Sonic Mania Plus
PlayStation 4
It was 1994 and we were just a few weeks away from Christmas. I was out with my family at a tree lot, where everyone was looking to find that perfect Christmas tree to bring home. Trees, however, were the last thing on my mind. All I could think about was how I wanted to go home and play my Sega Genesis. I had just rented Sonic & Knuckles earlier in the day, and I had only made it through one stage before being FORCED to leave the house to go shopping: in the snow, in the cold, with my brother and all my annoying step brothers in tow. As far as I was concerned, we couldn’t get home soon enough.
Needless to say, I did eventually find my way back home. I played the hell out of Sonic & Knuckles that weekend, completing all of the many different variations of the game. While overall I enjoyed the game, I couldn’t help but notice how not much had changed between this game and Sonic 3. In fact, not much had changed between Sonic 3 and Sonic 2. Or even between Sonic 2 and Sonic 1! Sure there were some small cosmetic and gameplay tweaks along the way, but overall the core Sonic formula had remained the same over the course of four games. The series was starting to feel just a bit repetitive to me. I was ready for it to undergo a major change. I got my wish. Little did I know, that Sonic & Knuckles would be the last true Sonic platformer I would see in a LONG time.
I would say that this was both a blessing and a curse, but given the quality of most Sonic titles since Sonic & Knuckles came out in 1994, I will say that it is more of a curse. It wasn’t long before I was hoping and praying for a return to the classic Sonic formula, the same one that I had taken for granted after Sonic & Knuckles hit store shelves. After over 20 years of suffering through mediocre to miserable Sonic titles, my wish finally came true. When I caught wind of Sonic Mania back in 2017, I got super excited. A classic Sonic title made with the technology of today, with the graphics and gameplay of yesterday? Yes please!
As excited as I was for the game, I didn’t get around to playing it in 2017. In fact, I kind of forgot about it. It wasn’t until I saw news of Sonic Mania Plus that the game officially found its way onto my MUST PLAY radar. Its release date was July 17th, which just so happened to be my birthday. It was like it was meant to be. So I got it. 24 years after Sonic & Knuckles hit store shelves, and my 12 year old self stupidly wanted the series to change its formula, I was finally getting my hands on a classic Sonic title once again.
My initial impression of the game was that it was all kinds of awesome. Call it fan service if you want, but I was giddy with excitement at the chance to play not only remixed versions of some of my favorite Sonic stages, but new ones as well. As soon as I started playing this game, I felt like that excited little Sonic loving kid all over again. “OMG, THERE IS SONIC RIDING ON THE PLANE WITH TAILS! OMG THE MUSIC! IT IS JUST LIKE SONIC 3!! WHOAH THIS IS NEW! OMG GREEN HILL ZONE! GAAAH THIS MUSIC IS MY FAVORITE! LOOK AT THE GRAPHICS, IT LOOKS JUST LIKE A GENESIS GAME, BUT BETTER!! SAME SOUND EFFECTS! COLLECTING RINGS, JUMPING, GETTING HIT AND LOSING ALL YOUR RINGS: IT STILL SOUNDS EXACTLY THE SAME!! THIS BRINGS BACK SO MANY MEMORIES!! THIS IS INCREDIBLE!!!”
I knew Sonic games were short, and I didn’t want to beat the whole thing in one night. I wanted to take my time and savor the game. So I spread out my initial playthrough over the course of three days. When I did beat the game, I turned around and played it on “Encore Mode” and beat the whole thing in one day. Now a few days have passed and I have had some time to reflect on the game. Was it worth the long wait?
Yes…. and no. I will start with the positives. I mean, it is a freaking Sonic game! It was a blast to come back and play new content using the old classic formula once again. The graphics, while very similar to the 16-bit Genesis games, are slightly better than they were in the past. More colorful, more detailed, better character models, better animation. The music is just as good as ever. Not only do a lot of classic musical tracks return here, but the game features all new musical tracks as well. Sonic Mania Plus also throws in a few remixed versions of some of my favorite songs. I’d have to say Act-II of the Oil Ocean Zone is probably my favorite remixed track in the whole game. A few other remixed tracks I don’t care for. Green Hill Zone is one of them. It is not that I don’t care for them, it is just that I prefer the original versions more.
