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Sonic Mania (PS4) Status: Stopped playing - Something better came along I started playing this game on Wednesday 5 August, 2020 // I stopped playing this game on: Tuesday 18 August, 2020
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.
August 18, 2020 12:03:20 PM
I'm probably about halfway through this and I'm starting to get a bit tired - mostly because I'll get to the end of the levels and then die at the boss state, and doing the levels all over again feels a bit tiresome to be honest. But, I did enjoy a few hours of multiplayer. The "plus" version (as in, the physical copy that's labelled Sonic Mania Plus - rather than the version I got as part of playstation plus) had a few new things to try out. A coop mode and a competitive mode. The coop mode was weird - one player is Sonic the other Tails but the camera is centered on Sonic and so...you have to really coordinate to stay together on screen (otherwise Tails is off-screen...) But it looks like Tails is invulnerable? It was really weird, tried it for 5 minutes or so - so these are really first impressions. The competitive mode is more fun - the screen is split into the number of players and then you each race through the levels - it's a shared level so if someone nabs a ring it's gone for everyone else. At the end of the level a winner is determined based on who did the best across 6 categories (so, the most wins in categories is overall winner). The categories are score, rings, total rings collected, items, time to finish, and one more? Maybe it was five. This mode is pretty fun as it encourages following different routes (especially if you're slightly behind) so you can get rings and stuff. This one was pretty fun - but the more varied the levels (with fewer chokepoints) the better. The earlier levels worked better when I was playing (3v3)
August 5, 2020 06:54:24 PM
I'm really enjoying this. Well, assuming I can get past the final boss of Act I in Studiopolis. It's a really annoying fight I've lost 4 times so far simply because I didn't know what to do. It also has a strange variable speed scrolling that has thrown me off, making it harder for me to avoid enemies. Perhaps I'm missing something? I would not have known this was a new Sonic game due to how well it emulated/resembles the original/older games. It's pretty uncanny. I've enjoyed the random stuff that's thrown in there. For example, one of the "boss fights" is actually a match of Puyo-Puyo! (or, as I remember from the genenesis - "Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine" - which I loved playing on emulator back in the late 90s). So far, the game's a joy but hard to get into after the precision of Celeste. Sonic definitely controls quite differently and I have a hard time with his static jumps - both the timing and controlling the landing. Perhaps I'll get better soon?

Sonic Mania (PS4)