The Hyper Ring power up bothers me. I'm really glad that they made the ring counter turn blue when the power up is active. But why is it blue? And the same question applies to blue ring icon on the monitor. When you drop rings with the power up, they're big and golden. There's nothing blue about it. It was the same in Chaotix. I think that dropped rings should be big and blue instead of the standard gold. It would just be a bit of consistency and would make things clearer. Minor issue really. But still something I'd change.
I guess they just wanted to distinguish them? Maybe it's blue because shields are blue and it's kinda like a ring...shield? Idk what other icon would make sense? Although a blue ring might not be a bad idea.
Wonder if we'll ever get a boss attack mode. Mania's bosses have more depth and technique to them than the main trilogy of classic games (Generally, anyway, IMO), and are more akin to CD's approach. They're the sort of battles I'd like a way to replay and practice. ... Also, as much as I enjoy the introduction of the HBH, I find their actual presence in the game is lacking in potential. As a result, I can't help but get a generic 'evil troop' vibe from them, almost like a set of forgettable Robot Masters, or the Five Dastardly Bombers. I felt as though only Heavy Magician [Mystic sounds better!] and Heavy King managed to get a significant amount of screen time and stand out as individual characters to me - and it was inevitable that Heavy King would get some establishment, considering his role as leader and inevitable usurper. It's really only a minor nitpick in reality, since I still love the general aesthetics and concept of the HBH, but I would have liked to see more of Heavy Gunner, Heavy Shinobi and Heavy Rider outside of boss fights.
As this is a commercial game, I doubt they'll add features for it. Another thing to debug etc etc etc.
I haven't played Chaotix and hadn't come across the hyper ring before. I thought it was something like the ufos or the metal sonic projectors in the past levels of Sonic CD, where you had to find the hyper ring in each level, and then try and keep it until the end of the level. It really changes the way you play when you're desperately trying not to lose any rings, I couldn't manage it on any level on my first play through, but now I've learnt that it doesn't matter. Do you get a special points bonus for finishing an act with blue rings? Also noticed the "cool bonus" at the end of the act, is that a new thing, or have we had that before? Furthermore, anyone managed to get a "Perfect Bonus" yet (ie collecting all of the rings in a level)?
Nope, no special bonus for completing the level with the blue ring, and the Cool Bonus is like a hit meter, and every time you get hit you lose 1000 (or 100) points until you just lose them all (and I think dying completely negates it). Is there a Perfect bonus in this game? I imagine that'd be a nightmare to get.
There are graphics for a Perfect bonus for both the normal and special stages, but I don't think they're in the game. I got every ring in Mirage Saloon Act 1 and it didn't trigger, I think it's impossible to get every ring in any of the special stages (Even the first one has one ring that's too high up in the air for the player to get), and the Blue Spheres stages don't have a tally. I think they realized how big each act was and junked it.
The blue icon and blue hud are both fine. It's just that those two things are blue, but the actual effect of the power up (the giant scattered rings) are not blue - they're standard gold. They should be blue instead. When I first played Chaotix, I could never figure out why sometimes I would drop one giant ring and other times it would be several normal rings. It's just a bit unclear.
The animation looks nice but its off-character. Tails can't put his tails that far forward in front of him and spin them, i assume thats why Sonic Team would have asked to remove that animation.
I mean, Tails can literally use them as appendages with finger-like accuracy to type on a roboticizer keyboard to reprogram it while he's bound to a table. And Mania's cartoonier than that, so I don't think there's some sort of canon disallowance.
They removed the dunkey Easter egg? I still don't know what dunkey is, but I never got to try it for the HCZ weirdness. For shame removing this. This means anything can be altered, not just bug fixes. I just realized that this patch thing for games is quite the double sword. I feel like 25 years from now, starting up Mania would just show a dead and bloody Sonic upon a crucifix.
While it's good the console versions got updates, I just hope we didn't blow it with the bug reporting. If you all remember, Sonic CD on Steam Didn't get updated like the Mobile version did. How can we be sure we're going to get more than one update on consoles?
That dunkey thing was a really dumb secret. You put in an input during a situation that mostly only longtime fans would think to try, and you get sound effects from some eceleb you may have never heard of? What? More than that though, the guy has some baggage involving slurs and other unpleasantness. Not the kind of person I'd imagine sega would want to associate with, which may be why it got the axe. Not live yet. If what I've read about switch updates applies, it may not be out until thursday. Hope I'm wrong since my weekend will be over :v:
To add onto this, since we got the console patch, the bug reporting thread should be re-opened now, right?
I believe it never should have been closed in the first place, how do we know if we blew our chance to get some of the missed big bugs fixed?
I have a strong suspicion that the Dunkey thing was put into the game without telling anyone at SEGA. That would explain why it was removed in a patch. Does anyone else think that's possible? Also, some Sonic Mania wallpapers if anyone's interested: https://imgur.com/a/GoKH7 I might make some more later, they're not hard to put together. Also also, I got post #10000 yaaaaay