Co-op looks just about as messy as I expected it to be, if not even more. Though my overall opinion of this game is pretty positive, I can't shake the feeling that this is the umpteenth instance of the Sonic series trying to do something that is currently "cool", regardless of how well it actually suits Sonic gameplay. I agree about the music; it's erratic. The theme song and Bridge Island sound like they're trying for the same vibe as "Friends" in Sonic Mania, by Hyper Potions, Speed Jungle sounds like it's moving in the direction of Angel Island Zone from S3K, and Pinball Carnival sounds like a Tee Lopes song. To be fair, Sonic Frontiers also had a rather varied soundtrack, but arguably all genres of music there reflected the game's general theme of unease and mystery. This game just sounds like multiple composers being multiple composers.

I am in Japan in december but I'm only in Osaka until 15th 🤣 oh well I think you need to speak Japanese for this anyway 😄

I am wonfering whether to get this or the game version with the acryic stand. If i can add the digital extras as adlc, no brainer but if some as retailer locked....

I more so meant what convinced Whisper in the first place in the previous issue. Silver hadn’t met Minic yet was able to describe perfectly about Mimic’s face and eyes changing as he left him for dead. That right there is the perfect evidence to make Whisper steadfast in her belief - the only way Silver COULD know about that tell when he described it was he actually saw it. So Whisper just shrugging it off in the end looks utter ridiculous. If the characters were written in character, Whisper wouldn’t have backed down and would’ve convinced Tangle by bringing up that exact point. I think the point Silver was trying to do wasn’t making him drop the disguise, but to spook Mimic enough that he would instinctively do something that anyone who isn’t a trained operative couldn't do - and technically, Silver was right - because when Mimic is spooked, he does a extremely skilful move by using his foot to grab ahold of the railing, and that gives him several seconds where he can just think about his next steps. The problem is the comic expects everyone to just forget that happened apparently, or somehow suspect that literally no one in the entire crowded base, not even Silver and Whisper themselves saw Duo pull out a move that makes literally zero sense for a inexperienced citizen to be able to do. Having Whisper not recognise it especially is pretty silly. It’s the same later on. When Mimic falls off a chair and this is also enough to convince everyone that it isn’t Mimic, because apparently Mimic just…wouldn’t pretend to be injured or anything. The characters are just blatantly written stupidly to justify keeping the plot rolling.

I assumed that Whisper must've informed Silver of his tells between the issues. It would've been clunky to reiterate it all at the start of the issue, but I don't really think they have an excuse to not have referenced it like they did twice in the other half of the comic. As in: Whisper: Do you remember Mimics tells that I told you about? Silver: Yeah. [#Tangle & Whisper Mini Series] Even so. Isn't Silver and by extension, Whisper, wrong? I don't think we've seen Mimic lose his disguise during stress, he does lose it when he's taunting his victim, like a dumbass. So maybe Whisper for some reason, never told Silver his tells, it would be fair to assume Silver made the incorrect assumptions that his disguise slips during peril. (Which didn't happen in the previous issue but Silver being confused due to his peril is a reasonable excuse for him to get it wrong.) Whisper believing the same however is pure nonsense. The two have a history and she should know him like he's her sibling and using her trauma as an excuse for why she can't be trusted is a little.......bleh. Especially when she has no history of making wild claims or acts of violence against friends before.

