Spin Dash, and even the boost itself are rendered pointless by being able to spin at the fastest speed the game will let you, just by holding LT while moving. I was genuinely excited to see what they would do, and I really don't mean to be a stick in the mud. But this... this is an absolute mess. I now get why you had to go out of your way to unlock it, because it's execution is really sloppy and it trivializes basically every other mechanic in the game. No seriously, what the hell is this? LOL
It does applies there as well, for example in 1-1 you can constantly hold boost and jump over the the platforms in the first section without needing to boost again. With jump deceleration off you’ll also maintain the speed from the boost even when you let go of that button.
Just a nice callback to the times where you had to meet a lot of requirements to unlock a broken super form, they really are respecting the series legacy here.
Sonic Team could have made the Spin Dash a contemporary to the game's mechanics, or they could have made it fun and broken, which they did. This was the better of the two options.
Something I have been thinking about recently is the fan game sonic utopia. From what I have seen this fan game seems to be similar to sonic frontiers in the sense that it is an open world sonic game but unlike frontiers, sonic utopia feels very much like a 3D translation of sonic 3 and knuckles, the physics are some of the best I have seen in a 3D sonic fangame, the music is impeccable and I think a fleshed out professionally developed version of this could do exactly what frontiers did but even better and be even more recognized by the game industry because it would be revolutionary for sonic like frontiers while also staying true to the philosophy established by the genesis. I really did enjoy Frontiers but I think it fell short in certain areas and would benefit with much higher production values and gameplay and world design that is closer to the classic games and Sonic adventure. Heres hoping we get a mania/christian whitehead situation for 3D sonic
I very much agree that the spindash is more of a spinboost. I’m more looking forward to mods that implement a more classic inspired spindash. That said, the general improvements to movements and the more intricate level designs bode well for the next sonic game. I wouldn’t mind a spinboost if the game was fully designed around it. In the meantime, I can’t wait to see how speedrunners use the spindash in New Game + runs.
Spindash momentum is alright going downhill, but I managed to bug out the animation so it's just Sonic's curled position rolling in place and he just...kept going up hills very slowly. Sonic 4 moment.
That animation is actually not a bug; if you press the left trigger at a standstill, or if you land with a Spin Dash (not a Drop Dash, but when you launch off of a ramp while already Spin Dashing), Sonic will assume a unique roll state. This state actually has the closest thing to classic slope physics in the game. He'll roll and gain speed if you turn off deceleration. It also proves that momentum straight up does not exist when you are actually moving Sonic yourself, and he will just infinitely roll in any direction. Does not matter how high the slope is.
Okay, does anyone know how the hell to get the one big koco on Kronos? It’s the one where you scale the big structure over the water and have to hit the buttons. I’m thinking the way I go about it keeps messing up some flags because on one attempt, the button to turn off the top spikes appeared and it never did earlier.
Just unlocked it. With vanilla physics, it's... Wow. This is weird. 2d stages are absolutely broken by this, but what's unfortunate about that is the game's actual roll mechanic (press down in 2d stages) doesn't use the same physics logic the spin dash seems to use. It also seems less useful in the 3d ones. It's very strange. I think this works best as an extra, but every single reason you would use it is kind of invalidated by the new deceleration settings, which a lot of people seem to be messing with, which sucks because the game's balance with the default physics is great. I think if they wanna put this in another game it's gonna need a serious overhaul. It feels like there's no consequences to using it, which there definitely needs to be.
They locked the spindash for a reason. I think they realized it broke the game. They REALLY need to invest in some nice procedural generators like what was shown for Unreal 5.2, rather than handcraft every aspect of the world. What they’re doing is unscalable, especially when trying to figure out the movement physics and how to avoid breaking the game. Something that could adapt the world to the game physics automatically to weed-out issues.
This second update really saved the game tbh. The jump deceleration slider is a fantastic addition that really helps the game feel fast but the biggest thing for me is the new Koco challenges, they feel like entire mini levels that make use of all of Sonic's movement abilities and still maintain a really fast pace. If this can be applied to whatever game comes next along with proper terrain instead of random floating platforms and rails, then I think Sonic Team might actually have something near perfect Also wooooow there's so much content in this game now, I think you could play the last four or five 3D Sonics back to back 100% completion and still fall short of Frontiers max runtime.
