Sonic Mania - a new 2D Sonic game that looks like it will be good

[Lemming]

Been playing for about 20 minutes since it finally released on Steam. I'm at Chemical Plant Act 2 and it's great so far, plenty of opportunities to chain momentum-y stuff together to go flying across the map like a lunatic. I'm liking the disorientation for fans of the original too, where Green Hill Zone and Chemical Plant both start off as they did in the MegaDrive games before suddenly becoming completely different stages.

The only real complaint so far is Tails. The stupid cunt keeps scaring the shit out of me by suddenly rocketing down from off-screen and I think he's an enemy, jump to intercept him and invariably go falling down a hole that leads back to the start of the level and/or death. When he's not doing that, he's hovering in front of me and doing jack shit while I get assailed by the robotic spiders.

The forced nostalgia stuff can fuck off too, but that seems limited so far. The classic SEGA intro was pretty cringey, although necessary I suppose, and the options menu actively pissed me off by offering the choice of having a scanline filter over the game. Yes, please let me make this game look like eye-burning shit for no reason at all.

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The only real complaint so far is Tails. The stupid cunt keeps scaring the shit out of me by suddenly rocketing down from off-screen and I think he's an enemy, jump to intercept him and invariably go falling down a hole that leads back to the start of the level and/or death. When he's not doing that, he's hovering in front of me and doing jack shit while I get assailed by the robotic spiders.

ONCE YOU GET USED TO HIM, HE'S GREAT - HE'S AN ALLY AND NOT AN ENEMY.  IT'S AMAZINGLY CLEVER HOW THEY'VE DONE THIS, TO CREATE A SECOND CHARACTER WHICH FOLLOWS YOU AROUND.

[Lemming]

On the Stardust Speedway or whatever boss fight, where you have to bounce the robot Sonic into the boss, and Tails is now openly mutinying against me by rolling himself into a ball of death and killing the robo-Sonics I need to progress.

[biggytitbo]

It says on steam this game has always online DRM on the PC, so it can fuck off. For a 2d sonic game aswell, jesus.

[madhair60]

Just be always online and it should be absolutely fine.

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It's like the old days when you needed to make sure your computer was being powered by a source of electricity.

[Lemming]

Tails is stealing my oxygen bubbles in Hydrocity Zone and watching blankly as I drown before his eyes.

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Tails is stealing my oxygen bubbles in Hydrocity Zone and watching blankly as I drown before his eyes.

HE'S AN ALLY AND NOT AN ENEMY.

[Lemming]

I miss the bubble-generator thing by an inch and Tails jeopardises the mission by immediately leaping in and landing on it perfectly, just to humiliate me. If these had been the final seconds before I ran out of air, Tails would have murdered me.

[popcorn]

It's a brilliant idea for a game. 

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It's a mini game called 'Bubble Stealing Fucker' that was originally on the Game Gear.

[biggytitbo]

It's like the old days when you needed to make sure your computer was being powered by a source of electricity.

I don't think there's any justification to making a 2d single player sonic game o line only. It's getting so much flack on steam for it I imagine they'll see sense eventually and take the denuvo shit out.

[Consignia]

Tails is stealing my oxygen bubbles in Hydrocity Zone and watching blankly as I drown before his eyes.

No he isn't. They took out. You're just looking for excuses against Green Hill's true hero.

[Delete Delete Delete]

I'm enjoying this so far, but Flying Battery 2 has some proper bullshit in it. The crush deaths are way to sensitive and the electricity pylons over nothing, pure bullshit.

[colacentral]

I'm enjoying this so far, but Flying Battery 2 has some proper bullshit in it. The crush deaths are way to sensitive and the electricity pylons over nothing, pure bullshit.

Yeah, I agree. I've been crushed a fair few times and it's come as a complete surprise as I had plenty of space still.

[Replies From View]

I don't think there's any justification to making a 2d single player sonic game o line only. It's getting so much flack on steam for it I imagine they'll see sense eventually and take the denuvo shit out.

I don't know what "denuvo shit" means but I can grasp the general gist.  I'm essentially somebody from the early 90s trying to make sense of the words you have written.

