Subtitled "Nostalgia: The Game".
Sonic Mania takes the traditional path for a Sonic game, combining original stages from the franchise's past, with entirely new elements. More or less everything possible is in here, and it all works together brilliantly.
I had forgotten how hard Sonic can be though. My memories of the old Megadrive days have me finishing acts with 200 rings in the bank, and a smug look on my face. I'm currently limping in with five.
And the special/bonus stages! I'm not atrocious at the Sonic CD-inspired "catch the ufo", a time limited collection race, but I am shockingly bad at the "Collect blue spheres". That's another blast from the past, in which you have a maze structure built of red spheres into which you can't run, that can require incredible feats of logic to navigate.
I am so out of practice it's embarrassing.
That's not going to stop me from keeping putting the hours in however, as this is unashamedly fun. There are a lot of little nostalgic references (and many more I'm sure I'm missing) and the bosses tend to be fairly ingenious. The usual principle of learning the pattern and exploiting it applies, but there's an impressive variety in the types of pattern and you'll enjoy working them out.
This isn't a game which highlights the power of art, or has a deep philosophical point about the goodness of man. This game had only one message for you:
Gotta go faster.
Fallen in a pit.
Ow. Spikes.
Gotta go faster.
Obviously since I'm playing it on PC, I have to mention Denuvo. This is the main cause of negative reviews on Steam (of which there are a shedload). It annoys a lot of people, including me, but hopefully it won't be around for too long as it's generally removed a little while after release. If you have sufficently strong feelings about it, put off the purchase for a couple of months. It'll still be good then.
For those of us who couldn't wait however, this is another excellent addition to the Sonic series. Though it has tempted me to dig out th old Megadrive and Sonic 3D.
Highly recommended.
Tagged: Game Platformer 2D Average difficulty PC