That's why for me most come of the writing issues comes of making us know that Mimic was Duo (especially with also how much clues and error they made him make), and go to this "we know the situation but the character doesn't road and one knows but can't prove it" (from my experience, it's something that often create the most cringe-inducing arcs, like this one, as it's really hard to pull-off, especially in a serie with simple characters where Sonic). IDK why they decided to do that, I thought it was kinda known that quiproco arcs aren't a good idea xD. I still think that Lanolin being angry at Silver/Whisper makes sense (she should have trusted them, which is also way it would have been more interesting if Duo was a false flag and that it wasn't Mimic, because nobody would be in the actual knowledge of stuff, but the action of Silver are the perfect way to make someone looks more innocent). Not that I think it's greatly written, but for me the fault is way more in the very premise of this arc, or more precisely how they've handled the information we got. I think they wanted to much to do a "Silver is right this time". I really feel that they should have either dropped Silver seeing that he is Mimic, either created a false flag to make us think a character is mimic to reveal later he wasn't. And I feel that it would have been way more "fun" if they had make Mimic/Duo make connections with Whisper, and Whisper going to slowly starting to believe in "Duo" just to be crushed later (yeah I'm a monster, I know). It would also be a good way to create the importance of the new Diamond Cutter, by making Whisper need her new support network here. MetalSkulkBane's idea could be great too, seeing Mimic being played would be kinda interesting and could kinda save Lanolin here (it would make her very insensitive, because I'm not sure that making Whisper and Silver doubt themselves is essential to catch Mimic, but we could argue that if discovered, he could have made a rash act that could have put someone in danger ?) and create a great payoff. But I'm not sure that Mimic was good enough for a payoff of "we trapped you" to be enough satisfying. Still seen worse (and I don't care a lot about the "due respect to Silver part" which is what annoyed the most people), but eh, really one of the weakest arc of the comics, and with the 900th issue that wasn't very good, ouchie (especially when the official medias became better). I hope they'll manage to create a good sendoff to that storyline, and I'm kinda happy we're going to another mini-arc next month.

Silver might’ve jumped the gun in trying to find evidence, but acting like there’s none at all is a piece of bad writing that looks horrible on all characters. Whisper witnessing the action is already a piece of evidence in of itself. Whisper is a trusted, world renowned hero who has put her life on the line numerous times over and knows Mimic perfectly, to disregard anything she says is downright idiotic. Whisper’s mask is capable of recording things, there’s no reason they couldn’t have had what she witnessed recorded. Silver has never met Mimic yet was able to point for point perfectly describe what Mimic does when he loses his disguise, something Tangle and Whisper know all too well because he did it multiple times in their miniseries. Even if you want to ignore the lack of evidence, treating the possibility as non serious is utterly idiotic, and shows how much of a terrible leader Lanolin is being. Part of leadership is being able to remove emotions from the situation in order to access situations without bias. While Silver and Whisper were in the wrong for trying to spook him, it also doesn’t erase the fact Lanolin should be capable of seeing the clear and present danger and wish to investigate it. If ‘Duo’ has nothing to hide, he would aid. Lanolin also opts to cut Whisper off when she tries to inform Lanolin that she knows Mimic’s tells - one of which would be that Mimic is downright incapable of altering his hands. If he’s innocent, he should have little issue removing the gloves to prove he’s innocent and let apologies and such come after. A proper leader not only would’ve taken the necessary steps to ensure the matter is investigated properly due to the serious allegation, but also just do the most obvious thing of asking Duo to show his hands which would confirm things one way or another. There’s logical or intelligent about Lanolin’s actions. Not even close. Every single hero in this issue is written as stupidly and incompetently as possible in order to justify stretching it out and resetting the status quo back to before Mimic outted himself via stupidity. Lanolin ignoring her friends’ opinions, belittling Silver’s experiences as if he’s a irresponsible child, even though he’s lived in worse, more deadly circumstances for longer, and outright putting every single person in the Restoration in danger because she wouldn’t even choose to humour Silver and Whisper, and at least do the bare minimum checks to ensure they were wrong just frankly makes her the worst in a bunch of badly written, incompetent characters this issue. The clear issue is Silver, Whisper, and Tangle have all had multiple issues where they’re written correctly and in character. Meanwhile, Lanolin is a background chapter promoted to main character, yet hasn’t displayed any particularly good traits that should get people to like her. Making her the leader of the Restoration is already a weird choice, but outright having her previous arc be about failures, picking yourself up, and trusting your team, only to see her to the exact same shit but in a worse way see makes her come off as much worse.