[Pseudopath]

I don't know what "denuvo shit" means but I can grasp the general gist.  I'm essentially somebody from the early 90s trying to make sense of the words you have written.

It's the shitty DRM software that constantly phones back to a licensing server to check that the same copy of the game isn't running on multiple PCs (thus preventing people from playing the game offline). Some also believe it's the reason the PC version of the game was delayed for a fortnight. Glad that Sega backed down and removed the requirement to be constantly online, but they were lunatics for even considering it in the first place (although this is Sega we're talking about).

[brat-sampson]

Squish deaths being so damn sudden are a factor of the originals I would've liked to have seen removed. There's some travelling electricity in a later zone as well that doesn't signpost its arrival, i.e. on top of you, so can cause sudden ring damage, which ain't a fun night in, I can tell you.

[biggytitbo]

It's the shitty DRM software that constantly phones back to a licensing server to check that the same copy of the game isn't running on multiple PCs (thus preventing people from playing the game offline). Some also believe it's the reason the PC version of the game was delayed for a fortnight. Glad that Sega backed down and removed the requirement to be constantly online, but they were lunatics for even considering it in the first place (although this is Sega we're talking about).

Gotta agree with what Jim sterling said about it today.


Back to the game, apperently they found unused sprites in the code of sonic 1 of Splats, the rabbit character that was dropped from the game and he finally appears for the first time in this.

[Lemming]

Wow, I take it all back.



No idea what you have to press to make this happen, but Tails absolutely came through during the big octopus boss fight. I fell into the oil and he swept down and lifted me back to the platform. What a champ. Undeniably the MVP. I see now, he's an ALLY, not an ENEMY.

[popcorn]

You can have Tails fly and carry you aboot by pressing up + jump.

[Kelvin]

You can have Tails fly and carry you aboot by pressing up + jump.

whaaaat!

[Shay Chaise]

[Shay Chaise]

Dankey Kang

[popcorn]

It's a brilliant idea for a game. It's amazingly clever how they've done this.

[Kelvin]

I completed this tonight. Definitely enjoyed it more in the last few hours, not so much because it had fewer bullshit moments, but because I've grown more used to them. Definitely had a few cool moments in the later levels, like the boss that drops mini versions of classic sonic bosses, and the level where you jump in and out of the foreground. In that respect at least, the game is up there with the best platformers, in it's willingness to offer up an idea, play around it with for an act or two, then completely disregard it for something fresh. Not everything works, but not everything has to.

I've also learned the multiplayer mode can be quite good fun, with the desire to beat your mate to the finish line a surprisingly effective way to add tension, especially when you see them whizz past on a different floor. I'm sure this becomes less fun if one of you learns the levels back to front, but at least for now, we're enjoying it.

[popcorn]

I keep thinking I've finished with this and then I go back and do a bit more. I've got all the emeralds with Sonic and Knuckles now. It's so easy to jump in.

[Golden E. Pump]

I just lost 12 lives to the Hydrocity act 2 boss and haven't felt rage like this since the 90s. I nearly flung my controller at the game over screen before I realised that it's a bit harder to replace an £850 TV than a shitty portable TV from my youth.

[AsparagusTrevor]

I still hate the Blue Sphere stages, there are a couple of really scummy examples where there's orange spheres which, unless you've memorised the entire layout, you just have to take a leap of faith and hope they don't catapult you into a bed of red spheres, which they often do.

I just lost 12 lives to the Hydrocity act 2 boss and haven't felt rage like this since the 90s. I nearly flung my controller at the game over screen before I realised that it's a bit harder to replace an £850 TV than a shitty portable TV from my youth.

Weirdly how some bosses click and some don't with different people. I had no problem at all on the Hydrocity boss, but its was the fucking Flying Battery spider boss that I first spent loads of lives on. Then later on I met my new nemesis, the Lava Reef octopus thing, with weird, random, un-telegraphed crush-deaths (a bug?).

Maybe it's multiple legged bosses I have trouble with.

[Obel]

Really? A bunch of lives on the flying battery boss? I haven't died against him at all! Just knock him into the spikes and don't hit the spikes! I don't think that ones poses a threat at all really.

Personally hate the Oil Ocean boss, it requires a smidgen of patience that I don't have. Oh and metal sonic, just find him real boring.