Sonic Mania’s faithful recreation of the classic, Genesis-era platforming is both a blessing and a hindrance all at once. Sonic fans will undoubtedly eat up its classic aesthetic and callbacks to past games, but other elements suffer from the same issues that have plagued these games since Sonic & Knuckles in 1994. My biggest issue, specifically with the last few levels, is how the game will throw obstacles at the player without much warning. My deaths never came from challenging platforming sections but usually came from unforeseen enemy placements or spikes that I had idea were coming until it was too late. This resulted in the game having many instances of trial and error. To add to that, Sonic Mania keeps the extremely dated lives system that will take you back to the beginning of a stage if you die too often, having you redo some larger levels a second or third time. Sonic Mania’s audiovisual design is on point, so its 90’s gameplay sensibilities made it that much more disappointing. I loved some of the boss fights and the new levels have some really clever sections, but I got frustrated too many times to recommend it to anyone other than hardcore Sonic fans.
I Play a lot of Video Games 