Basic gameplay remains the same. Sonic controls just as he did in the old Genesis games. So does Tails. So does Knuckles. This game adds the ability to play as two new characters as well. You can select some yellow creature that looks a bit like Super Sonic, but controls like Mario with the cape in Super Mario World. The other character is some red and black thing that that looks like Knuckles, but can ground pound and repel spike attacks. I liked the addition of these characters, but when I started up my playthrough it was the tried and true Sonic and Tails combo or bust for me. Other than the addition of these characters, not much has changed from the 16-bit days. There are a few small gameplay tweaks here and there, but nothing that immediately comes to my mind.
Level layout: still the same. Beat Act I of a zone, and face off against a mini boss at the end of it. Then you go on to Act II, where you fight Robotnik at the end. Zones seem a little bit longer this time around. The earlier ones are pretty easy, but the deeper you get into the game, the longer they take. It isn’t unusual for an Act to take seven or eight minutes to complete, especially when you are like me and like to take your time and explore. I even ran out of time TWICE in one of the last zones in the game, which never happens to me in a Sonic game. I won’t complain though. The more there is to see and explore, the merrier I am.
The game is filled with all kinds of Easter Eggs and nods to past Sonic titles. I wish the showdown was a little more difficult, but for one of the boss battles you take on Dr. Robotnik in a battle of good ole’ Mean Bean machine. Other classic boss characters return, albeit under very different circumstances. Remember the final battle with Robotnik in Sonic 2? Well, the machine from that fight is back in Sonic Mania Plus, and you have to fight him at the end of the very first stage! Metal Sonic makes an appearance as well. Other boss characters are very similar to characters you have fought in Sonic games past, but with slight differences. Clearly the makers of this game are paying homage to the original quadrilogy of Sonic games, but without directly recycling old material at the same time.
Bonus stages require 25 rings to activate after you run through a checkpoint. Just jump through the circle of stars above you and you will find yourself playing through all the old Blue Sphere stages from Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles. Beat the stage and you collect a gold or silver medallion, which you can use for unlocking hidden stuff. It was fun to revisit some of these old stages, but uhhh more on that later. As is tradition with Sonic games, you can collect Chaos Emeralds as you make your way through the game. They are completely optional and not necessary to collect to beat the game. Which is good, because I found them to be particularly hard to get my hands on! Special stages are discovered in a similar fashion to how they are found in both Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles. There are giant gold rings hidden in each stage, and you have to jump into them to activate the special stage. In the special stage, you take control of Sonic from a behind the back perspective. In each of the seven stages you have to chase down a machine carrying a Chaos Emerald. The closest thing I can compare these stages to is Sonic R for the Saturn. Collect blue spheres to increase your speed, and rings to give you more time on the clock. If you can't catch the Chaos Emerald-wielding machine by the time the clock runs out, you fail! These stages are extremely hard and I only managed to collect two Chaos Emeralds by the time I finished with the game. Is there is one weakness in my Sonic playing repertoire, it is that I have always been bad at collecting Chaos Emeralds, and I see that nothing has changed here in Sonic Mania.
All in all, if you discount the bonus and special stages, the game takes about three hours to complete. Add in the bonus and special stages, and it is probably closer to four or five. Herein lies my problem with the game: there are too damn many bonus stages! The Special stages where you collect Chaos Emeralds: those are fine. But the damn blue sphere bonus stages.... ugh! First of all, they are 100% recycled from Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles. Nothing new to see here! My main problem with them, however, is that there are too damn many of then. Each Act of each zone probably has at least, AT LEAST four or five checkpoints in it. Consider that each Act probably takes about five minutes to complete (not a truly accurate number, just my ballpark estimate). If you are hitting five checkpoints in that time span, that means chances are you are going to trigger at least four of them to activate a bonus stage. So in five minutes of in-game action, you are getting pulled into a bonus stage roughly every minute and a half. Of course, these stages are 100% optional and do not need to be completed. But being the completionist that I am, I couldn't just ignore them in good conscience. I had to play them. There are so many bonus stages in this game (because there are so many checkpoints) that I found them interrupting the flow of the main game itself. It felt like I was spending more time collecting blue spheres than I was playing the main game. I'd play until I hit a checkpoint, jump in to the circle of stars, and off to the bonus stage I would go. Win or lose, I would come out of the bonus stage and continue playing. One or two minutes later, I was back playing the bonus stage again. I'd finish up and continue playing. Thirty seconds later, I hit another checkpoint and activate another bonus stage. On and on it went. It was majorly interrupting my enjoyment of the campaign and disrupting the overall flow of the game in general.