"Hey, don't be like that!" Komaru pouts. "I think it's cool to see this in action! Whatever... this is!" "Tell you what, how about we play some Find Four, instead?" "Impossible Burger, meet Impossible Drink..." Kyubey comments at the weird behavior of the snow upon coming in "relative contact" with the coffee. "Strange..." Shuichi comments as he plucks a bit of grass from the ground, and inspects it. "Despite all of our actions living here, the ground has finally melted... to coffee of all things. Not even those of the Fire Element." He comments.

The only thing I'm not digging is how the robots do not turn into a ball when jumping. It looks awkward as fuck and even hard to aim. It's strange, because they nailed the ball form with the main characters, way better than Generations ever did. Other than that, looks like a fun time. Just mildly dissapointed that you can only use robots in MP modes... that's... a choice... maybe they'll reconsider.

Overall, I'm a bit disappointed by the new Metal character designs. Knuckles fares best, being similar to his Sonic R design, albeit looking significantly clunkier. But I don't like the fact that his spines aren't attached smoothly to his head, nor the fact that they're hinged in the middle. The metal plates on his shoes are too huge too. Metal Amy is really weak. Her face looks entirely cute and girly, instead of threatening. Her head shape is the same as Metal Sonic's, with the addition of a exhaust pipe her forehead to look like hair. All that combined with her "naked pink" torso and unusual jet-skirt just fakes for am uninteresting, boring and blue kind of ugly design. It lacks originality. At the very least, her torso needs to be recoloured to green. And finally we've got Metal Tails. Off the bat, his design isn't exactly the worst, but I don't particularly like it either. The positive is that I'm glad that they managed to give him a threatening face. Everything else though, nah. He looks oddly bulky with all of the heavy armour plating on his limbs. He's a very mustard-yellow colour, and I'd personally have preferred to see him look more orange. His jet engine tails are a cool idea that actually make sense, but they look a bit too busy. Maybe they're better in motion? But my biggest gripe is that, like with Metal Amy, he lacks originality. And that stings a lot because he didn't even need to exist. Tails Doll was already the perfect "metal" variant of the character, providing a much more interesting and creative Eggman-made doppelganger to Tails than just just giving Tails a Metal Sonic makeover. So yeah, kinda wish they went in a different direction with these designs. Whilst Metal Knuckles is alright and Metal Sonic is the same old glorious design as ever, the other two kinda stink.

How does Metal Amy look? Can't find her anywhere

Hurray now I can get 'em!

Nice to see some in-depth looks. Honest thoughts at this point are that the gameplay looks solid enough and fun (as expected). I think where Sonic 4 burned me (and because the Mania team aren't working in this and instead it's Arzest) I still feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop - but I also love a good comeback story for a studio. In general I do think some levels still look kind of sparse or open, I don’t know if that’s just the art style they've gone for or the fact that they are accommodating for 4 players. I don’t always feel this way when looking at the screenshots or videos, but there are moments where I’m either of the opinion that the game looks stunning, or just super bland. It's 100% better than Sonic 4's efforts, but it's also a weird inconsistency. It might be I just feel a bit well fed with generations art style, but I'll take this at 60FPS anyday. Speaking of 4 players on screen, it's going to be manic (but that’s expected). At least the other players get snapped to P1 pretty quickly if they get left too far behind as well, but I suspect it’s not really going to as fun for them being tethered to the main player, however there is not much in the way round that with this kind of game. Battle and multiplayer looks decent enough too, these modes don't really interest me personally - but considering the price tag on this title I’m impressed that they have added additional modes like this into this game, it adds value and engagement outside the main campaign. Having in game cosmetic unlockables and things to strive for is always a plus (if you aren’t paying extra). What I will say with the other level footage shown off is that I’m also a bit puzzled why the name/location of the zone pops up twice before the level starts, IMO you don’t need to announce the area then announce it again with the act. Also gutted about the mini boss and main boss music, they really went and drove it back into the Sonic 4 vibes. This clarifies my earlier concern about having multiple composers on this project, the soundtrack is probably going to end up all over the place and not remain consistent (and I'm not talking in terms of quality here), it's just going to be super weird in a 2D Sonic title. Otherwise… roll on October! :)