Nestor

I like to headcanon that Mania Adventures follows on immediately after Forces; after that all gets resolved, the Phantom Ruby returning to the classic dimension causes a distortion that teleports Sonic back to Angel Island for the beginning of encore mode. It seems to fit better this way round as in Forces, Classic Sonic kind of fades away and returns in that same pose in Mania Adventures, while in Encore he's spinning all over the place; the only slight wrinkle is that as per episode 6, Metal Sonic is left to rot for at least a few months, so Encore has to take place a little while after that as he's in it....

I'm loving Eggman in this, the sheer tonnage of missiles and explosions he causes is loads of fun - if you have more than one Eggman in a race, it's complete chaos. 😆

Oh gosh, Tikal was crazy before the nerf - an attack that creates traps directly in front of all racers, damages them and blinds them? I remember being able to spam her attack every couple of seconds on certain tracks if I was in first place, it was devastating. Even with the nerf, potentially blinding all players is still handy. Conversely, Vector's bubble trap doesn't appear directly in front of racers and frankly needs some teeth to make Vector usable. I agree however about the trap for Zazz (and now Jingle Belle Amy) being overpowered if they're ahead, but unfortunately there isn't a lot they can do to nerf it short of just completely changing the power, which they'd only do as a last resort. Theoretically, the weak point of Zazz's trap is that it can't hit anything in front of you, but I don't think it outweighs it's massive advantage if you're ahead. Still not unbeatable though, particularly if you have Invincibility and can just crash through it.

Huh, I'd actually been enjoying the changes they made with the last update - Vector's bubble attack now does damage (elevating from most pointless rare character), Invincibility has slowed slightly, the ring guzzling boost of treasure hunter Knuckles and spy Rouge takes less rings and is faster (making it less suicidal), the eminently pointless slash attack of Black Knight Sonic has had its range extended and that blasted light sphere attack of Tikal's has been nerfed so it no longer does damage. I was struggling with connectivity issues significantly the other day though; I wonder if they were having problems to begin with. Seems fine today however, I've had a bunch of decent runs with only one race with connection losses.

It really depends how much the 'Federation' part of the United Federation changes it from our United States. From what little we see of it, it seems superficially similar, so assuming the Sonic!USSR is roughly similar in make-up to our version, it's relations with the Federation would probably be similar. However.... there does seem to be an implied greater level of international cooperation on Sonic's Earth, with a global military organisation (GUN) having existed for over 50 years, so it's possible that the Cold War never happened and the Federation and USSR equivalent got along for some reason. The Federation however seems to be the reigning super-power as the GUN Commander appears to either report to him or is at least inclined to take his advice.

It's quite possible that a USSR equivalent never existed on Sonic's earth; it's always been my (admittedly headcanon) thought that the difference between our Earth and Sonic's is the presence of the Chaos Emeralds and all the changes in history that their existence on Earth would create (the US being a Federation, the echidnas somewhat replacing the Aztecs, etc). Perhaps in Sonic's Earth's timeline, Rasputin managed to obtain all the Chaos Emeralds and destroy the Revolution....

That was the original idea - the Sonic the Comic (StC) stories were based off of the (now non-canon) Western Sega of America localised backstory for Sonic, where a kindly human scientist called Dr Ovi Kintobor creates a machine to absorb all of the evil on the planet Mobius into special six gems - the Chaos Emeralds - with the aim of then finding the seventh emerald to destroy the evil for good. Unfortunately, before the evil can be neutralised, the good doctor has an accident and the machine is destroyed, with the evil in the emeralds changing and warping him into his exact opposite - Dr Ivo Robotnik. While it sounds odd to us now (as the current storyline abandoned this old western backstory for the original Japanese version), back at the time StC was actually sticking extremely closely to the actual game lore of that period in the West. This incidentally is why StC portrayed Super Sonic as evil - as the Chaos Emeralds were supposed to be filled with evil energy, the logical extrapolation was that if Sonic used their power, then Super Sonic would be evil too. As back then only Sonics 1 and 2 had been released, there was precious little to go on in the games regarding Super Sonic's exact nature, but StC made an effort to work with what lore they'd been given in a logical fashion.

Depressingly no, it's even more simplistic than that - he simply took Knuckles's nickname of 'Knux'... and changed one letter, while adding an apostrophe. It's literally one step away from Sanic.