When you finish single player mode, you activate Encore mode. This is a remixed version of the original game. There is a slight difference in level layouts and colors in the background of each zone. The main difference is that you are forced to switch back and forth between all five of the game's playable characters. Rather than collecting lives, you simply have these other characters as backups. So let's say have a full complement of characters in your inventory. You are playing as Sonic and you die. Rather than lose a life, you switch over to the next character in your lineup. If all of your characters die, it is game over for you. At least I assume it is game over, I never actually lost everyone all at one time, although I did come close once. If you lose a character, you can get them back by either finding a character monitor and smashing it, or by restocking in the game's pinball bonus stages. Yes, the bonus stages in encore mode are different from the bonus stages in the regular campaign. Rather than playing the recycled blue sphere stages all over again, you shoot Sonic around in a pinball machine where you can collect rings, shields, and bring back dead characters. If your inventory is in good shape, there is really no reason to visit these pinball stages. Plus, you need 50 rings to unlock these stages rather than 25. They are a lot less frequent in appearance than the blue sphere stages too, so they do not interrupt the game's flow as much.
I found playing Encore Mode much more enjoyable than playing the original campaign. I like how you are forced to use each character, and I liked using their different strengths to explore the game's stages. The bonus stages are far less intrusive, and it allowed me to just sit back and play this game the way it was meant to be played. I really got a kick out of Encore Mode, and most of my future playthroughs are probably going to be done in this mode. I do still have to return to the original mode and collect all the Chaos Emeralds and finish up the blue sphere stages I couldn't complete the first time around. Bleh. I am not looking forward to that, but I am a completionist and I will not be able to rest easy as far as this game is concerned until I have unlocked everything there is to unlock.
If you are a big time Sonic fan like me who grew up playing the original games for the Sega Genesis, you are going to want to play this game. It captures the spirit of the original games perfectly. 24 years after Sonic & Knuckles first hit store shelves, those games finally have a worthy successor. It makes me wonder why they haven't just been making Sonic games like this for years and years now. If you are new to the series, you may not enjoy it as much as it won't carry any sentimental value for you. I would still like to think you'd consider it a good game, though.
While this is certainly a good game, at least in my books, I couldn't help but feel a little bit let down by it. I still think all the old Sega Genesis games are better. Most likely that is because I have nostalgic feelings for them as I grew up playing them. But I feel as if this game doesn't quite capture the same magic that those games did. It rides their coattails too much, relying on your nostalgia for past games to try and make you fall in love with this one. I like this game, I really do. But I feel as if it had been its own, brand new Sonic game made in the style of the old ones it would have been much better.
I have heard this game referred to as "one of the best platformers of this generation." While I agree that yeah it is a really fun game, I don't know if I would go that far. Heck, I had a better time with Rayman Legends (which I just beat and reviewed a month or two ago) than I did this game, and I have no sentimental feelings attached to the Rayman series whatsoever. That doesn't mean I am shitting on this game, by any means, it just means that I have played better games in the genre, and recently too! That said, I will not discourage you from getting Sonic Mania Plus, especially if you and the Sonic series go way back together. You are going to like it. Will you love it as much as you did the old games for the Sega Genesis? Only you can answer that. But me: I did not.
Overall:
B+
If you liked my review of Sonic Mania Plus, please check out some of my other reviews:
PS: if they made a Sonic Mania 2 following the same formula as the original, I would like to see the following zones make a return: Spring Yard Zone, Casino Night Zone, Emerald Hill Zone, Metropolis Zone, Carnival Night Zone, Mushroom Hill Zone, and the Sky Sanctuary Zone. What zones would you like to see remixes of?
No comments:
Post a Comment