Sonic Lost World - Wii U - Sky Road Zone 1

Описание: S-Rank Time: 4 minutes 40 seconds

The first time I went through this stage, I described it as "Windy Hill Zone 1 with no mercy." Going through it for the S-Rank, it still felt like that. Visually, it is very similar to the introductory stage of this game and even has similar stage design, right down to the windmill shapes, only it's near the end of the game and no longer holds your hand.

Heck, right from the start, if you're not careful, Sonic will fall to his doom not five seconds in. See those stairs? If you miss, that's the end of the line for Sonic. It starts like this and never lets up to the end. In fact, I would say this stage is a difficulty spike compared to Silent Forest Zone 4 (which itself I felt considerably harder than any of the other Silent Forest stages).

The second planetoid is populated by four huge worm robots. Taking more cues from Mario, or perhaps Zelda, access to further parts of this stage is granted only after destroying all four of them. They take six hits, and the only way to hit them is when they've slammed face-first into the floor. While they always do so at fixed locations, they do create shockwaves that can harm Sonic. The charged attack is barely fast enough to get those six hits onto a robot before it burrows back underground, so if your timing is a bit off, or Sonic gets hit by a shockwave, that's a bunch of time lost. That, and not knowing where to go next.

This is also the first location I've put up where running along those tubes at high speeds is a required part of the stage. (The other place where it's required is Frozen Factory Zone 1, but no one has requested that yet.) So now you get to see what it looks like.

This stage, while not an introduction to the Crimson Eagle and is by no means required for finishing, is still worth talking about that Wisp. The Crimson Eagle allows Sonic to glide for a while. Its duration is shorter than the Green Hover, but it does travel faster (except for when the Green Hover is following traisl of Rings). This was before the update, so the Crimson Eagle controls almost exactly like Fluzzard from Super Mario Galaxy 2. I know some people really struggle with those controls, but I understood it perfectly, and the Crimson Eagle is no less clumsily implemented for me.

People have a lot of trouble with that cannon, and personally, it's incredibly annoying. You need to damage it three times to get rid of it and advance, and to do so, you need to position Sonic underneath one of the bullets and headbutt it from below when it's stuck in a cloud before it breaks free. As you can see, the bullets get pretty fast on the third hit, and it becomes pretty difficult to headbutt it in time. In addition, the spring to proceed appears rather far away from where Sonic arrives, hence why I frequently edged him over to the right. That alone saves about 12 seconds.

Between the giant worms and the cannon, a time limit of 4 minutes 40 seconds is actually more generous than usual. I'm sure the designers knew people would have trouble with both and set the time limit a bit higher than what it normally would be.

This stage's music is used in two other stages in this game, tying it with the Hidden World theme for most-used song. (The other two stages are Sky Road Zone 3 and Tropical Coast Zone ?, by the way.)

Requested by Central de Corrida