All the S@nics - the end

[Grounder]

So yeah, almost all of this story's tracks are basically remixes of the previous one's.

They are different though, mind you

[Crow]

the first one is pretty similar, the rest diverge quite a bit more iirc

[Paragraph]

I think the track design here is really interesting, and benefits a lot from learning the paths. For example at one point in the last video, raocow failed to get to the top path like he wanted and said "this may have cost me the race", but only on the bottom path, there's a rail for the speed character to use, so it might actually have given him the victory. This depends on how much faster the rail actually is than the top path, of course, but I imagine it's worth it, because it seems to be quite well balanced. Good stuff.

Probably the biggest issue the game has is how much it wears its influence on its sleeve. It seems like it'd be a Tony Hawk, or hell, something like the skateboarding minigames in Spyro, but instead it's more like a 3D version of Rush. Especially regarding the tricks, where the individual ones don't really matter and there's little skill involved, you just push one button (or Stick in this case), only the amount matters. And then you have the up-tricks and forward-tricks that really allow you to go different routes. This is very much not like in a skateboarding game, where you'd have to pull off trick chains for points and the timing of the inputs and keeping your board level by hand matters.

Doesn't help that the weird "charge jump and release just before end of ramp" thing from the Adventure games is such a staple for Sonic boarding, it has never made much sense to me even though it's "realistic".

[Shard1697]

it seems very thematically weird to me to have 3 different bird characters and have only 1 of them be "flight" type

[Paragraph]

it seems very thematically weird to me to have 3 different bird characters and have only 1 of them be "flight" type

[kitikami]

The Rogues are not only a Team Chaotix 2.0, they are a Team Chaotix led by their Charmy Bee equivalent, which is horrifying.

[raocow]

bird boot camp

[Katazuki]

The trick to avoiding cars in Night Chase is to...pick a power character and just punch them away.

Yeah there's really no easy trick to avoid them if you're not using a power character. There was plenty of times where I grinded off the sign after the top path in the beginning only to land immediately on a car after. Non-easy tricks to avoid cars is to hard swerve by tapping drift while turning and always going through the right tunnel to jump the intersection using the ramp on the right side...which honestly loses you more time than hitting the car and boosting immediately after so there's no point to doing that.

One thing I'd also like to mention is that boosting in front of a speed pad isn't always the best move as the speed boost you get from the pad will always take priority over your boost's speed boost which on level 2 and 3 are usually faster than the speed pad's speed boost.

[Paragraph]

A question that occurred to me now that we have an all-robot-race again: are there Speed, Flight and Power robots, or can they just not take any of the special paths? Are they perhaps faster/have more boost to compensate? The first place dude in the winning run sure seemed to just have a forever trail of boostage.

[Peptobislawl]

A question that occurred to me now that we have an all-robot-race again: are there Speed, Flight and Power robots, or can they just not take any of the special paths? Are they perhaps faster/have more boost to compensate? The first place dude in the winning run sure seemed to just have a forever trail of boostage.

The red robot is speed whereas the green ones are power, there's no flight robot. All characters of the same type have the same stats, then your choice of gear modifies that.

[Paragraph]

Ah, I should have figured you can also play as them, necessitating classes for the robots. Thanks!

...why isn't red power (Knuckles) and green is speed (Jet)?

[Kleetus]

Given the general aesthetic(?) of the rogues I expected them to be more mercenary types. I'm a fan of their motivation, trying to find something belonging to their precursors, it gives them a more personal stake in the game. It also explains why three clearly incompatible people are working together; they've been drawn to a higher cause.

[Grounder]

Given the general aesthetic(?) of the rogues I expected them to be more mercenary types. I'm a fan of their motivation, trying to find something belonging to their precursors, it gives them a more personal stake in the game. It also explains why three clearly incompatible people are working together; they've been drawn to a higher cause.

They also seem to be the last descendants of the Babylonians, or at least those aware of it. They might well feel they have no one else to turn to but each other.

[Peptobislawl]

Oh boy. Missing the rail isn't actually that big of a deal, assuming you know the little yellow triangles in the corner are how you progress without them. You kinda made that way harder on yourself by just resetting the moment you missed one instead of trying to learn where to go without it.

[BobisOnlyBob]

Sonic Riders X

[kitikami]

Eggman's measured IQ is 300 because IQ is scaled so that the population average is always set to 100, and the population he is being measured against is mostly made up of woodland creatures.

[Grounder]

ft. droopy i guess

anyway, tomorrow might be a thing or might not

i'll be surprised if it's anything in-between

[Peptobislawl]

ft. droopy i guess

anyway, tomorrow might be a thing or might not

i'll be surprised if it's anything in-between

I don't remember ever losing this next race when I played as a kid way back when. Not losing isn't the problem, though, not by a long shot.
Also, there's a track you unlock after this that isn't played in either story or Grand Prix, and it's pretty great so you don't want to miss it. I think it's in mission mode a couple times if you end up finishing that but otherwise you may wanna try a race of it. It's

a real track based on the final boss's area, treated as it's babylon variant

. Speaking of spoilers, almost all of the unlocks from mission mode require you only to clear it, not to get a specific rank. The only exception is the unlock for getting all gold ranks on every mission, a Very Special Extreme Gear. Oh yeah, all modes other than story allow you to pick Character and Gear freely, so you'll probably wanna be buying Gear from the Chao. The default gear isn't too great, you'll wanna find a favorite.

[Peptobislawl]

Is it possible to lose?

Yes, you still have to finish in 1st place to win. After 15 minutes or more of chasing a giant holo-genie around a basic loop track you can potentially still lose because someone pulled ahead after you killed him. Not likely though, since only human players can actually damage the genie. Yes, "Human players" because you can play this boss fight in multiplayer for some reason.

[Grounder]

I win the race! I win the race! I win the race and now I'm... Uh...

Crap.

[kitikami]

There was a point in time when i would have found the claim that birds descended from genies ridiculous, but now that the prevailing wisdom is birds actually descended from dinosaurs, i'm willing to believe anything on the subject.

[Donut]

To me the obvious answer is that genies are actually dinosaurs.

[TiKi]

There was a point in time when i would have found the claim that birds descended from genies ridiculous, but now that the prevailing wisdom is birds actually descended from dinosaurs, i'm willing to believe anything on the subject.

have you met gooses

[AuraLancer]

I'm not saying it's good, but the quality jump in the writing and scenes from previous 3D Sonics is pretty noticeable

[Peptobislawl]

I didn't play battle mode too often, just stuck to normal races even in multiplayer. Probably too janky. For the record, it's passing under one of those gates with the emerald that gives you a point in survival, rather than finishing a lap. Speaking of, don't forget to look extensively at Sonic's board list once you get to a mode that lets you choose boards.