I don't think that Shadow killing is an inherent part of his character, but I think of all the characters other than Omega, he would be the least squeamish about it and would probably have the lowest bar for deeming it necessary. I don't think that he would kill unless he absolutely had to, and there are circumstances where it is impossible to avoid even for other characters (Shadow and Sonic technically kill the Biolizard, and the other characters don't seem to worry about destroying the Black Arms that they fight), but if it becomes necessary, he has no qualms about it compared to other characters - indeed he doesn't seem to have any remorse for committing genocide against an (admittedly evil) alien race in order to save Earth.

That's the connection issue again; when it starts going for someone, their character can appear to the other players in places they aren't in 'reality'. You'll notice it most prominently if you yourself lose connection when you're around other racers; their movements will become more erratic and then they'll suddenly 'snap back' to where they actually are when it's restored. Occasionally you'll see someone seemingly run straight through a trap or obstacle unharmed.... and a few seconds later spin out of control on open ground as in reality, they're actually back at the trap and are hitting then. The other common one is if someone completely disconnects from the race; their character will seem to uncontrollably surge ahead, apparently invincible and abnormally fast - but will then be absent from the leaderboard at the end.

In fairness, Forces is a functional game at least; it doesn't have the glitches and insane loading times of 06. It also doesn't have the odd 'realistic' art style 06 went for, or the Elise romance plot. Forces's main issues are bland level design and plotting; it's not technically bad like 06, but it also isn't a really good game. It's just.... very mediocre.

Oh I'm sorry, that sucks - it was like that for me in April around the time when the coronavirus lockdown started. Oddly, it seems to have been more stable for me this last month or so with almost zero connection lossed, so I wonder if it's a regional thing.

I'm.... really not sure that developers are specifically changing the game just to mess with your posting. Reading the forums is one thing, but changing aspects of the game to troll online posters is a tad unlikely. This is kinda the seeing patterns thing again.... the hackers disappearing would more logically be due to the new update countering down whatever exploits they were using. It kind of reinforces that they weren't some sort of AI designed by Hardlight because if they were.... they'd just stay in place, as designed. Also, if you don't mind me asking, I'm genuinely curious.... why are you playing this game to tide over the time until the next main game, instead of... any other Sonic game, to be honest? Why play this one if you hate it so much? Not judging or anything, I was just wondering why not something more palatable to you?

@Iko Remember though, I'm also an Elite tier player who plays multiple times a day.... and it really does sound like an (understandable) case of seeing patterns where none exist. The reason that these glitches mostly occur when you need to get past an obstacle or get an object is because most of the times when you'll input a move will be in these very situations. It also does in fact happen randomly - I've had multiple instances of me going to skid under an obstacle and instead jump it or vice versa. Nothing happened. I didn't crash, it didn't impact the game, it's just.... a random glitch. Similarly, the times I've accidentally benefitted from it hadn't been times I was losing a lot; I've never had a losing streak where it hasn't been down to my own error or the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time when multiple abilities go off. The problem is, if this was an algorithm, it would be consistent. Instead, I can happily win almost every game throughout a day without any higher incidence or any interference. I just hit the Elite tier; I've experienced no shenanigans or game altering situations. I really would suggest that you're just putting greater weight on any time there's a glitch and creating an illusory pattern. As I've said before, there's no logic behind Hardlight doing this; the game's reward structure is set up in a way that none of these issues would affect it or require people to spend more money, and you yourself are the proof that these issues do not addict players but would actually serve to push them away. I can accept the idea of a mobile game doing something dodgy - but only for a clearly defined goal; no company anywhere would sink resources and time to set up a convoluted realtime monitoring system to break the game for no gain. Sorry, as it's the internet it's hard to tell - is this bit a joke or are you being serious? It's always difficult to be sure without tone, didn't want to get it wrong and reply to a joke seriously!

See, I think the problem is that you're ascribing agency to every glitch or problem where none exists. I occasionally get a misread control - but occams razor suggests it's just another issue due to poor connections (a constant reoccurring issue in the game) rather than a special algorithm monitoring all the players positions and intervening in races in realtime for no obvious motive. The input glitches are few and far between and they rarely cause me to lose - indeed, I've even had a couple which actually helped me!