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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Sonic Mania Review thread- 86 meta with 50 reviews

I'll just put my own review of the game here as well.

Back in the early 90’s, there were a lot of games that could be beaten in a couple of hours, but were considered good. There were also games that took a very long time to beat such as Final Fantasy II, or A Link to the Past. In my opinion, the longer games stood head and shoulders over the shorter games. Sonic was a short game, and so were the sequels. I would still recommend Sonic and Sonic 2 to any gamer these days. But only in the sense that I would still recommend Megaman 2, or Contra 3.

 

Sonic Mania comes along and fixes one of the main problems with the old Genesis games. It’s easily twice as long with way more replay value, than its predecessors. Part of this is because there are double the zones as oldschool Sonic games. But it’s mostly due to the fact that every level is huge.

 

You can play with either Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles. Different characters can get to areas that the others can’t. Each level has multiple branching paths. The stages in Sonic Mania aren’t just a collection of the same old springs, and loop de loops. The developers have gone out of their way to bring fresh new mechanics to traditional Sonic levels. Some levels, for example, will have Sonic jumping into the background. Others will shrink Sonic down to half his normal size. Sonic Mania lets you select any previous level once you’ve finished the game, making it much easier to explore the game.

 

 Every boss has an interesting unexpected twist, and there are as many bosses as there are stages. The developers could have gone the safe route, and had Dr. Robotnik hover over you shooting fireballs in a predictable pattern. Instead they keep coming up with the most zany boss battles in a 2D platformer ever. Some of these encounters don’t even have you stick to a single area as you fight, opting for a high speed chase of sorts instead.

 

Hidden in every level is the usual giant gold ring from Sonic 3 that will teleport you to a Chaos Emerald stage. These hidden stages offer a 3D race with a UFO opponent. Collecting rings adds seconds to your time limit, and collecting blue power balls speed you up. If you catch the UFO you get a Chaos Emerald, and if you run out of time the level is over. In addition to this there is a hidden blue ball bonus level inside every checkpoint. It plays exactly the same as the ones from Sonic 3. If you complete them all you get hidden unlockables. These two variants of bonus levels expertly capture the look and feel of the old challenge zones from the Genesis games, without being overly ugly.

 

 

It took me about 6 hours to beat Sonic Mania. Including replays with Tails, and Knuckles this is easily an 18+ hour long game. Sonic Mania isn’t just a good tribute to the Genesis Classics. It absolutely blows those games out of the water. 

9/10 



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A bit of history on the game for those interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omKGDC4JaMU



shikamaru317 said:
Mar1217 said:

Isn't it Nintendo though during the WiiU era with Sonic Lost World and Sonic Bo-eurk ?!!

A pretty decent sized chunk of Sega fans switched to the original Xbox after Dreamcast support ended, due to talk of a partnership between Sega that would allow Dreamcast compatibility on Xbox (those discussions eventually fell through though). However, though the Dreamcast compatibility didn't happen, Xbox got several Sega exclusives in the early/mid 2000's, which helped to cement Xbox as the home of many former Sega fans, myself included. How many of those Sega fans stuck by Xbox this generation though remains to be seen. I know as far as ratings on the US stores go, it's currently 612 ratings on PS Store and 419 ratings on the Xbox Store.

is there any numbers to support this? Becasue i imagine most went with Nintendo since they partnered together and started putting out Sonic games "exclusively" for GC (the Sonic Adventures rereleases, Mega Collection coming out first, Gems collection exclusive in the US, Heroes coming to GC first) and looking at the sales of Sonic games in particular, I dont think their has been one that has done better on Xbox than PS, hell even when 360 was stomping PS3 Sonic 06 still managed to sell better.



shikamaru317 said:
Captain_Yuri said:
Anyone know the last time a sanic platformer game got above 80 meta?

I think it was Sonic Advance 2 in 2003 which got an 83 meta. Generations and Colors both came pretty close to 80, but got cheated out of it by some Sonic haters and clickbait reviewers.

Edit: The Wii port of Sonic 4: Episode 1 managed an 81 meta it seems, though the other ports fell far short of it.

Tbf Sonic Colors had a lot of defficiencies and wasn't as good as some used to say. Was decent nothing more. 78 is a reflective score. Sonic Mania looks sick though. A big return to form



Mar1217 said:
Nem said:

Don't make this about console wars. Just enjoy the game. SEGA will let us know the sales values eventually.

Maybe there's that. Or maybe we just wanna know if the game is performing well on other platforms cuz we want it to do well. Sonic Mania is a great game from what I've played so knowing that the game is doing well everywehre ensure us that we'll see a new 2D Sonic game like this one instead of this being a one thing done and never touched again.

Anyway, it's 1st on the Eshop in Canada, so I'm glad we answered the call :P Hope it stays like that for at least the rest of the week.

PS : The Switch sits at 89 on Metacritic with only 4 reviews,lol.

You don't have to worry. The game is doing well (probably already was with pre-orders alone) and the good reviews will give it legs aswell.

I am fairly confident that this will send a message. Especially if Forces tanks later this year, as we can all guess it will.

Either way they would have to be insane to not green light more of these projects just on the positive reception alone. This is doing wonders for the Sonic brand.

 

 

Oh on your other post, don't worry about the emeralds, you will be able to collect them after you finish the game. The golden rings will respawn everytime you start a level. You just have to collect them (i spammed green hill a bit cause it was the most time efficient method) and go back to the final stage once you got them all.



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Mar1217 said:
Nem said:

You don't have to worry. The game is doing well (probably already was with pre-orders alone) and the good reviews will give it legs aswell.

I am fairly confident that this will send a message. Especially if Forces tanks later this year, as we can all guess it will.

Either way they would have to be insane to not green light more of these projects just on the positive reception alone. This is doing wonders for the Sonic brand.

 

 

Oh on your other post, don't worry about the emeralds, you will be able to collect them after you finish the game. The golden rings will respawn everytime you start a level. You just have to collect them (i spammed green hill a bit cause it was the most time efficient method) and go back to the final stage once you got them all.

I looked  at Gamexplain yesterday for the trick you just talked about. Glad I won't have to do an all other playthrough with Sonic/Tails just to hope getting the 7 emeralds. I'm now stuck at the 4th one :P

I think the 4th and 5th arre really tough. I don't recall very well the 6th but the 7th was surprisingly really easy. So, you'll get there. Just have to get used to the strategy on each one. On the hardest ones it makes sense to get as many rings as possible on the first lap so you can just focus on catching the UFO on the remaining time.



A lot higher than I expected, wonder if it will sell really well then



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What caught my attention there is the difference in Users score.  While Sony and Nintendo users have given it a 9.0, the Xbox users have given it an 8.0.  

I think it goes to show the difference in tastes in those platforms.



Just beat the game last night, easily the best Sonic game in the entire series IMO.



"Just for comparison Uncharted 4 was 20x bigger than Splatoon 2. This shows the huge difference between Sony's first-party games and Nintendo's first-party games."

shikamaru317 said:
chakkra said:

What caught my attention there is the difference in Users score.  While Sony and Nintendo users have given it a 9.0, the Xbox users have given it an 8.0.  

I think it goes to show the difference in tastes in those platforms.

Pay no attention to user ratings on Metacritic, too many trolls there, most likely Sony or Nintendo fans downvoting the Xbox One version due to their own belief that the game doesn't belong on Xbox. The user rating on the Xbox One Store, which you can only rate if you actually own the game, is 4.9/5 with 578 ratings.

happens to pretty much every xbox game, fanboys are ruiening a otherwise good system, just take the other versions as a guide because I cannot imagine the ps4 version being superior in a game like this lol




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