upslopes and grip notes

Upslopes and Grip

The biggest thing that affects quick turning grip is upslopes. When facing upslopes you’ll have reduced turn responsiveness and acceleration or speed, depending on your speed and the sharpness of the slope. The faster you’re going, the more an upslope will reduce your snaking grip, and the sharper an upturn, the more it will reduce it as well. This effect is also in max speed and is clearly noted on sharp upslopes such as before the dive on Aero Dive, but unlike in max speed where you only really worry about it in a few clear situations, in snaking it’s a constant issue on the tiniest slopes you might not even notice as a solely max speed player. A very important trial of snaking is managing grip as best as possible to keep your acceleration up or to maintain as much speed as possible where speed loss is unavoidable.

MT is the most effective way of improving snaking grip. This comes at a loss of obviously being unable to gain any speed since the engine isn’t on, but for slopes too steep to gain speed on anyway, MTing is often the best option. You would usually want to MT these slopes because they would cause you to lose too much speed, but it has the added effect of allowing you to make the turn a lot more directly than if you were holding A.

The next most effective way to improve grip is to be in boost state. The best way I can understand or explain boost state affecting snaking handling is that it seems to be affected by how far above your max speed for the given ground angle/etc you are, so to speak. By being in boost state you’ll have a higher max speed, so you can continue to snake on harder upslopes or maintain higher speeds on the same upslopes. In some cases a slight upslope on an opener without boost power will be similar to the same section with boost power because the grip gained by boosting there will be offset by the higher speeds you’ll be moving at because of the boost, but in most situations the way you handle the section on an opener will be completely different than how you handle the same section on boost laps.

Finally, the last method of increasing snaking grip is to be moving slower. This doesn’t sound like something that you would ever want to do, but it’s something worth noting as there are some situations where you’ll make the non-optimal play for gaining speed because it will reduce your grip causing you to lose all that speed and more. Additionally, playing poorly in some places and ending up with lower speeds than what you plan for may partially be compensated for by making an upcoming upslope section easier to handle.

On that note about moving slower, there are some times where you’ll want to take narrower strides to keep up your handling. Doing so helps keep your grip in two ways. The first is, like I said, keeping your speed lower. Avoiding red sparks when pressing A is pretty important because of how quickly they reduce your speed, but the other effect has to do with keeping your angle as pointed into the slope as possible. Taking wide strides on slopes is weird because the longer you turn, the more the ground will level out relative to the direction you’re facing, so the more you’ll accelerate, but then when you switch directions your newly gained speed will quickly result in skidding, which just ends up being much slower overall. In addition to being faster, all this is referring to grip after all, and since this is done in an environment where grip is very low, keeping narrow strides can help keep control for other things like avoiding walls or aiming for boosters or refill.