Knuckles is pink as shit!

Well, it’s here. The physical release of Sonic Mania, a game who’s marketing tauts it’s high ratings to compensate for it’s poor sales. Clearly, the game is so far up it’s own ass to worry about competent design as it bastardizes the very zones it’s supposed to be “celebrating“. There isn’t a shred of polish that makes it “the best Sonic game in years!” It’s the most narcissistic Sonic game ever.

“BY THE MANIA, FOR THE MANIA!!” NEVER MIND IF That STATEMENT DOESN’T MAKE ANY FUCKIN SENSE! 

A team of “passionate developers” it says! Not talented or capable, just passionate! This whole preface reeks of pretentiousness, and after playing this shit, it’s beyond infuriating to see these guys are just masturbating to a mirror while they have a game out that is purely about nostalgia and nothing else. 

*sigh*

I’m trying to give this shit a fair chance, but it’s either boring or just tedious! I don’t know. It feels like I’m playing Advance 3, and you all know how I feel about that game. And top it off, the fuckin creators are so busy trying to convince me of Mania’s value, that’s why they have this art book in tow showing all these sketches. The game is pissing me off, and these fuck jobs are just shoving it in my face that “they‘re awesome“. They care more about them damn Metacritic scores than actually trying to make a coherent game. It’s frustrating, and i’m not having any fun with it. Where do I even begin?

Level-design is Rom-hack levels of bad

I think the guys of Sonic Dissected mentioned that it was easy to get lost in certain zones, using Studiopolis (the Clusterfuck that it is) as an example. And shit, I can vouch for that.

This bastardized version of Chemical Plant (just put in Wacky Workbench, you hacks), you can see that I’m all over the place. How the fuck was I supposed to know there was a ceiling that you had to bounce right into just to progress!? A detail like that is far too easy to miss when that shit blends into the stage with no obvious signs that signal to you “go here retard!”. 

One of the more amateurish things rom-hackers do is that they tend to try and one-up other hackers by trying to make the levels harder by stacking the deck, and that’s often done by fucking up enemy and trap placement. And Sonic Mania’s Zones are fucking flooded with enemies and traps to the point of absurdity and fatigue. Go check out Lava Reef and tell me how many exploding rock bitch and fire traps you run into within mere… fucking… seconds! They’re all over the goddamn place! You can literally have 3-4 of these bastards within centimeters of each other, and that alone wouldn’t bode well. But hell, earlier in Stardust Speedway, there wasn’t a platform I couldn’t reach without getting rammed with those blue spiked balls that pop out of those holes.

Enemy Placement is also a bit on the obnoxious side. I recall a few instances in Metallic Madness where, if I try to jump over one of those spike carriers, i’d run into one of those bees with maces on their asses. Or again, in Stardust, if I try to avoid those spinning spike platforms, i’m getting knocked on my ass by a roller bug.

And if it’s not enemies, it’s always a damn spike trap. They never fail!

 If the goal was to take the rare elements of older zones and ramp up the quantity, mission accomplished. But even the new zones have this bullshit. 
Titanic Monarch, I know is the final zone, but what sense is it to flood the zone with those ffffffffucking lock-on enemies!? These flying bastards who surrounds you with these balls that close in on you if you don’t kill him or escape? escaping is always a grand option, but is ultimately pointless when the very next area has another  one? Escape him, seconds later BAM another one! Escape him BAM another one! Escape BAM another one! I mean goddamn! Let me catch my damn breath for a good minute or 2!

This wouldn’t be so bad if these assholes were easy to find and kill, but often times, they’re in out of reach areas, off screen, or in areas where you get stuck on electronic balls. It doesn’t help that there’s so much shit you gotta pay attention to because the acts were designed by some guy on Ritalin. 

These examples and more often force me to take the levels slowly. But as always, if you are rewarded for taking a slower approach in a faster-paced franchise, that’s a red flag that the devs have to go back to the drawing board because they dun fucked up. Enemy and trap placement was not an issue in 2D Sonic (save for advance 3, see where I’m going with that?) Of old, but this is Rom-hack design philosophy. You flood the zone (hehe) in some sick, fetishy desire to make the game hard as hell. You gotta take everything slow cause otherwise, you’re gonna be running into shit constantly. And that’s not fun in the slightest. Unless you’ve memorized these Acts, you won’t know when shit is coming. After a while, it just gets annoying, and it’s not mitigated by the fact that the game keeps jerking itself off. How can you be proud of level-design like this!?

that being said, I’m amazed Press Garden turned out so well. That’s pure classic Sonic right there… aside from those disappearing blocks.

Fuck Mega Man!

