However, you actually spend very little of Chemical Plant Zone submerged in the stuff. There’s a purple chemical that’s designed using all the same mechanics as the water: It slows you down and Sonic can’t breathe while submerged. Now, let’s compare this with Chemical Plant Zone, which is the second zone in Sonic 2. And then, you’re forced to endure the underwater nightmare of Hydrocity. This primes you to get comfortable with Sonic’s speed, making you ready to really tear things up by the end of it. Angel Island is sort of your tutorial zone, and while it has a few troublesome spots that will halt your progress, there’s a good amount of momentum to it as a whole. So anyway, Hydrocity is the second zone in Sonic 3, immediately following the stunningly brilliant Angel Island Zone. Here’s a video in case you don’t believe me:

Combined, this is enough to frazzle just about anyone. I got Sonic into a position where he was drowning (cuing the panic-inducing drowning music) and being nibbled on by a piranha (triggering the ring sound once for each time a ring is stolen) at the same time. And, perhaps worst of all, there are robotic piranhas that cling to Sonic, making him unable to jump (and draining rings in the process).Īs an experiment, I decided to combine two of these things to make what might be the most stressful sound in Sonic history.

On top of that, Sonic needs to stop for air or he’ll drown, so you’ll spend time waiting for air bubbles to emerge so you can breathe. For starters, you’re submerged in water, which slows Sonic to a crawl. Too much about Hydrocity Zone is designed to take that away from you. More than anything else, the Sonic games are about speed. You’ve got loops and ramps to make use of your momentum, springs to give you a quick start, and the Spin Dash (introduced in Sonic 2), which is designed to give Sonic the means to hit top speed from a dead stop almost instantaneously. The entire premise of the Sonic games is that Sonic goes fast, and level layouts are generally designed to show that off.

My biggest beef with Hydrocity is that everything about it is designed to slow you down.

Casino night zone sonic 3 air