Sonic Forces - Stage 20 - Guardian Rock

Stage 20
Green Hill - Guardian Rock
(Remember to click on "Show more.")

I think this is the latest Green Hill has ever come up in any Sonic game, at the two-thirds point. Well, we began with Green Hill too, but Green Hill would continue to show up every now and then through the game up to this point. But yeah, that means after this will be Secret 3. More on that later.

If you've followed the pre-release stuff from SEGA, at conventions, on social media, and such, you may recognize this stage: This is the one I kept seeing to showcase the Avatar, and people's impressions was that this stage looked to be one the tough side. They made the wrong assumption that this would be near the beginning of the game, as Green Hill typically is. (If you count Mecha Green Hill as such, Guardian Rock narrowly beats it, as this is the 20th stage out of 30, and Mecha Green Hill Act 2 is Sonic Chaos's 8th stage out of 13.)

Wispon: DRILL
Abilities
1. Lets you stop on a dime, regardless of speed.
2. Gives a burst of speed after landing a Stomp.
3. Enables you to perform sequential Wire Attacks faster.

For some reason, the music for this stage sometimes gets stuck in my head. (It's called "Set in Motion," if you wanted to know.) If the lyrics are any indication to Rookie's state of mind, it seems her one-on-one victorty against Infinite has given her a shot of confidence, that she knows she can make a difference and help the Resistance in significant ways. You know, besides locating Sonic in the prison and escorting him back, accompanying Sonic in halting Eggman's weapons manufacturing in Green Hill, rescuing the survivors in the city, finding Eggman's secret lab in the Mystic Jungle, and confronting Infinite alone and winning including his cutscene power. Rookie of the Year.

Guardian Rock, as a stage, is all about Eggman's top machine patrolling the area, the Death Crab. This giant enemy crab has been effectively preventing the Resistance from doing much in the Green Hill area, and the dialogue suggests it can move to other regions to cause trouble for the Resistance too. Right now, it's in Green Hill and has its attention completely toward Rookie, which is exactly what the Resistance wants because they're focusing their attention onto shutting down the Death Egg. For whatever reason, it is remotely operated from the ground at the Chemical Plant, so the Resistance would be going there to disable it. As Eggman would concentrate his forces there, they want Rookie to divert them elsewhere. Well, it looks like she got the Death Crab.

Whatever bizarre way the Death Crab works, there are numerous legs stomping all over the place here, which function as spiked walls that open and close at regular intervals. Those legs make up most of the obstacles in this stage, though to show you whom they belong to, the Death Crab itself will sometimes run across in the background.

I used the Drill Wispon in Capital City, but here's a stage where you get to see the Yellow Wisp power in action, as Capital City had no Yellow Wisps. Remember how I said that the Wisp power allows Rookie to quickly travel along the ground and go up walls and ceilings? (In a way, that makes this similar to the Pink Spikes Wisp power.) Well, there are actually Yellow Wisps here now, and they're located near tall walls, allowing you ro skip some platforming. And though it uses the regular attack, there is a bridge near the end over a bottomless pit that collapses so quickly that you're better off just jumping over the gap...unless you're speeding on through with the Drill's fully charged attack, with which you can cross the bridge before it falls.

The stage caps off with a boss battle against the Death Crab. It's pretty straightforward: Use the Quick Step to dodge the falling rubble kicked up by the Death Crab, then a cutscene will occur in which you must press the A button (or whatever is the equivalent on the platform you'd play Sonic Forces on) to continue the cutscene in which Rookie uses a wire to swing cables around Death Crab's legs and make it fall, immobilizing it. And she is still a rookie.

(If I could title these videos whatever I want, I would've called this video "Death Crab for Cutie.")

Defeating the Death Crab, as it seems, frees Green Hill from the Eggman Empire. With tha, it also unlocks Secret 3.