(Personal gripe) Aside from that, there are obvious signs that Knuckles is severely hindered. I can tell this game was made purely with Sonic and Tails in mind. Being the guy who rides the Echidna’s nuts, Im trying to go through it with him, but I constantly feel pressured to play the game in the mindset of Sonic anyways. Knuckles can’t fully utilize his climbing abilities to the fullest extent because every area feels like it’s impassable without a decent jump. I even recall a certain cliff in Mirage Saloon because the Cliffside was slanted. Infact, a lot of walls in that zone are shitty to climb anyways. You get the feeling the game was working against Knuckles simply because he could climb, like they assumed knuckles players would have it easy just because he can climb. That’s not the case here. You don’t have a lot of options when it comes to Knuckles simply because there are areas that he can’t get to due to how the zones are structured. He’s honestly the worst character to use due to his shit jump height. You’re literally better off with Tails. Or Mighty because he can actually rape the bosses.

Difficulty Spikes

Up the ass. Gets more and more noticeable once you hit Mirage Saloon.

Inconsistent Themes/Gimmicks

Well, Mr. Spore, you might’ve been right about Press Garden. Act 1 is purely a newspaper factory (hence the name.) But when you get to Act 2, the theme of the zone changes to a Japanese Winter shrine… something, if only to coincide with the boss being a reference to Revenge of Shinobi. The only real connection is thr grinding down of trees to make said newspapers, but other than that.

Another jarring decision is in Studiopolis where  some strange instance, you’re playing a bingo machine. I’m like “wtf does bingo have to do with making movies?”

One could also make the argument for Chemical Plant where Act 2 and the following boss are more akin to a candy factory/laboratory, what with the gelatin floors that were spliced from Wacky Workbench, oversized syringes, and DNA elevators. Yeah, those are 2 different themes. And judging by the science lab theme that Titanic Monarch sports, Act 2 would’ve been far more appropriate there instead.

Not a frequent issue, but it shows they were more focused on the spectacle rather than it making sense. Perhaps it’s explained away by the Phantom Ruby, but all that seems to do is teleport people. A little logic wouldn’t hurt, is what I’m saying.

There was also this mechanic where your elemental shields could manipulate the environment, but these opportunities only appear in Green Hill and Oil Ocean, and only seem to be an aesthetic feature for trailers because otherwise, they serve no purpose other than for Taxman to jack off to Mega Man. 

That’s another thing. Splicing one or 2 elements from zones you did not include don’t make the ones you did include fresh. It just comes off as lazy and unoriginal. As if the game wasn’t derivative enough.

Developer Narcissism

Often times, you can tell when a game thinks too highly of itself when it smacks you over the head with references to past work. Konami and Capcom both have this problem, but see… they can get away with this because a lot of the games they choose to callback on are games that haven’t been seen in years. Like Symphony of the Night making references to Castlevania 3 and Kid Dracula, super obscure shit like that.

This doesn’t work for Sonic Mania for the simple fact that Sega’s been making a million retro collections in the last 2 generations, and even has a new one for this gen. Not to mention the single releases on digital download services, and even the classic genesis mock-up with several games installed. Sega was not intent on having us forget the “good ol days” so long as it made them a penny.

The problem? Mania is completely oblivious to this simple fact as it smacks you upside the head with it’s callbacks. It’s this juvenile theory that automatically having these references will elicit some happy response out of the audience via way of “hey, I remember that!” Whether it’s Heavy Shinobi having sound effects from Revenge of Shinobi, Knuckles having some children’s drawing of what happened to him after Lava Reef, or this bullshit:

Rest assured, you will NEVER FORGET!!! 

What irritates me is the game assuming that I’m supposed to find it cool… because it has all these references. All the while I’m zeroing in on why the Act 1 boss in Mirage Saloon is an oversized Mario enemy.

Heavy Magician works because the three cameos it turns into are those we haven’t seen in ages. Metal Sonic works because no one played those game gear games (:P), and in small part, Encore mode works because Sega absolutely refuses to rerelease Knuckles Chaotix. Now you wanna talk about a missed opportunity, between Sonic Gems and now, they seem to ignore the real obscure shit save for Sonic fighters. It’s always this non-stop parade to glorify the Genesis trilogy. Not much of a celebration if you neglect all but a few titles.

I just completely forgot what I was ranting about.

Bad Physics/bugs(?)

OHH I’m hurting some feelings with this one. Oh check your blood pressure meds at the door, these instances don’t occur throughout the entirety of the game, but seeing as this is the most tauted “pro” of mania, I expected perfection! But alas…

Please, all you Mania ass lickers. Explain to me why in a boss fight where you have to to jump to avoid missiles, your momentum DROPS!!!!?

Cause this is the 3rd time I had to fight him  cause I didn’t understand why I couldn’t jump over them very well! I thought it was the random shifts in elevation on thr road that interrupted my jumps, but the moment I notice that, I was pissed beyond belief! I was getting angry at this fight!! That shit right there is no excuse!

