Sonic Mania

Well... It's a Sonic game (fan made licensed by SEGA) but not quite good as the first 5 (S&K and S CD) was in my opinion.  Yes it looks like Sonic3 & Knuckles. Yes it has the same feel as those good games but not quite there. You can feel the “fan made” miles away. I’m going to tell you why.

Did you like going fast in the first 3 games + Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic CD? Want to go fast? No, you can't, go hit a bump every 10 seconds.  Love forks in the road? Well take 3 every time you come to one. Hope you're lucky enough to notice them before your fast movement is interrupted by another bump again and you have to backtrack. You have no idea where you going but eventually you'll be at the level end.

Did you love those bonus stages where you collect blue spheres? Well they no longer give you the chaos emeralds. Also for some reason you get this mini game from a checkpoint instead of the big teleport ring. You still get the chaos emeralds from the giant rings. But now they are well hidden and you have no desire to look for them given that exploring a level gives you an aneurysm rather than joy. Not only that there is also a new mini game to get the chaos emeralds. Now you must chase some weather balloon while collecting rings to be able to stay in the level and blue rings to increase your speed. Personally I didn’t like that mini game as much as I dislike the tunnel run from Sonic 2.

Remember up and down cylinders from Carnival zone? Well the entire game feels like that. Bosses suck too. You can’t bum rush them quickly anymore… well not everyone of them. There is even a Puyo Puyo Tetris boss from Mean Bean Machines and I hate Puyo Puyo Tetris. Now most of the bosses need to go through several animations before you are allowed to hit. This in my opinion hits the old Sonic spirit the most. Of course there are also DLCs… which I can’t access due to SEGA banning my country from getting their products on Steam for causes they have no business to butt in. I bought this game before 2022 so at least I can play the main game. So far I only beat it with Sonic without the true ending due to me reflexes getting old. Now I’m going through the game with Tails and he’s kind of awkward to control but at least you have some air control. So as always I’d say get it when it’s on a discount because that's what “a bit above of mediocre game” deserves. BTW Sonic movies suck.