The game keeps the familiar formula from older games of having a stack of lives which can be increased. But, in an attempt to combat the high difficulty, the developers have at least tried to make it easier for when you inevitably run out of lives. I was Player 1 though so these issues didn’t bother me because I won! But seriously these are very infrequent and it’s much more likely that a rage quit will occur due to the difficulty, rather than see a glitch determine the victor.Īs mentioned earlier the most difficult boss seems to appear early in the game, but this is relatively speaking, because the rest of Sonic Mania is far from a walk in the park. Here I noticed the odd glitch though and on some levels Player 2 would became trapped, ultimately leading to a forfeit by being timed out. Local multiplayer is also included but this time you can race on every single zone in the game, not just leaving you to choose from a select few.
The rest of Sonic Mania sounds equally fantastic, and the sound effects will instantly sound familiar. The second act has these themes remixed but still sounding excellent. Again, the first act of each zone has the standard music, at least for the returning zones, whilst new zones have a completely new theme. The remixing extends beyond the design into the soundtrack as well. The zones play fantastically, but they also look and sound great too. The final two zones however are deserving of their places at the end and bite back with a vengeance. The zones and the bosses themselves are faultless to a ‘T’ and play exactly like you remember, but it’s like they have been shuffled up and put back in the wrong order. The zones appeared to be shorter as well, around three quarters of the way through, compared to some earlier ones which again wasn’t expected. By the 4th zone I had already defeated the hardest boss in the game, and none of the remaining others came close to its’ difficulty. This highlights some of the games’ inconsistency in terms of difficulty. Some of these will look familiar, albeit tweaked, but the newer designed ones are really clever in their appearance and require more lateral thinking should you wish to be able to defeat them. These major changes extend to the boss battles also, which like any good Sonic game occurs at the end of the zones.
Subtle changes have been made across all the first acts of the zone, but then major changes occur in the second acts of the zone. These zones are not carbon copies of the originals though – they have been ‘remixed’. As a personal note though, thank the lord that Metropolis Zone from Sonic 2 is not in Sonic Mania. I won’t spoil what zones are here, because it was a genuine moment of joy when seeing certain zones returning, but the game opens with Green Hill Zone from the very beginning of the franchise, and includes another seven classic zones alongside four completely new zones. And back through time in the sense that those classic levels you remember are all featured in Sonic Mania. Eggman/Robotnik and his cronies find the anomaly before the daring duo can, and send them back through time. The game begins with Sonic and Tails returning to Angel Island, birthplace of Knuckles, to investigate an anomaly.