The game has some goddamn technical flaws, and no one said shit for a year!? Agendas, mang. Agendas

Tedious Boss Fights

Now, mind you, the bosses are prone to difficulty spikes as well, but the majority of them might as well have been in Alien Soldier.

Sonic 2, Heroes, and Shadow all have the best boss fights by virtue of the fact that you simply HIT them, and not have to wait for an opportunity to do so, unlike in the majority of sonic games. But Mania seems to be much worse. The bosses themselves prove to be just a bit more chaotic that you aren’t giving much breathing room to think and plan on what to do next. 

A lot of them, you have to figure out what In the hell you have to do first before trying to strike them, and it isn’t obvious what you have to do. That and I was playing Knux  whole time, so his shit jump height was an impediment to doing anything of worth.

Like Metal Sonic, it took me 5 tries before I figured out you had to hit the silver bastards into Metal’s chair or w/e, or with the Act 1 boss of Press Garden, you had to wait until this fuck hits a brown box to break off a chainsaw (subtle hint in the intro, I know), or that ffffucking Act 1 Lava Reef Boss where you had to wait for the Lava to burn off this asshole’s armor before you could actually hit him. It threw me off cause you had armorless fucks appear throughout the Act. Is this Sonic or Zelda?

Then there’s just fights that are just tedious. Act 2 of same zone, you have to employ the same tactics used against the final boss of Sonic 3 (hitting the middle section). Problem is this fuck randomly jumps half the damn time, so you’re being knocked away even though you’re timing your shit right.

Or the spider from Flying Battery. And he ain’t even hard, but you have to be fast and ultra precise just so the damn thing doesn’t take too long to kill, or so you can avoid accidents. And then even when you hit him, he’ll just hit the ground instead. So annoying!!!

And then they get lazy and start trotting out some of these old bosses like Sonic 1’s final boss, or the death egg security system from S3K. None of which were enjoyable to fight back then.

Special Stages are absolutely terrible. 

Ok, one. The Super Peel-Out is a shit move. Nothing is special about it. It’s an inferior spindash. Treating it like some sort of reward is laughable. And so are the conditions for unlocking this and other shit.

Blue sphere, one of the worst special stages in Sonic history, makes it’s obnoxious return to Mania, and it’s shittier than ever before. This time around, they’re treated as the bonus stages for getting 25 rings at a signposts. IE I can ignore them, right? WRONG! In order to unlock anything of worth (like Knuckles Mode), you would have to do these stages consistently. The tokens  you get from blah blah you should already know. I hate Blue sphere! Seems to be a recurring theme in Mania, bringing back all the elements I hated in the classic, namely the shit from S3K.

This wouldn’t be so bad if a lot of the new stages weren’t designed specifically to be disorienting. Like they’re scripted to be completed in a certain pattern. And if you don’t know the pattern, you’re gonna be thrown off course and you’ll lose all the time. And they included the old stages so you can do side-by-side comparisons of how retarded the new stages are. The older ones don’t rely on one-way patterns to be challenging, they were simply mazes you had to traverse. How is that a throwback when you fucked up the very essence of the damn special stages!?

But hell, that’s nothing compared to the actual special stages. This new breed of impossible blends elements of blue sphere and with character models from sonic R, and the piss ass controls that make it impossible to enjoy. I kept thinking how much better this would be if I could fucking drift. Turning by itself is an absolute chore as the characters can’t bank worth a damn, so what happens is that you start skidding around the road constantly,  and that can’t be good for anyone’s stress. Especially when you add in the need to stay off the grass, collect rings, keep from bumping into walls or falling off cliffs, etc.

And all that just to replicate the feel of the olden days!? Look, just cause your goal is to make the game feel old doesn’t mean everything about the classic days was gold. Some things need to be dumped. Why not just bring back S2’s Special Stages?  It’s the only good one that people liked.

And lastly, Knuckles is still treated like a joke!

And yet, despite this desire to replicate the good ol days, someone missed the memo that Knuckles wasn‘t comic relief, and was actually pretty popular. And yet, here he is being knocked off of planes at Mirage Saloon. Just another way of keeping the black man down, I suppose. 

I’m guessing your next question is “”well, is there anything you do like?” Cause if I don’t like anything, then that invalidates my shit, I guess. But sure there was. The soundtrack is on fleek…. that’s what the kids are saying these days, right? I love that they brought back Mighty and Ray,  and Mighty is probably the best to use considering the amount of enemies and traps there are, and the ability to use knux as a secondary character is a huuuuuuge plus! But even with all that, the frustration of this game, and the pretentious… “aura” it exudes, prevents any real praise from coming out of my mouth. It’s kinda like hearing on the news that an 8 month old baby was beaten to death by her 17yo father, and then you go outside and the sun is shining FUCK THAT DAMN SUN! Kids is dying and the sun is shining….

…not a good comparison,  I know.