Caelin Bragg
Lantern Staff
Fans of the old Sonic the Hedgehog games will find many hours of pure nostalgic ecstasy from Sonic Mania, but new fans might be frustrated by some of its 1990s jank.
Sonic the Hedgehog has probably been the most inconsistent video game franchise in terms of quality. He went from his height in the 1990s to his darkest days in the 2000s only to repeat the whole thing again during the 2010s, but things are now starting to look up again thanks to the recent release of Sonic Mania.
Mania is a 2D platformer in the style of the classic Sega Genesis Sonic games. Players have the choice of playing as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles or Sonic and Tails together, and they all have their familiar moves. Mania added in a new mechanic for Sonic, the drop dash, which lets Sonic get to top speed just by landing from a jump.
The main focus of Sonic has always been speed, and Mania is no different. Most of the time spent with the game will be barreling through zones at high velocity, but it never felt like I was just sitting there and not playing the game. Mania strikes a good balance of spectacles of speed and instances of challenging platforming and is overall just fun to its core.
Mania features some brand-new zones, but it consists of mostly old zones from Sonic 1, 2, 3 & Knuckles and CD. I would have liked to see more new zones, but the returning zones were all built upon in interesting ways that it did not really matter that they were already well trodden grounds.
Returning to Mania are special stages. The blue spheres from Sonic 3 & Knuckles make a return, which are used to unlock bonuses. New special stages, which are a cross between Sonic CD’s special stages and Sonic R, are used to obtain Chaos Emeralds. These are easily my least favorite things of Mania. The worst parts of Sonic are when precise control is taken from the player and both special stages do just that. I was only completing them for completion’s sake and not because they were enjoyable.
While Mania does a really good job at recreating everything good about the classic Sonic games, it does the same with the bad. Water still screeches the game to a halt every time, and there are many instances where getting crushed on random geometry is very common. Those moments can be enjoyable for those who remember them in the classics, but newcomers will be more frustrated than enthused.
The enjoyment that can be had from Sonic Mania will highly depend on the player’s prior experience with Sonic. Old fans can find tons of entertainment from both the good and the bad, but new players will probably be less enthusiastic about the problems that have plagued classic Sonic games since their inception.